Considering the present political climate, it probably is no surprise that the word hope has been on my mind a lot lately. Hope is a tricky concept because while it seems to indicate a positive outlook, it carries the underlying assumption that all is not presently as good as it could be. I’ve come to realize that this is perhaps what is behind some of the reactions to my last column at the now-closed site Comic World News, in which I asserted that more rigorous comics criticism will attract more literary-minded creators to the medium, thus setting the stage for a richer comics canon. In response, I was called to task for “complaining,” being “pessimistic” and having a “bleak” view of the state of comics.

I was surprised—because, to me, the column represented a hope I have for comics as an art and literary form. However, where I saw areas where comics and the culture around it were surely capable of improving to everyone’s benefit, people who read and write about comics saw only someone being critical. The medium is still very young and its followers are such a relatively small number of people that their connection with it is very intimate. Those accustomed to comics being an insular world, I’ve discovered, sometimes look upon outsiders with wariness. And this is exactly how I presented myself in that column: not as a comic book editor or dedicated comics reader but as a literary-minded person who feels more connected to prose than sequential art and who is willing to examine why that is so.

Perhaps I am misguided in thinking myself still something of a comics outsider; I’m editor-in-chief at an independent publisher, after all. Still, I often feel like my seven years in the industry and 15 years reading comics—few of them superhero comics—are not enough to keep me from being something new and strange. And not necessarily welcome, at times—because a critical viewpoint can be perceived as overly negative or elitist to people who are devoted to comics, especially fans of genres in which I have little interest. But to me, an outsider perspective is exactly what I need to hold onto, even as I become more and more part of the comics world. I’ve had exchanges with comics readers who don’t care what outsiders think of the medium and who feel no need to attract the interest of people who are not yet aware of the range of genres available in the medium. The comics world, though increasingly expanding, is still a cozy circle of publishers, comic book stores and readers, and it seems there are many who like it that way.

However, many publishers are trying to widen this circle by actively pursuing sales in bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, many of which now have impressive manga sections. Borders has recently opened “concept” stores that have expanded specialty sections, graphic novels among them. There are doubters when it comes to how this brave new world of comics selling is doing, however. San Francisco comics retailer Brian Hibbs annually pores over sales numbers, with results that he claims show that the direct market (the collective noun comics “insiders” use for comic book stores) better serves the public than large bookstore chains in selling graphic novels. Let’s put aside his analysis, which has been a point of contention among comics industry pundits and journalists for the past couple of weeks. What is more interesting to me is the perspective that motivated it and message underlying it. What does Hibbs want comics publishers and readers to take away from his analysis? I asked Hibbs for clarification. He repeated what he has written elsewhere—that he believes the numbers show that a specialty store obviously will do a better job of selling the medium it specializes in than a book store with a more general inventory of books. And of course, there is that “well-defined set of primary customers” Hibbs cites in his analysis as a strong point for the direct market.

But these customers are not the only, or necessarily the best, market for many graphic novels. Even as comic book stores are specialized, so are their customers. It’s no wonder that many comics publishers have sought new readers in the bookstore market: we’re trying to make a living from comics just as much as retailers are. A better living comes from expanding our readership, and it seems to me that, no matter how Hibbs crunches the numbers, new readers are to be found in the wider public, those who have not historically read comics—those people who do not go to comic book stores. Bookstores have the allure of untapped potential, and with increasing mainstream recognition of literary graphic novels like Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, that potential is even more promising.

That brings us back to those outsiders. An established, loyal readership is certainly not something any comics publisher would reject. However, the industry can’t grow and certainly can’t attain the kind of diversity necessary for an art form to develop and mature without finding new readers—new readers who have never heard the phrases “Team Comics,” “pull list” or “long box”; who read their first comic not after a trip to their local comic shop (LCS to comics insiders) but after seeing it in the New York Times Magazine. My hope lies with these outsiders, yes, but it is a hope firmly rooted in my position inside comics. I want the medium to be healthy and the industry to grow, and my outlook would indeed become bleak if I thought that was not possible.

Jennifer de Guzman is editor-in-chief at the independent comics publisher SLG Publishing. She also writes fiction—mostly in prose, occasionally in comics—and holds an M.F.A. in literature and creative writing from San Jose State University. The opinions expressed are her own and not necessarily those of Publishers Weekly or PW Comics Week.