Seth
Cartoonist

The Comics Journal has given me a lot of pleasure over the years. Mostly this has been due to Gary Groth's wonderfully vitriolic (and incisive) essays and columns. Besides the pleasure, though, The Journal has given me a real education. I first started reading it back in the early to mid '80's and at that point I was, most definitely, an ignorant youth. The Comics Journal served as an excellent primer on cartooning, old and new -- pointing me in the right direction. I read a lot of crap following recommendations in the Journal, but, in the long run, it helped me form a critical point of view.

That is the Journal's real strength. The comic book world is such an uncritical "fan" world -- the Journal made an attempt to hold comic books up to some level of standards and create a concensus of what a "good" comic is. I think, ultimately, it has done a good job of this. When I first started reading the Journal, things like American Flagg or Sable were considered worthy of serious interest. I think the Journal has helped to steer that interest on to more deserving subjects. Even in those days when the Journal itself was taking American Flagg (for example) seriously you could feel that it was being held up to the likes of Raw (for example) and falling short. Today, we know That Frank Miller (for example) cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with Chris Ware. (We do know that now, don't we?)

I've probably mentioned this before, but I can recall with utter clarity how I felt when I read that big fat issue #ZOO of The Comics Journal -- depressed. I was full of youthful enthusiasm for the future of comics -- it seemed like so much great work was going on and that the sky was the limit. That issue really burst my bubble. I think that's when I realized what a sad and doomed medium I had tied my hopes to. Thanks Gary. I can't really recall what it was specifically in that issue that pointed out this grim truth -- it was probably just the Journal's endearing negativity.

In those days, Chester Brown and I would devour each issue and then meet for lunch to discuss in detail everything we'd read. Even way up here in the frozen north, we still felt connected to all the back-biting and dirty dealing of the comics industry thanks to the Journal. Oh, how we enjoyed Gary Groth's delightfully mean replies to Terry Beatty's letters (a high-point in the Journal's history) or that great Fiore/Pekar brouhaha. Those were the days. Personally though, the greatest thing the Journal ever published was that massive interview with R. Crumb in issue #121. I read and re-read that interview until it was a coverless rag. That thing was my bible in my 20's. Another "Catcher in the Rye." Just recently, I bought a nice, fresh copy of it to replace the torn remnants of the old one.

Admittedly, I don't read the Journal with quite as much enthusiasm as I once did. Perhaps I'm just getting old. Or maybe The Comics Journal is. It seems more mature, less angry. Of course, I recall letters complaining of just this thing way back then... so maybe it's all perspective. I must say though, there does seem to be far too many interviews and reviews of Grant Morrison/Vertigo/Sandman type stuff these days for my tastes. Still, who can complain when you get an interview with the wives and girlfriends of your cartooning peers. That's something even the old Journal never would've thought of.

Congratulations Comics Journal. I hope you continue to publish forever.

Michael Palmiotti
Cartoonist

Congratulations are in order, so get that sharp knife and stab yourselves on the back once again. I have been reading this magazine since I started reading comics way back then, and have always enjoyed the magazine to the fullest. As you guys already know, most of my work day is spent behind a drawing board working in a silent solitude trying my hardest to make the kind of comics I grew up enjoying. It is nice to read that others before me had the same things going on in their lives, both professional and personal, and I have to thank the Journal for their wonderful interviews with some of my favorite creators. The great thing about the Journal is that even those people I would never in a million years ever want to know one damn thing about, come off as intelligent and an interesting interview. Good one!

Don't get me wrong, this magazine makes Wizard look like Newsweek at times with its one-sided opinions, half-assed coverage, vicious back-stabbing and its wonderful way of kissing the same old ass over and over and over. All one has to do is look between the covers and you can see the invisible top ten lists appearing in front of your eyes! Hell, just look whose letters appear first in this section, accompanied with a sample of their artwork and you will get an idea of what I mean.

I have to admit, at times I only buy it when they interview someone I am interested in reading about, which is just about every other time. You guys have an uncanny knack of finding some out-there subject matter to report on and God bless! Sometimes I read this magazine and am lucky to find something that really pisses me off, and that's OK, 'cause it's usually written by someone who in a million years would never say it to my face. I love that! I think it's great how a bunch of no-talents depend on spell-check to clean up their act and report on an art form they cannot even begin to fathom. That's one of the magic things that makes The Comics Journal so special. That and the paper stock.

Finally, to cover my ass and not screw up any future attention/bashing, there are a few people I truly respect that work on the magazine and want to thank for keeping alive the work and legends in the business and continuing to ask those hard to answer questions. Happy 25 guys, keep pouring out all those crazy, self-indulgent, condescending, one-sided, backstabbing, intimate articles and interviews. I wouldn't want it any other way.

R. Fiore
Writer, The Comics Journal

All that need be said about Fantagraphics after 25 years is that it set out to elevate comics to the level of a serious art form and it succeeded. Which was not the way I would have bet, either. It's a little like Quixote taking out the windmill. And yet, let it be recorded in the Book of Life that in the last year of the 20th century (let's not argue about it) that not one but several comic books were widely reviewed as serious works of literature, not as a cutesie-poo, aren't-we-hip-and-clever silly season feature, but as if the critics felt they could do it without fear of being embarrassed by it. Naturally Fantagraphics wasn't alone in this enterprise. First and foremost were the cartoonists, who, instead of expending their hard-won talents on something sensible like making money decided instead to drive their parents to despair. Other indispensable parties included Harvey Pekar, Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, Drawn & Quarterly and any number of anonymous (well, I don't know who they are) alternative weekly editors. But Fantagraphics was always at the center of the movement.

I think I can say this despite having been pretty intimately involved with Fantagraphics over that time because (1) the campaign was two-pronged (2) I was on the wrong prong. The wrong prong was a critical magazine dedicated to nudging the commercial comics companies into doing more creative work. One hears these days about a culture war being conducted by conservatives, which appears to consist mainly of writing books about how awful the culture is. Trying to fight a cultural war with criticism is like trying to fight a shooting war by dropping propaganda leaflets. Similarly, trying to move a mercenary enterprise towards idealism through a magazine of criticism is like, well, it's like something that would work better as the second clause of this sort of comparison. I think the best we were hoping for was to move the industry to something more like the EC comics of the 1950s.

The right prong was a vagrant desire on the part of Gary Groth and Kim Thompson to publish comics on their own, a desire that developed into the proverbial whim of iron. It started out with the most godawful piece of 1950s-style sci-fi dreck you ever saw by the most forgettable hack you've ever forgotten, a tome that could probably still be had if you were willing to go that deep into the warehouse. Then along comes Love & Rockets. It was as if a saloon Casanova accustomed to making his dates with whatever was left at closing time suddenly fell head-over for the minister's daughter and resolved to become a better, nobler person. From then on an indulgent distribution system fed an ambition that soon became Napoleonic.

There are things you can fault Gary and Kim on. Fantagraphics has got to be about the only publisher that slips an "About the Publisher" blurb into its endsheets. It puts me in mind of an anecdote whose provenance I can't recall. A Sunday School teacher asks a bright pupil, "If you could save the lives of all the children who died in the war by giving up your own life, would you do it?" The kid thinks about it for a moment, then says, "Not anonymously." This I think is Gary and Kim's philosophy of dedicating themselves to the betterment of the art. It is a sin we can live with.

Rich Tommaso
Cartoonist

Upon picking up a copy of The Comics Journal in a local comic shop, I hear a voice cry out, "Oh, God, you're not gonna buy that are you? Are you one of those guys that buys anything on an indie label? Are you a comics elitist? Those Journal people are elitist pig-dogs! They don't like anything! That Gary Groth guy needs an ass-beating! He shits on everything mainstream. ..." And so on, and so forth. This has to be the one-millionth time I've listened to a comics store clerk vent his frustrations about Fantagraphics, the Journal and their "ilk." So I look up at him and say, "You just gotta understand where they're coming from." But this reply only falls on deaf ears. This person is from a completely different world -- he doesn't believe that 90% of the comics produced are fluff, he doesn't realize that the Journal scrutinizes these comics so brutally because they care about the medium and not because they hate comics, nor does he realize how terribly immature comics still are when measured against the intellectual growth that has been achieved in the film medium. If filmmakers and film goers can mature than why can't cartoonists and comics readers?

It is a sad reflection upon the industry that after the past 25 years, The Comics Journal remains the only intelligent, comprehensive, critical voice in comics. No one else in the field seems to have a strong desire to protest the fact that so much shit lines the walls of these comic shops. Again, no one sees anything wrong with the content of the material, so why should they care about transcending it?

The clerk is clutching the copy of the Journal in his hands, still bickering away, and I feel blessed to never have had my picture taken in any comics magazine -- he doesn't know that I work in the comics profession and I sure as hell am not going to tell him. There isn't any point, we're from completely different worlds. Maybe in another 25 years the Journal's message will finally sink in.

Peter Bagge
Cartoonist

The first Comics Journal I ever read was the Harvey Kurtzman issue (TCJ #67), back around 1980 or so. That interview was incredible; not only for all the intense research and detail that went into it, but also for the seething tone that underscored the entire conversation. Gary and Kim somehow even got Harvey to ridicule their mutual "enemies" and other poor, defenseless schlubs. "What a couple of shitheads!" I thought to myself. I loved it.

Since then the Journal has matured from the thinly disguised adolescent fanzine that it truly was to the serious critical Journal it always strove to become, though I both prefer and miss the former. I wish "Spot-On!" took up half the magazine, and if they print one more roundtable discussion on Understanding Comics I'm going to set their office on fire. And then there's Ken Smith, a man who manages to use every 10-dollar word in the dictionary to say absolutely nothing.

Still, I must admit that the inclusion of Smith's column is a classic example of Groth's spitefulness; a spite so profound that it sometimes borders on insanity. And ya gotta love that. Theoretically, at least.

Robin Fisher
Writer, The Comics Journal

The first issue of The Comics Journal I read was the young cartoonists issue, #205 (the one with the Adrian Tomine cover, of course). I had just been given my own radio show about alternative comics and I was starving for any subject matter which was remotely educational, intelligent, discourse worthy, fun, and which had as little to do with superheroes as possible. Though daunting, the Journal fit the bill. I devoured it, wondering where it had been all my life. Since then I've managed to accumulate over 60 more Journals. I love reading the articles, the interviews, all of it.

The one thing that I always remember is the letters page, Blood & Thunder. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. #205 had an almost embarrassingly honest letter, a letter from a reader fed up with their negative ways, and a letter from Al Columbia. Wow. Anything I had ever read up to this point seemed shallow, commercial, and boring, and not the least bit encouraging of thought or discussion.

The next issue I read stunned me as well. #189. Mike Mignola was interviewed by someone I knew. Cool. But first, the letters page. It scared the hell out of me. An angry barrage from Alex Toth and a terse, venomous reply from Gil Kane. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know who to believe. Then there was a letter from Darcy Sullivan, a Journal contributor, complaining about the last issue. This was all new to me. I was amazed by the lack of censorship, and the Journal's willingness to show all sides. TCJ #189 will also go down in history as spawning one of the longest debates I've encountered in the Journal. Kochalka's "Craft is the Enemy" letter provoked discussion issue after issue. After 6 years it's still talked about. It was also in this issue that I first discovered something the Journal has become notorious for: the response. Tom Spurgeon's dissection and dismantling of Steve Weiner's letter left me cold. It's actually my only complaint about the Journal. The editors (or, in some cases, their friends) must always have the last word, and the results can be very childish. But I accept it as par for course. It wouldn't be Blood & Thunder without it.

As time went on and I collected older Journals, I was continually surprised. Sometimes I recognized my friends within those pages; a couple of times, I've found letters from people I used to know in high school, leaving me to wonder, why wasn't I told about this? Creators I like and respect respond as well. In one issue you can find Scott McCloud, Jason Little, David Collier, and Wilfred Santiago. Not bad for a magazine that initially focused mainly on superheroes and fluctuated between no letters and 49 pages of letters (issue #63). I enjoy the fact that they accept and print criticism, and let writers, creators and strangers correspond on issues brought up within their pages as well. Different editors have come and gone, each with their own opinions of the letters page. These days it's not as acerbic as it used to be. They are also culling more and more from the Internet. But they still say whatever they want and stand behind it all the way. They're the kid that knew the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. The kid that provides much-needed balance in this industry steeped in ignorance.

Donna Barr
Cartoonist

The Comics Journal is a nice little industry rag. Limited market, but it's critiquing a limited market - mostly stuff for boys. Pretty safe and conservative, but then, boys are conservative (I guess if I had part of my internal anatomy in the form of two glands hanging outside my body, protected by nothing but a skin sack, I'd be wary and defensive, too).

The Journal does a good job covering books within its parameters. It's pretty honest -- it never makes a pretense of going outside its limits. It sticks to the guns it knows.

Roberta Gregory's books pretty much scare the Journal. Colin Upton is beyond 'em. I've had a couple of nice reviews, but the scary in my stuff is disguised, and spoon-fed.

The editors are nice. Kim likes my books, as far as he can understand them. Gary and I have always gotten along -- I actually think he's kind of cute. He's stopped blowing up toilets since he became a father. Gary adores the kid, and the kid looks up to his dad like he thinks Gary hung the moon -- it's downright poignant to watch 'em together.

Their parties are pretty tame. But I'm an out-in-the-woods person, and hanging out in the Little Blue House eating M&M's and gossiping probably just doesn't push my buttons.

Michael Gilbert
Cartoonist

Let's see if I get this straight. Last month, my free "lifetime" Journal subscription runs out -- so I whine and plead and beg Kim Thompson to put me back on the sub list. Then (by the merest of coincidences!) a week later I get a letter from Gary Groth "suggesting" that I might want to write a short note celebrating the 25th anniversary of that very magazine. Darned funny timing if you ask me! So anyway, here's my totally unbiased comments on this august occasion:

Swell! Great! Love the Journal! Can't live without the Journal! More Journal!!! More!! More!!! More!!!!

Ahem! Now can I get my free sub, guys?

But seriously, folks... I've been a fan of The Comics Journal for a quarter of a century (my collection even contains a couple of the newspaper editions of the Journal, before their 1976 switch to magazine format!). So we're talking serious fanboy stuff here!

I haven't liked everything in it every issue (the Journal can get pretty catty at times - though I shamefully admit I've often enjoyed the catfights!). And sometimes the Journal can be downright unfair. But at its best, The Comics Journal has also been a passionate advocate for the medium we love. More often than not, publisher Gary Groth has used his magazine as a forum to praise the best of comics past, present and (hopefully!) future. Gary's also stood on his soapbox complaining endlessly about the current sorry state of comics. What a noodge!

Whatever bitching Gary does on the editorial page, he clearly loves comics. No one sticks with something for a quarter of a century unless they care deeply about it. So congratulations, Kim and Gary, for your stubborn, cussed persistence -- and to the Journal's many editors and contributors over the years, for making the magazine what it is today. I thank you all, and eagerly look forward to your next 25 years.

Or at least I will -- if you remember to get me back on that $#%#$%#$ subscription list!

Michael Dougan
Cartoonist

The Comics Journal is a valuable addition to my periodicals library. It holds a place of honor right next to Ceramic Collectibles, Needlepoint News and Toy Fox Terrier Monthly. Bold, fresh, hard-hitting Journalism. Nevermind it's about a topic whose entire readership could fill Gary Groth's living room, it's a great magazine. I do wish it was printed on glossy paper, but their strategy of printing it on recycled unsold comic books is both cost-effective and environmentally sound. Best of all, it manages to keep a handful of aspiring Journalists off food stamps, but without giving them any false hopes about their career choice.

Bill Randall
Writer, The Comics Journal

What are we doing? The Journal is certainly quixotic; we're essentially charging windmills even though we're riding dachshunds. No one on earth really notices our favored form, and the material rewards simply don't exist. Still, though, we seem as a whole obsessed, and have been so for 25 years. The creators' obsession understandably comes with their territory, but why the critics?

Perhaps as critics we're simply the weak ones slumming because we couldn't make it elsewhere: novels are too long, poetry's too hard, film's too crowded, so we ended up with their bastard child. Comics sure are a lot easier to apprehend than any of these other forms, except perhaps film, but you don't need a date and popcorn for a comic. And reading comics just makes intuitive sense, though making them doesn't. Melting words and images together on the page only comes with difficulty.

But that's fine: as Joseph Brodsky said, art's "development is determined not by the individuality of the artist but by the dynamics of the material itself." And he's absolutely right, for works of art don't come to us in ways we can control. Often, it's the wrestling with the raw material that produces the art; thus meter in poetry. Which is why the page, the grid, or even just the gutter is so necessary to create art, because they all create resistance.

Brodsky could call poetry, perhaps our oldest form, "the goal of the species." I'd have a hard time saying the same about a form as weird to come up with as comics, but I hope we're just as taken with it as Brodsky was with poetry. Then we might fulfill our own prophecies. We might mirror Jean-Luc Godard's conviction that cinema's invention was the most significant event of the 20th century, which has pushed him to create the most significant body of films in existence. He has, of course, been taken in part by the newness of cinema. This potential also attracts us to comics: we're seduced by the idea of uncharted territory, by the idea that the great works don't yet exist. Most excitingly, because of their unique architecture, comics can work on our brains in a way that other forms simply don't: if I learned anything from R. Fiore, it's that comics can be "a way of organizing experience, ...one of the most cogent arguments for the importance of the medium as an art form." Perhaps, then, comics can bring us to new insights that we couldn't even discover because of how the other forms work on us cognitively. If, as Brodsky claimed, poetry is accelerated thinking, then comics can be accelerated something, and both can lead us to different revelations.

Meanwhile, the critic's by the wall, scrawling in the notepad, looking for something to say about these discoveries and failures, despite the lack of a real vocabulary for doing so. Often, critics don't get it, especially when an artist is grappling with things so difficult, with such incredible resistances both in the material and the self, that the final product stands apart from anything that has previously existed; but that's understandable, and such criticism will fade. Only that criticism which honestly uncovers the material with which the artist has struggled will last. In a field such as ours, where the most difficult works might disappear before they're ever embraced by our tiny reading public, the importance of the critic increases profoundly, especially given that many of the best artists discuss their work only reluctantly. Critics can therefore be witnesses of sorts, testifying to the truth in these works, before they dissolve completely in the torrent of history.

Furthermore, the critic can push the artist further in the work. Ezra Pound played a similar role for Eliot, and without his criticism, The Wasteland would be less brilliant. We can play this role for one another now, to push our artists, especially the young ones, past mere sentimentality and hollow experimentation toward something more lasting. Probably without the Journal, many of the artists in this field would be content to piddle in bathroom-stall doodles or lame satire; at least with a gathering place of aesthetic foment, in print if not in person, the bar can rise a little higher. An artist may be clever, diverting, entertaining, but immortal? At least for a while?

This, then, is the most crucial role of the critics: we're not tastemakers, nor gauges of entertainment value, and certainly not self-obsessed poseurs. Nor are we artists who couldn't "make it," the easy cop-out I've heard so often when bruised egos brush valid criticisms to the floor. In truth, we are simply the most sensitive of readers, and therefore function as the conscience of the artistic community. Artists ultimately must be honest with themselves; failing that, let them know that if no one else notices, the critic will hear any false note like a broken windowpane. And it's important to keep some perspective about this entire ordeal of art. I think no one more eloquent than Andrei Tarkovsky when he claimed that "art is called to express the absolute freedom of man's spiritual potential." Central is that annoying absolute, the idea that we're all struggling to reach something out there, above us.

So if we're honest, we're all slaves to a truth outside of ourselves, even though it's not fashionable to believe so. And I hope that the people who publish in these pages are honestly pursuing that truth. Since we're all imperfect human beings, we're not going to make it every time. So for this essay, mea culpa. But on the whole, if we're inching, even slouching closer to that truth, comics are better for it, as are we.

Bill Griffith
Cartoonist

My two cents on the 25th anniversary of The Comics Journal: When a new copy of The Comics Journal arrives in the mail, I, like all other congenitally insecure cartoonists, immediately flip rapidly through its pages, using a data retrieval skill honed over years of use, looking for my name. If it's not in there, I put the issue in the recycling bin. Well, unless there's a good interview with another cartoonist, preferably dealing with his or her insecurities. Then I read it and get jealous. Then I re-scan the issue for names of cartoonists I know, hoping to find a negative review of their work. Finally, I silently curse whoever it was at the Journal who rated me as number 66 of the "Best 100 Comics of the Century" and draw another strip about how insecure I am.

Steve Geppi
President and CEO, Diamond Comic Distributors

I've been a subject (and a target!) of the Journal during its years of existence, and I suppose it would be easy, under those circumstances, to hold a grudge. But one thing I've always known about the Journal is that, ultimately, it's on my side. (No, I'm not trying to induce a heart attack!) You see, whether we agree on the politics or the aesthetics, we're both in this business because of a love of comics. Not always the same comics, I admit, but comics just the same. We're both fighting for a world in which this medium we love so much has a wider acceptance.

We may have chosen different means to that end, and we may not agree on the specifics of that end, but between the two polar opposites, there's a happy medium. I suspect that's where we'll end up -- in the happy medium (and I mean that word in both senses). It won't be the world the Journal envisions, and it won't be the world that I envision, but it will borrow liberally from both, and probably be the better for it.

So here's to 25 years of annoying and enlightening, of aggravating and entertaining. May there be 25 more.

Jakob
Cartoonist

In 1987, I was young and green but determined to see some of Europe. I had my first job, horrible but regular, so I managed to save some money, buy hard currency on the black market and a rail pass, and sat on a train to Oslo with the main goal to see as many of Munch's paintings as possible. One afternoon, after my mission was accomplished, I strolled around and, as usual on such occasions, found myself in front of a bookshop with a relatively good selection of comics in the cellar. The want-to-be comic artist in me was immediately attracted by a magazine cover veristically depicting creative disorder on a comic artist's table (the artist was Dave Gibbons and it was the Watchmen issue). I bought the thick, substantial thing and immediately lost any interest in further sightseeing. Instead of that, I positioned myself on a bench at the beginning of the park in front of the Royal Palace (overlooking the Karl Johan Street) and lost myself among the long interviews and drawings from Crumb's sketchbooks at the back until it got too chilly.

Later, I took every opportunity to buy new issues, be it in Venice, Munich or Vienna, and I even got some in Ljubljana from Ziga Leskovsek, a comic fan and collector. As soon as it was possible, I subscribed. And every two months or so, when the battered envelope arrived, my life centered around the thick magazine for a day or two. I remember at least one occasion of cutting short a date because a new issue was waiting for me at home.

These days, the arrival of a new issue is not such a big event anymore. I can't say why: it may be the overflow of available information in these Internet times, or perhaps the fact that most of my heroes have been interviewed already (now, if you could only persuade Ben Katchor). Or the absence of that 5-page sketchbook section. Or simply because issues come out too regularly now. Still, it remains the only publication I'm subscribed to -- and knowing my appetite for anything printed, this is not a small thing.

Tony Millionaire
Cartoonist

A long time ago I created a masterpiece called the Sock Monkey. It was published by the great people at Dark Horse comics, because of a vigorous campaign ram-rodded by the visionary Phil Amara, my editor. After the first two issues came out, the numbers people decided to can it, and into the garbage pail it went. One day, Matt Silvie, the genius, wrote a shining review of the Sock Monkey, it reached the desk of Mike Richardson, who was seen later pounding his desk quietly saying, "More Sock Monkey, more Sock Monkey..." This sounds like some fanciful tale, but I can assure you, it really happened exactly as I just described it. I wish to thank Matt Silvie and all the geniuses at The Comics Journal who had the brains and the wherewithal to write the right words at the right time. Thank you.

Justin Green
Cartoonist

Although my name appears infrequently these days in The Comics Journal, I don't consider that as any kind of barometer of my self-worth. Both praise and blame are burdens, especially when the former is too mild and latter too severe. To escape mention in each issue is to break even (although I would like a nice obit some day: I consider the post-mortem material to be among the best work turned out by the Journal staff).

I'm not too thrilled about the interview process either. Though honored that some would take the trouble to record my thoughts and impressions, what makes it to print is seldom an exact facsimile of the spoken word, and by the time the stuff hits the stands, it's too late to delete or paste. I wish my comrades well, but at a certain point that well-wishing is a damn lie. When I read in TCJ that somebody is making roughly 4000% more than I do for the same type of work, or that perhaps a mediocre draftsman is awarded three-quarters of a million dollars for a "genius" grant, my sphincter tends to contract. At such moments I need to breathe deeply and remind myself that, after all, it's only a tempest in a teapot; it's just the latest flap from "The Graphics Ghetto Gazette." Though our ranks are getting thin, the guys who still ply this bastard art form have developed thick skins over the decades. It's good to know the Journal is out there surveying the whole scene, yet its findings are not to be taken as the ultimate truth. We must make our own.

Barry Windsor-Smith
Cartoonist

The Comics Journal is the only vehicle for real news, truthful reporting, and genuine criticism of the comics arts and industry. Given this, the Journal has been one of the more reliable sources of depression since the early 1980s.

Kim Deitch
Cartoonist

I'm a big fan of The Comics Journal and no mistake. Generally speaking, in a new issue, I'll read anything written by Ruthie Penmark or about Ted Rall before I read another thing. But what really gets me going more than anything else in the mag are what I'd characterize as the old-timer interviews. And the strange thing is that over time I've reached a stage where I'm not even too particular about who the interviewee is. What I've found is that you never know for sure who may have a great human-interest story worth hearing about. And since these are the stories of working cartoonists, it's surefire material for someone like me who is in that racket. In many cases I've been downright inspired by the recollections of old cartoonists that I've never or just barely heard of. A recent example in that category and a personal all-time favorite would have to be the recent interview with Tom Sutton. I almost passed it by at first glance and what a mistake that would have been! Because once I got started in it, I swear, I lived with that baby for ten days off and on! Another recent item that could have been easily overlooked, if one was just cruising for the pontifications of big names only, would be the issue which contained the obit and good interview with Pat Boyette. These pieces and others like them, that display the passions of these artistes, up and down the rocky road of life, really get me going. Among interviews with the better known, the lengthy interview with Charles Schultz has to be mentioned as a singular stand out. And, like most people who follow this stuff, I could never get enough of all the various talks with Gil Kane down through the years. Another recent item, actually a transcript rather than an interview, that stayed with me, was the John Buscema lecture [to Marvel staff artists] on how to be a good hack, which, in spite of its aim actually had a lot of good, practical, down to earth tips about how to draw comics well, and I often find myself thinking about it when I'm fumbling and bumbling around with something that's particularly hard to draw. All in all, The Comics Journal is a stand out inspiration to me.

Congratulations, guys! And here's to the next hundred years!

David Collier
Cartoonist

In October, 1990, I thought, why not do a comic about comics? I mailed the finished page, called "Memory Lane," to The Comics Journal before Halloween, as the snow started to pile up in Saskatoon, where I was then living. A long winter came and went and then in April, 1991, I got a card from a woman who identified herself as Helena, the managing editor. She wrote that The Comics Journal was interested in running the page that I'd sent, that I'd neglected to include my phone number with the page and she asked me to call her. We talked and later the Journal ran the page under a title they invented for it: "Hey Kids! Comics!" This was my first involvement with Fantagraphics. The re-education of David Collier is complete, I thought to myself.

I grew up hating Fantagraphics with a passion. I refused to buy anything that they published. The one time I remember wavering from this commitment was in 1983. I was a teenage punk rocker living in a hot apartment with walls that I had painted black. Under the apartment was a restaurant called The Not So Greasy Spoon. Across the street was a comics shop called The Silver Snail where I regularly hunted for stuff by Barks, Crumb and John Stanley. I remember hesitating over the first issue of Nemo. I had my boycott of Fantagraphics to consider, but here was a magazine that had made a new George Herriman discovery! I broke down and bought the copy of Nemo and eventually collected just about every issue of that magazine, but otherwise I kept my home free from Fantagraphics. I honestly can't remember why I was so angry at the company, though its pretty certain that in those days they didn't meet the standard of comics fundamentalism that I then adhered to. My idea of fun then was going to the library and squinting at the microfilmed back issue of seventy year old newspapers with their weird old comics. I had recently given away all the super hero comics that had ended up in my collection over the past ten years (with the exception of DC's Golden Age reprinting "100 page Superman Specials" and the few books by Neal Adams and Bernie Wrightson that I had), what can I say, I was making a living mopping floors then and I was not a happy camper. I needed something to lash out at and oh-so-smug Fantagraphics fit the bill perfectly.

It took me years to get over this mind set. It wasn't until I was in the Army, when I saw the issue of The Comics Journal with Chester Brown's room on the cover, (I bought that issue on the spot in a French comic book shop in Quebec City and I've been a regular reader ever since) that I became a Windsor-Smith-like convert. Now I've been lucky enough to get to know some of the people who've put the Journal together over the years and some of my favorite camping trips were those I spent in Seattle in 1992, 1994 and 1997.

Roberta Gregory
Cartoonist

I think the first time I really encountered The Comics Journal, and Fantagraphics, for that matter, was about 15 years ago. I had been trying unsuccessfully to find a publisher for my graphic novel Winging It, and one of the publishers I had contacted was Fantagraphics, who were still publishing things that looked like fantasy and even (gasp!) funny animals. I had managed to get on their mailing list and had also picked up (or been given by them) an issue or two of The Comics Journal. About the time I bit the bullet and published the first issue myself, I got an invitation to a Fantagraphics Party, out in Westlake Village. I was thrilled to be able to rub elbows with the bigshots of the comics industry, and also hand out copies of my new creation. I was a bit intimidated by all the people I didn't know and had the bad judgement to give a copy of my comic to a sour-looking young woman I have never seen since.

I got more knowledgeable about the comics industry and read a few more Comics Journals, and on the one hand found them fascinating for all the information they provided, but on the other hand, found the tone of a lot of the reviews very off-putting: along with the analysis, there was an awful lot of what seemed like unnecessary sniping. It seemed the magazine had an identity problem: was it an intellectual Journal or an adolescent-toned rantzine? A couple years later, I landed a job at Fantagraphics, before their move to Seattle. On my first day in the office, was (a bit sheepishly) handed the review of Winging It the Ice Princess at the party had published, not in The Comics Journal, but in some hardcover publication I was not familiar with. It was a very vicious, missed-the-point-entirely rant against my comic, with a lot of strange personal stuff mixed in, such as she had been enjoying herself at the party when this repulsive person approached her and forced this horrible dreck upon her which was not only a waste of trees, it was a waste of the air and water that made the trees and so on. I had by then gotten enough very positive feedback about Winging It from the people I had apparently "written it for" (unlike this young lady) that I did not take this too personally, but I did recall having a flash of insight about The Comics Journal: this woman was attempting a very poor, badly-written, pointlessly nasty version of what The Comics Journal seemed to be known for and at least was fairly successful at: the comics review with bite. Maybe she was a wanna-be Comics Journal reviewer.

I have not read The Comics Journal that regularly over the years, but more often than not, I felt myself cringing in empathy for whichever creator seemed to be getting skewered in the current issue. TCJ reviewers have sung the praises of creators whose work does not in the least appeal to me, (and there seems to be a lot more of those sorts of comics out lately) but out of respect for a fellow creator who is simply not "writing for me" I try to keep my negative opinions to myself. So far I have not mentioned the interviews, which are among the best I have read, but it seems to me that it is in the area of reviews that The Comics Journal has had the biggest impact on me. The Journal has made me think a lot over the years about reviews and reviewers: what motivates reviewers, how creators respond to reviews. And it has made me think a lot about the position of creative people in the world among a majority who are not creative but looking for satisfaction from the creators and so on. There are other sources of reviews, of course, and I have been fortunate not to have gotten jabbed (too badly) by the Journal (I have gotten mauled in other publications) but for some reason, it is always the Journal that comes to mind when I am thinking about this, so I would say it has succeeded in establishing some sort of benchmark in my mind. Of course, there have been the aforementioned interviews and valuable news about the industry, but at least for myself the reviews have made the biggest impression.

Oh yes, for a while there, it seemed like the last publication in the world to which I would write a letter to the editor with a dissenting opinion, after seeing some of the futile and brutal back-and-forths on the letter page.

Brad Angell
Former art director, The Comics Journal

Peering over the shoulder of Mark Vick (former art director for TCJ), between doing inside front covers for New Bondage Fairies, I couldn't help but think that Art Direction for The Comics Journal would be daunting at best. Well, I was right (and wrong)! After Mark left and a brief "Queen Itchie" stint, I finally got my chance.

Those first couple months certainly were daunting; redesigning layouts, choosing artwork for various articles as well as multiple lengthy interviews and news, trying to get along with your new co-workers, etc. All this while trying to remain on some sort of deadline. Fortunately, it all came together very quickly. The co-workers were not a problem, in fact I think Eric, Mike and I hit it off right away and the enthusiasm that resulted turned out some pretty damn good issues.

I tried to bring an artistic approach to the design, using as much art as possible and making the layouts more dynamic and visual. Some times it worked and some times it didn't. I'm happy to have worked with so many great artists and writers and to have my name in those pages.

Some of the highlights include:

Issue #221. My first issue all by myself. It looks terrible to me now. Discovering Paul Chadwick's artwork helped to inspire new layouts for interviews. And it was great to rummage through Pat Boyette comics!

Issue #222. I was out of the country enjoying the fruits of Amsterdam for most of this issue and when I came back a lot of it was already done!

Issue #223. Minimalism rules!

Issue #224. Thanks to Eric Reynolds (for the use of his books) and Bob Levin (for writing), I now know and love Barnaby. Also, my favorite of all "End Times" illustrations.

#225, the Mad issue. This was a real treat! Poring over all those yellowing, old Mad magazines, reliving my youth, and getting constantly distracted from my work. I could have stolen/borrowed a million ideas! David Lasky's Mad logo and John Kerschbaum's "Fold-In" were both perfect! And who will forget that dirty little Johnny Ryan?

Issue #226. C.C. Beck was a nice change of pace for a feature and a good read, too. "They Will Not Be Forgotten" and Kochalka were other highlights.

Issue #227. Grace under pressure. Carl Barks dies and this issue was cobbled together as we went along. And what a beautiful tribute to behold!

Issues #228, #229. By now the issues are coming together very solidly. Lutes! DeCarlo! And my personal favorites, Jouflas and Gordo!

Issue #230. The contents page art by Tom Sutton sets the mood for this issue. Everything about this issue seemed too long and tensions flared. The result was, I think, one of the best issues yet. With two different covers!

Issue #231. Probably my favorite cover. Gene Colan is amazing! Chabon was interesting. And you gotta love Ruthie Penmark! Despite technical difficulties (like a new editor and art director) this issue turned out quite well. And it was my last one.

Leonard Rifas Writer, The Comics Journal

For any Journal, but especially The Comics Journal, to survive 25 years is an achievement. For Gary Groth, its leading voice, to stay fresh for this long is also remarkable. Groth succeeds as an editorialist, not because of the passion with which he's excoriated other denizens of the shrinking pond that is comics, or because of his cranky impatience with mendacity, hypocrisy and banality or because of his efforts to establish a pantheon of cartoonists based on artistic standards. Groth's editorials succeed because they communicate his bone-deep, tenaciously-held perception that the status quo is unbearable (and it is).

Les Daniels
Historian

"Are you a cute boy, but don't know where to turn?" This enigmatic ad, with its vague promise of surcease from woe, is the main reason why I buy each new issue of The Comics Journal. I am concerned, however, because while I certainly don't know where to turn, I'm not dead sure that I qualify as a cute boy anymore. I would hate to schlep all the way out to your drop-in center and then be turned away. So instead I sit here before a roaring fire, poring over issues from bygone decades and laughing hilariously at the list of those whom Groth once found worthy of worship. However the magazine's interviews are always good and often awesome (as we literary types are wont to say), so you have my permission to keep on publishing, and to enjoy as many of my dollars as Diamond deigns to deliver to you.

Bill Pearson
Editor, Publisher

It's hard to believe The Comics Journal has been agitating people for a full quarter century. This is an improbable milestone in a curious publishing experiment, which was, obviously, "How can we denigrate as many big name cartoonists as possible, while building a successful circulation base of subscribers who, until we came along, thought those big name cartoonists were pretty damn talented!"

Gary Groth knows so many large and esoteric words that it's impossible to correct his opinionated judgments, and Kim Thompson is intimidating in his own way... he says so little you don't know what the hell he's thinking. Together and with various underpaid help (they'd have to be), these two have produced hundreds of publications of dubious value but intriguing content including a few in collaboration with myself. I have to admit they're men of integrity and have adhered to our original contracts to the letter, over many years, and I can't think of a major complaint against them.

As for The Comics Journal, a too-serious magazine about a too-often trivial art form: It has achieved a remarkable distinction. It has lasted 25 years. May you go on forever, and ultimately discern just what it is you're trying to say.

Congratulations on your anniversary!

Mike Curtis
Cartoonist

My name is Mike Curtis. I created and still write Shanda the Panda, and write Atomic Mouse. With my wife Carole, Katmandu writer and creator, I run Shanda Fantasy Arts, publisher of 14 comic titles. Before that, I was a newspaperman.

I grew up with a fine example to follow, namely, George Reeves as Clark Kent. I watched the thrilling exploits of this newspaperman and read about them in the comics. The Daily Planet was a crusading newspaper, taking chances and unafraid to expose corruption and crime.

When I attained adulthood, my first job was at a daily newspaper. In later years, I ran two weeklies, one a "crusading" newspaper, exposing corruption and crime in local government.

There's a big difference between a fluff piece and investigative reporting. That's what I have always liked about The Comics Journal.

Opinionated? You bet the Journal is! But it also digs deep to get to the facts behind the rumors and stories.

Nowadays, I get my latest comic news off the Internet and through friends in the industry. Then I wait until the Journal comes out to get the rest of the story.

It's a nice feeling for an old newspaperman.

Pat Moriarity
Cartoonist,
Former art director, The Comics Journal

Here's some offbeat Comics Journal history:

When I started as assistant art director (and later as art director) of The Comics Journal, the office was woefully behind in technology. I had to relearn how to work without a computer, and eventually forgot how to use one. Back then, the whole magazine was literally pasted together, using photostats, rubylith, hot wax and rubber cement. The closest thing to a computer in the place was the Compugraphic typesetting machine that spat out copy in long scrolls of chemically-drenched photo paper, which we would cut off at some point with scissors and hang to dry from the doorways and ceilings. This sounds ancient, but it was 1991. On certain stress-filled deadlines, the art department looked like some kind of perverse laundry room, with indoor clotheslines strung everywhere, filled with hanging sheets of copy, lightly blowing in the wind of our blowhard conversations and heated arguments. The air was often full of vaporized photo chemicals. The whole operation was (and still is) run out of an average-sized house, so everyone was breathing this "fortified" air. Few gave it a second thought.

The darkroom was also filled with boxes of leaky used chemicals. A few of us tried to convince Kim and Gary to get rid of the stuff, but it was low on the priority list. Remember how in college dorms they'd stack empty beer cans in a corner until it turned into a giant pyramid, or cover the whole wall? Well, imagine that, except each beer can is instead a gallon-size wine box, filled with fuming toxins, aging and jelly-like. Like it was always done years before my stint at The Comics Journal, the boxes of brand new developer, activator and blue-line chemicals were stacked in one corner of the darkroom, while the old used chemicals would just get poured right back into another empty box to be stacked against the opposite wall.

I used to get paranoid that the chemicals were making me sick. I always felt a little nauseous after being in the darkroom for a while, shooting halftones and photo-stats. I'd come out squinting and feeling dizzy, only to inhale the fumes of the hanging scrolls of dripping type. There was an electric ventilator in the darkroom, but it was small, and often broken. Desperate, I contacted Agfa (our photochemical supplier) about how to dispose of the ochre-colored goop. It looked just like crusty phlegm. The Agfa people would not take the rubbery ooze, only to say we must take the boxes to a business that charged you a fee to dispose of it. The Fantagraphics solution? Pouring it down the bathtub drain. It seemed unthinkable, and I felt horrible for the unsuspecting folks renting the upstairs apartment. What was this doing to the plumbing? Anyway, the boxes of dark orange molasses still seemed to pile up faster than we could slowly pour it out....

Years later, we joined the 20th century, got some Macs and began scanning the art instead of photographing it. One day the entire mountain of boxes disappeared. No one asked questions. Who knows, maybe we were being paranoid about the toxins, but gradually, I began to breathe and feel better at work. With the constant rotating door of employees over the years, I doubt any of them were there long enough to get brain damage. A word of caution to any cartoonist who might be staying at the Fanta-house: Don't ever bathe in that tub!

Happy 25!

Eric Reynolds
Cartoonist

When I started doing promotions for Fantagraphics in 1995 or so, after a stint as the news editor of TCJ, my pal Peter Bagge gave me a very prescient handwritten list of tips to help me do my job, titled "The Fantagraphics Promotions Game Plan, By Coach Pete Bagge." It immediately came in handy, and remains posted next to my desk to this day. The most salient and useful tips were the very last two on the list:

• Distance yourself from The Comics Journal if the subject ever comes up.
• Don't waste your time defending Groth to his critics; change the subject!

Dean Haspiel
Cartoonist

The first time I read The Comics Journal, it made me nervous. Suddenly I was confronted by scathing comix criticism, history lessons, in-depth interviews, the mystery of Gary Groth, academic analysis and solid industry reportage sans the naïve "Pow, Bang, Zoom" headlines. The notion of taking the form extremely seriously and staring directly into the whites of its eyes, outside the inner circles of our studios and convention hotel rooms, scared the Jezebels out of me. TCJ took a bold stance and stepped up to the proverbial plate, assuming a forthright position as our niche ghetto's communal radar. Who would've thought? Who would've cared? See, I do what I do because I am compelled to communicate with strangers. Ergo, I flex the muscle to meet the desire. TCJ helped me to embrace a regular dose and discourse of invigorating comix thought and analysis, and it rattled my cage. I couldn't wrap my head around a magazine that seemed to love the state of comix more than I did! Yet, when I dared to compare my wares to what's hip and/or scrutinized inside the annals of TCJ, I was forced to step back and reconsider my work. Sometimes, I pull out a flask of aggro-moxie so I can drop pheromone-bombs and make my pages explode. Other times, I scrap an idea because it's not up to snuff, and take a much needed nap until my subconscious works it out and makes it right. Most times, I wade and swagger on the fault lines, wondering what a Tom Spurgeon, Bart Beaty or a Milo George, might think of my latest scrawl. Heck, worst of all, I have heart palpitations about the new crop of watchmen, and daydream about picnics on the meadow with the likes of Anne Elizabeth Moore, painting her toe nails while reciting passages of Kirby's 4th World to her. And I wonder "Why? Have I gone mad?" And I remind myself that it is a healthy dose of fear that makes me do my best. And I realize that, after 25 years and running, The Comics Journal has got my back and it is all good.

Happy Anniversary!

Diana Schutz
Senior editor, Dark Horse Comics

My introduction, in print, to Gary Groth came by way of The Comics Journal #71. That was March 1982 -- not quite the 25 years we're celebrating here, but close enough. In that issue, a younger but no less feisty Groth took on Frank Miller and the "critical hysteria" surrounding Daredevil by way of attacking Frank's fans -- specifically those of us whose letters of comment had seen print in the comic book in question. Referring to our words of praise as "shallow, sententious, simpering prattle," Gary heaped a healthy dollop of ridicule my way -- misspelling my surname in the process.

That ubiquitous fucking L again!

That summer I attended my very first San Diego Con, working the Comics & Comix tables with Jim Buser and Scott Maple and the mysterious Ronald Reagan-headed dildo that kept bouncing into view at the most inopportune moments. (That's another story.)

Gary approached the table -- with Kim Thompson at his side, if I correctly recall -- and handed me the first issue of a magazine-sized comic book written and drawn by a couple brothers with a Hispanic family name. (I wonder if he ever misspelled that, too.) As a then-retailer, I promised I'd give the comic a read with the idea of possibly ordering more for the stores -- there were seven C&C locations back then!

I took the opportunity to chide Gary about the ineffectiveness of shit, as opposed to honey, as a magnet for flies - and mentioned that, in future, if he were so inclined to slag me again, he should bloody well learn to spell my name right.

Gary looked a little stunned, but that lasted only a beat. Then he asked, "Are you Diana Schutz?"

I was not wearing a name badge.

Clever fellow, our Mr. Groth! And this time he'd left out the damn L and even pronounced the name correctly! We've been friends ever since.

I haven't missed a single issue of the Journal since then, even going so far as to badger Kim one day in Seattle into taking me out to the Fantagraphics warehouse in order to compile an almost complete reference library thereof. (Nor have I missed an issue of Love & Rockets -- or any of the solo Hernandez outings -- since that very first free copy.)

Look: love or hate The Comics Journal, it is critical to our medium -- and I fully intend the pun. Love or hate Gary Groth, we'd all be a lot worse off without him to keep us on our toes!

I just hope the spelling improves over the next 25 years.

Aleksandar Zograf
Cartoonist

As I lived in Serbia, I hadn't even heard of The Comics Journal before I started to publish in US independent comics magazines and zines in the early 1990s. When I was a kid, I grew up reading Yugoslav magazines and periodicals, and one of them was called Pegaz (Pegasus) -- it was published in Belgrade, in the mid 1970s. Each issue of Pegaz was in a thick, magazine format (with cardboard covers) book, and it was entirely dedicated to the history of comics. I remember reading a lot of essays about comics, especially about the classical American comic strips from the early 20th century, which was really inspiring.... Anyway, I always believed that there's a lot to say about comics, and I only wished that somebody somewhere would create a regular publication (Pegaz was published now and then) which will concentrate on writings about comics.

When I first saw The Comics Journal, as I said, in the early 1990's, it was totally appealing - a lot of articles about comics, compiled in a monthly magazine... very neat. In fact, I was even more fascinated by the extensive interviews, which allowed artists to go in to detail when they spoke about their work, and their ideas.... Usually, media were not interested that much to listen to what cartoonists had to say, so to read a 50-page interview with some underground comics author was a sort of a revelation to me, especially because I was so far away from the actual scene, so that I had to struggle to get the picture about what was going on there.

Maggie Thompson
Editor, Comics Buyer's Guide

For years, The Comics Journal has succeeded in providing an entertaining sideshow to people who are entertained by that sort of sideshow.

Dale Crain
Senior Editor - Collected Editions
DC Comics

25 years? Ye Gods!

For all its excesses (What was that? An 85-page interview with Tom Sutton??? And we won't even mention Kenneth Smith...), and causes (Kirby vs. Marvel) TCJ always has been and is still the only magazine for anyone with a brain that reads comics. And, yes, I do realize that that's a sliver of a fraction of a portion of the general population.

And to think, I was there when it was just around the half-way point, and what I do consider one of TCJ's best periods -- About 1986-'89, alternative comics were exploding, Maus was out, Watchmen, Jim Shooter was proving on a daily basis why he was really comics' greatest villain, the crazy lawsuits, the moves, the occasional wack-job coworkers, a period where costumed heroes' stranglehold on the industry was potentially slipping. What a perfect time it was to be associated with the only real magazine about comics.

Working at Fantagraphics and on TCJ was unquestionably the best job I've ever had. Fantagraphics was just the place for me; being the workaholic that I am, I was happier than a pyro in a lumberyard. I learned so much about everything; publishing in general, the comics industry, comic books, comic strips, alternative comics, European comics, books, movies, music, met some incredibly talented people, on and on....

Thanks, TCJ for keeping the industry on its toes, and my personal thanks to Gary and Kim for one hell of a do-or-die education!