Okay; it's been a while, between the death of my mother and the holiday season, which is a busy time for me, at work. Also, we are running out of high profile indie companies. Oh, I still have plenty to go; but, a lot of them had limited offerings and shorter shelf lives; so, not as much meat to chew. Never fear, though, eager young comic reader; we still have a biggie or two for the offering. So, without copius amounts more of "ado," we will cut to the proverbial chase, as the phrase goes.
So, in 1976, a pair of guys were doing a record collector adzine, called Sounds Fine. They got the opportunity to purchase a comic related one, called the Nostalgia Journal. The Nostalgia Journal was a competitor to Alan Light's Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom (later renamed the Comic Buyer's Guide) and had put out about 26 issues. The buyers were named Gary Groth and Michael Catron. Groth was the son of a Navy contractor and grew up in Virginia, near Washington DC. He had published a fanzine, The Fantastic Fanzine and organized a couple of comic conventions. After dropping out of his fourth college, he teamed up with Catron to do Sounds Fine. He had also turned down an offer at an editorial position at Marvel. Catron worked as a PR guy for Mike Gold, at DC Comics, while he also co-published Sounds Fine and he and Groth had tried to put on a rock and roll convention, which was a dismal failure.
Catron and Groth relaunched the Nostalgia Journal as The New Nostalgia Journal, starting with issue #27, then renamed it the Comics Journal, with issue #32. The early focus was still on the new releases from the major publishers; but, it expanded into lengthy interviews with comics creators, reviews, critical essays and outright savaging of the comics industry.
From the start, Groth courted controversy (and attention) by attacking Alan Light. They had been friends, when Groth produced Fantastic Fanzine, but had a falling out and Groth harangued him endlessly, with late night calls and confrontations at conventions. Groth used the mailing list of the WSA (a consumer protection group, within the comics collector community) to solicit subscriptions for the Journal. Light cashed a check to place an ad for the Comics Journal in The Buyer's Guide; but, never ran the ad. When Light sold the Buyer's Guide to Krause publications, Groth denounced him and a libel suit was launched and subsequently dismissed.
The Journal became a regular source for attacks on the mainstream, personal vendettas and other tabloidy content, which drew attention; but undercut their stated mission to elevate the artform into something greater and on par with classic literature and film. If you could get past the rhetoric and propaganda, there were some really great interviews in the Journal, much of it conducted by Groth.
Of course, the interviews generated their own controversies, whether it was a rebuttal from someone name dropped during the interview, or the subject, taking issue with how the interview was spun, despite copy-editing the interview, or outright lawsuits for libel. The Harlan Ellison interview in issue #53, included a segment where Ellison is talking about hackwork and Groth throws out the name Don Heck and Ellison picked up on it, when he hadn't meant Heck. He spent years apologizing to Heck afterward, for mistakenly using his name. The bigger controversy, though, came from statements about Michael Fleischer, writer on Jonah Hex and the Aparo Spectre stories, in Adventure Comics. Ellison referred to Fleischer as "bugf@#$" and Fleischer wasn't happy. he filed a libel lawsuit, dragging both Ellison and Fantagraphics into it, before it was eventually dismissed. That soured things so badly between Ellison and Groth that a Cold War of Words grew, leading, eventually, to a juvenile stunt by Groth, with a group calle Enemies of Ellison, which attacked Ellison and sought to stir criticism of him. Never one to miss a feud, Peter David jumped on this in the Comic Buyer's Guide and launched friends of Ellison. Groth took a lot of heat and eventually dropped the EOE thing.
The Jack Kirby issue shown above featured Jack's faulty memory, egged on by both Groth and Roz Kirby adding her own venom, and had Jack claiming that Stan only wrote the credits and was sitting on his desk crying, as the office furniture was being repossessed, when Kirby promised hima hit, went home, created the Fantastic Four and saved the company. Jack had harbored a grudge about the credit Stan took for the Marvel stories and he had a point, as he was largely plotting his own stories. However, Stan's dialogue (especially in the FF) added a new dimension to the story and must certainly be considered "writing." It unleashed a lot of venom and Jack ended up walking back some of it, later, while other observers, like Mark Evanier and John Romita, provided another perspective to the arguments about who contributed what (with further discussion covered in the Jack Kirby Collector, as they compared original art to finished story, complete with Kirby's plot notes in the margins).
Some proved surprising, as the Todd McFarlane interview, which on paper looked like it would be Groth chewing up a prima donna artist ended up with McFarlane largely coming off well as someone who just wanted to go off and do his own thing, the way he wanted to do it, without an editor telling him otherwise, and for a bigger cut of the revenue. And, he was successful at it. Groth hit him with criticism of his work and McFarlane acknowledged the validity of much of it, but countered with his own point of view of his work and his intent. In the end, you couldn't fault the guy. It was a far better performance than the circus that was his "debate" with Peter David.
The Journal was one of the rare places where you could find reviews and articles on foreign comics, with extensive pieces on noted European works and creators to read, from the obvious likes of Moebius, Bilal and the other Heavy Metal regulars, to the works of Tardi and the lesser known Joost Swarte, from the Netherlands, whose work would be featured in Art Spiegelman's Raw and was championed by Harvey Kurtzman, in From Aargh to Zap.
Newspaper comics were also covered and they did lengthy interviews with such artists as Berke Breathed (Bloom County and its spin-offs), Matt Groening (Life is Hell), Charles Schulz, Lynn Johnston (For Better For Worse) and a very rare and in depth interview with Bill Watterson. They regularly reviewed collections of classic comic strips and Fantagraphics would publish reprints of many, which I will cover later.
Reviews and critical essays were a major feature, with Kim Thompson, Tom Spurgeon, Groth and others providing both insightful and damning looks at works from all levels of comics. These were regular sources of controversy, which made the letters pages worth reading in their own right, as both professionals and fans fired back, while Groth, Thompson and others responded to that feedback. However, it could easily degenerate into juvenile namecalling, with a thesaurus nearby. Groth, in particular, seemed to enjoy "poking the bear," if only to get a response that he could then attack like a pit bull on a chew toy. When Marvel Marketing and Distribution honcho Carol Kalish died, Groth used the occasion to attack Kalish for "selling cretinous junk to impressionable children." Kalish had her faults and Marvel was publishing a lot of material that was filler; but, she also had a lot of friends in the professional and fan communities and was a fan, first and foremost. The occasion of her death was not the time for critical attacks for attention and it angered many pros, most especially Peter David, who didn't seem to know how to ignore yapping dogs and usually ended up exerting a lot of time and energy giving attention to the mutts. Many other pros refused to rise to the bait and ignored the Journal's attacks, whether valid or just attention-seeking.
Again, if you looked beyond the grandstanding and attention seeking, there wee some really great articles that promoted comics as literature and art, giving light to many independent and alternative works, beyond just their own publications. Creators like Jeff Smith, Joe Sacco, Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, Harvey Pekar, Roberta Gregory, Peter Bagge, Dan Clowes, Seth, and more received high praise within the Journal. In the early days of the Journal, Dave Sim received tremendous support; but, he also got some pointed and deserved criticism for essays within Reads and editorial statements he made, that devolved into outright misogyny. Frank Miller received high praise for work, while also criticism for lifting whole passages from Mickey Spillane and Jim Thompson, in Sin City. Rich Buckler was attacked as a swipe artist, filed a lawsuit, then withdrew it as they provided example after example. Kieth Giffen was outed for swiping from Jose Munoz, as was Miller's Sin City, both in the artistic style that Miller had adopted; but also in the story content and similarity to Alack Sinner.
The Journal offered an opportunity for pros to have their say, as it featured some heavy criticism by people like CC Beck (as the Crusty Curmudgeon) and Gil Kane (who just vented his spleen on editors, writers, publishers, content, artistic aspirations vs commercialism, etc...
The Journal was the place for extensive coverage of the business side of the industry, something mostly ignored at CBG and elsewhere, beyond the comings and goings of talent or their public fights with editorial. The Journal covered things like distributor bankruptcies and the companies who were stiffed by them (such as the Schanes Brothers and Scott Rosenberg), troubled publishers (such as Eclipse, First and Now, when each ran into cash flow issues and late payments to talent and printers) and shenanigans, such as when the folks behind Majestic went belly up, after pirating their own licensed trading cards for the NFL and the siphoning of money for some evangelical group. They covered copyright and trademark battles over such things as the THUNDER Agents characters, as Joe Carbonaro battled David Singer.
The Comics Journal continued as a magazine until 2009, when it switched to a large, semi-annual publication, alongside a new website. It then went on hiatus, in 2013, only recently returning, in 2019.
Fantagraphics originally supported the Jack Kirby Awards, but an argument over ownership (with Dave Olbrich, who went to Malibu), and unease with the situation from jack Kirby, led to Fantagraphics dropping sponsorship (with the Kirby giving way to the Eisner Awards) and the establishment of the Harvey Award, named for Harvey Kurtzman.
Fantagraphics fortunes have risen and fallen, quite often dramatically. Company insiders have pointed at chaotic management and the offices described as akin to a frat house, at one point. Kim Thompson kept them financially afloat early on, becoming a co-owner. In 1988, Fantagraphics went through a round of layoffs and was close to bankruptcy, when they launched their Eros Comix imprint, featuring pornographic and erotic comics, whose sales helped keep them afloat. It became ironic that the publisher of the Comics Journal, which routinely attacked DC and Marvel for publishing superhero comics, which they likened to porn, needing to publish actual porn to stay alive, despite critical darlings like Love & Rockets. The company that poo-poohed the X-men was saved by Wendy Whitebread, Undercover Slut.
In 2003, Fantagraphics was near bankruptcy, as the 2002 bankruptcy of book distributor Seven Hills left them with a large amount of unpaid invoices, badly damaging their cash flow. A quick appeal was made to the comic community to order product from their website, which was carried by rivals, including CBG, which resulted in a massive influx of orders and cash. This tided them over until they could find new distribution to book stores (especially for the Love & Rockets collections) and the developed a partnership with WW Norton Company, to publish high end collections of Peanuts and Dennis the Menace (as well as new editions of the Prince Valiant albums).
After starting with the Journal, Fantagraphics spread into actual comic book publishing, starting in 1979, with Jay Disbrow's The Flames of Gyro. In 1982, after receiving a review copy of the Hernandez Brothers' Love & Rockets first issue, they offered to publish a regular series and continued to publish the works of Los Bros, to this day. They became the home to such works as Roberta Gregory's Naughty Bits, Dan Clowes Eightball, Peter Bagge's Hate (and Neat stuff), Terry Laban's Cud, Chris Ware's Acme Comics Novelty Library, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, William Messner-Loeb's Journey, Charles Burns' Black Hole, Jan Strnad & Dennis Fujitake's Dalgoda.
Fantagraphics have published collections of classic newspaper strips, Golden and Atomic Age comics, historical works on noted creators, publishers, and others. They have reprinted foreign material, including Oesterheld & Breccia's The Eternaut, the work of Igort, Tardi, and the Complete Crepax.
Next, we will take a look at some of Fantagraphics other magazines, including Honk, Nemo, The Classic Comics Library; and their counter-intuitive long running publication, Amazing Heroes. Yep, the people who routinely bashed superheroes and most things DC and Marvel, put out a magazine devoted to those very subjects. However, as we see, it wasn't all hypocrisy.