Issue Description

In its 28th year as the pre-eminent magazine of comics journalism and criticism, The Comics Journal re-vamps its format with more color, more pages, better paper, higher quality printing, and a fresh, new design. Content is also rejuvenated with expanded news and commentary sections, the inclusion of a comics section, and wider and more contemporaneous coverage of current comics publishing. This issue's cover feature is Alex Toth, with an examination of his life and work by Bob Levin, critical essays, an interview, and 30 pages of rare comics from one of Toth's most fertile creative periods in the 1950s, in both black-and-white and color. Our pre-election 2004 political coverage includes interviews with Steve Bell, the controversial editorial cartoonist for British newspaper The Guardian and recent winner of the British Press Awards' coveted Gong for "Cartoonist of the Year," and Steve Brodner, one of America's most preeminent illustrators and political satirists, whose work has appeared in periodicals from The New Yorker to Rolling Stone to The Atlantic Monthly to Harper's magazine. Reviews of the most noteworthy current comics and graphic novels and our columns on every facet of comics from manga to European comics to mini-comics and even (gasp!) mainstream comics round out the issue.

The Comics Journal (1976)

Publisher

Fantagraphics

Volume Description

The Comics Journal is a magazine that covers the comics medium from an arts-first perspective, and one of the nation's most respected single-arts magazines, providing its readers with an eclectic mix of industry news, commentary, professional interviews, classic comics sections and reviews of current work on a regular basis. Due to its reputation as the American magazine with an interest in comics as an art form, the Journal has subscribers worldwide, and in this country serves as an important window into the world of comics for several general arts and news magazines.

Despite a contentious relationship with the rest of the North American comics industry, due in no small part to its investigative news stories and uncompromising review section, the Journal has won several industry awards, most notably the Utne Reader, Eisner and Harvey trophies.

In October 2009, we announced the next phase of the evolution of The Comics Journal, beginning in 2010 as a uniquely sized and formatted, evocatively visual and tactile semi-annual event, with expanded content at The Comics Journal website TCJ.com.

A comics magazine, which originally began as the New Nostalgia Journal, started in 1976 by Gary Groth and Mike Catron after the Nostalgia Journal (which ran 26 issues) lost their battle against the competing adzine, The Buyer's Guide. Gary and Mike, both in their twenties, had no plan, but somehow convinced the maker of the Nostalgia Journal to give them the paper.

As Gary Groth recalls:

I can’t remember how we talked them into this, but I suspect they were on their last legs and decided to hell with it, let’s give it to these two kids. Shortly thereafter, a box arrived in the mail with some back issues, a list of advertisers and a mailing list, and we were the proud new owners of Journal.

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Status: Not in Collection