Issue Description

A spectacular anniversary issue featuring intergenerational dialogues between the cream of the cartooning biz: Alt wiz Kevin Huizenga and reigning Maus king Art Spiegelman; indy comics publisher/cartoonist/musician Zak Sally and Love and Rockets co-creator Jaime Hernandez; Bottomless Belly Button auteur Dash Shaw and Asterios Polyp elder auteur David Mazzucchelli; inflammatory muckraker Ted Rall and editorial cartoonist Matt Bors; super-popular Zits! cartoonist Jim Borgman and newly syndicated Keith “Knight Life” Knight; Martin Luther King chronicler Ho Che Anderson and American Flagg! creator Howard Chaykin; cartoonist/Kramer's Ergot helmer Sammy Harkham and Eurocomics great/L'Association co-founder Jean-Christophe Menu; superhero neo-mythologizer Frank Quitely and Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons; award-winning Fun Home cartoonist Alison Bechdel and Slow Storm wunderkind Danica Novgorodoff; mainstream writing powerhouses Denny O'Neil and Matt Fraction; and Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai and cartoonist/educator Chris Schweizer. Plus reviews of Acme Novelty Library #19 and Asterios Polyp, the usual columns and features, and Noah Van Sciver penetrates the Fantagraphics ivory tower for a hilarious cartoon interview with TCJ honcho Gary Groth.

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