How Rebellious Indie Publisher Fantagraphics Survived Tumultuous
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WIZARD EDGE, THE GUIDE TO MUST-HAVE INDIE BOOKS, STARTS HERE! and i ARMED S OHE U GER SAYS HI N“The cops were scared sh--less How rebelliousA indie D of us,” recalls Fantagraphics co-founder/ co-publisher Gary Groth. “We were much publisher Fantagraphics better armed than they were.” It was a gray Saturday in September survived tumultuous 2007, and the staff of celebrated alternative comics publisher Fantagraphics had turns to take on the loaded into a van and driven an hour or so north from their Seattle headquarters industry and blaze new to an isolated stretch of woods in the KIM THOMPSON tiny Snohomish County town of Sultan, trails for the art form Wash. Once there, they lined up their targets—televisions, computer monitors, up a bunch of electronic equipment while By Sean T. Collins bottles of cleaning products, even a trespassing on private property. No charges lawnmower. Unloading an assortment were filed, though there were a few tense of guns that included a 9mm, a 10mm, moments when the cops, with hands a rifle with a telescopic lens, a .45, a .44 on their holsters, first approached the GARY GROTH Magnum, a .357 Magnum and a 12-gauge Fantagraphics crew. “They were very wary shotgun—plus some bayonet knives, just of us,” says Groth, “until they realized we in case—these guardians of comics’ cutting were just some goofballs from Seattle.” edge proceeded to blow the crap out of Goofballs? Perhaps. But Fantagraphics everything in sight. is deadly serious when it comes to the “It’s a long and distinguished tradition,” business—and the art form—of comics. says co-publisher Kim Thompson of the Groth, Thompson and company have spent company’s annual “Shoot-Out Party.” over three decades with their metaphorical “Before there even was a Fantagraphics, guns blazing on behalf of the notion that back when it was just Gary and me, he and comics are art, more than capable of I used to go out and shoot at a friend’s producing powerful images and telling farm, just bring Hawaiian Punch cans and sophisticated stories. Their ammo in this blow the hell out of ’em with a Magnum.” battle: a hall-of-fame lineup of comics and As the company grew, so did the arsenal. creators, from alternative comics pioneers “We’d buy bombs at the Indian reservations such as Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez to under the table and set them off in cars and living legend Robert Crumb to classic strips fridges and washing machines,” Groth says. Krazy Kat and Prince Valiant. “There was one [lawnmower] that blew 50 It hasn’t always been easy—the feet up in the air. We thought it was gonna publisher’s been kept alive by everything land on us.” from public pleas to porn to Peanuts. And This time, though, the shoot-out party thanks to the outspoken opinions expressed had some party crashers—the sheriff’s in Fanta’s magazine The Comics Journal, department. Turns out it’s illegal to shoot they’ve taken as many shots as they’ve dished out. But according to Groth, the aim has remained the same all along: “Our love is to publish great cartooning, in whatever form that takes.” 38 WIZARD #213i who came ORIGINS AND OMENS aboard in Long before publishing any 1978 when comics, Fantagraphics was Catron founded with the simple ambition departed for of talking about comics. a PR job at University of Maryland DC Comics, journalism-school dropouts Gary the late Groth and Mike Catron, both ’70s were veterans of the comics fanzine a terrible scene, formally incorporated time for i their publishing venture the kinds of Fantagraphics in 1975. After a sophisticated brief flirtation with the rock- comics the music press, they took over the Journal was Texas-based Nostalgia Journal, searching for. a collector-geared pulp-culture “That was a magazine. “We bought it with the really dead idea of expanding its editorial spot in comics content to include much more history. Marvel coverage of comics,” says and DC were Groth. Inspired by the kind of pretty much hard-nosed journalism that had in decline, at recently exposed the Watergate least in creative terms. The different scandal, Groth established underground wave [of the late sequential- the tone of The New Nostalgia ’60s and early ’70s] had crested art look Journal from his first issue, July and fallen back. The top level [of at Mexican-American lives 1976’s #27, which contained a the entire industry] was Steve that would truly put Fanta on lengthy investigative attack on Gerber’s Howard the Duck. It was the map as a publisher to be ABOVE: The Comics Journal the business practices of the rival almost a ground zero at which reckoned with. Buyer’s Guide. to start.” Exploding out of the Los The point, Groth says, was to The notion that they were Angeles punk scene, brothers BELOW: Los Tejanos interior page treat comics not as the province the change they’d been waiting Gilbert, Jaime and Mario of collectors loading their dusty for, to paraphrase President Hernandez self-published a shelves, but as a living, breathing Barack Obama, hadn’t yet art form that deserved hard- crossed their minds. hitting reporting and reviewing. “The Comics Journal was really the anchor of the company, [and] FROM ‘ROCKETS’ it was possibly the first time in WITH LOVE the history of comics when a By the early ’80s, the industry magazine actually devoted space began showing positive signs to negative reviews of comics. of creativity and innovation. Of course, the criticism ran the “Certainly [Will Eisner’s] gamut from being wildly ecstatic A Contract with God was to harshly negative, but it just important,” says Thompson. took people aback that we would “That was a good early warning criticize comics so harshly. This shot. And there were still good was the first time comics creators undergrounds being produced— and publishers were confronted, Crumb never stopped working, month after month, with a lot of for instance.” negative criticism. They pretty Meanwhile, Fantagraphics’ much flipped out.” first foray into comics publishing Over the years, the came about as a result of the Journal’s no-nonsense attitude, “if you build it, they will come” particularly when Groth was principle. Having successfully set at the helm, has prompted up a relationship with the half- feuds with figures ranging from dozen distributors that made up Cerebus creator Dave Sim to the fledgling Direct Market at science-fiction author Harlan that point in order to publish the Ellison to Marvel Editor-in-Chief Journal, Groth and Thompson Jim Shooter. According to Groth, had unwittingly created the he was even banned from the infrastructure to start putting Marvel offices. out comics as well. Their first The negative tone probably was 1981’s Los Tejanos, a shouldn’t have come as a graphic novel by underground surprise, since according to Kim veteran Jack Jackson about the Thompson, a friend of Groth’s Texas-Mexican War, but it was a wizarduniverse.com 39 32-page comic called Love & uncompromising, sophisticated “Gradually, it dawned on us Rockets. “After a lame attempt approach to adult topics, the that we were something called trying to shop it around at a book instantly caught Groth’s eye. an ‘alternative comics’ publisher, local convention, Gilbert got the “Here were the kinds of comics but I can’t tell you exactly when idea to send it to the Journal that we’d been championing in that happened because we didn’t for a possible review,” recalls theory. That was a revelation. I have any grand plan to become Jaime. “I liked the magazine was so smitten by it that I called one,” says Groth. “We were because it was different from them up and basically just asked always flying by the seat of our the other fan trades. It had them, ‘Would you be interested in pants, and we never had any higher standards for comic art, us publishing this?’ They jumped five-year plan—we barely had a called out the bullsh-- going at the chance, and the rest is five-month plan, and we only had Love and Rockets #15 on in the comic biz and was history.” that because we had to send our ’09 WIZARD EDGE WIZARD ’09 cover just plain nasty. It Fantagraphics re-released solicitations to Diamond three reminded me a lot an expanded Love & Rockets #1 months in advance. But when of the punk music in the summer of 1982, in time the Hernandez Brothers started, magazines I was for the San Diego Comic-Con. cartoonists like them, with the reading at the time. Before long, the series, which same ambitions, started coming Maybe [a review] chronicled the long-running sagas out of the woodwork.” would get us of Jaime’s bisexual punk rockers some kind of free Maggie and Hopey and Gilbert’s BUILDING A LEGACY… advertisement, fictional Central American village Having moved from their original even if they hated Palomar, became the core title headquarters in Washington D.C. it—in the punk not just of Fantagraphics, but and now operating out of the days, a trashed of a burgeoning movement of same large Connecticut house review was a intelligent, ambitious sequential that many of its skeleton-crew good sign!” art. Along with a pair of staff lived in, Fantagraphics With art as anthologies helmed by giants began receiving submissions accomplished of the underground scene—Art from young cartoonists inspired as the best Spiegelman and Francoise by the company’s unorthodox mainstream Mouly’s avant-garde RAW, approach.