The Comics Journal

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The Comics Journal
Editor-in-chief	Michael Dean 2006 - present
Categories	Comic books news/criticism
Frequency	Monthly
First issue	1977
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	http://TCJ.com

The Comics Journal, often abbreviated TCJ, is a US magazine of news and criticism pertaining to comic books and strips. Known for its lengthy interviews with comic creators, pointed editorials, and scathing reviews of the products of the "mainstream" comics industry, the magazine promotes the view that comics are a fine art meriting broader cultural respect, and thus should be evaluated with higher critical standards.

Contents 1 History 2 Recent editors 3 Top 100 Comics list 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

In 1976 Gary Groth and Mike Catron acquired The Nostalgia Journal, a small competitor of the newspaper adzine The Buyer's Guide for Comics Fandom, reportedly with no money changing hands. At that time, Groth and Catron formalized Groth's umbrella publishing company as Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

Relaunched as The New Nostalgia Journal with issue 27 (July 1976), the zine demonstrated a pugnacious oversight of comic books as art and industry from the start. With Issue 32 (January 1977), the zine became "The Comics Journal" ("...a quality publication for the serious comics fan"). Issue 37 (Dec 77) adopted the magazine format it retains today.

The Journal has always published criticism and received it in turn. Early issues included critical reviews of 1970s superhero titles, a rarity at the time, and further irritated some fans and pros by dismissing some familiar journeyman artists and writers as "hacks." Some interpreted the abundance of criticism as an editorial bias against comics in general. After Fantagraphics started publishing comics, the Journal's bias was sometimes accused of an intrinsic bias against everything they didn't publish. Following the 1999 Top 100 Comics list the allegations of favoritism mellowed into accusations of snobbery.

The Journal’s practice of investigating industry news objectively, although the norm for traditional journalistic enterprises, was in sharp contrast to the affectionate and promotional methods of publications like Comics Buyer's Guide and Wizard. In 2006, the print Journal's industry news was largely abandoned in favor of a topical daily blog that covers the same ground.

The Journal's news staff has been accused of failing to appreciate or disclose editorial and personal conflicts of interest that inevitably occur when covering Fantagraphics. For some errors, the Journal has issued corrections and apologies.

The Journal's long-running letters page and open forum, Blood and Thunder, features caustic editorial humor and has been an arena for lengthy and heated controversies.

The Journal features book-length interviews, conducted by Gary Groth and others. Noteworthy interviews include Gil Kane in #38, Robert Crumb in #113, Charles Schultz in #200, Denny O'Neil in #64, Harlan Ellison in #53, and Steve Gerber in #41.

Over the years The Journal has prevailed in a handful of lawsuits. Artist Rich Buckler attempted legal action for a review that called him a plagiarist while printing his panels next to earlier and quite similar Jack Kirby art. A Groth interview with science fiction writer Harlan Ellison sparked a lawsuit by writer Michael Fleisher, over an informal discussion of Fleisher's work and temperament. Co-defendants Groth and Ellison won the case, but emerged from the suit estranged.

The Comics Journal Library: The Writers (2006) reprinted the Ellison interview with the cover blurb "Harlan Ellison: Famous Comics Dilettante", for which in part, Ellison shortly thereafter filed suit against the Journal, Groth and Thompson.^[1] That suit was resolved in 2007 through mediation, with no money or apologies changing hands.

The Journal has on occasion published, as cover features, lengthy court transcripts of comics-related civil suits. Notable instances include the Fleischer suit, and Marv Wolfman's failed suit against Marvel Comics.

The Journal's advertising policy is unusual for its editorial freedom. It accepts and solicits paid advertisements, and apparently does not often edit or censor ads that blatantly contradict the magazine's sensibilities. The editors also don't censor or apologize for critics who vilify advertised products, even if as a result the Journal loses an upset advertiser's business.

The Journal has won many awards; its successes helped inspire publications such as Comic Art Magazine and The Comics Interpreter, as well as web sites like Newsarama, Comic Book Resources, Sequart.com, ICv2.com, Egon, Comic Book Galaxy, The Beat, and The Comics Reporter, run by former TCJ managing editor Tom Spurgeon. The immediacy of online topical industry coverage led the print version of the Journal to truncate its news section in late 2006 in favor of a daily news weblog edited by Dirk Deppey, Journalista!.

The Journal's staff members and regular contributors have included Gary Groth, Kim Thompson, Greg Stump, Eric Reynolds, Ng Suat Tong, R. Fiore, R.C. Harvey, Kenneth Smith, Don Phelps, Robert Boyd, Tom Heintjes, Michael Dean, Tom Spurgeon, Robert Rodi, Gene Phillips, Marilyn Bethke, Cat Yronwode, Heidi MacDonald, Lee Wochner, Arn Saba, Ted White, Bob Levin, Carter Scholz, and Noah Berlatsky. Guest contributors have included Dave Sim and Trina Robbins.

A complete collection of Comics Journal and its predecessor is held by the Michigan State University Comic Art Collection.

[edit] Recent editors

Tom Spurgeon 1994 - 1999
Eric Evans 1999 - 2001
Darren Hick 1999 - 2001
Anne Elizabeth Moore 2001 - 2002
Milo George 2002 - 2004
Dirk Deppey 2004 - 2006
Michael Dean 2006 - present

[edit] Top 100 Comics list

The Journal published a 20th century comics canon in its 210th issue (February 1999). To compile the list, eight contributors and editors each selected his top 100 works. The eight lists were then informally combined, and tweaked into an ordered list. Widely circulated, the list became the Journal's best known and most controversial cover feature.

The Top 100 list was criticized for the small number of jurors, as well as the exclusion of comics in languages other than English. Large bodies of inconsistent work were counted as single entries for some artists and one publisher (i.e. Foster, Gould, Gray, Hirschfeld, 1950s EC), while selected individual works of other artists were considered as separate, multiple entries (i.e. Crumb, Kurtzman).

Some critics perceived a self-promoting bias; installments of Los Bros Hernandez' Love and Rockets comic, published by Fantagraphics, were counted as five separate works among the top 31 slots. Fantagraphics' responded it was no great surprise that many of their choices were also works that they had published or reprinted, as the company was dedicated to identifying and promoting the best comics of the past and present; they have since published further entries from the list.

The Village Voice cited the survey's unmanageable criteria:

Putting Bernard Krigstein and Al Feldstein's eight-page story "Master Race," Hal Foster's 34 years of work on Prince Valiant, Al Hirschfeld's theatrical caricatures, all the horror comics EC published in the first half of the '50s and Robert Crumb's sketchbooks in the same category suggests that they've cast their net a bit wide.

Several inclusions and omissions were controversial. Some readers argued for the convoluted contraptions of Rube Goldberg, Frank Miller's stylish The Dark Knight Returns, Superman's first appearance in Action Comics #1, and the influential post-1956 Mad Magazine (following original editor Harvey Kurtzman's ouster), among others.

Dave Sim's long-running Cerebus was the list's most frequently cited absentee. Sim and the Journal have periodically been at odds. Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson has admitted at least one story arc from the comic should have been included, if only to have avoided the brouhaha over its absence.

Superhero comics, which have dominated the American marketplace for half a century, were represented by six entries, with the foremost selection being ranked either 30th (or 15th, if one counts Will Eisner's The Spirit).

[edit] See also

• List of Comics Journal interview subjects - provides the number of the issue(s) they appear in.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Dean, Mike; Moore, Elizabeth Anne. "Timeline". The Comics Journal 235, page 82.

[edit] External links

• TCJ.com - Official The Comics Journal website
• Comics Reporter: TCJ Covers, Contents and Mastheads with many Comics Journal covers