KUOW73%
Seattle comics publisher Fantagraphics celebrates 50th anniversary 18%
By Katie Campbell0%
6/11/2026, 7:53:07 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, and Appeal to Emotion, with Halo Effect as the most egregious example at 26.7% saturation with 247 hits. Analysis detected 1,924 faulty-reasoning hits from 924 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.2% and a BS Rank of 18% (18,028 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 82.40% of the article peer group.
Eric Reynolds used to hand out business cards that identified him as an "official shill and paid apologist."
"[That] was very much my own kind of punk-rock way of taking the piss out of any kind of corporate attitudes or structures," he said.
"I never wanted a professional career.
I never wanted a real job.
I feel like I've not had a real job in 33 years, and I say that with a huge amount of pride."
Reynolds has spent those years at Fantagraphics, the comics publisher based in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood.
"It's a small company, and everybody wears a lot of different hats," said Reynolds, who's grown from "shill" to vice president and associate publisher.
"I don't know that any career counselor would tell you that that's, like, the shrewdest move [to go to work at Fantagraphics]."
Maybe not, but enough people like Reynolds have made that move nonetheless over the years that the storied publisher is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
In that time, Fantagraphics has, in their own words, "published the very best comics and graphic novels that the medium has to offer."
Their catalogue includes a wide range of artists, including Peter Bagge, creator of "Hate," one of the bestselling comic book series of the last 25 years, according to Fantagraphics; Daniel Clowes, creator of cult classics "Eightball" and "Ghost World"; and the Hernandez brothers — Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario — who created the beloved "Love and Rockets" comics, among others.
Fantagraphics was founded in 1976 by Gary Groth and Michael Catron — Kim Thompson joined in 1977 and became co-owners in 1978 after Catron left for DC Comics in 1978 — more than 2,000 miles from the company's bookstore and headquarters is today.
The company had a few homes after that humble start in Maryland, but it's been here in Seattle since 1989, giving Fantagraphics a definitive place in the city's grungy '90s counterculture.
"The '90s is when Fantagraphics really established itself as a publisher of progressive, provocative, good work," Reynolds said.
"You can think back to, like, Nirvana wearing the 'corporate magazines still suck' T-shirt on the cover of 'Rolling Stone.'
At that time, you kind of identified yourself as much by what you didn't like as what you really did like."
Don't like the superheroes Marvel and DC Comics put out?
Cool, maybe Emil Ferris' "My Favorite Thing is Monsters" instead.
"Archie" too wholesome for you?
No worries, check out something like "Hate" or any of the more, ahem, adult comics Fantagraphics offers.
Mainstream arts criticism too stuffy?
Sounds like you need "The Comics Journal."
And while Fantagraphics has published plenty of popular titles, the company has also been a home for more experimental or less widely read creations.
Jim Woodring, a cartoonist who's been with Fantagraphics for about 40 of their 50 years, learned that for himself when Gary Groth found his work in the '80s.
"My magazine, 'Jim,' was the lowest-selling title in their roster, but they kept it going because they believed it had artistic value," Woodring said.
"Gary and his late partner, Kim Thompson, had artistic and philosophical standards, which was a very rare thing in the comics industry back then."
Thompson died in 2013, and Reynolds became Fantagraphics' vice president.
(Not to worry.
His punk-rock vibe lives on.
Tucker Stone, Fantagraphics' executive director of communications and marketing, was proud to share his title "means my full-time job that gives me health insurance is to tell people how good Gilbert Hernandez is.")
Before Thompson passed, Reynolds said he, Thompson, and Groth were "something of a three-headed beast," buidling Fantagraphics and influencing the wider industry.
Fantagraphics' "The Comics Journal," which Groth also launched in 1976, delivered news and sharp criticism of the comics world, and still does on a bi-yearly basis.
"'The Comics Journal'... did far more than just provide articles and news and interviews.
It challenged the ossified norms of the profession and proposed that comics were a serious art form and should be considered as such," Woodring said.
"Gary and Kim mercilessly hammered artists and publishers that produced what they considered to be dreck.
As you can imagine, this stirred things up considerably.
There were a lot of bloody battles fought out in the editorials and letter pages of 'The Comics Journal.'
Feelings were hurt, and enemies were made, and the comics community was forever changed for the better."
Fantagraphics' 50th anniversary isn't just about this one publisher, not from the perspective of people like Woodring and Reynolds (who got his start with Fantagraphics at "The Comics Journal.")
"Fantagraphics is really a history of the art form," Reynolds said.
"It's as much about preserving the legacies of the creators who've made their mark on the medium as it is any kind of defining house style."
If there is a "house style" at Fantagraphics, it seems to be somewhere in the team's counterculture beginnings, their appreciation for art, and their disdain for the status quo.
"I remember Trina Robbins, who was an underground cartoonist, lobbying that the comic book business needed to produce more work for girls, and her argument was basically, 'If you make it, they will come,'" Reynolds said.
"Then in the early 2000s, as the adult literary graphic novel was ascending, you suddenly had this influx of work that was created for a broader demographic of readers. ...
Trina's prediction proved true.
If you made the work, they would come. they would come.
And Fantagraphics, that was sort of always our M.O."
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100%flagged-word coverageTucker Stone
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