Jack Thomas Chick was an American cartoonist and publisher, best known for his fundamentalist Christian "Chick tracts". He expressed his perspective on a variety of issues through sequential-art morality plays.
A graphic novel is a long-form work of sequential art. The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book, which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks.
Eightball is a comic book by Daniel Clowes and published by Fantagraphics Books. It ran from 1989 to 2004. The first issue appeared soon after the end of Clowes's previous comic book, Lloyd Llewellyn. Eightball has been among the best-selling series in alternative comics.
Acme Novelty Library is a comic book series created by Chicago cartoonist Chris Ware. Its first issue appeared in 1993. Published from 1994 by Fantagraphics Books and later self-published, it is considered a significant work in alternative comics, selling over 20,000 copies per issue.
Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.
Alternative comics or independent comics cover a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to mainstream superhero comics which in the past have dominated the American comic book industry. They span across a wide range of genres, artistic styles, and subjects.
Daniel Gillespie Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in Eightball, a solo anthology comic book series. An Eightball issue typically contained several short pieces and a chapter of a longer narrative that was later collected and published as a graphic novel, such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993), Ghost World (1997), David Boring (2000) and Patience (2016). Clowes's illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vogue, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. With filmmaker Terry Zwigoff, Clowes adapted Ghost World into a 2001 film and another Eightball story into the 2006 film, Art School Confidential. Clowes's comics, graphic novels, and films have received numerous awards, including a Pen Award for Outstanding Work in Graphic Literature, over a dozen Harvey and Eisner Awards, and an Academy Award nomination.
A minicomic is a creator-published comic book, often photocopied and stapled or with a handmade binding. In the United Kingdom and Europe the term small press comic is equivalent with minicomic, reserved for those publications measuring A6 or less.
A letterer is a member of a team of comic book creators responsible for drawing the comic book's text. The letterer's use of typefaces, calligraphy, letter size, and layout all contribute to the impact of the comic. The letterer crafts the comic's "display lettering": the story title lettering and other special captions and credits that usually appear on a story's first page. The letterer also writes the letters in the word balloons and draws in sound effects. Many letterers also design logos for the comic book company's various titles.
Drawn & Quarterly (D+Q) is a publishing company based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, specializing in comics. It publishes primarily comic books, graphic novels and comic strip collections. The books it publishes are noted for their artistic content, as well as the quality of printing and design. The name of the company is a pun on "drawing", "quarterly", and the practice of hanging, drawing and quartering. Initially it specialized in underground and alternative comics, but has since expanded into classic reprints and translations of foreign works. Drawn & Quarterly was the company's flagship quarterly anthology during the 1990s.
Adrian Tomine is an American cartoonist. He is best known for his ongoing comic book series Optic Nerve and his illustrations in The New Yorker.
Ghost World is a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. It was serialized in issues #11–18 of Clowes's comic book series Eightball, and was published in book form in 1997 by Fantagraphics Books. It was a commercial and critical success and developed into a cult classic.
Michael Christopher Diana is an American underground cartoonist. His work, which is largely self-published, deals with themes including sexuality, violence, and religion. He is the first person to receive a criminal conviction in the United States for artistic obscenity for his comic Boiled Angel.
Chick tracts are short evangelical gospel tracts in a comic book format, originally created by American cartoonist Jack Chick in the 1960s. His company Chick Publications has continued to print Chick's work, as well as tracts in a similar style by other writers. Several tracts have expressed controversial viewpoints including strong anti-Catholic views and criticisms of other faiths.
Rick Altergott is an American alternative cartoonist and illustrator. Altergott is best known for Doofus, a long-running low-brow, scatological series of strips which chronicle the misadventures of two small-town weirdos, Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss.
Psychopia is a small press zine featuring reviews and articles on British comic books and small press comics and interviews with cartoonists. Unusually for comix zines it focussed almost entirely on British comics such as The Beano and The Dandy ignoring American superhero comics.
The Duplex Planet is a zine edited and published by David Greenberger since 1979. It contains transcriptions of his interviews with elderly residents of senior centers and "meal sites" in the Massachusetts area. For many years, the zine focused on the residents of the Duplex Nursing Home, located in Boston.
Modern Cartoonist is a 1997 essay by Daniel Clowes published as a 16-page black, white and red illustrated pamphlet. It was originally bound in with copies of Eightball #18 and was also offered for sale individually. Although the back cover describes it as being published by "The Catholic Federation for Preservation and Advancement of All Things Related to the Comic Book and its Creators, Inc.," the address given for ordering additional copies is that of Fantagraphics Books, presumably its actual publisher. Because of its subject matter, its small dimensions and its illustrations, and its original distribution inside of a comic book, Modern Cartoonist is sometimes classed as a minicomic.
Newcity is a media company based in Chicago, founded in 1986 by Brian and Jan Hieggelke." It started as the Newcity independent, free weekly newspaper in Chicago. Effective March 2017, the founders changed the newspaper into a glossy monthly free magazine, using the same Newcity name. As of March 2018, the firm also "publishes a suite of content-focused web sites", also under the Newcity name, and creates custom publications to order.
Quimby's Bookstore is an independent bookstore located at 1854 W. North Ave in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. In addition to the main location, Quimby's NYC opened in 2017 at 536 Metropolitan Ave in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Quimby's specializes in selling independently published and small press books, zines, comics, and ephemera, describing its collection as favoring "the unusual, the aberrant, the saucy and the lowbrow". The Chicago Tribune has described Quimby's as "a treasure" and "an unofficial clubhouse for zine lovers", and Inc. magazine has featured it as "Chicago's weirdest bookstore".
