Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels

by Tom Devlin (Editor)

North America's pioneering comics publisher celebrates its quarter-century with new and rare archival comics; essays from Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood, and more.

Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels is an eight hundred-page thank-you letter to the cartoonists whose steadfast belief in a Canadian micro-publisher never wavered. In 1989, a prescient Chris Oliveros created D+Q with a simple mandate to publish the worlds best cartoonists. Thanks to his taste-making visual acumen and the support of over fifty cartoonists from the past two decades, D+Q has grown from an annual stapled anthology into one of the world's leading graphic novel publishers.
With hundreds of pages of comics by Drawn & Quarterly cartoonists, D+Q: 25 features new work by Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Michael DeForge, Tom Gauld, Miriam Katin, Rutu Modan, James Sturm, Jillian Tamaki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi alongside rare and never-before-seen work from Guy Delisle, Debbie Drechsler, Julie Doucet, John Porcellino, Art Spiegelman, and Adrian Tomine, and a cover by Tom Gauld. Editor Tom Devlin digs into the company archives for rare photographs, correspondence, and comics; assembles biographies, personal reminiscences, and interviews with key D+Q staff; and curates essays by Margaret Atwood, Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem, Deb Olin Unferth, Heather O'Neill, Lemony Snicket, Chris Ware, and noted comics scholars.
D+Q: 25 is the rare chance to witness a literary movement in progress; how a group of dedicated artists and their publisher changed the future of a century-old medium.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Anthologies, Art, Comic Book

776 pages, Hardcover

First published May 26, 2015

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drawn and Quarterly may be my favourite comics publisher purely because they publish Seth. But they also have one of the richest catalogues of quality comics with a host of other incredible creators too. This year sees the Canadian indie publisher, headed up by founder Chris Oliveros, celebrate 25 years of great comics with this humongous hardcover anthology of essays, profiles, reprinted and new comics from so many creators.

This nearly 800-page beast opens with a 44 page essay covering D&Q’s creation when Oliveros and a trio of young unknown artists - Seth, Chester Brown and Joe Matt - began producing exciting indie comics and were swiftly joined by others like Julie Doucet, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and a very young Adrian Tomine.

And here’s where I’ll confess: I didn’t read many of the essays/profiles. The opening essay is just too dry and, unfortunately, not terribly interesting. D&Q starts up, attracts new talent who would go on to become household names, and that’s about it. Except the essay covers all the minutiae in painstakingly dull detail! So my approach was set right away: I was going to read the comics only - the essays were optional.

I did read Margaret Atwood’s appreciation of Kate Beaton though and found it amusing that even an award-winning literary writer like Atwood still ends up gushing and listing her favourite sketches like any other online reviewer of Beaton’s comics!

I’ll just cover the ones that I really enjoyed rather than try to summarise everything in here which would otherwise make this the longest review ever! Chester Brown’s The Zombie Who Liked the Arts was a funny and sweet romance about a human woman and a zombie man who bond over their love of culture. James Sturm’s The Sponsor followed a boy through his life as he strove to be a cartoonist of note - and be published by D&Q!

Joe Sacco’s On My Day Off (Berlin ‘91) was funny too as Sacco tried to have a pleasant day relaxing only for everything to remind him of WW2 and Hitler! Dan Clowes’ brilliant creation Wilson returns to torture a clipboard hippy or “clippie”, and there’s an extract from Seth’s Palookaville #2 (long out of print) which was great, covering a time in Seth’s youth working a summer job at a beachfront restaurant.

All of the above appeared in other publications previously but it’s good to have them collected in one place, especially as many of them were originally printed in obscure magazines/really old D&Q issues. Also reprinted are extracts from Dupuy and Berberian’s Monsieur Jean books, Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant! and Jason Lutes’ Jar of Fools, all of them excellent to revisit and a wonderful sampler for new readers of the joys this publisher puts out.

I discovered a fantastic new creator in John Stanley - well, “new” to me. His work was published in the ‘50s and ‘60s with D&Q reprinting some of his old stuff in new editions. Val and Judy in The Shy Boys from 1965 was very sweet, silly and charming.

There are also some new, never-before-printed comics here too. Guy Delisle’s contribution about going to an exhibition in his honour was delightfully awkward and Pascal Girard’s The Osteopath was weird and wonderful.

The big name though (comparatively) is Joe Matt who contributes 15 new pages to this anthology - and they’re brilliant! It’s notable as Matt hasn’t produced any comics since his last book, Spent, was published in 2007 and, in reading the introductory essay on Matt, it’s very disappointing that these 15 pages represent the sum total of his work these past several years. He hasn’t been working on a new book or been stockpiling pages - he only produced these 15 pages as a favour to Oliveros. I’m not sure what’s changed - maybe he’s bored with comics, lost his passion?

The new stuff covers his move from Canada to LA where he tried (unsuccessfully) to get HBO to produce a TV show based on his Peepshow comics. He also tells us about his girlfriend Maggie, and, best of all, shows us the farewell party his friends threw him when he moved to LA. Seth gives a speech about being Joe Matt’s friend which is awesome and ends brilliantly. These 15 pages were so good - please, please Joe Matt, take your dick out of your hand and return to making comics full time!!

Printed on quality paper stock, the book itself is a treasure regardless of its contents - but what a collection of comics this is! Indie comics fans will love browsing through this and I’d also recommend it to any new readers who wants to know more about alternative comics - this book contains so many flavours, you can sample them all and pick out the ones you liked best to read more of.

As long as this review turned out to be, I didn’t even get around to mentioning the comics by Michael DeForge, Gilbert Hernandez, Art Spiegelman, Peter Bagge, Tom Gauld, Lynda Barry, Mimi Pond, and Tove Jansson.

Or Julie Doucet, Vanessa Davis, Brian Ralph, John Porcellino, Gabrielle Bell, Anders Nilsen, Kevin Huizenga, Rutu Modan, Michel Rabagliati, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

Or Adrian Tomine, Doug Wright, Frank King, Dylan Horrocks, David Collier, David Mazzucchelli, Jillian Tamaki and literally dozens and dozens and dozens more!

Happy 25th Anniversary, Drawn & Quarterly - here’s to another 25 years and beyond!

[Drew Canole · Rating 5 out of 5]

D&Q is my favourite comic publisher. I often go to the book store and just pick up D&Q books up at random. I'm rarely disappointed. They're dedicated to interesting creators and beautiful books.

This book was full of amazing creators. Probably the only anthology I've read where I wasn't bored by any of the entries. It's also probably the largest anthology I've read.

[Adan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be the best book I read this year. An anthology full of new and reprinted comics (including the first new Joe Matt strips in over a decade!), a collection of appreciations, photographs, interviews, and critical essays, and a history of D+Q itself. I thought the 700-plus page count would be daunting, but this is actually an incredibly fun and quick read. Featuring never-before-seen art and comics by Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Tom Gauld, the aforementioned Joe Matt, Rutu Modan, Jillian Tamaki, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and many, many more.

I cannot recommend this book enough to comic lovers in general and D+Q fans in particular.

[Emilia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoa! How has no one reviewed this on Goodreads yet? What is Goodreads coming to!? Well, here I am to lead the way. Drawn & Quarterly has an amazing legacy, some of the greatest artists, and most of my favorites, and lots of trailblazers and some great new names are featured in this comic -- also they've done some great stuff in translation and brought some old stuff back (Moomin, Pippi Longstocking comeeks?!) and so part of me utterly rejoices at this. The other part though is that I felt like this was trying to be both a "look at all the great names we have greatest hits" thing which I enjoyed, and a "hey everybody send something on the 25th anniversary theme that is not entirely whole-assed" which was not so great. There were some great retrospectives and some navel-gazing ones, some great tributes and some obscure ones -- I did enjoy the narrative of D&Q's rise to worldwide acclaim, but after that it all got haphazardly laid out. All in all, I enjoyed it and am glad of D&Qs existence, but I also got it for free, so that was a great boon. Oh and I reviewed a black and white ARC but the final is glorious color! Wooo.

[Robert Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Publishers that manage to stick around like to publish this kind of thing--a celebration of making it for 25 years. These are necessarily uncritical, but I don't begrudge it. This is one of the best I've read. It's a brick, and is filled with comics, photos and prose about the history of this scrappy, great publisher. It's inspiring. Long live Drawn & Quarterly!

[George Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big fat slab of talent- with lots of good stuff, though more of it is a reprint that I was led to expect in the publicity. Still a thrill for fan and, to be honest, a good anthology for anyone wanting and into to the best in comics.

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clocking in at 775 pages, Drawn and Quarterly's mammoth publishing feat delivers precicely what it offers on the cover: a comprehensive overview of the independent publisher's impressive twenty-five year history. Needless to say, for the discerning afficionado of the comics medium, there is a veritable treasure trove to be found between its covers. For longtime D+Q readers, it is Walhalla.

Not only is the humble origin, slow expansion and enormous influence of the company thoroughly discussed (perhaps a bit too self-indulgent to some, which is a valid criticism), the reader is also treated to profiles and excerpts of the various artists D+Q has published over the years.

Naturally, there is always a downside to anthologies of this type. While the effort is to be commended, invariably there will be some duds or uninteresting segments among the avalanche of artists presented here. Instead of giving my subjective opinion on the ones I didn't care for, I'll comment on my personal highlights.

First off and most important: Joe Matt is finally back. Everyone's favourite miser and porn addict has deemed this anthology worthy of lending his lately much underused talents to, which makes it his first published work in over 10 years (Don't stop now, Joe, I beg you!). Additionally, his faithful compadres Seth and Chester Brown are given ample breathing room to show off some previously unknown or lesser work.

Apart from the triumvirate of Matt, Brown, and Seth, all the usual suspects are here: Kate Beaton, Adrian Tomine, James Sturm, Joe Sacco, Petter Bagge, Brecht Evens, Julie Doucet, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Guy Delisle, Art Spiegelman, Shigeru Mizuki, the list goes on and on. Heavy hitters all, and a great reminder as to how cosmopolitan D+Q has proven itself to be. I also greatly appreciated the time and space dedicated to largely forgotten cartoonists from the past, like John Stanley and Frank King. Simply delightful.

Best comics anthology ever published? Quite possibly.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

kind of meh. chester brown parts are good but joe matt is obviously the shining star of this collection. god love 'im. also, mimi pond meets tom waits? YES!

[Aharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars as a book, 5 stars as a doorstop.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly comprehensive, frequently redundant, occasionally tedious, periodically wonderful.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

It speaks volumes that I've read quite a handful of D&Q books without even being aware of D&Q itself. Their history consists of a dedication to the medium and its makers by playing the role of fierce, behind-the-scenes advocate. This huge volume is no different. Less than 100 pages walk you down the formal D&Q timeline from inception to sending this book to the printer. The other 600+ pages consist of contributor's work, staff and contributor appreciations of other contributors, and more art/cartoons. To have so many talented, passionate people both editorially and creatively is pretty amazing to see. Their work speaks for itself. Wishing D&Q at least another twenty-five magical years!

Not sure where to get started? There's a list here on GR:
The Best of Drawn & Quarterly

[Amey Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

really useful sampling of many comic artists’s work. loved hearing how artists relate to and understand each other’s work - inspiration and personal relationships

[Mark Schlatter · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started developing my comic book reading tastes as an adult (in the late eighties and early nineties), my touchstone was Fantagraphics Comics. There are many reasons for this, but probably the best was that Fantagraphics mirrored my expansion from superheroes to independent titles. After all, the publisher's magazine, The Comics Journal, still covered the superhero world for some time as it promoted independent comics, and Fantagraphics' flagship title, Love & Rockets, played with the adventure genre even as its expanding cast of characters mirrored the continuity of superhero universes. Thus, a lot of my early independent reading was Los Bros Hernandez, Jim Woodring, Peter Bagge, a bit of Dan Clowes, and a lot of the Kim Thompson-edited Critters comic with Stan Sakai. In short, when Drawn & Quarterly came along, I didn't read much of their stuff and even purposely stayed away from the autobiographical comics genre that D&Q focused on early.

Thus, it was a delightful surprise to read through this volume and realize how much the D&Q ouevre has been part of my life. These days, I do value the work of the often autobiographical "Toronto Three" (Chester Brown, Seth, and Joe Matt), but D&Q has also provided me with works by James Sturm, Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware, John Porcellino, Jason Lutes, and the incomparable Guy Delisle.

The book itself starts with a history of D&Q and then focuses on individual artists, usually with an appreciation or two. The history is fascinating, especially since D&Q quickly moved away from the pamphlet concept of comics to the graphic novel. There's detail upon detail on how D&Q helped support the selling of graphic novels to bookstores and the important decisions of finding partners in book publishing. You get excellent glimpses into the "top brass" (founder Chris Oliveros, publicist Peggy Burns, and editor Tom Devlin) as they grapple with creative decisions and build a brand based on artistic expression and beautiful design. (I love how Peter Bagge describes a cartoony submission of his as "ruining" the look of a D&Q publication.) And there's even a great interview with D&Q's most prolific translator about the struggles and joys of translating comics!

The appreciations are often a mixed bag, with a tendency towards the worshipful. (A notable exception is Lemony Snicket's hilarious appreciation of Seth.) But you do get some interesting pieces (e.g., Margaret Atwood's essay on Kate Beaton) and some nice context. The comics excerpts themselves are often quite good, with my favorites being Chester Brown's "The Zombie Who Liked The Arts", the few Joe Matt pages since Peepshow, and a laugh out loud piece from Guy Delisle. Looking through this, I believe I need to read One Hundred Demons, Hark! A Vagrant, some R. Sikoryak, and some early Julie Doucet.

In short, this is an impressive work and well worth the read for anyone interested in independent comics.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard call with this one. Firstly I'm reluctant to even give it 3 stars because the production value is absolutely insane (this is a huge, huge, beautiful book) but I'm just not sure who it's for.

The styles of artist they've got in here are so immensely diverse that it's sort of unlikely you're going to like more than a handful of the many. There were some I just had to flip through because they were too obtuse/too difficult to find a narrative in.

D+Q has always been great as a platform for really different artists, but this kind of acceptance is hard to collate into one volume. There couldn't be any huger distance between Lynda Barry and Daniel Clowes, for example - I can't really imagine getting a whole lot out of all the exerts, because they're so wildly different.

The artists I did enjoy (Kate Beaton, Chris Ware) I'd enjoyed because I'd met them elsewhere first. In this way it's not a great introduction to some of these artists - the book seems made for people who have spent a good deal of time with D+Q and really no one else.

That said, if you've got a thing for book design - ugh, incredible.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sheer size of this tome may frighten small children and housepets. And one dares not drop it for fear of it crashing right through the floor, the cellar, and all the way down to the Earth's core. Holes like that are expensive to fix. Drawn & Quarterly has managed to pack a lot of history in the last 25 years. I vaguely recall buying the first issue of the magazine from a comics shop in Livonia many many years ago. Who knew they'd slowly grow that magazine into one of the most highly-respected publishers of graphic novels in the industry? Heck, who knew, twenty-five years ago, that graphic novels would even be an industry? Anyway, this book is chock full of reminiscences, interviews, comics, and more. We've got Seth, Joe Matt, Chester Brown, Joe Ollman, Julie Doucet, Shigeru Mizuki, Gilbert Hernandez, Peter Bagge, Art Spiegelman, Kate Beatton (including her "Canadian Stereotype Comics", one of my favorites), Frank King, John Stanley, Tove Jansson, and many more. I was particularly thrilled by the Shigeru Mizuki pieces, including some excerpts from his Yokai Encyclopedia. This is an excellent, if large, book, well worth however long it takes you to read it.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is like 750 pages of content! I actually say and read almost. Every single page- I treated this like a history class and studied and took notes and added many tomes to my Goodreads list! Can you beloved it's kind of not enough?! I kind of wished they had broken this down into 2 volumes and really paid homage--- some artists received several pages and some received an article and maybe a photo? Kinda odd. Not quite balanced book- but super impressive and gives a real idea of the philosophy of D&Q! Makes me want to look at histories of other comic publishers like Fantagraphics and stuff. I esp liked the Julie Doucett and Lynda Barry passages... Interview with why comics were reproduced and published were insightful as well

[Steven Rodriguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

A perfect example of how the contemporary comics scene has exploded and expanded into a large and multifaceted movement, and yet most of it is disgusting trash and inanely self-absorbed memoir.

The comic as an art form could be the vehicle for incredible storytelling. I can't wait until the medium grows out of this memoir and surrealist phase.

There are a few gems in here, to be fair, but they are vastly outnumbered by drivel and garbage.

I don't often post negative reviews on Goodreads, but I have been frustrated with comics for years, wishing that the movement would take a turn for the better. I'm still hoping for positive change.

[Tristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is EXHAUSTING. It truly is a giant encyclopedia of all things Drawn & Quarterly and it feels like it was trying to do too many things at once. It is, of course, full of treasures and gems but navigating all the different artists' work on top of long written essays rambling on about history and meetings and Comic Cons was just too much. I'm still completely glad I got to explore its contents and discover new artists.

[Peter Hollo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just unbelievably wonderful. Read it from cover to cover. Incredible number of great comics, incredible number of which are exclusive to the book. Fantastic selection of long quotes, interviews, essays on the publisher and their artists. From early examples of the medium through to some of the best new cartoonists, along with French, Swedish, Finnish and Japanese (at least!) in translation.
Must read.

[Stephanie (aka WW) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to confess that I didn't read most of the profiles in this doorstop of a book. But what I did read (including Margaret Atwood's commentary on Kate Beaton), was great. And the D&Q graphics/comics (is there a preferred phrase?) are a great sampling of some of the best in the genre. I prefer full stories, but that is not the idea here.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal. I've been a fan of D+Q since I started reading graphic novels and comics in my early twenties but I don't think I appreciated the scope of what they publish. Something I would love to own.

[Gary Sassaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing book ... part history, part anthology. Beautifully laid-out and printed. If you love comics (like the people at D&Q do), this book is for you.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

25 years of the best from Tatsumi to Kate Beaton.
A true alt comics embarassment of riches.
Reall sad that Tatsumi sensei and Mizuki sensei has passed on before I finished this awesome collection.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very, very heavy.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing sampling of the artistic/literary comics published from Drawn and Quarterly.

[Joe Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful mix of history, essays, and glorious cartooning!

[Colin Murtagh · Rating 5 out of 5]

D&Q are one of my favourite publishers, in fact one of the very first books I added to Goodreads was a Chester Brown book. This is a real monster of a book, coming in at over 750 pages, yet came in at only £30. Given that most collections and GN a fraction of the size come in at about the same price this is a real bargain.
The book starts with a set of essays on the history and ethos of the publisher. From there its split between comics and appreciation essays. Every third or fourth artist is given a short essay, Margaret Atwood on Kate Beaton, Jonathan Lethem on Chester Brown, Naomi Fry on Daniel Clowes etc.
But it is the comics themselves that are the real stars. Everyone who D&Q has published seems to have contributed to the book, and on the whole, it's new pieces. Where it's not new, it's either something that’s been published in obscure places, like the Chester Brown piece which was commissioned by the Toronto City Arts, and printed in a local paper, or it's part of a larger piece. Jason Lutes has an excerpt from Jar Of Fools for example. The editors have obviously tried to ensure the book is as new to the reader as possible.
The star piece to me is Joe Matt, in his first new comic work in ten years, he's been one of my favourite artists for a long time and to see something that is not only new, but very of him, is a real joy.
It would be impossible to list every piece I enjoyed in this, there is a character limit after all, but amongst them would be Tom Gauld, Chester Brown, Seth, Dylan Horrocks, Adrian Tomine, Lynda Barry, Kate Beaton, Peter Bagge, I could go on and on.
I really can not recommend this book enough. If you have any interests in the comics arts at all, there will be something in here for you, and you will find something new. An excellent and essential collection.

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous and illuminating volume that’s big enough to kill a cat. This book explores the origins of Drawn and Quarterly through today. Starting in an apartment, and moving from apartment to apartment, and then even more apartments throughout Montreal, this bootstrap company started as little more than an idea and grew to become the most important publisher of illustration, stories, comics, and graphic novels of the twenty-first century, practically saving the medium as a whole. This amazing book chronicles and celebrates the artists who came together as businesspeople to honor and celebrate visual storytelling, creating a new era of character-driven, beautiful collections. The book is 750 pages of art, comics, interviews, profiles, biographies, oral history, and so much more, and was an absolute pleasure to read. Beautifully curated and bound, it is the perfect representation of the history of a publisher whose output I am certain is always worth picking up. Excellent profiles of Seth, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and literally hundreds more. A true pleasure, a wonderful history, an excellent book.

[LC · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s no denying D&Q’s excellent curation of comics works and creators. It’s probably the most exciting publisher of comics and graphic novels out right now! It was so interesting reading the history from the perspectives of the people behind it all and so inspiring! The only downside was maybe how long it would take to really sit down and read it all- I did end up mostly reading the comics because I borrowed it from my university’s library and I have my own artwork to worry about right now! But in saying that it’s very hard to complain about having too much excellent content to peruse.

[calvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

it’s an anthology so pretty hard to review, but many of the comics in here pop into my head at random intervals and are so beautiful and unique, i think if you’re interested in getting into indie comics or already like indie comics or don’t know anything about indie comics you will really enjoy this book.

picked it up in 2018 at a comic book store in charlottesville, VA on a road trip and read it the whole time and also when i got back, and i pick it up to flip to whatever i got reminded of often. this time it was “blankets are always sleeping” by the late geneviè castrée