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Eisner’s A Contract With God (which gets a cameo mention here) appeared in 1978 and was considered something of an anomalous breakthrough. Craig Russell’s Parsifal being an ambitious exception and deserving of recognition as such) and two self-publishers, WaRP Graphics (Richard and Wendi Pini’s Elfquest) and Aardvark-Vanaheim (Dave Sim’s Cerebus).
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This dissent was aimed at what was then a monolithic Comics Industry composed primarily of Marvel and DC, which comprised what was then called the “mainstream” and which published probably 98% of the comics being consumed by the American public (excepting Archie, which was under everyone’s radar, especially mine) the other 2% were the vestiges of the underground comix publishers as well as a few minuscule independent or self-publishers: Eclipse published its first book in 1978 (written and drawn by two mainstream creators) Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach (1974–79, preposterously touted as “ground-level comics” - to position itself between underground and mainstream comics - consisted mostly, again, of mainstream creators doing work not far removed from what they were already doing at Marvel and DC P. I had been editing and publishing The Comics Journal for just three years and had, by 1979, found my - and the magazine’s - dissenting editorial voice.
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Very little of it will make sense to someone who does not have an historical understanding of that moment in comics history. This interview with Harlan Ellison was conducted in 1979, and it is therefore a time capsule to a different world of comics culture - and, I suppose, of everything else. From the TCJ Archives The Harlan Ellison Interview
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