Kim Thompson interview – a telling look at the comics medium in 2009 | The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Kim Thompson interview – a telling look at the comics medium in 2009

Wed, Dec 31, 2008

Joe linked to the interview by Tom Spurgeon with Fantagraphics co-founder Kim Thompson early in the week, but on reading it I thought it was worth putting this excerpt up for us all to read:

“The industry has changed far more radically, and for the better, than I ever could have imagined, in terms of the respect accorded to comics, the level of work being produced, comics’ place in the market, the whole ball of wax. (You have to bear in mind that when we started cartoonists were literally wondering whether Americans would ever be willing to read comic books that ran beyond the length of an issue of Giant-Size Fantastic Four.)

The weird thing is that the idea of “graphic novels” and comics for adults has had so very little penetration into the general literate populace. Most regular people are, in my experience, still utterly stunned and confused at the very idea, New York Times Book Review reviews notwithstanding. There is a weird disconnect between the press’s enthusiastic embrace and promotion of the medium and its effect on actual “mainstream” readers. You have millions of New York Times subscribers reading and presumably mostly enjoying the Jason serial, but how many of them would even think “Hey, I should go buy a book by this guy”? .001 percent?

It remains an uphill battle, and if I’d known how much of an uphill battle it would continue to be, even with all of these victories, I might have become an advertising copywriter circa 1979.”

So that’s what we’re going to be doing in 2009 then.

Making the idea of the graphic novel something that penetrates further and further into the general literate populace.

A good new year’s resolution for us all.