ForeWord This Week

August 15, 2013



Comic-Con: John Lewis

A comic book has been released featuring the adventures of a superhero.

Doesn’t sound like news? Well, consider that this superhero is a real-life one: Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, who fought for truth, justice, and the American way against the evil forces of Jim Crow South, suffering beatings at the hands of police and angry mobs—all for the right to vote and be treated as an equal citizen of his country. This superhero story is all true and chronicled in a new graphic novel called March, published by Top Shelf Productions, which tells Lewis’s story and those of others in the civil rights movement.

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Chris Staros

Photo by Ben Dashwood

In this interview with ForeWord This Week, Top Shelf publisher Chris Staros said that he considers March to be a new breakthrough into mainstream consciousness for the graphic novel. He also discusses the past and future of the graphic novel as a literary genre and educational tool.

Have comics always covered serious issues?

Comics traditionally suffered from the stereotype of being action hero adventure. A lot of the publishers throughout the decades have made it their mission—Top Shelf being one of them—to redeem comics as a literary art form. I remember in the mid-’80s when Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Maus came out there was an initial interest in the literary aspect of what comics could become. But right after those three books, there wasn’t a whole lot there to support it. In the ’90s, a lot of publishers like Top Shelf made an effort to produce literary graphic novels covering a wide range of subjects. Top Shelf has dealt with serious subject matters before like gay rights, autobiographical issues like growing up in a religious household, and Jack the Ripper.

With March, Top Shelf started trying to reach outside of the comics market to attract normal people. March is one of those books that reaches far beyond what we would normally be able to do. John Lewis isn’t only a national figure, he’s a national treasure. Getting to know him over these last couple years, he’s a truly remarkable man. He’s very inspirational and makes you feel special when you’re around him. With his status and stature in the marketplace, and with the book turning out so well, it wasn’t just a good idea, it was a good idea brilliantly executed.

As a result, it is reaching out to a lot of mainstream sources. Libraries are really going to pick this up. Schools are going to use this to teach, and we have a teachers’ guide written and published for this. CBS News covered this when he was at Comic-Con. We were on the national news that Sunday evening.

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Is this considered even more of a breakthrough into mainstream consciousness for the graphic novel?

Yes, I think so. It’s something I’m proud of, not just as a publisher but as a member of the comic book community. We are all in our own little world, on a mission to let people outside of our world know how good this stuff is. It’s easy to digest, and we’re in a visual world, and this is a visual medium. You can buy these digitally on the iPad and Kindle. We’ve really stepped into the modern age with this stuff.

How do you envision graphic novels being more integrated with technology? Is there a future in print, or is it all going to be on the iPad?

I honestly think they’re both going to survive side by side with each other. Comics are lucky in that we’re not just a pulp romance novel that can be printed easily and therefore really go to digital easily. We do a lot of high art, and it looks good on paper. We do a lot of design on hardcovers, French flaps, matte finishes, textured papers, full color, and different kinds of color. We’ve produced a lot of art objects that are nice to hold in your hand. I think even if digital goes ballistic, we’ll still have that art-object value.

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More school libraries are carrying graphic novels now. What can a graphic novel do to a lesson that a traditional textbook can’t do?

There are several things graphic novels offer the school system. First of all, a lot of young people either find it difficult or tedious to read prose. I used to read novels by the dozens, but the world has gotten fast paced and compartmentalized. Major articles in Time magazine used to be three or four pages, but now they’re 400 to 800 words. We’re getting our information in bite-sized chunks down to even 140 characters.

Comics are in some ways easier to digest than prose in that they’re quicker to absorb. They catch you in a way, visually, that is quite immediate. Visual image goes to the brain very quickly, and you can say a lot of profound, resonating things with comics. A lot of kids will say they first started to learn to read with comics.

How is the competition? Is there room for more publishers your size?

This is kind of an oxymoron, but we’re one of the larger small publishers. I’ve never viewed myself as competitive in this industry with anyone. We’ve all been on a mission to grow the industry. My feeling is that we were never fighting over slices of the pie, we were trying to make the pie bigger. I’ve always been supportive of all the other publishers, of the fifteen or so in the industry.

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Tell me more about your personal history and how Top Shelf was founded.

When I was a kid I never read comics. My parents told me that books with pictures were for kids and books with words were for adults. Just like every other kid in the world I was in a hurry to grow up, but now I regret that. One day, I stumbled across a comic book store and discovered Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and was blown away by the potential of what comics could be. I suffered from the same stereotypes, and it hit me how amazing this medium could be.

I did three or four years of research into comics before I dove in. I started writing a zine called The Staros Report, which was my guide, pre-Internet, of where to find the best comics. It occurred to me that only the superhero stuff was at comic stores. All the great stuff had to be special ordered. I met Brett Warnock, my business partner, in the mid ’90s. He was very artsy and I was more editorial, business oriented. We formed Top Shelf in 1997 and have been on a mission to produce literary graphic novels that look and feel like books that could help steer the industry in a more literary direction.

What are you planning next? With March you’ve launched into a whole new level. How do you follow that up?

There are three or four books coming out this summer that are all special. There is a truly all-ages book for boys or girls called Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell. It’s going to shake some people up because it’s so good. Another interesting book we did is called God is Disappointed in You, which is actually an illustrated prose book, and we don’t do those often. It looks like a Bible with the rounded corners, leather patterned cover, gold and silver edges, red bookmark, and Bible-type fonts. It is complete summation of the Bible; each chapter is summarized into one or two pages. It’s a very funny yet accurate and respectful condensation of the Bible. It’s illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler. We introduced it at Comic-Con, and I wasn’t sure if the comic fans would pick up on it because it wasn’t a comic book. But every time someone picked the Bible up and opened it they bought it.

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‘A Naked’ Update

In last week’s ForeWord This Week, we had a conversation with Levi Stahl, the University of Chicago Press publicist who discovered Sergio De La Pava’s self-published book A Naked Singularity. On Wednesday, the book won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and $25,000, for a debut work.

New Reviews

Some fascinating and entertaining books have crossed our desks this past week, including books four and five of Peter S. Fischer’s Hollywood Murder Mysteries series: Everybody Wants an Oscar and The Unkindness of Strangers. Fischer continues his focus on Hollywood’s Golden Age through the eyes of noir-ish cinema publicist Joe Bernardi. It’s a world Fischer knows well, as a former TV writer for some popular shows, including Murder She Wrote and Columbo. Also, Startup, by Glenn Ogura, “raises questions about the Silicon Valley business world with an action-packed narrative”; and Make the Grade: Everything You Need to Study Better, Stress Less, and Succeed in School, by Lesley Schwartz Martin, “does not just tell students how to get better grades, but how to succeed in all aspects of school life.”

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