RAW# 1 was printed on heavy white paper and included a small
comic book by Spiegelman called “Two-Fisted Painters” (one of his many
strips devoted to exploring and satirizing the comic form). The front cover
had a color panel pasted on it to give Spiegelman’s stark black-and-white
illustration another dimension and to compensate for the lack of full-color
printing. “A lot of attention was paid to its objectness,” said Spiegelman,
who was creative consultant for Topps Bubble Gum Company during that
period, and has always harbored a fetish for novelty that he translated into
the magazine. Though many of the strips were visually raw compared to
those of slick mainstream comics, their surreal and heady unpredictability
forced the reader to take notice. By RAW# 5 , which Spiegelman and Mouly
agree was the most challenging issue, the various mixtures of typography,
art, and novelty were so well integrated that RAW’s style was decidedly its
own.RAWhad become a genre.
“It was never meant to be a long-lived project,” sighed
Spiegelman, revealing his characteristic angst. “It was meant to be a
demonstration of how something could be in a better world, and ended up
having its own logic and momentum; it began, more or less, steering us
rather than us steering it. And I think that’s still true.” That momentum
was generated in part by the RAWartists, who were being given a venue in
which to grow and were not eager to give it up. “Once everything was set
up,” continued Spiegelman, “it was just as easy to feed it as to kill it.”
RAWcertainly did fulfill a need. It became a veritable mecca for
quirky and visionary artists and storytellers from all over the world. From
the initial five thousand print run, subsequent runs increased incrementally
to almost twenty thousand by RAW# 8 , the last of the large-format issues.
Among the relative newcomers were Gary Panter, who already had a cult
following for his Jimbostrip, which appeared in a West Coast punk
magazine called Slash; Charles Burns, who had only ever published spot
illustrations before sending his meticulously drawn translations of 1950 s
horror and love clichés to RAWfor consideration; Jerry Moriarty, who was
teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York and barely getting
published before RAWpicked up his “Jack Survives,” a surrealistic view of
the banal; and Mark Beyer, with his art bruttales about depression and
death. Other homegrown discoveries included Drew Friedman, Ben
Katchor, and Mark Newgarden.
Spiegelman and Mouly also published the cream of the European
comic strip artists, including the brilliantly designed strips of Joost Swarte
from Holland and Ever Meulen from Belgium; the explosive graphic
fantasies of Pascal Doury and the noirstorytelling of Jacques Tardi, both
from France; and the seductive comicalities of the Spaniard Javier Mariscal.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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