Punk comix.

• Author: Constant, Paul
• Position: Fantagraphics Books Inc.

In Seattle, there's a neighborhood called Georgetown that the mysterious forces of Real Estate and Art have conspired to label the Next Big Thing, though right now it's still humble, a mix of singlefamily houses and abandoned factories slowly being repurposed into galleries and condos. There's pretty much one block of commercial interest--a cozy coffee shop, a coming-soon sign for a button-making store, and a record store (literally, it sells vinyl) that shares space with a bookstore called Fantagraphics Books, owned by the graphic novel publisher of the same name. Every single title that Fantagraphics has in print is on sale at the store. Works by Robert Crumb and Chris Ware stand alongside archived comics collections like Krazy Kat and Popeye. The thirty-year-old publisher uses the space to celebrate the work of its artists, and it devoted a weekend recently to the twenty-fifth anniversary of a comic book by brothers Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez.

On February 11, fans packed Fantagraphics's new store for a panel discussion with the Hernandez brothers. People in their sixties who had never abandoned the counterculture joined with teenagers in their awkward Goth-pop styles. In a comic book culture rarity, there were at least as many women as men, and the ethnic mix was diverse, especially for Seattle.

A quick glance around the shelves of the bookstore showed that the brothers have created about a third of the store's stock. Fantagraphics's publisher, Gary Groth, who has a reputation for being the angriest man in comics with his hyperliterate, splenetic rants about the sad state of publishing, seemed downright star-struck as he conducted an interview with the brothers. As they reminisced, it became clear that there were many times, due to lack of funds, when the partnership nearly came to an abrupt end.

For thirty years, Groth has published some of the best graphic novels in the world, and for almost all that time, the publisher has been struggling to keep afloat. In 2004, just after a serious bankruptcy scare, Groth worked with Charles Schulz's estate to acquire the rights to publish collections of every single Charlie Brown cartoon in order for the next twelve years. The Complete Peanuts not only lovingly archives Schulz's wildly popular work, it has ensured that Fantagraphics won't have to worry about money for at least another decade.

One of the most obvious examples of the new financial freedom that Fantagraphics has is the storefront...