RAW Magazine edited by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly (No. 16)

RAW Magazine (1980-1991)

edited by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly

REVIEW BY KIM THOMPSON:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

RAW didn't come out of nowhere, exactly. With his co-editor Bill Griffith, Art Spiegelman had already staked out much of the same creative territory half a decade earlier with the short-lived underground anthology Arcade (1975-1976); moreover, the superb hardcover collection, Breakdowns (a combination of Spiegelman's Arcade material and his best underground work) had thrown down the gauntlet - in terms of ambitious formats as well as formal experimentation - for other cartoonists to pick up in the coming decade. Even so, in the vast funny book wasteland of 1980, with underground comics seemingly tapped out and new "alternatives" yet to come (don't even bring up the mainstream, then, as now, at one of its many nadirs), the extravagantly oversized, lushly printed, frighteningly expensive ($3.50!) RAW #1 came as the biggest shock to the comics system as ZAP #1.

RAW was built around a core of cartoonists that included a new generation of technical virtuosos intent on producing discomfort in the reader (Mark Bayer, Charles Burns, Sue Coe, Drew Friedman, Kaz, Mark Newgarden and Gary Panter); the very best of the previous decades still-kicking undergrounders (R. Crumb, Kim Deitch, Justin Green and Griffith and Spiegelman); and an impeccably selected cross section of modern European cartoonists (Doury, Loustal, Mariscal, Masse, Mattotti, Meulen, Munoz / Sampayo, Swarte and Tardi). Add in the editors' serious and painstaking but prankish approach to magazine production (issues included bubblegum cards, deliberately ripped covers, and a set of X-rated bits "censored" from a story), RAW became an art object as well as superlative reading experience.

After eight self-published tabloid-size issues in seven years, Spiegelman and Mouly re-launched RAW as a Penguin paperback. Even though this second "volume" was designed in a more mainstream friendly format, there were no creative concessions; in fact, by making impossible the graphic indulgences of the tabloid-size editions, the "new" RAW handily rendered moot the most frequent criticism - that its emphasis on design overshadowed narrative. Unfortunately Spiegelman and Mouly called it quits after three issues. At the time, RAW had become so infrequent (those three Penguin editions took six years to produce) that its disappearance didn't carry a sting - more like a long slow, creeping disappointment as the '90s continued on with no new releases. But by that time, RAW had launched so many careers, defined (and in some cases exhausted) so many trends, and opened so many possibilities that its job had arguably been done.

(And then there was that Maus serial, too...)

FURTHER READING:
Cultural Daily: Art Spiegelman & RAW - His Other Masterpiece
Eye Magazine: Comics for Damed Intellectuals

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