How Comics Were Made: About the Creators

About author Glenn Fleishman

Mugshot of Glenn Fleishman wearing glasses showing pattern leaves in the background, by Lynn D. Warner

From as early as I can remember anything, I was the kind of kid who lay on the floor of a library with giant collections splayed out—the kind of kid who used microfilm to read old installment of Peanuts. I’ve devoted the last several years to understanding the history of comics reproduction. This has included purchasing artifacts across the last century of newspaper cartooning, deep research into the production of newspapers, and visits to printing and comics museums and archives. I’ve given talks at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, the Grabhorn Institute (watch), and TypeCon about my printing history research.

Prior to my interest in comic printing history, I spent my career across several professions: book author of dozens of titles, starting in the late 1990s to the present; technology journalist, appearing regularly in the New York Times, the Economist, Wired, Fast Company, and Macworld; conference editorial planner, helping build the sessions of the earliest internet-focused creative events; and programmer, building content-management, price-comparison, and other systems at Amazon.com (catalog manager in the 90s), TidBITS, and for my own ventures; and editor and publisher of The Magazine, a publication founded and initially run by Marco Arment, who hired me as its first editor. Among various life trivia, I was an early podcaster, helped broadcast the first feature film over the internet (Party Girl), auditioned for and made callbacks for the movie Stand By Me, and was once paid to write actual gibberish (technology variety) for a radio promo spot.

Researching printing history in general and comics history for this book has taken me to The Type Archive, St Bride Printing Library, and the Stationers Company (London); the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum (WI), the Charles M. Schulz Library & Research Center (CA), the Museum of Printing (MA), the Museum of Fine Arts (MA), and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (OH); and a trio of Ivy League special collections: Columbia, Princeton, and Yale. Several cartoonists and colorists have also welcomed me into their studios to see their archives and working methods.

You can find out more about me at my blog and my website.

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About designer Mark Kaufman

Mugshot of Mark Kaufman facing right. Photo by Eric Lynch

Mark’s first professional assignment was in the waning days of the Madmen era, when the boys in accounting downgraded the three-martini lunch to one beer and a few greasy meatballs. In a career spanning six decades, he finds himself uniquely positioned to collaborate on a project about the history of comics creation and production. In that time Mark has blindly—some would say boldly—navigated the massive technological changes in the design industry, from glue pots and paste-up, the lost art of type specification, personal computers, desktop publishing, the internet, social media, to whatever Artificial Intelligence will throw in his path.

Along the way, Mark has been a designer, illustrator, animator, and cartoonist for the likes of the New York Times, The Stranger, the Cornell Daily Sun, In These Times, T-Mobile, Waste Management, Brooks Sports, and Airbnb. His work has been awarded by Print Magazine, American Illustration, the Society of Illustrators, and the Society of Publication Designers.

Mark’s decade as a contributor to The Nib, and designer of The Nib Magazine, has been recognized by the Ignatz and Harvey Awards, and short-listed for the Stack Magazine Awards. The Nib received the 2023 Eisner Award for Best Anthology. Mark has served as Vice President of ICON The Illustration Conference, on the executive boards of AIGA Seattle and Into the Woods Conference, and as a jurist of The Creativity Awards and the World Illustration Awards.

Mark Kaufman’s collage art, paintings, and drawings have shown in galleries around the world, where, coming full circle, cheap wine and greasy meatballs are served. His general comic and illustrative work can be found at drawmark.com, his design practice at vivitiv.com, and his work for sale at saatchiart.com/drawmark.

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About editor Harry McCracken

Acting as a check on Glenn’ flights of fancy and bringing a gimlet eye as editor is Harry, the perfect mix of technology expert and comics aficionado and researcher. Harry held a variety of editorial positions at PC World over 13 years, and has spent the last 10 years as technology editor of Fast Company. But Harry is also a deeply nerdy comics and animation fan with a deep appreciation and knowledge of the classics—particularly forgotten comics. Harry unearthed this amazing 1957 Charles Schulz-authorized guide book to the Des Moines Register and Tribune printing operations with non-Schulz-drawn Lucy and Charlie Brown figures (!!), which appears in the book. Harry actively maintains the Scrappyland website, devoted to restoring the memory of “America’s favorite forgotten cartoon star.”

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About letterpress printer Jessica Spring

Letterpress printer, teacher, and designer Jessica Spring is the proprietor of Springtide Press in Tacoma, Wash., started as a typesetter using phototype equipment, then traveled back in time to pick up her love and decades-long devotion to metal type and letterpress printing. She invented Daredevil Furniture, a set of rigid shapes that allow composing metal type in circles, curves and angles. Her work in artists books, broadsides and ephemera is included in collections around the country and abroad. She co-authored Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color.

A lifelong lover of cartoons—particularly underground comics and Bill Griffith’s work—she and Glenn collaborated on the design and she printed the limited-edition Zippy the Pinhead flong re-creation and print.

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