Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, it's my great pleasure to have Gary Groff with me.

Gary Groth is one of the founders,

and now I believe the editor-in-chief,

of Fantagraphics books.

In 1991, Art Spiegelman came on to Bookworm.

Mouse, too had just appeared in book form.

I was all sorts of doubtful about this thing that was not yet called the graphic novel.

And so Art took me in hand and introduced me to the work of the cartoonists he

particularly admired. Those included Chris Ware and Dan Klaus and Charles Burns, among many, many others. And, well, I was dazzled. And gradually,

I came to realize that most of these cartoonists either began or were published by Fantagraphics Press.

And over these 30 years that we've been doing the show,

I keep encountering fantagraphics, fantagraphics,

fantagraphics, fantagraphics.

They've published the complete arc crumb,

...