The Comics Journal Special Edition #1

Plot

2001 marks the 25th anniversary of The Comics Journal, a monthly magazine of journalism, criticism, and scholarship. The magazine is celebrated as the most outspoken forum for evaluative criticism and debate in the history of the medium and equally renowned for its long, career-spanning interviews with the most highly regarded cartoonists of the 20th century—the cartoonist's equivalent of The Paris Review interviews.

Twice a year, the Journal publishes a special "coffee table" theme edition with longer and more extensive critical and historical essays, a section devoted to a specific aspect of cartooning or a particularly noteworthy cartoonist (who contributes a new strip and is interviewed). The special edition also features a variety of new comic strips done especially for the magazine by today's best cartoonists.

Our Winter edition happens to focus on the theme of comics journalism and spotlights Joe Sacco, whose Safe Area Gorazde garnered more favorable press in the political and literary press than any graphic novel since Maus, with a new cover, a long interview, and a never-before-published strip done especially for this issue.