History
Drawn and Quarterly was founded in 1990 by Montrealer Chris Oliveros, aged 23 at the time.
Oliveros was inspired by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's Raw to publish an arts comics periodical. He borrowed $2000 from his father to fund starting the magazine Drawn and Quarterly, which debuted in April, 1990. It was intended to be published four times a year, containing short arts comics. Soon, Oliveros realized there were arts comics which were too long to be contained in his magazine, and began publishing stand-alone comic books and graphic novels, beginning with Julie Doucet's comic book Dirty Plotte.
Amongst the earliest cartoonists to become associated with Drawn and Quarterly were the Toronto-based Chester Brown and Seth. In the early 2000s, Brown had a surprise bestseller with Louis Riel. In 2003, A Drawn and Quarterly Manifesto was released, describing to booksellers how to stock and sell graphic novels.
As graphic novels became more popular with the public, Oliveros found the need for a publicist. He asked Peggy Burns, who was doing such work at DC Comics, if she knew someone who could fill the job. Burns offered herself, and moved from New York City to Montreal. She was the company's third employee, and soon signed a distribution deal for the publisher with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which greatly expanded the company's exposure, while giving it a literary air. Drawn and Quarterly reduced the number of serialized titles it published, focusing on book-form comics such as collections and graphic novels. Business expanded over the next decade to the extent that the publisher employed nine people. In November, 2012 the Canadian radio program The Sunday Edition aired a documentary portrait of Drawn and Quarterly the contains interviews with cartoonist Lynda Barry, teenage blogger Tavi Gevinson founder Chris Oliveros and associate publisher Peggy Burns. Barry is very emotional when she describes how Drawn and Quarterly helped save her career.
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