Raw (magazine) - Origin

Origin

Spiegelman has often described the reasoning and process that lead Mouly to start the magazine: after the demise of Arcade, the '70s underground comics anthology he co-edited with Bill Griffith, and the general waning of the underground scene, Spiegelman was despairing that comics for adults might fade away for good, but he had sworn not to work on another magazine where he would be editing his peers because of the tension and jealousies involved; however, Mouly had her own reasons for wanting to do just that. Having set up her small publishing company, Raw Books & Graphics, in 1977, she saw a magazine encompassing the range of her graphic and literary interests as a more attractive prospect than publishing a series of books. At the time, large-format, graphic punk and New Wave design magazines like Wet were distributed in independent bookstores. Mouly had earlier installed a printing press in their fourth floor walk-up Soho loft and experimented with different bindings and printing techniques. She and Spiegelman eventually settled on a very bold, large-scale and upscale package. Calling Raw a "graphix magazine", they hoped their unprecedented approach would bypass readers' prejudices against comics and force them to look at the work with new eyes.