A few years ago, the talk of the graphic novel bubble started. Or maybe the graphic novel bubble itself started; it’s hard to tell. Maybe the bubble actually started much earlier, but people didn’t realize it was a bubble at first. Whatever the case, Chris Ware and Dan Clowes had books come out from Pantheon, the same publisher that had put out Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and their books started getting a lot of critical acclaim and attention from the mainstream press. Marjane Satrapi followed with her critical and commercial success, Persepolis,and Harvey Pekar’s long-running autobiographical comic American Splendor was adapted into a fairly successful film. At least, I think it was fairly successful. Then Craig Thompson worked for five years on his graphic novel Blankets for Top Shelf, and it was a critical and commercial success, both in the United States and internationally. Craig then signed a book deal with Pantheon, and suddenly it seemed like every alternative/indie cartoonist was dreaming of signing the big book deal with a mainstream publisher, and literary agents were looking to sign up the top graphic novel talent, and there seemed to be an unreal amount of opportunities for cartoonists whose previous publishing dreams involved printing somewhere other than the local copy shop.

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