Its production values resulted in a $3.50 cover price, several times the going prices for comics, either mainstream or underground. In the midst of a commercial and artistic fallow period in the American comics industry, the lavishly-printed, 10 + 1⁄ 2 in × 14 + 1⁄ 8 in (27 cm × 36 cm) first issue of Raw appeared in July 1980. 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. She and Spiegelman eventually settled on a very bold, large-scale and upscale package. Mouly's approach was hands-on, and she gave great attention to every step of the printing process. Mouly had earlier installed a printing press in her and Spiegelman's fourth floor walk-up Soho loft and experimented with different bindings and printing techniques. Īt the time, large-format, graphic punk and New Wave design magazines like Wet were distributed in independent bookstores.
The magazine was to provide an outlet for the kinds of comics that had difficulty finding a publisher in the US, in particular younger cartoonists who fit neither the superhero nor the underground mold, and European cartoonists who did not fit the sex-and-sci-fi appetites of Heavy Metal fans. Spiegelman finally agreed on New Year's Eve 1979 to co-edit. Having set up her small publishing company, Raw Books & Graphics, in 1977, she envisioned a magazine encompassing the range of her graphic and literary interests as a more attractive prospect than publishing a series of books. 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.
After the demise of Arcade, the '70s underground comix anthology he co-edited with Bill Griffith, and the general waning of the underground scene, Spiegelman despaired that comics for adults might fade away for good.
Spiegelman has often described the reasoning and process that led Mouly to start the magazine.
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