Can an anthology help change the face of a medium? In 2004, Image Comics published the first volume of the Flight anthology series, edited by Kazu Kibuishi—a series that would go on to change the face of comics.
Now, 21 years later, Random House’s Inklore is set to reissue the entire series, with new editions of the first two volumes scheduled for publication this fall. In his afterword to the first volume, preeminent comics theorist Scott McCloud explains why Flight was—and is—so important, from the ways it shows the influence of webcomics and manga to the relatively young age of the creators featured within at the time of their work’s inclusion. PW spoke with Kibuishi, who is also the author-illustrator of the bestselling Amulet graphic novel series, about the process of bringing out these new editions and how his own impressions of the series have changed over the years.
How did the idea of reissuing the anthology come about?
I can't take credit for getting that ball rolling. It was really my agent, Judy Hansen. As always, she's been behind the scenes of the creation of so many big graphic novels. She brought this idea to me a couple of years ago, and said that it looked like it might happen. Since then, we've been talking to Random House. They proposed a new version of it with repackaging and all that. I thought it looked great, and I liked the idea of it being back in print. I had just finished the Amulet series, so I actually have a little bit more time to dedicate to this.
I know the series started out with Image, but it changed publishers to Random House’s Ballantine imprint partway through its run. Was there an existing relationship with Random House there as well?
It was through a mutual friend that my agent and I had over at Random House at the time, Chris Schluep, who later on went to work in an executive position for Amazon's publishing wing. Chris brought Flight over there.
I was fine with it being at Image. Image was fantastic. It's a great publisher to work with for anyone, really. But Flight was always a group project, and with any major decisions that we had, I would test the waters with the group and ask what they thought they'd like to do. The contributors were overwhelmingly in favor of putting Flight in the traditional publishing market.
A lot of them were not comic artists per se. They were from the animation world, and they weren't really that familiar with Image or any of the mainstream comics publishers. So for them, the idea of going to Random House, it was almost unanimous, I think, that everybody wanted that to happen. There were a couple of contributors who hadn't contributed yet who expressed a little bit of opposition to it, but such an overwhelming majority of people wanted to do it that I decided to go ahead and migrate it.
When did you realize just how much this anthology series documents a particular moment in the industry and the art form?
I see it more like a personal snapshot that we took, as a group of friends, of where we were at that moment in time. I had no doubt that everybody that was involved would do well in some capacity. I didn't think of them as trailblazers in any sense. I didn't think of myself as a trailblazer in any sense at the time. I was just a fan of the series. I really was just focused on the audience. The audience wasn't there where we were producing comics at the time. The audience that we were looking for were families and people who don't read comics. We just wanted to get the books out in that field.
I think history is written by the people who watch it happen, not necessarily those who are involved in it in some capacity. So, I hesitate to say that it was a groundbreaking thing. I think what it is, though, is an interesting snapshot of a group of friends who all had a very strong vision for the future of publishing comics. And they actually carried out the vision and succeeded. I think that's a rare thing to see.
Looking back at say the first volume, you have a lot of very different styles and approaches to the medium coexisting, which feels significant in and of itself.
All the different styles were really representative of what was there. These creators were working in animation. They were on the internet. They were in classrooms at art schools. I was really young when I put together the first book. I was 23 or 24 when I started putting it together, and I was considered the old guy on the crew.
Everyone thought I was older than I actually was, but I was actually senior to some of these creators, creators like Vera Brosgol or Jen Wang and Clio Chiang. They were essentially just coming out of high school. They were really, really new to this; they were artists that just put stuff on the web.
As you've been revisiting the series now for the new editions, is there anything that strikes you about it now or that you have a new and different perspective on after all these years?
Well, one thing that has played out is that I feel that we actually arrived with a book like this a little too early. And by that, I mean that we had not built a culture of reading graphic novels like this yet. And that would actually have to start from the younger set. It's the reason why I pivoted to kids' books. I had never done one before Amulet, and I started working on Amulet concurrent to the creation of Flight. I would eventually transition Flight into an anthology called Explorer, that was made for younger readers.
And so I put all of my energy into building new audiences that had this unconditional love for the content, the way we did about comics when we were kids. So when I look back at Flight, I just think it was a window into the future in the way that Scott McCloud indicated in his afterword. But that also meant that we were too early. We had arrived at the party before there were any chairs or a room. We didn't have anything to settle into. It's interesting that I'm coming back to the project now.
I'll have to say, all credit to Judy Hansen for this because I was pretty resistant to going back into doing this. I don't like living in the past. I like moving forward. I've talked to a lot of people who said Flight was what got them into reading these types of books or selling these types of books or making these types of books. I realized that Flight does have a place in the history of comics as we know it today.
Did working on these anthologies—Flight, Explorer—have an impact on your own work as a writer and artist and take your work in some unexpected directions?
It helped me in one really major way in that I knew that no matter what I had in hand in terms of the content that was coming in, no matter what came through the door, I would be able to assemble a book that made sense to people. It could be the most different and eclectic mix of comics you'd ever seen. They could be so far apart from each other that you couldn't imagine them in a book, but you can order them in such a way that it tells a story and it feels cohesive. And when I saw that happening with Flight every single time, I knew that I could do that with my own book. And so with Amulet, I do that, or I try that as much as I can.
As a reader, what was the last comic that pleasantly surprised you and took you to a place you weren't expecting?
I don't read comics very often. You may hear that from other comic artists. I just don't read a lot of work that's like mine. But if I had to think of something that really surprised me, one of the books that I always go back to is Creature Tech by Doug TenNapel. I hadn't seen very many people do just one graphic novel that kind of stands alone. It was like watching a really great midnight movie as a kid.
It's fully complete, it's got a beginning, middle, and end, and it's the size of a book. And for me, that was eye-opening because I thought I wanted to make movies. That's what I wanted to do as a kid, but I draw comics better than I make movies. So when I saw Doug do that, I thought, There's a kindred spirit here. I thought, I'd like to make things like this book, Creature Tech, and then fuse it with books like Nausicaa and Bone by Jeff Smith. So that book was the one that was probably the most eye-opening read for me for graphic novels.
