No longer just kid's stuff, today's comic books are hip, contemporary entertaining and seriously collected. Here, in twenty original interviews, leading figures in the field discuss how, approaching the graphic novel from an often daringly radical taboo-breaking perspective, they transformed it into a significant medium - at once art and literature - of our popular culture. Every stage of the medium's evolution is represented here, from the underground "comix" creators of the 1960's to the giants of independent publishing today. Each interview is accompanied by a representative piece of art work that the rebel in question helped create, as well as a portrait of the interviewee by co-author Bissette, a comic book rebel himself (please see back flap). In their own words, these visionary creators tell their compelling and often outrageous stories of taking on an industry that at first disdained or even discouraged them, offering readers a rare opportunity to meet the forces behind the transformation of a whole art form.