What sort of boy grows up to be a comic critic? In the case of Gary Groth, we have some idea, since the journalist Aileen Jacobson wrote a fascinating profile of the future Fantagraphics honcho in 1972, when he was all of 17 years old. The profile ran in the Washington Post on August 13, 1972, and can be read by clicking on the image above.

Here is the opening:

A gentle comicmania is its own reward. Often at three in the morning Gary Groth pastes up the new editions of Fantastic Fanzine. The smell of glue tinges the air, and Groth’s slender hands, pale even in midsummer, glide lovingly over his layouts. If the glues isn’t dry, he swings his blue-jeaned desert-booted legs around 90 degrees to face the typewriter by his side. A huge monster of a thing, IBM electric.

He types rapid-fire, with two fingers, adding a few words to the pages that he often retypes two or three times to get the margin a perfect flush right. Some nights that rapid tap-tap reassures his parents, briefly awakens them: At least we know where he is tonight.

Then Gary Groth’s mind – 17 years on this planet, nine of them fascinated by technicolor comics – clicks through new plans.

Labels: Gary Groth