Oliveros steps down at D&Q as Burns is named publisher

As revealed in the Globe and Mail, a change at the top of one of the most lauded and loved alternative comics publishers was certain the #1 topic at the parties of TCAF: Chris Oliveros, founder of Drawn & Quarterly is stepping down as publisher to focus on his long dormant cartooning career. Peggy Burns will succeed him as publisher while Tom Devlin will take over as executive editor.

A lot of folks expressed surprise to me over the change, but Oliveros was a mere lad of 23 when he started the company and at age 48 still has a lot of time left to explore his art. Burns and Devlin have helped completely reshape the publisher with kids lines, reprints, discovering and rediscovering great cartoonists from all over the world.

If you want to hear more about this from the horse’s mouth and happen to be at TCAF come to the Hinton Learning Center in the main TCAF library venue tomorrow at 3 pm for

3pm: Changing of the Guard: A D+Q AMA
Drawn & Quarterly celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2015. On stage will be founder and “chief” Chris Oliveros with his two right hands, Associate Publisher Peggy Burns and Creative Director Tom Devlin. How do they select what to publish? How do you submit a book? How did they start in comics? Where do they see the future of comics heading? Where’s the best duck fat poutine in Montreal? When is the next issue of Joe Matt’s Peepshow? Ask them anything. Heidi Macdonald of Publishers Weekly and The Beat will be on hand to ask the hard-hitting questions.

For those with better wifi than have at the moment, Tom Spurgeon has a roundtable of opinions on Oliveros’s achievements and D&Q’s status in general; as Joe McCulloch put it “There is no flames of Gyro for D&Q.” They have indeed managed to forge ahead with one of the most consistent and important and entertaining lines of graphic novels in an era that they helped make possible.

Again if you’re at TCAF you know that the 25th Anniversary of D&Q is a main focus so please stop by to buy some books and congratulate Oliveros, Burns and Devlin on their well earned changes.