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Cerebus (1977)
Published
Dave Sim started Cerebus in December 1977 under his own Aardvark-Vanaheim banner and kept going until March 2004, ending exactly at issue 300 without the aid of any publisher. That finished run of about 6,000 pages became the standing proof for later self-publishers that one creator could set a huge goal, keep a schedule and reach the end.
It opens as a sword-and-sorcery parody starring an aardvark and grows into a long political and religious saga. Start with the first collected "phonebook" volume, Cerebus, and keep going into High Society, where the series finds its voice. The later volumes are divisive, and plenty of readers stop partway.
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ElfQuest (1978)
Published
Elfquest shows what to do when your first publisher lets you down. Its first chapter appeared in Fantasy Quarterly in February 1978, and after that publisher tried to keep Wendy's original artwork, Wendy and Richard Pini borrowed from Richard's parents, founded WaRP Graphics and carried on themselves, running the first 20-issue series independently through 1984.
The story follows the Wolfriders, a tribe of elves, and it is a rare fantasy epic from this era built by a husband-and-wife team who kept the rights. Dark Horse has collected the core stories in big volumes, which make the original quest easy to read in order.
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The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale (1997)
Published
Maus as serialized in Raw, 1980 to 1991
Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly put out Raw themselves, an oversized anthology they edited and published through Mouly's own small press, and Maus ran in it as a small booklet tucked inside each issue. That do-it-yourself home gave Spiegelman years to build his account of his father's survival of the Holocaust, told with Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, before any big publisher was involved.
Collected in two volumes in 1986 and 1991, it went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and became the book people hand to anyone who doubts what comics can do. The Complete Maus gathers both volumes in one.
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Love and Rockets (1982)
Published
The Hernandez brothers printed about 800 copies of the first Love and Rockets in 1981 and folded and stapled every one themselves. They sent a copy to The Comics Journal for review, and within a year Fantagraphics had picked it up, reprinting that first issue in September 1982 with new color covers.
That leap from a homemade magazine to a series the brothers are still making decades later is the clearest case for mailing your book to the right people. Inside, Jaime's punk Locas stories and Gilbert's Palomar stories about a Latin American village are two separate worlds, so pick one. The Fantagraphics paperback library editions, such as Maggie the Mechanic and Heartbreak Soup, are the easiest way in.
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Ed the Happy Clown (2012)
Published
Ed the Happy Clown, from Chester Brown's Yummy Fur minicomics, 1983 to 1985
Chester Brown began Yummy Fur in July 1983 as a tiny minicomic, the first printings with the price penciled on the cover and a rubber-stamped back page, a few hundred copies at a time. Those homemade issues grew the surreal, deeply rude Ed the Happy Clown story, and from 1986 Vortex reprinted them at full comic size after Seth persuaded its owner to take a chance.
It is proof that a cheap handmade run can lead to a whole career. Read the 2012 Drawn & Quarterly edition, with Brown's own notes, and be ready for grotesque body horror and religious satire.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The original Mirage Studios comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, from 1984
Two friends with a few thousand dollars of borrowed money, trading as Mirage Studios, printed 3,000 copies of a black-and-white comic about four turtle ninjas in 1984. It was an immediate success, and the first issue was reprinted several times to meet demand.
From that one self-funded print run came cartoons, toys and films, the biggest leap any comic here has made, which is reason enough to read where it began. The early Mirage issues are grittier and stranger than the cartoon suggests, a send-up of Frank Miller's Daredevil and other comics of the time, and they remain in print in collected editions.
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Dirty Plotte (1991)
Published
Julie Doucet's photocopied Dirty Plotte minicomics, from September 1988
Julie Doucet was working part-time at a Montreal copy shop when she realized she could make her own comics on its Xerox machine. Dirty Plotte began in September 1988 in runs of 150 to 200 copies, and in January 1991 Drawn & Quarterly took it on as a regular series.
Her frank, funny, unapologetically gross diary comics about periods, sex and dreams still feel braver than most of what followed, and they showed that a minicomic could carry a voice nobody else would print. Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet, from Drawn & Quarterly, gathers the work.
More about Dirty Plotte8
King-Cat Comics and Stories (1989)
Published
John Porcellino has been making King-Cat Comics and Stories himself since 1989, and it is still going more than 80 issues later. If the other entries here are about self-publishing as a launch pad, King-Cat is about self-publishing as a life's work that never needed a bigger publisher.
The comics are short, plain-lined diary strips about walks, birds, cats, jobs and illness, and their simplicity is the point: they feel like a letter from a friend. Drawn & Quarterly's King-Cat Classix gathers a selection from the first fifty issues, and new ones still come straight from the source.
More about King-Cat Comics and Stories9
Bone (1991)
Published
Bone reached the widest audience of any comic here. Jeff Smith launched it through his own Cartoon Books in July 1991, at a time when retailers were wary of any self-published black-and-white book, and he vowed to do six issues come hell or high water. Dave Sim helped by running Bone as a backup feature in Cerebus, and the series ran to 55 issues by 2004.
The story of three cousins lost in a valley mixes slapstick comedy with a real fantasy epic, and it works for children and adults alike. Scholastic launched its Graphix imprint in 2005 with a full-color edition, which has sold millions and brought Bone to a generation of young readers. Start with Out from Boneville, or take the one-volume edition.
More about Bone10
Optic Nerve (1995)
Published
Adrian Tomine's self-published Optic Nerve minicomics, 1991 to 1994
Adrian Tomine was still in high school when he began self-publishing Optic Nerve as small homemade minicomics, seven issues between 1991 and 1994. Drawn & Quarterly then signed him and relaunched it as a regular comic in 1995, renumbering from one.
The minicomics are where you can watch a teenager teach himself to draw quiet, precise stories about loneliness and awkward young adults, the style that later made his New Yorker covers and graphic novels. Drawn & Quarterly collects them as 32 Stories, which is the place to see how much a cheap homemade series can build.
More about Optic Nerve11
Strangers in Paradise (1994)
Published
Strangers in Paradise as self-published by Terry Moore's Abstract Studio, from 1994
Terry Moore's three-issue opening ran at Antarctic Press in 1993, and he then relaunched the series on his own Abstract Studio imprint. Its first eight self-published issues won the Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story, and the series ran until 2007 across about 90 issues.
It is the warmest book here: a funny, heartbreaking story of two women, Katchoo and Francine, and the friend who loves one of them, drawn with a gift for faces. It shows a self-publisher can build a devoted readership on character alone. Abstract Studio's pocket books collect the series, and Dark Horse's Omnibus Volume 1, due November 17, 2026, gathers the first 23 issues.
More about Strangers in Paradise12
Stray Bullets (1995)
Published
David Lapham walked away from superhero work in 1995 to co-found El Capitan Books, a small company set up to publish his own crime series, Stray Bullets, which he wrote and drew himself. Within a year it had earned him the Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist, and the first collection, Innocence of Nihilism, won another.
This is the self-published book for readers who like their comics bleak. Its eight-panel grids and out-of-order chapters follow ordinary people caught up with small-time criminals across decades, and the violence lands hard because the characters feel real. Image Comics now publishes it, including the hefty Über Alles edition that gathers the original run.
More about Stray Bullets13
Castle Waiting (1997)
Published
Linda Medley used a Xeric Foundation grant, one of the awards that helped cartoonists publish their own comics, to put out the first Castle Waiting story in 1996 under her own Olio imprint, then kept the series going herself from 1997 to 1999. Fantagraphics later collected it in a handsome hardcover in 2006 and carried the story on.
It is a gentle fairy-tale comic about the misfits who live in a castle after its Sleeping Beauty has left, more interested in conversation, kindness and running a household than in quests. It is ideal for anyone who wants fantasy without battles, and the Fantagraphics volumes are the way to read it.
More about Castle Waiting14
Copra (2012)
Published
Copra is the proof that the old route still works in the internet era, in print. Michel Fiffe launched it himself in November 2012, selling a first issue of just 400 copies through his own online shop, and he kept writing, drawing and publishing the issues himself. Image Comics took on the collected Rounds in 2019.
It is a team of mercenary misfits on impossible missions, drawn in a loose, inventive style that borrows from 1980s mainstream comics and from art comics at once. If you love superhero action but want it made by one obsessive person rather than a committee, start with Copra, Round 1, which collects the first six issues.
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