Dreaming in Comics: Alumni Interview with RJ Casey ’09

Happy New Year, and to all at Hope, welcome back for a new semester. This week we’re delighted to bring you an interview with RJ Casey, a Hope ’09 grad whose pursuit of English has taken him from Moby Dick and Walden Pond to the cutting edge of comics publishing!

RJ, we can’t wait to hear the details. Tell us, what are you doing now?

I work for Fantagraphics Books in Seattle, Washington. My business card says “Rights & Operations,” whatever that means. In publishing, especially working for a small publishing house, it’s all hands on deck, so my job changes from day to day. I edit books, manage the company’s foreign rights sales and permissions requests, and coordinate with our digital distributors, amongst other things that hopefully result in us getting our books in your hands.

I’ve written art criticism, book reviews, and articles about basketball for various sites over the last few years. My writing and interviews can now mainly be found at tcj.com.

I’m also the new co-managing editor of The Comics Journal magazine, a resurrection project I’m very excited to be a part of. Nearly seven years ago, The Comics Journal ceased publication after forty years of being the only real literary magazine looking at the comics medium with a critical eye. In January 2019, I helped to bring it back for a triumphant return with issue #303. It’s now a twice-a-year prestige magazine covering the cutting edge of comics, as well as unearthing artists or works we feel have been forgotten or overshadowed. It’s a true esoteric dream come true.

On a personal note, my wife Ann (Hope ’10) and I had a child last year and live in Tacoma, Washington.

How did your Hope English education shape you?

 It challenged me, first and foremost. It knocked me off of my cocky, spurious late-teens/early-20s pedestal and then built me back up into someone who is hopefully more knowledgeable and compassionate.

It gave me people like Dr. Pannapacker, Dr. Schakel, and Dr. Montaño, who would let me incessantly bug them about the writers I was interested in and would patiently sit through my grueling trying-too-hard-to-be-witty poetry. I remember running into Professor Rappleye in the Kletz and showing him (or accosting him with) a poem I had written in my frat house on a typewriter! I emailed Dr. Pannapacker asking for tips a night before driving to Walden Pond over a weekend on a whim!

I’m just so glad I had that time in the Hope English Department where professors met my bad short stories and wild enthusiasm with thoughtfulness and then guided me toward better writing, better opinions, and a better understanding of literature and the world at large.

What advice would you give to current English majors and students considering an English major?

Become something of a jack-of-all-trades. If your goal is to work in publishing or become an editor, you will have to know how proofread, copy edit, content edit, organize a million various schedules, and manage moody and unpredictable writers and artists.

If your plan is to become a moody and unpredictable writer or artist, you will need to know how to send invoices, file freelance taxes, organize another million various schedules, and deal with overbearing and erroneous editors and publishers. Knowing and accepting this in college will definitely give you a leg up after you graduate, I think.

If you could teach any English class, what would be the title?

It would sure have a niche audience, but “Reconsidering the Comics Canon.” There are important, transformative works outside of Watchmen and Fun Home. Believe me!

Well then, we have to ask — such as…?

The uncanny humorous work of M.K. Brown, Richard Thompson, and Sasaki Maki; the pit-in-your-gut comics of Renee French, Carol Swain, and Phoebe Gloeckner; and the Hernandez brothers would make the backbone of my hypothetical syllabus.

Favorite book read recently or in college?

Some recent favorites have been “Mother’s Walk” by Lauren Weinstein; John, Dear by Laura Lannes; Mammother by Zachary Schomburg; and Idaho by Emily Ruskovich.

In college, the only thing that mattered was Moby Dick.

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