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In a no-holds-barred joint interview at the Fantagraphics offices in Stamford, Connecticut, DAK turns the tables on the Comics Journal publishers. Groth recounts how he and Mike Catron rescued the Journal from its original Texas publishers and rebuilt it from an advertising trade sheet into a critical magazine, with Thompson coming aboard shortly after; the switch to magazine format quadrupled circulation from 2,000 to 8,000. Groth and Thompson defend their reputation for negativism, arguing that their stringent critical standards come from a deep love of the medium's unrealized potential, and that mainstream comics — singling out Secret Wars as an example as infantile as a bad 1940s comic — have failed to evolve artistically in forty years. They discuss plans to expand outside the direct market through album-format reprints such as Popeye, warn that most independent publishers are financially precarious, and discuss the three lawsuits pending against the Journal. Thompson explains the rationale for making Amazing Heroes bi-weekly, and Catron describes his role handling circulation and advertising for the entire Fantagraphics line.