I recently happened upon this book in my local comic shop. The colorful image on the cover caught my eye, so I picked it up and gave it a flip-through. Much to my dismay, it was full of words, kind of like a magazine. Yuck, when I go into a comic shop I expect to find books with comics, not books with words! Upon closer examination, however, there was something familiar about it all. And then I read the cover– “Right Thing The Wrong Way: The Story of Highwater Books.” Cool. I loved Highwater Books. And just like that, I was sold.
Highwater Books was a short lived but influential publisher of original graphic novels. They actually helped usher in the idea of the graphic novel into the mainstream. I specifically remember reading some of those early books and thinking that it was weird how an all new work was being published as a big fancy book, as opposed to smaller installments of the regular ol’ pamphlets that we all think of when we think of the term “comic book.”
“Right Thing The Wrong Way” actually served as the catalog for a Highwater Books retrospective gallery show that was held last year. Described as an oral history, it details the entire run of the publisher as told by most of the major players involved (i.e. the cartoonists). The 32 page book is filled with fun anecdotes, cool promotional artwork, and a lot more. They even get into the nitty gritty about the bad and the ugly (in addition to the good). It reads very much like an episode of Behind The Music, only in book form, and about comics. If you’re into art comics, or just enjoy reading about process, I recommend seeking this out.
And now for a little Highwater Books anecdote of my own. At one of the very first Small Press Expos (SPX, as the cool kids like to call it) I attended, as I left the elevator to go back to my hotel room (most people stay at the same hotel where SPX is held), I noticed a large cardboard cutout print of Brian Ralph artwork curiously sitting by itself in the hallway. It was propped up either on an end table or maybe a chair rail. Brian Ralph’s imagery is probably most synonymous with what many people consider the Highwater Books aesthetic to be. I found it to be quite impressive and figured that, surely, something that impressive must belong to somebody, and they’d be back to get it. Well, when I left the hotel room later to go back out, it was still sitting there, all by its lonesome. This time, I said to myself “If that thing is still there the next time I come back to my room, I’m gonna take it.”
And I still have it today.
