A zine, a self-published anthology and two people at the same show, 1995–1997.

Top Shelf Productions took its name from a comic before it was a company. Wikipedia says Brett Warnock had already used Top Shelf as the title of a self-published anthology when he and Chris Staros decided to go into business together in 1997. In a short interview with Tom Spurgeon for The Comics Reporter, posted on 23 June 2007 to mark the company’s tenth anniversary, Warnock said he grew up in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, went to the University of Oregon in Eugene in 1985, and found that his talents lay more in production and design than in drawing. He said the fifth issue of the anthology made its debut at the Small Press Expo in 1996, by which point he had a few one-shot projects and the anthology but, in his words, no idea what he was doing.

Staros came to the same show by a different route. Publishers Weekly, in a profile by Brigid Alverson published on 21 December 2022 for the company’s 25th anniversary, said the story starts in 1995, when Staros brought his zine, The Staros Report, to the Small Press Expo and sold 100 copies, the moment he said he “caught the bug”. The magazine said he had worked as the American agent for the cartoonists Eddie Campbell and Gary Spencer Millidge, and that he had earlier been a rock guitarist. Wikipedia adds that he had self-published a number of comics-based zines.

The partnership was agreed at SPX. Warnock told Spurgeon that Staros proposed it at the show in September 1997, and Publishers Weekly said the two agreed there to publish graphic novels together. Wikipedia describes the division of labour as Warnock’s design and marketing skills joined to Staros’s editing and bookkeeping, and says the pair first published under the name Primal Groove Press before changing it to Top Shelf. The founders did not share a city: in 2007 Spurgeon described Warnock as living in Portland and Staros in Atlanta, and the company’s offices were later reported to be in Marietta, Georgia, a city in the Atlanta area.

An art director’s rule, convention launches and a house tone, 1997–2014.

The early list grew one book at a time. Wikipedia says the first title under the new name was Pete Sickman-Garner’s Hey, Mister: After School Special, a collection of his self-published comics with two new stories, followed by works by James Kochalka and, in 1999, Craig Thompson’s Good-bye, Chunky Rice. Publishers Weekly said in 2022 that From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, was among the first books, and that early sales came mainly from comic shops and conventions. Staros told the magazine: “We were good guerilla marketers.”

Design sat with Warnock. In the 2007 interview he described himself as a traditional art director rather than a designer, said he hired freelance cover designers to work from his direction and often let cartoonists design their own books, and set out one rule: “I don’t want any of our books to look like a ‘comic book.’” He named Jacob Covey as the comics designer he most admired at the time. Wikipedia says Staros and Warnock wanted the imprint to have a style “that is quite hip, but also quite endearing”, and that Staros regularly signs his correspondence “Your friend thru comics”.

Wikipedia describes the founders as seeing themselves, alongside Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly and the Highwater Books imprint, as trying to change the public face of comics, and says Staros made that argument in a keynote speech at the Ignatz Awards in 2000. The company also built a habit of launching books at conventions; Wikipedia says it launched eight books at the 2004 San Diego Comic-Con, after launching Thompson’s Blankets there in 2003. It also records a difficult moment in April 2002, when the collapse of the bookstore distributor LPC left Top Shelf short of money; the company appealed directly to readers to buy books, and the appeal was carried across the internet by writers including Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis.

An anthology’s name on a spine, kept through a change of owner.

In European comics, much of a publisher’s identity is carried by the album itself. A series usually appears as a run of hardback volumes of the same size, with a number on the cover and the spine, so that a reader can see at a glance which volume comes next and where the gaps are. Shelved side by side, those spines form a band of repeated elements: the series title, the volume number and a small publisher mark, often in the same position from one book to the next. Over years of publication, that row becomes a kind of signage, and changing the spine design halfway through a series is a decision that readers notice. Collected editions and anniversary reissues then add a second layer, with a different trim, a slipcase or a uniform cover treatment that sets them apart from the original volumes.

Imprints extend the same logic across a whole catalogue. A house that publishes children’s albums, adult graphic novels, translated manga and illustrated books will often give each line its own name, symbol and spine style, so that booksellers can file them in the right section and readers can follow a collection rather than a single title. In a bookshop, the mark has to work in one colour, at a few millimetres, beside artwork that changes with every cover. At a comics festival or trade fair, the same mark is scaled up on banners, signing tables and catalogues. For designers, the useful approach is to treat the publisher mark, the imprint marks and the spine grid as one system, planned for both the shelf and the stand.

A distinct imprint inside IDW from 2015.

The ownership changed on 6 January 2015. Publishers Weekly, in a report by Calvin Reid that day, said IDW Publishing had acquired Top Shelf, that it would “remain a distinct imprint within IDW”, and that it would stay in its offices in Marietta, Georgia. Staros continued as editor-in-chief of Top Shelf Productions, while Warnock left to pursue a business venture outside comics. The magazine named the staff staying in place as Leigh Walton, publicist and marketing director; Chris Ross, designer and digital director; and Zac Boone, warehouse manager. It quoted IDW’s chief operating officer, Greg Goldstein: “IDW is committed to preserving and growing the Top Shelf brand, which we’ve long admired.” Staros said the two companies “complement each other perfectly”.

The Beat, in a report by Heidi MacDonald on the same day, described a deal between San Diego-based IDW and Marietta-based Top Shelf whose terms were not disclosed. It said the match had been brokered by Bill Schanes, a former purchasing vice president at Diamond who had consulted for IDW, that Top Shelf’s creator agreements would be honoured in full and its backlist kept in print, and it quoted IDW’s chief executive Ted Adams calling the purchase “a milestone for IDW”. IDW Publishing has owned Top Shelf since 2015.

The split of work inside the larger company was described in 2022. Publishers Weekly said Staros recruits creators and edits while IDW handles shipping and sales, and that Top Shelf uses Penguin Random House Publisher Services for the book trade. It said the original team on the March trilogy, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, was Staros, senior editor Leigh Walton and designer Chris Ross, and quoted Staros summing up the house’s approach in three words: “Art before commerce.” The same profile described Warnock as the co-founder and designer who left when IDW bought the company, and Staros recalled that in almost twenty years as a team the two “never had a single fight or a problem”.

For a design guide, Top Shelf Productions shows a publisher whose name was borrowed from its own first anthology and kept unchanged through a sale. Compare it with IDW Publishing, the company that has owned it since 2015, and Drawn & Quarterly, another house built on graphic novels for bookshops. For this guide we use shelf green, brick spine and book cloth with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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