"It was a website that finished me."

It was actually a trip to Florida that started it.

I was cooling my jets at the airport gate, waiting to board the puddle-jumper to Gainesville. It was February 2003; I was on my way to present a paper at the University of Florida's second conference on comics. Who, I wondered, was most likely to share my specific destination? I scanned the scattered crowd. A quiet, self-contained young woman with a backpack was the best choice. The purple Doc Martens were the tip-off. This is how you learn to read.

Chance called my bluff, if chance can do anything at all, and seated me elbow-to-elbow with Purple. Lacking social skills, I panicked; I pulled out a comic book and pored, intently. Fortunately, there are readers less timid than me.

"Excuse me, do you happen to be going to...?"

A simple question restored my functional humanity; introductions, a conversation followed. When Martha Kuhlman wondered aloud when she'd be giving her presentation on Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli's City of Glass, I produced the event program I'd hastily designed prior to departure. As it turned out, we were both on the same panel.

Martha's presentation insightfully traced the complex pleasures of City of Glass, a graphic novel I'd read once, in a sitting, somewhere deep in the College stacks. Martha's analysis left little doubt in the room that the graphic adaptation of Paul Auster's book was far more than an illustration; it is among the most intelligently conceived and rewarding achievements of long-form English-language comics to date. Too bad about it being, as Martha noted, long out of print.

That night I went to Jeff Mason's house. After raiding his stash of Alternative Comics publications, I flipped idly through some boxes of comics left over from his days as an independent distro. I quit flipping when I hit City of Glass: not just one copy, but a small stash. Struck by my good fortune, I quickly bought three (one for myself, two as gifts). I've since read the book several times, my appreciation deepened and informed by Martha's excellent ideas.

It may have been chance that Paul Karasik happened upon "Egon," a comics news and information website I maintain, or it may be that he wanted to plug his latest book, The Ride Together. Either way, I responded humbly and enthusiastically to his unexpected e-mail, gushing over both City of Glass and Karasik's very insightful interview in an issue of the Ganzfeld. I guess I gush good; several months later, Karasik fired off a scoop: City of Glass would return to print in the summer of 2004, courtesy of Picador USA (who also publish Paul Auster's work in paperback).

It is my pleasure, then, to offer this City of Glass-themed issue of Indy Magazine, to mark that book's impending return to print. First and foremost, I am thrilled to present Martha Kuhlman's excellent paper to the wider audience it deserves. Martha's piece focused my attention on this book and offered a starting point for my own thinking, and, in that way, indirectly inspired this issue.

I am deeply grateful to Paul Karasik for consenting to an interview. Paul and I arranged to meet in Boston last month. We chatted for over an hour about various subjects, but mostly about City of Glass. I can't thank Paul enough for taking the time to collaboratively edit the transcript of our conversation into the much more focused discussion presented here.

The tag team of Karasik and Mazzucchelli functioned like some mythological creature with two heads and two hands to produce the book this issue highlights. It would have been profoundly inadequate to treat City of Glass without participation from both co-adapters, and I'm pleased that David Mazzucchelli was moved to accomodate my interview request in his fashion.

I must also thank art spiegelman, who readily agreed to loan Indy his new introduction to the Picador edition. His piece offers an inside view of the book's development, and saved me from having to cover too much basic background information in my conversation with Paul.

Christian Hill materialized at some point with a complete and edited 7,000-word Françoise Mouly interview in hand. He asked me if I wanted it. I am particularly grateful that individuals such as Christian and Charles Hatfield (among others) volunteered contributions following Indy's re-launch. It certainly makes my work easier, and it's gratifying to know that the previous issue could attract such interest.

Special thanks to Isabelle DeConinck and to Ben Katchor for facilitating a visual slide-show presentation based upon "The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or The Friends of Dr. Rushower," Mr. Katchor's recent musical. Urgent thanks to Tom Hart for agreeing to play photographer on the very day of dress rehearsal.

I'd been hounding Sammy Harkham about a Kramers Ergot 5 preview since I began planning the first issue of Indy Magazine's current run. Fortunately, Sammy had enough work in hand this time around to share eight interior pages and a cover image with the magazine.

And finally, thanks to Gilles Laborderie for agreeing late in the process to review Yoshiharu Tsuge's L'Homme Sans Talent, a book of great interest to anyone who's enjoyed the trickle of Tsuge's work that's seen print in English. Gilles, until recently, maintained the excellent French comic news website BDNews.net. He has given it up in favor of more in-depth writing.

As always, I welcome comments via e-mail: billyk@alum.dartmouth.org. Indy will return this summer with something else entirely.