THERE COMES a time over the course of nearly every small publisher's career when they question whether they can, or should, continue doing what they do. For Andy Brown, founding editor and publisher of Conundrum Press, that moment came in 2005, as his business was approaching the end of its first decade. “When my first son was born, I realized I was not making a living,” he says. Brown toyed briefly with the idea of selling the company and looking for work as the editor of a graphic novel imprint at a larger house, but in the end decided he’d be happiest working for himself, and forged ahead.
Another decade has passed and Conundrum is now one of the most respected and acclaimed graphic novel publishers in the country, and Brown is in a more celebratory mood. To mark the press’s 20th anniversary, he is releasing 20 x 20, an anthology featuring little-seen and unpublished work from 20 Conundrum authors, alongside a recap of the press’s 129-title backlist.
Brown founded Conundrum in Montreal in 1996. His first book was a handmade collection of work by his then roommate, Catherine Kidd. Encouraged by its success, he began producing books for other English authors, and soon found himself running an eclectic press. “Montreal in the mid-’90s was a hotbed of talent and artistic creativity, but there was no infrastructure on the English side,” he says. “This was the post-referendum climate for English creators, so everyone I knew was under-represented and I was trying to fill a void.”