Gary Groth

Gary Groth is a fictionalized comics-world figure — a caricature of the real-life Fantagraphics publisher — appearing in satirical and self-referential stories within publications like The Comics Journal and Hate, blurring the line between comics industry reality and parody.

A fixture of the comics world's own self-reflective literature, Gary Groth made his debut in The Comics Journal #49 in 1979 — right in the thick of the Bronze Age — brought to the page by a collaborative quartet of creators including Jim Korkis, cat yronwode, Eddie Eddings, and Mitch O'Connell. As a character appearing most prominently in Fantagraphics publications like The Comics Journal, Hate, and Jizz, Groth occupies a genuinely unusual corner of comics history: a real-world figure rendered into the medium itself, sharing pages with the likes of Buddy Bradley, Peter Bagge, and Kim Thompson. With appearances stretching across nearly five decades into 2026, this is a character whose longevity alone tells you something fascinating is going on — a rare meta-comics curiosity well worth tracking down for any serious collector.