It’s too “upscale” to be easily dismissed as garbage, the way many otherwise reasonable have become accustomed to thinking about comics, but it has an urgency that makes it seems out of place on a coffee table.
Our stationery announces it as “The Graphix Magazine That Changes Its Subtitle Every Issue.” And that much at least, is true.Françoise Mouly defines her editorial decisions for Raw as: It's very hard to verbally express what our criteria are, but they have a lot to do with the artist setting up a goal that's somewhere around the best he or she can do and accomplishing it.
It has to do with a certain craft, a certain honesty, and the expression of a unique point of view and personality.As a reader flips through the pages, they are exposed to design and art that set itself apart from other comics and magazines published during the 1980s.
[4] Both book’s oversized format is printed on intricate, die-cut covers of which some were hand-ripped and re-tape that speaks to its high production values, and attention to detail.
These many handmade interventions and special inserts characterizes Mouly’s intention to challenge “the prejudice against comics as toilet literature, that they should be printed only on newsprint and disposable.”[5]