<P> Hillary Chute has become recognized not only as the most incisive scholar of contemporary comics, but also as the most canny interlocutor with the star practitioners of this booming genre. There is a sense of community among these artists, and they have together taken the field of graphic narrative forward in terms of force, sophistication, and craft. But their styles and sensibilities diverge, and their work represents a range of goals and desires, which Chute deftly elicits in conversation. Several commonalities emerge from the interviews. For example, art school was not, for any of these cartoonists, a necessary step for a career in comics. Another theme running across the interviews is the enduring importance of print and the varieties of its circulation. For example, Lynda Barry s first book, collecting her series "Two Sisters" was entirely reproduced through Xeroxes: Copy shops had just come out, she tells Chute. I just copied the whole collection. I put it in a manila envelope and I hand-decorated the top, and I sold them for ten dollars. These mechanisms of reproduction, Chute notes, were key for the expansion of creative comics culture.<BR>"