“Can a small publishing company that offers an alternative viewpoint on social issues survive in an industry dominated by international giants?” In 1980 a Quill and Quire writer asked that thorny question. Well, here’s the answer. Decades after its founding, Between the Lines is still definitely, defiantly, delivering those alternative viewpoints, and much more. Books without Bosses—a graphic history—provides a serio-comic glimpse of the publisher’s forty checkered years (so far).

Founded in November 1977 as a cooperative venture of two against-the-grain outfits with sixties roots (Dumont Press Graphix in Kitchener and the Development Education Centre in Toronto), Between the Lines remains one of a kind. From its first book—The Big Nickel: Inco at Home and Abroad—to today’s award-winning titles, it has indeed survived—as one author put it, “publishing outside the mainstream, ensuring alternative voices are heard loud and clear!”

Robert Clarke, of Peterborough, Ontario, is a long-time BTL editor and member of the collective.

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Kara Sievewright is an artist, writer, and designer who has published comics in many magazines and anthologies including Plenitude, Descant, World War Three Illustrated, Certain Days: Political Prisoners Calendar Broken Pencil, and Briarpatch. Over the last fifteen years she has created graphics, posters, and websites for many radical and progressive movements. She joined the Graphic History Collective in 2015. She now lives in Daajing Giids Llnagaay/Village of Queen Charlotte, Haida Gwaii on Haida Territory.

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