Michael Catron

Biography

Catron met Gary Groth while they were both enrolled at the University of Maryland. In 1974, Catron and Groth put on a Washington, DC-area rock and roll convention that ended in financial failure. Nonetheless, he and Groth dabbled in music publishing with the short-lived magazine Sounds Fine, which they co-published until 1979. During this period, Catron also worked as a public relations assistant for Mike Gold, at the time employed by DC Comics.

In 1976 Catron and Groth co-founded Fantagraphics Books, at that point located in College Park, Maryland. They took over an adzine named The Nostalgia Journal, quickly renaming it The Comics Journal. Catron acted as Fantagraphics' co-publisher until 1985, also handling advertising and circulation for The Comics Journal from 1982 to 1985, when he left the company.

In 1986, Catron established Apple Comics, which began as a packager for Wendy & Richard Pini's WaRP Graphics but with its own financing structure. Soon, Apple branched out to publishing original titles, and became known for publishing war comics, particularly the long-running title Vietnam Journal (as well as many spin-offs and one-shots). Apple Comics went defunct in 1994.

From 2000 to 2008 he served as a board member for the Grand Comics Database.

Catron has been the agent for the estate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster.

In early 2012, Catron relocated to Seattle and returned to Fantagraphics as editor with the publishing company he co-founded 36 years earlier.