Drawn & Quarterly

Drawn & Quarterly was founded in 1990 by Montrealer Chris Oliveros, age 23 at the time.

Oliveros was inspired by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's Raw to publish an arts comics periodical. He borrowed $2,000 from his father to publish the first issue of the anthology magazine Drawn & Quarterly, which debuted in April 1990. It was intended to be published four times a year, containing short arts comics. Soon, Oliveros realized there were arts comics which were too long to be contained in his magazine, and began publishing stand-alone comic books and graphic novels, beginning with Julie Doucet's comic book Dirty Plotte. Seth, Joe Matt, and Chester Brown, Toronto-based cartoonists who soon became associated with the publisher. In the early 2000s, Brown had a surprise bestseller with Louis Riel. In 2003, A Drawn & Quarterly Manifesto was released, describing to booksellers how to stock and sell graphic novels.

As graphic novels became more popular with the public, Oliveros found the need for a publicist. He asked Peggy Burns, who was doing such work at DC Comics, if she knew someone who could fill the job. Burns offered herself, and moved from New York City to Montreal. She was the company's third employee, and soon signed a distribution deal for the publisher with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which greatly expanded the company's exposure, while giving it a literary air. Drawn & Quarterly reduced the number of serialized titles it published, focusing on book-form comics such as collections and graphic novels. As of 2012, the company employed 16 people.

While at first publishing mainly Canadian and American artists, during the 2000s the publisher expanded its catalogue with European artists like Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berbérian, Lewis Trondheim, and Guy Delisle, as well as exploring the Japanese gekiga movement. It also began publishing the works of Shigeru Mizuki, Susumu Katsumata, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Oji Suzuki, and Seiichi Hayashi for the first time in English.

In 2015, the publisher produced a collection titled Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics and Graphic Novels, featuring of out-of-print work, remembrances, and essays by well-known writers such as Margaret Atwood. The same year, Oliveros stepped down as publisher to focus on his own cartooning, intending to self-publish the graphic novel The Envelope Manufacturer. In his place, Burns took over as publisher and creative director Tom Devlin became executive editor. In the summer of 2023, it was announced that Oliveros had sold Drawn & Quarterly to Burns, Devlin, VP Editorial Tracy Hurren, and VP Marketing & Sales Julia Pohl-Miranda.

In November 2023, employees of Drawn & Quarterly formed a union with the Fédération du Commerce under the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, with certification from the Administrative Labor Tribunal of Quebec.