Everyman Studios

Everyman Studios was founded by Artie Edward Romero and friends. Starting in his high school days in the late 1960s, Artie was a cartoonist, comic book artist and publisher. In the spring of 1968, seeing his covers and illustrations for George Washington High School literary magazine Cranberry Oblivion hot off the press at a print shop in Denver, Artie became fascinated with printing and publishing. He studied fine art and illustration in college, and kept drawing and publishing, achieving fame as "Ed Romero" in the small comic book fan community of the day. In 1972 he edited and published the fifth and best issue of his comics and science fiction fanzine Realm, including artwork by Frank Frazetta, Vaughn Bode, Michael Wm Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, Carl Barks, Gil Kane and other titans of the Silver Age of comics.

In 1973 Artie was a founding member of the artist co-op Everyman Studios in Colorado Springs, along with Darrel Kurt Anderson, Rick Berry, Tom Haber and William Kirk Kennedy (1954-2010). Everyman published an underground/alternative newspaper The Everyman Flyer 1974-1975, including their original comic strips.

In 1975 Artie began to edit and publish alternative comic books, AKA underground comix, with the Everyman Comics imprint. He published dozens of minicomics, various large format underground comix including Animal Bite Comix and Realm, tabloids such as Everyman Comics, Scrabbits Reno Comics and Scrabbis Treno, and 23 issues of a popular alternative comics journal, Cascade Comix Monthly. At first the core artists of Everyman Studios, including those listed above plus John Peterson and Allan Greenier, drew most of the comics. After Cascade was launched, Artie was able to include work from a worldwide pool of talent, including Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, Spain Rodriquez, S. Clay Wilson, Denis Kitchen, Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, Trina Robbins, MK Brown, Dan O'Neill, Larry Rippee, Ted Richards and England's Hunt Emerson, among others.

Artie Romero circa 1980
Above: Artie Romero's tabletop offset press (1980)

Everyman was always a labor of love, successful only by the standards of the small press. Artie largely lost interest in printing and publishing in 1981, after he fell in love with the art of animation. In 1981 Everyman Studios became an animation studio, and it was renamed ARG! Cartoon Animation in 1994. For more details, check out Artie Romero's personal site.