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Here's our wriote up for the original 2013 edition:

Supermag is a 56 page full color (with some black & white, where called for) magazine, saddle-stapled to a heavy duty glossy cardstock wraparound cover.  It boldly sports endorsement quotes on the front cover as well as back – by a wide-ranging mix including an art director, a publisher, a comics artist and a couple of designers, that points to the equally wide-ranging variety of works contained therein – in such a way that their appearance is organically incorporated into the cover's design in the manner in which readers normally expect to see a magazine's contents displayed.  This bold assertion of the work's quality in place of the normative listing of its contents brings to mind Norman Mailer's landmark collection, Advertisements for Myself, which, like Supermag, is a miscellany showing off the author's creative strengths, also published at a similar point in his career.   Supermag contains comics, illustrations, poster and cover reproductions which taken together demonstrate a startling mastery of styles and skill sets.  The majority of the work has been previously published in books, magazines and comics ranging from micro small press to mega mainstream media.  There are several never-before-published works included as well making this a must for even those rabid Rugg completists who have managed to get their hands on the rest.  There's something for everyone here, and for some, everything.  

And here's Jim's personal statement about the work:

As a comic book loving kid in the 80s, I frequented the one newsstand in my town where my three choices were Marvel, DC, or Archie. When I began going to comic book shops, my world expanded exponentially to self-published, independent, alternative, underground, art, European, and Japanese comics, plus reprints of classic strips and comics spelled c-o-m-i-x. It was a lot to process as an aspiring, self-taught cartoonist.

In the 90s, I studied graphic design as publishing entered the digital age. In the wake of the desktop publishing revolution, before the internet's ubiquitous rise, magazine design went weird. Art directors were given computers, software, and little-to-no training with those new tools.

Supermag documents my exploration of the vast, endless comics landscape and reflects my interest in printed matter and the narrative collapse.

Funding for the writing, drawing, and design of Supermag was provided by Investing in Professional Artists: The Pittsburgh-Region Artists Grants Program, a partnership of The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation.

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