Chris Staros

Chris Staros
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Writer, Editor, Publisher

Chris Staros (born c. 1961) is the publisher of the graphic novel publisher Top Shelf Productions, as well as the former president of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF). He is also the author of Yearbook Stories, 1976–1978, published by Top Shelf.

Staros never read comics as a child, thinking that books with pictures were for children. Later, he learned guitar and spent years playing in rock bands. As an adult, Staros spent a decade in the high-tech software industry. One day in 1990, Staros stepped inside a Marietta, Georgia, comic book store. Uninterested in superhero comics, Staros was directed to Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta. That chance encounter led to Staros making comics his career.

Staros spent the next four years studying all forms of comics, from the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics to contemporary alternative titles. He officially entered the comics field in 1994 with The Staros Report, an annual fanzine dedicated to promoting "the most intelligent and innovative" graphic novels in the business. In addition to ranked reviews, each issue of The Staros Report featured interviews, comics, bibliographies, character guides, letters, and more. He published four editions of The Staros Report, during which time he also became the American art and distribution agent for cartoonists Eddie Campbell and Gary Spencer Millidge.

At the 1997 Small Press Expo, Staros joined forces with Brett Warnock as publisher of Top Shelf. Staros and Warnock have aimed to give their imprint a style "that is quite hip, but also quite endearing", and Staros regularly signs correspondence with the tagline "Your friend thru comics." Staros & Warnock envisioned Top Shelf — together with Fantagraphics Books, Drawn and Quarterly and the now defunct Highwater Books — as an attempt to "change the public perception and face of comics altogether".

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