Se eu fosse realmente editor de alguma coisa, gostava de editar como o Alvin Buenaventura. Com um amor incondicional pela arte, uma atenção ao detalhe inigualável, um desprendimento sobre as consequências económicas do perfeccionismo e uma capacidade robótica de detectar qualidade.
Pessoalmente era um ser atribulado, tinha tudo para falhar, mas em pouco tempo deixou uma obra marcante, primeiro com a sua Buenaventura Press (infelizmente falida por razões que nunca foram esclarecidas depois do gigante e polémico Kramers Ergot 7) e mais recentemente com a Pigeon Press. Pelos testemunhos, facilmente se conclui tratar-se de uma pessoa que foi cedo demais, ainda ficou muita banda desenhada por editar e um vazio difícil de preencher.

Alvin was the one comic book publisher who was temperamentally more like a cartoonist than like a publisher; shy, riddled by self-doubt and occasional depression but always generous and, especially in his notes, enthusiastic if not even incongruously exuberant, he privately suffered despite trying to bring some cheeriness into other people’s lives.
—Chris Ware

I still remember how nervous he was printing The Comic Book Holocaust. He thought we would be sued or that even selling it at a convention would get him beat up.
—Johnny Ryan

Alvin Buenaventura was the most important person in my life outside my immediate family. (…) he was inexplicable, the most singular human being I’ve ever met. There’s nobody else in the world even remotely like him. He can’t ever be replaced in any way. He was born into a nondescript suburban So. Cal. army-brat childhood that could have in no way indicated his future, magically gifted with what can only be described as a perfect eye.
—Daniel Clowes

Links de interesse

Blog Flume
Daniel Clowes no Comics Reporter.
The Comics Journal
Dustin Harbin