Why Comics? is a celebration of all that has changed both in comics and for comics over the last generation, written by the person most qualified to host the party. Indeed, our being where we are today owes a good deal to Hillary Chute, who began her career writing some of the field's most intelligent and informative reviews and interviews and went on to write two of the most influential books in comics studies, Graphic Women (2010) and Disaster Drawn (2016). I first met Chute when she was working on her dissertation, and although the decade between us placed me in the role of outside reader on her committee, she was already leading the way forward for all of us in the field.