His career began in the 1980s as he managed the Fast Fiction table at bi-monthly comic marts held in London's Westminster Hall. Gravett invited artists to send him their homemade comics, which he would sell from the Fast Fiction table with all proceeds going to the creator. His role in the British indie comics scene is depicted in Eddie Campbell's Alec comics, in which Gravett is called "The Man at the Crossroads."

In 1983, Gravett launched Escape Magazine with Peter Stanbury, in an attempt to showcase the cream of the alternative cartoonists of the day. Under the Escape Publishing imprint, he co-published Violent Cases by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, three volumes of Eddie Campbell's Alec between 1984 and 1986 and London's Dark in 1988 by James Robinson and Paul Johnson.

The magazine lasted for 19 issues before closing its doors in 1989. The Comics Journal is quoted as saying of Escape, "This now-defunct London based anthology remains one of the most sorely missed comics of all time not simply because of its tremendous track record of translating European comics but simply because it was always good in so many ways."

From 1992 to 2001, Gravett was the director of the UK charity The Cartoon Art Trust, dedicated to preserving and promoting the best of British cartoon art and caricature and to establish a museum of cartoon art with gallery, archives and reference library.

Gravett has written a number of books on comics. He also co-edited Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption a political anthology comic.

He helps run the Comica comics festival and coordinates a number of events surrounding it, like Graphical Short Story contest, run in conjunction with The Observer.

Gravett is the author of several non-fiction books on the topic of comics and sequential art, including:

• Sixty Years of Japanese Comics (Harper Design, 2004, ISBN 1-85669-391-0)
• Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life (Aurum Press, October 2005, ISBN 1-84513-068-5, US printing: Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know, Collins Design, November 2005, ISBN 0-06-082425-5)
• Great British Comics (Aurum Press, October 2006, ISBN 1-84513-170-3)

Reviews

• Great British Comics in The Guardian, November 25, 2006

Paul GravettPaul Gravett