Networking and early roles

Working on The Telegraph Wire "put me in touch with creators whom I would interview [and] publishers from whom I would solicit advertising to help underwrite the cost of this "newsletter" that we would give out for free at each of the seven Comics & Comix stores." These contacts were added to by her attendance at an increasing numbers of conventions, including the Creation Conventions and the San Diego convention:

"Creation, at that time, used to run a comic book show virtually every weekend in some part of the country. It was then that I met my future . . . husband, Bob Schreck, who was working for Creation in those days."^[7]

In addition to meeting and mingling with publishers, distributors, promotion teams and all manner of creators, Schutz started freelance work for "various other fan publications", including Comics Buyer's Guide, The Comics Journal, Amazing Heroes and Comics Scene, from which she graduated to a very brief — four-day — job with Marvel Comics as an assistant editor.^[7]

Recommended by friend Chris Claremont, Schutz was to be (at age 29) Ann Nocenti's assistant editor on the X-Men, but found herself entering her new job with "unrealistic expectations"; ultimately handing in her notice after a mere four days. Several months later (in 1985), she (and Bob Schreck) began work at Comico, which "with its opportunities for creator ownership, and the fact that it was much smaller and more personable, was much more [her] style".^[7] Schutz's first comic book editing credit was Robotech: The Macross Saga #3.^[8] Having picked up in her brief tenure at Marvel some knowledge "from Virginia Romita how to create and enforce production schedules", Schutz took over as Comico's primary editor. (Schreck oversaw "all the marketing and publishing type aspects".)^[7]

Dave Sim and Cerebus

Having been one of the small core of readers who bought the first issue of Dave Sim's Cerebus, Schutz got to know the man himself, and began working for him as a proofreader, first unofficially, and then officially from the "middle of '94" until early 2001. She explains that she "never proofed the book itself," "[j]ust the text, the typeset text" feeling that her respect for his abilities outweighed any potential "qualms" about the book's often-contentious content.^[7][9]

Schutz's stated stance (which has largely held sway throughout her entire editorial career) is that her role is not to interfere with an artist's story, merely to make sure that their work is "as grammatically clear as it could be." This she did for Sim for several years, balking only when Sim sent her a "boxing challenge to proofread"^[10] which she felt was a personal attack on a friend (and one introduced to her by Sim himself). Schutz promptly resigned in January 2001, and Sim even published her resignation letter in Cerebus #265. This issue also included a "20-page anti-female diatribe," and Schutz remains mildly aggravated over this juxtaposition, since she thinks some readers might equate the two—she did not, and found herself having to explain that she had no problem proofreading "an argument, no matter how faulty, in which Dave believes," no matter her personal views, and that she had resigned over the boxing challenge itself from the previous issue, #264. Indeed, even while Schutz was performing proofreading duties, she did so via fax, and had very little—if any—personal contact with Sim himself.^[7]

Dark Horse

By 1990, Schutz began work for Dark Horse Comics, rising (by 2007) to the position of Executive Editor, having variously held the roles of Senior Editor, Managing Editor, and Editor-in-Chief. In December 2001, she was the fifth-most-senior staff member in terms of length-of-employment (after, respectively, Mike Richardson, Randy Stradley, Neil Hankerson and Cary Grazzini), but stated that she had originally relinquished the job of Editor-in-Chief in December 1995, after almost two years, "because what it did is it put me in meetings all the damn time, writing memos and holding people's hands and I wasn't able to make good comics anymore".^[7]

Concurrent with her move to Oregon, Schutz returned to graduate studies, and in 1994 she received a Master of Arts degree in Communication Studies from the University of Portland, writing her M.A. thesis on female cartoonists Julie Doucet, Roberta Gregory, and Aline Kominsky-Crumb.