Fantagraphics Blog Eric Reynolds

August 30, 2008, New York, NY – Forum Gallery presents American Presidents & Selected Paintings: 1966 – 2008, including nearly 50 paintings and drawings by David Levine, America's acclaimed observer of humanity and politics. For over four decades Levine has entertained readers of The New York Review of Books with his often-satirical portraiture of public figures. The current exhibition brings together these caricatures and Levine's intimate painted portraits of the diverse characters that populate New York City. The exhibition features a selection of more than 40 political figures from the caricatures the artist has created since he began working for…

Subterranean Books has some great pics up from Tim Lane's art show and book release party last Friday night.  Here's one of the author with a life-size cut out that I want for my living room:

Our pal Jenn Chan sent us these awesome photos of a weekend baking jag inspired by Krazy Kat (and perhaps even Chris Ware's design). Her husband was "feeling really bummed about the Mets so I made these to cheer him up." Lucky man. Well, aside from those Mets, anyway. At least he's not a Mariners fan. Back to the Kupkakes. Mmmmmm:    

Left: Rock Bottom, Michael Shilling (2009) Right: Misery Loves Comedy, Ivan Brunetti (2007) I don't mean to necessarily suggest the above is a swipe — I think it could be entirely coincidental. But I was just struck by not only the design similarities (down to the sans serif fonts), but the similarly nihilistic titles the designs serve. Did the tone of each title drive the design to similar, bleak places independent of the other, or did the designer of Rock Bottom look to Misery for similarly bleak inspiration? And what was Ivan riffing on when he designed his book? I have no answers, I…

Flog!'s North Carolina Bureau Chief Rob Clough attended the opening of the Dash Shaw show at Duke this past Friday night and was kind enough to provide us with this exclusive report: 

Dash Shaw's show BOTTOMLESS at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University debuted on Thursday, September 25th. The well-attended opening was a multi-media affair that was as much about process as it was about a final product. The way that curator Diego Cortez designed the show gave a unique glimpse into Shaw's method. By juxtaposing Shaw's original pencils against his color sheets on the walls of the exhibit, the viewer could see the way Shaw composes color for his pages is unusual. On display were pencils and color pages from his webcomic BodyWorld and MOME short stories "Train" and the upcoming "Satellite CMYK". That latter story may well be his best effort yet.

There were also some other unusual entries, like a drawing Shaw made of himself and Barack Obama as surfers.

The Boston Phoenix talks to Robert Pollard about Town of Mirrors and his new band, Boston Spaceships.

This show includes Zak Sally and Tom Kaczynski and looks pretty darn good to me!    

Gary Groth, Kim Thompson and myself are all headed east this weekend to attend one of our favorite shows of the year:     Taking place Saturday and Sunday in Bethesda, MD, SPX is the last great East Coast show of the year, and we'll be there in full force with a slew of signings, events, debuts, etc. To wit:  FANTAGRAPHICS SPX SIGNINGS: SATURDAY 12PM: Paul Karasik & Miss Lasko-Gross1PM: Paul Karasik & Tim Krieder2PM: Dash Shaw & John Kerschbaum3PM: Dash Shaw 4PM: Lilli Carré  SUNDAY 12PM: Paul Karasik & Miss Lasko-Gross1PM: Lilli Carré2PM: John Kerschbaum & Tim Krieder3PM: Paul Karasik & Dash Shaw4PM: Dash Shaw FANTAGRAPHICS-RELATED PANELS: Sat. 1:00PM: Kim Thompson:…