Fantagraphics Blog janice headley

Ellen Forney & Jim Woodring at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, 03/08 This weekend, the Boise Art Museum unveils a new exhibit that is right down our alley: Comics at the Crossroads: Art of the Graphic Novel. The exhibition spotlights 40 different comic book artists from the Pacific Northwest, including our own Jim Woodring, Ellen Forney, Shannon Wheeler, and Colleen Coover. We're also excited to see Fanta-friends David Lasky and Matthew Southworth included in the line-up! Included in the exhibit will be original artwork, unpublished drawings, book covers, and more! A preview party for Comics at the Crossroads is…

Robert Goodin shows newcomer Malachi Ward how great it is to be in Mome! Mome 22 introduces a slew of first-time contributors, and today, we continue our spotlight on these newcomers with a new favorite of mine, Malachi Ward! Malachi was gracious enough to spend some time signing with us at San Diego Comic-Con, despite the fact that Mome 22 was delayed in customs and didn't make it after all. Quite clearly, he is awesome. Malachi debuted this gorgeous self-published comic at SDCC.  If you turn it over, it has an entirely different cover and different story.  I tried to…

The tour rolls on for Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind! EMP Senior Curator and editor of the collection, Jacob McMurray, is on tour across the Northwest, doing readings and discussions of the "Seattle sound." And this Friday, August 19th, Jacob will be appearing at Easy Street Records in West Seattle! Enjoy an ice cold beer as the store spins hits from the "grunge" era, and join Jacob for a presentation, followed by a Q&A. (And don't miss the vinyl section upstairs at Easy Street, man, oh man…) Artwork by Ellen Forney, from the pages of Taking…

We're introducing quite a few new artists to the pages of Mome 22, so as we wait for the final Mome to hit the stores, we're profiling some of these newcomers on the FLOG! Such as, Jim Rugg here! First and foremost, I encourage everyone to check out Kristy's incredible interview with him over at The Comics Journal.  And here are some more "Things to See" from Jim! I can't even begin to list all the awards that Rugg's blaxploitation ode Afrodisiac has received, but most recently it was a 2011 Eisner Award nominee for Best Humor Publication! Speaking of…

This interview was conducted by Fantagraphics' Eric Buckler. Thanks to Eric and Lorenzo! (Ed. note: Hi Lorenzo! We miss you in North America! xo janice) Lorenzo Mattotti is a talented necromancer; his hands give life to some of the most charged and heart-pounding characters in cartooning and illustration today. Having a cabaret of phantoms at his disposal, Mattotti has assembled comics that are a dangerous and dark exploration of human emotion. His latest cartooning project was a collaboration with Claudio Piersanti called Stigmata, which follows a man who bleeds from his palms as he trudges down a dark path that…

Apparently, we're not the only ones with the '90s Riot Grrrl movement on the brain! Our friends at Poketo have just released a new series of wallets entitled "You're a Riot, Grrrl!" — each wallet featuring artwork by bold female artists, like Lisa Hanawalt, Hellen Jo, and our very own, Esther Pearl Watson!  I got the "Unlovable" wallet at San Diego Comic-Con, and lemme tell ya, so far, it's been quite lovable! The inside design boasts the truth "1978 Honda Hatchbacks are sexy" (damn straight) and it comes with a 1" Tammy Pierce button. Poketo even did an illustrated interview…

Our summer tour continues for Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind! After a sell-out show in Olympia [note: it was free], editor and Senior Curator of the EMP museum, Jacob McMurray, is now heading over the water to bad-ass Bellevue, WA!  Charles Burns's iconic artwork for Sub Pop 200, from Taking Punk to the Masses Sub Pop friends like Modest Mouse and Sunny Day Real Estate both formed on that side of the lake, and the East Side used to boast some legendary all-ages venues like Ground Zero and the Fire House. You can join Jacob this…

We were totally thrilled to have In the Red / Volar Records band Christmas Island stop by the Fantagraphics Bookstore during their West Coast tour this past weekend! Ajax and I actually met their awesome drummer Lucy at the San Diego Comic-Con late last month, and she had mentioned that her band was gonna be playing The Funhouse in Seattle for Pizza Fest 2011! [Full disclosure: Ajax works the door at The Funhouse when not workin' the warehouse at Fantagraphics.] But I totally suck, and I missed the show and the ensuing pizza-eating contest! Dammit. Don't suck like I did:…

This Friday, August 12th, the fabulous Roq la Rue gallery debuts The Blab! Show, curated by noneother than Monte Beauchamp!   Beauchamp returns to the theme of "Krampus," which you may remember from back issues of Blab! and the collection of vintage Krampus postcards The Devil in Design, and the show features interpretations by artists like Shag, Andy Kehoe, and Ryan Heshka. If you don't recall, Krampus is a sinister holiday devil, so appropriately enough, Roq la Rue promise they'll be "throwing one hell of an opening party!" The Blab! Show runs until September 3rd. For anyone outside the Seattle…

Director Seth Craven has taken the tender, lovely Jordan Crane comic The Last Lonely Saturday and has turned it into a film! I have not seen it yet, but just the still above is getting me choked up, so that's probably for the best. Like our tiny 4" X 6" book, the film, too, is a tiny eight minutes. Like the (nearly) wordless panels of Crane's novella, Craven's movie has no dialogue. And, like Crane's comic creation… this film will probably make me cry! The Last Lonely Saturday makes its film debut this Friday, August 12th as part of the…