Kim Thompson has been my partner at Fantagraphics Books for 35 years. He's contributed vastly and selflessly to this company and to the comics medium and worked closely with countless fine artists over that time. This is a tough announcement to make, but everyone who knows Kim knows he's a fighter and we remain optimistic that he'll get through this and report back to work, where he belongs, doing what he loves. – Gary Groth I'm sure that by now a number of people in the comics field who deal with me on a regular or semi-regular basis have noticed…
Naughty Hal Foster?
We are pleased to announce that the sixth volume of our acclaimed Prince Valiant series — once again shot from Hal Foster's original set of syndicate proofs — is now shipping to stores and readers. We're busily working away on Volume 7, covering the years 1949 and 1950, which we expect to have out in May or June, trying to catch up from the slightly delayed Volume 6, and thereby aiming for three volumes this year. (By the way, our Free Comic Book Day comic for this year will feature an advance excerpt from Volume 7. Be sure to grab one — if only to…
We love Wonkette…
…and we love Wonkette's graphics department, but today especially.
Fantagraphics en Français in Seattle This Saturday!
The Seattle-based French cultural organization the Alliance Française is having a Christmas market and you're invited! Fantagraphics will have a table there selling our French translations (Tardi, Trondheim, David B., etc.) but we will also have a big pile of non-Fantagraphics editions of French and Belgian classics such as Tintin, Asterix, the Smurfs, and Lucky Luke, and several boxes full of french comics IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH that have not previously been made available in our store. The Alliance Française is a great organization and this should be a fun time for Francophiles in general even above and beyond Fantagraphics'…
LRNS #5 Is Out, Onto LRNS #6!
(click image to enlarge) The indefatigable Gilbert Hernandez has already turned in his cover to next Fall's Love and Rockets: New Stories #6, featuring "Killer" in a pose and milieu that long-time LR fans will find familiar (and which picks up from the storyline in #5). That issue's stories will also tie into the life-of-Luba graphic novel "Poison River," albeit in an unexpected way.
Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on New York Mon Amour
[In in the return of our Editors Notes series, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") about New York Mon Amour by Jacques Tardi , now available to order from us and at a comics shop near you. – Ed.] This is going to be a particularly discursive and rambling one, so reader, be forewarned. I don’t want to see any complainin’ in the comments section about how self-indulgent this is; you’re being told that going in. That said… Okay, so… New York Mon Amour. This is what, your eighth? Ninth Tardi book? I’ve reached the point…
Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on New York Mon Amour
[In in the return of our Editors Notes series, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") about New York Mon Amour by Jacques Tardi , now available to order from us and at a comics shop near you. – Ed.] This is going to be a particularly discursive and rambling one, so reader, be forewarned. I don’t want to see any complainin’ in the comments section about how self-indulgent this is; you’re being told that going in. That said… Okay, so… New York Mon Amour. This is what, your eighth? Ninth Tardi book? I’ve reached the point…
Your Pogo strip-search update!
I'm pleased to report that thanks to a few tips, we've got 103 of the 104 Sunday POGO pages we need for the next book (three of them include black and white panels from book reprints that we've colored to match the surrounding strips, but that's just between you and us). The August 19, 1951 strip remains the problem child — or "chile," as one of Kelly's characters might say. We have a 1/3 Sunday page tearsheet, and have been able to track down two of the three panels from the missing top strip as this sequence appears in a book,…
Sorry About That, Chief!
(Click for larger image.) Early readers of the third volume of THE DITKO ARCHIVES, Mysterious Traveler, have already noticed two unfortunate glitches. The story "The Forbidden Room" is missing its ninth and final page (above), and "The Menace of the Maple Leaves" is also missing a page (below). Editor Blake Bell has been busy tearing his hair out ever since we learned this. The fix, fortunately, is very simple: We'll just reprint both stories (in full, at full size), in the next volume of THE DITKO ARCHIVES, coming in the Spring, so collectors will have the full stories. For those…
A few panels short on Pogo Volume 2!
We're coming down the home stretch on the second volume of Walt Kelly's Complete Pogo, and the good news is that we've got literally 99% of the never-beforere-reprinted, full-color Sundays from the two years covered in this collection. The bad news is that we're missing a half dozen panels still. How can we be missing panels and not strips, you ask? Simple: the Pogo Sunday was put together in an odd configuration in which of the three possible formats — full page, half page, and third page — only one, the third page, contained the complete strip. The third page…
