(click image to enlarge) See part 1 for more info about the book.
KING OF THE FLIES Halloween preview – page 2
(click image to enlarge) See part 1 for more info about the book.
KING OF THE FLIES Halloween preview!
The first volume of Mezzo and Pirus's extraordinary suburban horror trilogy, KING OF THE FLIES, will be released early next year. As an advance teaser, we're serializing the first chapter, "Hallorave" (which is also the title of the book) right here, a page a day. Since it takes place on Halloween, it seems appropriate to run it this week. This is the first foreign book of ours in a while I didn't translate, control freak that I am; fortunately I found Helge Dascher and John Kadlecek to pick up the slack, and they did a superb job on it. Volume…
YouTube Trailer for upcoming Tardi book!
The publisher of Jacques Tardi's most recent World War I book, the two-part PUTAIN DE GUERRE (my best translation: FUCKING WAR!), has released this nifty trailer on YouTube. It's all in French but there's lots of cool Tardi images between the vintage photos. PUTAIN DE GUERRE Volume II will be released in November in France. There are no plans just yet to release a U.S. edition (there are several other Tardi books we want to work our way through, including IT WAS THE WAR OF THE TRENCHES this coming Spring), which is good because it will give me…
Valiant Violence Restored!
Ace Hal Foster biographer Brian M. Kane (author of the forthcoming Definitive Prince Valiant Companion from Fantagraphics) just pointed out a fascinating fact to us: The Syndicate color proofs that we are using for the first time for our brand new edition of Prince Valiant have yielded at least one instance of a page that was originally toned down (presumably by the Syndicate) and has, in the 71 years since then, never been printed in Foster's original, unexpurgated, slightly more bloodthirsty version! Compare and contrast these two versions of page 50: While panel 3 is essentially the same in terms…
Ignatz Update/Previews!
It's been a while, but the international "Ignatz" series is finally percolating again. As you know, the final issue of Delphine by Richard Sala, #4, and Sergio Ponchione's third issue of Grotesque, have just been released (and will be proudly displayed at this week's Comic-Con). Also just released is a new, second printing of Lorenzo Mattotti's stunning Chimera #1, which has been out of print for many months; if you didn't catch it the first time around, now's your chance. This coming week Kevin Huizenga will be delivering the hotly-anticipated Ganges #3, featuring insomnia and cops. Expect this one to…
World Exclusive Jason preview!
(Click for larger version) Jason's latest book, Low Moon, has not even been released yet in the U.S. (look for it to premiere at MoCCA, as well as to-be-officially-announced June events at the Strand in NYC, Portland OR, and our very own bookstore), and our hard-working Norwegian has already completed his next opus, another full-color 48-pager in the same format as the Eisner-Award nominated The Last Musketeer and the Eisner Award-winning The Left Bank Gang. Here is an exclusive preview of the first page from Werewolves of Montpellier, scheduled for release next summer. (In between, we will be releasing a…
Prince Valiant – “A History of Valiants” by Kim Thompson
{product_snapshot:id=1581,true,false,false,left}This Afterword is excerpted in its entirety from Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938 from Fantagraphics Books. Terrifically popular from its inception, Prince Valiant is one of the most frequently reprinted comic strips of all time. Like many other classics, it was extensively collected in comic book form early on, but starting in the 1950s, it was also one of the first to graduate to bona fide book editions. Sadly, commercial and technical limitations conspired to undercut the true glory of Foster’s work, as the strips were recolored (inevitably to their detriment, as in the otherwise impressive 1960s Nostalgia Press editions)…
Tardi Part V: Then What?
Okay, so there you have it. This summer we are releasing two Tardi graphic novels, You Are There and West Coast Blues. Next summer, It Was the War of the Trenches. Should these find favor with the fickle American public, I plan to keep on translating and publishing Tardi books, working my way through the Nestor Burma books, the Adèle Blanc-Sec books, and all the one-shots, until, as with Jason, American readers will be able to enjoy the entire oeuvre of one of comics' grandmasters. If not, if we crash and burn, we'll still have made available three masterpieces of…
Tardi Part IV: Meet Manchette
As you are surely aware by now if you've been following this blog, Fantagraphics will be releasing two graphic novels by the great French cartoonist Jacques Tardi this summer. Yesterday I discussed the first of the two, Ici même. Today I hit the other one: West Coast Blues, née Le petit bleu de la côte Ouest. Tardi has always had a special affinity for detective-slash-crime fiction, so it was natural that he would pair up with Jean-Patrick Manchette. Aside from being the pre-eminent crime writer of his generation, with ten short, powerfully dark crime novels to his credit, Manchette happened…
