Would you like to watch Jacques Tardi draw for three minutes? Sure you would! Here he is working up a panel from his recently-published semi-sequel to IT WAS THE WAR OF THE TRENCHES, PUTAIN DE GUERRE. (My best translation: FUCKING WAR. Will need to rethink that for when we do our edition of the book.) Around 0:50 Tardi complains that he always screws up the boots and has to bring out the Wite-Out. So he is not a god. But almost.
Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on The Littlest Pirate King
[In this installment of our series of Editors Notes, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") about The Littlest Pirate King by David B., Fantagraphics' second Franco-Belgian kids' comic release, now available to order from us or at a comics shop near you. – Ed.] This is Fantagraphics' first full David B. book, right? Correct. We published the second issue of his Ignatz comic Babel (D+Q published the first one before wimping out on the whole Ignatz deal), and four of his short stories in Zero Zero and MOME (in fact, the three MOME stories will be…
Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on The Littlest Pirate King
[In this installment of our series of Editors Notes, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") about The Littlest Pirate King by David B., Fantagraphics' second Franco-Belgian kids' comic release, now available to order from us or at a comics shop near you. – Ed.] This is Fantagraphics' first full David B. book, right? Correct. We published the second issue of his Ignatz comic Babel (D+Q published the first one before wimping out on the whole Ignatz deal), and four of his short stories in Zero Zero and MOME (in fact, the three MOME stories will be…
Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on Toys in the Basement
[In this first of what will hopefully be a recurring series of Editors Notes posts, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") on the subject of Fantagraphics' first Franco-Belgian kids' comic release, coming to a comics shop near you later in November. – Ed.] This is your first Blanquet book. Why pick this one? Honestly, it kind of dropped in my lap out of nowhere. I read it, I liked it, and I thought "Why not?" I've long wanted do publish a Blanquet book – we've published short stories of his in Zero Zero and Blab!… This…
Editors Notes: Kim Thompson on Toys in the Basement
[In this first of what will hopefully be a recurring series of Editors Notes posts, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") on the subject of Fantagraphics' first Franco-Belgian kids' comic release, coming to a comics shop near you later in November. – Ed.] This is your first Blanquet book. Why pick this one? Honestly, it kind of dropped in my lap out of nowhere. I read it, I liked it, and I thought "Why not?" I've long wanted do publish a Blanquet book – we've published short stories of his in Zero Zero and Blab!… This…
Krazy Kat: Bad News Dept.
We are sorry to announce that several experts have confirmed that what we thought was a sketchbook of early versions of several years' worth of Krazy Kat strips created by George Herriman — and had planned to publish as such — is almost certainly the work of a very intense (perhaps contemporary with Herriman?) fan who diligently, even maniacally, copied each new strip into his sketchbook over a period of three years. The telltale signs of this became apparent only when we had a chance to take a closer look at high-resolution scans made as part of the pre-press process,…
Krazy Kat: Good News Dept.
Thank you, Chris Ware. This, the penultimate KRAZY + IGNATZ Sundays volume (covering 1919-1921), will be available in February 2011. We should be able to wrap up the series with the 1922-1924 volume by the end of that year, leaving us free to focus on… the dailies!
2011: One Manchette, one Manchette/Tardi!
Two bits of news for fans of the Jacques Tardi/Jean-Patrick Manchette West Coast Blues we released last year… (1) Here is the cover to our Summer 2011 Tardi release, his latest adaptation of a Manchette novel (in fact his latest graphic novel, period, it's just being released now in France), La Position du tireur couché. (The original prose novel was released in the U.S. as The Prone Gunman, which while out of print is still available on Amazon.) Our title is Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot. Dig ace designer Adam Grano's brilliant incorporation of that logo into the "inside…
Fantagraphics Is Looking for a few Good NANCY Boys!
…Or girls, for that matter. As work progresses on our first volume of Ernie Bushmiller's NANCY (yes, it's late, we admit it), collecting 1942 through 1945, we belatedly realize that our source for most of the strips is missing the first year. Oops. So we are sending out the plea to NANCY collectors: If you have clippings for 1942's NANCY daily strips, we would love to hear from you. (For that matter, as we are missing a handful of strips from 1943-1945, and some of the ones we do have are a little rough around the edges in terms of…
Adele tops French BO, Variety Mixed But Encouraging
Luc Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, adapting the earlier volumes of Jacques Tardi's graphic novel series, opened last week at a solid #1 at the office in France (handily beating the only other major opening, the Matt Damon Iraq flick Green Zone), to generally positive reviews. There was general praise for the lead performance by Louise Bourgoin (although some reviewers familiar with the original comics lamented the "sweetening" of Tardi's cranky original), the special effects, and the fun-ride aspect of the movie, less enthusiasm for some of the broader farcical aspects, and a general consensus that the Paris-based…
