Fantagraphics Blog Kristy Valenti

While I was working on The Love and Rockets Companion: 30 Years (and Counting) I noticed this contribution to the Love and Rockets #11 (April 1985) letters page signed “Christy Marx.” Dear Bros. Hernandez, Hmmm . . . how to tell you how great this comic is without sounding like a raving fan. Fuck it! You guys deserve raves. “Mechanics” is the best, closely followed by “Heartbreak Soup” in all its incarnations. “Errata Stigmata” I can do without, frankly. I read the first seven issues all at once, having come in late, drawn by growing word-of-mouth, plus the look of them began…

[The Umpteen Millionaire Club is our series which puts forth book club discussion questions for Fantagraphics titles. The Comics Journal interns Brooke Chin, Tom Graham and Toby Liebowitz put together this set of questions. As this is intended for those who have read the book and contains spoilers, questions can be found behind the jump. – Ed.]

Julio’s Day is a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez that spans the hundred-year life of one man. It opens with his birth; it follows Julio and his family and friends in a small farming village as successive generations are born and die. Packed within the pages is a range of human experience: a soldier goes to war and is changed; evil in the family goes unaddressed; and there’s the blue worm. We follow Julio to the end, which is much as the beginning, or, to quote Samuel Beckett, "the same day, the same second."

[The Umpteen Millionaire Club, our series which puts forth book club discussion questions for Fantagraphics titles, turns its attention to The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. The Comics Journal interns Tom Graham, Nomi Kane and Jack McKean put together this set of questions. – Ed.] Summary: The Heart of Thomas is a manga by Moto Hagio about students in a German boarding school for boys. The boys deal with tragic death, romantic love amongst each other and have more lighthearted concerns about popularity, rumors and cliques. Questions: How does the story address gender conventions or stereotypes? How do the characters deal with complex emotions that…

Best proofreading comment ever.

[For this installment of The Umpteen Millionaire Club (which perhaps should be renamed The Umpteen 1% Club for the occasion), The Comics Journal interns Kristen Bisson, Aiden Fitzgerald, Tom Graham, Janice Lee & Anna Pederson put together this series of discussion questions about Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman for use in book clubs. – Ed.] Summary: Barack Hussein Obama is a collection of absurdist four-panel gag strips featuring the Head of State, his family and numerous political friends and foes. Barack Hussein Obama Book Club Questions: What does this book have to say about Obama’s role as a statesman…

Interns Anna and Madisen model the latest in temporary tat fashion, courtesy of the desk drawer.