Fantagraphics Blog Sonia Lei

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Sweatshopby Peter Bagge 152-page full color 6.75" x 10.25" softcover$19.99 | 978-1-60699-812-0 See Previews / Order Now Mel Bowling is the unhappy, out-of-touch creator of a very bad daily comic strip called Freddy Ferret (a cross between Dilbert and Garfield). He spends most of his time listening to Rush Limbaugh and coming up with horrible catchphrases to merchandise, while his "sweatshop" cast of studio assistants grind out all the hard work. Sweatshop is a hilarious situational comedy from acclaimed author Peter Bagge (Buddy Does Seattle, Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story) that…

Sheriff of Bullet Valley, Starring Walt Disney's Donald Duckby Carl Barks 96-page full color 7.25" x 5.5" softcover • $9.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-820-5 Ships in: March 2015 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now When a passel of extra-sneaky, extra-ornery high-tech cattle rustlers strikes the good citizens of Bullet Valley, Donald Duck bravely dons a badge to become the "Sheriff of Bullet Valley." Fortified by the know-how he's gained watching Hollywood Westerns, our ever-intrepid Duck sets out to solve the perplexing mystery of how Blacksnake McSquirt's brand keeps showing up on the cattle of the honest ranchers. Sheriff of Bullet Valley is the…

It's a beautiful day to be taking in the bright, bold coloring and clean linework of comics giant Steve Ditko. We've received our advances of the fifth volume in The Steve Ditko Archives, lovingly edited by Blake Bell. Entitled Dripping with Fear, the book features over 200 full-color pages, essays, and extras highlighting the time period when Ditko began sharing a studio with famed fetish artist and art-school colleague Eric Stanton. Dripping with Fear is due out in bookstores this coming March, and we've got lots of previews to share in the meantime! Pre-order your copy now.

Today's Book-A-Day Sale title is by award-winning cartoonist and animator Lilli Carré. Heads or Tails packages some of Carré's best work over a five year period. Carré’s elegant short stories read like the gothic, family narratives of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers, but told visually. Poetic rhythms — a coin flip, a circling ferris wheel — are punctuated by elements of melancholy fantasy pushed forward by character-driven, naturalistic dialogue. The stories in Heads or Tails display a virtuosic breadth of visual styles and color palettes, each in perfect service of the story, and range from experimental one-pagers to short masterpieces like…

Today's Book-A-Day title is a bundled gift set of fantastical, surreal work by artist and musician Leslie Stein. Eye of the Majestic Creature Vols 1 + 2 are semi-autobiographical books starring the girl Larrybear and her talking acoustic guitar Marshmallow as they travel and have adventures around the countryside. Larrybear is in a constant struggle between the desire to connect with those around her and to be left to her own devices. You get a glimpse of her past life when she visits her home town of Chicago, trying to relate to old friends who have not matured since high school, as well…

Today's Book-A-Day Sale also starts off our new theme for the next seven days: "Women in Comics"! Late Bloomer collects rich stories by Eisner award-winning artist Carol Tyler and is her second solo work. In "Migrant Mother," Tyler tells the grueling story of a cross-country trip with the flu and her terrible-twos toddler using her trademark combination of rueful humor and empathy. The full-color "Just A Bad Seed" is a meditation on a problem child who might not be such a problem after all, while "The Return of Mrs. Kite" chronicles a family crisis — how her widowed grandmother fell in with…

Today's Book-A-Day Sale features Eisner award-winning artist Jaime Hernandez in an omnibus collection of stories featuring his main characters, Maggie, Hopey, and Ray. Locas II picks up shortly after Maggie and Hopey’s long-awaited reunion at the end of the first Locas. Even though her love life remains as chaotic as ever, Hopey takes her first few steps toward responsible adulthood with a real job (as a teacher), while a demoralized, divorced Maggie ends up as the manager of a fleabag apartment building where she continues to wrestle with the demons of her past — most prominently in the stunning centerpiece of the volume,…

Today's January Book-A-Day sale features a bundled package of our two definitive books on artists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's romance comics: Young Romance 1 and Young Romance 2. Together, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created such classic two-fisted comic series as Captain America, Boys' Ranch, The Newsboy Legion, and The Boy Commandos. But few people realize that one of their greatest successes — from 1947, when they singlehandedly created the genre, to the end of the 1950s — was… romance comics! In such best-selling titles as Young Love and Real Western Romances, Simon and Kirby delighted a generation of girls and…

Willard Mullin's Casey at the Bat and Other Diamond Talesby Willard Mullin and Ernest Thayer; introduction by Yogi Berra 52-page two-color 6.25" x 6.25" hardcover • $9.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-814-4 Ships in: March 2015 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now In 1953, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the World Series, legendary cartoonist Willard Mullin created images illustrating one of America's best-loved poems: Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat." These images were then put on a series of drinking glasses that were given away as premiums at various major and minor league ballparks across America. The first set was issued on…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Run Like Crazy Run Like Hellby Jacques Tardi 104-page black & white 7.5" x 10.75" hardcover$19.99 | 978-1-60699-620-1 See Previews / Order Now After the teeth-rattling one-two punch of West Coast Blues and Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot, Jacques Tardi makes a third appointment with ace crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette for his wildest adaptation yet. Peter Hartog, a rich industrialist, hires a troubled young woman, Julie, straight out of the psychiatric asylum to which she has been consigned for several years, to work as a nanny for his bratty kid…