Fantagraphics Blog Jen Vaughn

The 120th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at 7pm at The New School University Center, 63 5th Ave., room L104 (lower level). Free and open to the public. Please note new location this week only!  Drew Friedman on 40 Iconic Paperback Book Covers.Artist Drew Friedman shares and discusses 40 of his favorite paperback book covers. Paperback books are the cheaply printed (held together by glue rather than stitches) books released by publishers in a low-cost format. Friedman has amassed a large collection of vintage paperbacks over the years. The book covers…

Fantagraphics is ready and rarin' to go with at MoCCA Festival 2015 at the brand-new-to-you-and-me location. All weekend long you can find Gary tabling at 204-207 on the Second Floor (Red Zone) along with some of the world's finest cartoonists and their excellent books at the hot new location for MoCCA!   Debuts:   • The Kurdles by Robert Goodin In the spirit of Hergé's Tintin or Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge, The Kurdles is an all-ages comic spiced up with a teaspoon of strange. Sally is a teddy bear who gets separated from her owner. Desperate to find her way home, she stumbles upon…

Cartoonist M.K. Brown is making a special appearance this Saturday, April 4th at the Fairfax Library. From 2-4pm, enjoy the opening reception and book signing while soaking in Brown's original artwork on display. The show of original comics, gag panels and more will remain up from the 1st to the 29th of April. A percentage of the sale of her collection, Stranger than Life, will benefit Friends of the Fairfax Library. Here's a few of my favorites from the book: This one is part of a longer comic:So come get a copy of Stranger than Life and check out a book or two…

Emerald City ComiCon is on the horizon and we're ecstatic to have so many special guests this year with fantastic new books, guests, panels about the books, cartoonists, the biz and even one on Fantagraphics' fantastic book design! Washington State Convention Center is the place to be on Friday, March 27th – Sunday, March 29th you can find all of the great comics at booth 308! Our debut books include the following:  • Wuvable Oaf  by Ed Luce The texceptionally hairy ex-wrestler Oaf lives in San Francisco, taking care of his 27 cats while looking for romance in the City by the Bay. Wuvable Oaf is a unique romance…

Next month's issue of Booklist will include reviews of recent releases by Fantagraphics cartoonists + creators, excerpted below: A Starred review for Displacement by Lucy Knisley "Knisley finds both the humor and the sadness in her grandparents' condition…Whereas Knisley's previous travel memoirs speak more to the young adult experience, Displacement is a timely and mature work that pairs perfectly with other elder-care titles, such as Roz Chast's Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? (2014)." –Snow Wildsmith Love and Rockets: New Stories #7 by Jaime Hernandez & Gilbert Hernandez "Jaime's economically elegant cartooning and Gilbert's bold designs and imaginative characterizations-will leave fans satisfied and eager for next…

You came, you saw, you asked for more. Finally, Ed Piskor will be a guest at San Diego Comic-Con. Ed will be signing and sketching in your new copies of Hip Hop Family Tree Vol. 3, fresh from the printers and maybe even stilll warm. Each Monday SDCC will be announcing a new set of guests so keep your eyes peeled for the next Fantagraphics' one!

Admist the hub-bub of New York City and the Museum of Comics and Comic Arts Festival, MoCCA, you can find solace but not silence at the always fun Bergen Street Comics. Koyama Press, 2D Cloud and Fantagraphics TAKE OVER BERGEN STREET Party is happening on Saturday, April 11th at 7pm. Cartoonist and animator, Robert Goodin, will be appearing to sign his new all-ages book, The Kurdles in the spirit of Hergé's Tintin or Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge, spiced up with a teaspoon of strange. What else is happening at this cornucopia of comic delights? A. Degen's surrealist superhero adventure MIGHTY STAR AND THE CASTLE OF THE…

  Josh Simmons' latest, greatest and most terrifying graphic novel yet is about to hit the United States and he is taking Black River to the road. Black River stars a group of women, one man, and two dogs are making their way through a post-apocalyptic world in search of a city that supposedly still has electricity and some sort of civilization. Along the way, they go to a comedy club, take a drug called Gumdrop, and encounter gangs of men who are fools, lunatics, or murderous sadists. In other words, all manner of terrors.  You think the Hunger Games is scary? What if…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.  Willard Mullin's Casey at the Bat and Other Diamond Tales by Willard Mullin and Ernest Thayer 52-page two-color 6.25" x 6.25" hardcover$9.99 | 978-1-60699-814-4 "Mullin defined the modern sports cartoon by combining representative portraiture, cartoonish doodlery, and editorial commentary – part news account, part personal observation, his cartoons celebrated sport for…

Let the chill of the early evening air fill your lungs as you head over to Challengers Comics + Conversation on Sunday, March 22nd to get all* your comics signed by Peter Bagge. His newest book is a collection of the DC comic, Sweatshop, which discusses seedy underbelly of the comic book industry. Originally published as a six-issue series by DC Comics in 2003 this is one of the best and most undervalued works of one of the key voices of his generation. This Sunday evening soiree starts at 6pm.  Sweatshop focuses on the unhappy, out-of-touch cartoonist, Mel Bowling. As the hand behind a…