Fantagraphics Blog Jen Vaughn

The best looping GIF of Online Commentaries & Diversions:   • Review: Publishers Weekly gives a Starred Review to Messages in a Bottle by B. Krigstein. "Krigstein’s stories are sometimes epic and sprawling, sometimes compressed and confined…His mastery of chiaroscuro, and his dramatic composition and layout, applied across a very wide range of subject matter, are what make this gorgeous collection so essential." • Review: The AV Club also shows extreme love for the comics of B. Krigstein in his new collection Messages in a Bottle. Noel Murray writes, "Krigstein treated each assignment as a chance to put theory into…

The wait is finally over! Fantagraphics and comiXology are bringing you JASON comics starting with his 2008 Eisner Award-winner I Killed Adolf Hitler. A hitman is hired to travel back in time to kill Hitler in 1939… but things go very wrong. Hitler escapes to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past. This surprising thriller unfolds with Jason's wickedly dry humor. A hitman is hired to travel back in time to kill Hitler in 1939… but things go very wrong. Hitler escapes to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past. This surprising thriller unfolds with Jason's…

James Romberger, artist of 7 Miles a Second, will be giving a slide show presentation tonight TONIGHT at the NY Comics and Picture-story Symposium on his collaboration with David Wojnarowicz and Marguerite Van Cook in addition to his new book Post York, out from Uncivilized Books. 7pm, 7 Miles a Second pretty easy to remember. Music accompaniment by Crosby. The thirty-fourth meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Monday, February 25, 2013 at 7:00 pm at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street in The Bark Room (off lobby). See you there!

The half-day of school in Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Review: Nick Gazin of VICE reads God and Science by Jaime Hernandez. "I think it's cool that Jaime will make a comic with no sci-fi or fantasy elements for decades and suddenly remind us that the world his comic is set in is capable of housing superheroes. I own all of Jaime's stuff." • Plug: Bob Temuka tries to make you break down into tears at your desk but DAMMIT you didn't let him, didja? Tearoom of Despair lives up to its name by remembering the 'Death of Speedy' story…

The best cover band made of dogs of Online Commentaries & Diversions:  • Review: Unshelved reads Delphine by Richard Sala. Shivering with delicious fear, Gene Ambaum says "I’m a huge fan of Sala’s graphic novels, like Cat Burglar Black. And the dust jacket-less cover, with its graphics and the inset color image of a girl walking through a dark forest, looked exquisite."  • Review: Rob Clough of High-Low looks at Beta Testing the Apocalypse by Tom Kaczynski. "His stories address aspects of modern civilization and the ways in which they break down.…Kaczynski really has his finger on the collective neuroses…

Spain Rodriguez is on the list of finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize award in Graphic Novel. A winner will be chosen this April at a public ceremony at the University of Southern California's Bovard Auditorium. Spain's book Cruisin' with the Hound is listed along with works by Alison Bechdel, Leela Corman, Chris Ware and Sammy Harkham. The press release has more information: "The event is the prelude to the 18th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the largest public literary festival in the nation, to be held on USC’s campus on April 20th and 21st." Fingers…

The newest office of Online Commentaries & Diversions:  • Review: Glen Weldon from NPR Books pontificates on the wondrous LGBT-centric graphic novels and reviewed Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas "…whenever the emotions roiling just under her narrative's surface threaten to overtake her characters, Hagio's otherwise exacting and detailed art goes expressively feathery at the edges, like a ghost vanishing softly into the ether." • Review: Fantasy Book Review reviews The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. "This is not an uplifting tale until at the end, but it is a very well drawn period manga that gives glimpses of…

Urban Dictionary, CNN and others may have you believe that the Harlem Shake starts out with a masked person dancing while everyone goes about their business but at Fantagraphics, we believe it starts with a beagle. Charles Schulz, cartoonist and possible inventor of the world's first Harlem Shake. Looking for more action? Then check out our shelves and shelves of Peanuts comics. 

Digital Release Wednesday brings you a hot title that is finally seeing the light of day with proper coloring. Fantagraphics and comiXology bring you 7 Miles a Second by David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger, and Marguerite Van Cook, now a NY Times Best Seller in hardcover. 7 Miles a Second is the story of legendary artist David Wojnarowicz, written during the last years before his AIDS-related death in 1992. Artists Romberger and Van Cook unsentimentally depict Wojnarowicz's childhood of hustling on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood living with AIDS, and his anger at the indifference of government and health…

Fantagraphics and comiXology have heard your desperate pleas for more digital Love and Rockets, we know you have precious bookshelf space and move every year. In the fifth Love and Rockets book from Jaime Hernandez's Locas series, Esperanza features mores stories to thrill you.  Picking up where Book 4 Penny Century collection left off: An older and wiser Maggie faces down her demons while Ray tussles with the volatile bombshell Vivian. Taking its title from Hopey Glass's birth name, Esperanza follows the somewhat settled-down ex-punkette in her new life as a schoolteacher's assistant — which doesn't mean that her romantic…