Fantagraphics Blog Jen Vaughn

In a cheeky cameo, cartoonist Rich Tommaso magically appears next to FOX news reporter Denise Dillon when she grabs a copy of The Cavalier Mr. Thompson off the bookshelf. Tommaso has a better chance "of writing a NY Times Best Seller than winning the Powerball," currently at $500,000,000. While we distribute Tommaso's lastest graphic novel and have published a few NY Times Best Sellers, we cannot guarantee that a photogenic creator will appear next to you the next time you thumb through their work in a public space. But be warned: they might. Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports |…

Dash Shaw's masterpiece on life with the Loony Family called Bottomless Belly Button can now be yours thanks to comiXology. The 700 page epic is just the thing to slip onto your digital reading device as long you warm up your thumbing finger. After 40-some years of marriage, Maggie and David Loony shock their children with their announcement of a planned divorce. But the reason for splitting isn't itself shocking: they’re "just not in love any more." The announcement sparks a week long Loony family reunion at Maggie and David's creepy (and possibly haunted) beach house. Whether you've been a…

The spendiest debit card of Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Interview: Robot 6 and Tim O'Shea interview Chris Wright about Blacklung. Wright answers, "the characters in Blacklung, particularly Brahm, are wrapped up in these hellish cycles, of destruction, and grief, and that quote seemed, not so much to sum up the philosophical point of view of the book, but to act dynamically with it, and become part of it’s dialogue. How responsible are we really for our own fates, and how much of what we become, and what we experience is beyond our influence." • Review: Anime News Network looks…

The strongest umbrella in the wind of Online Commentaries & Diversions:  • Review: Paul Constant of The Stranger looks at The Last Vispo: Visual Poetry 1998-2008, edited by Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill. "As an art book, it demands hours of investigation. . . For those linguistic pioneers looking to find the future of fiction, this could be one of the most informative poetry anthologies to be published in the new millennium." • Review: NPR's My Guilty Pleasure looks at the Jacques Tardi graphics novels of Adèle Blanc-Sec who is "young writer with the brains of Sherlock Holmes, the body…

This week, Fantagraphics and comiXology are thankful to release Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars for your digital reading devices. This collection of graphic short stories, noir-ish narratives that are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama by way of the desperate and haunted characters that populate its pages. Lane’s characters exist on the margins of society—alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair, confused but introspective. Some of them are experiencing the aftermath of an existential car crash—those surreal moments after a car accident, when time slows down and you’re trying to determine what just happened and…

  Bizarre Magazine recently ran an article by Stephen Daultrey featuring some primo "JUICY" posters from our arty porn poster book Sexytime, edited by Jacques Boyreau and Peter Van Horne. Seeking to celebrate "the age of trashy porn with tales of enemas, garage lube, balcony wanking" and Sexytime, Daultrey and Boyreau's words effectively magic a nostalgia within the reader that I didn't think possible.  The 1960s brought on such a world that "Grindhouse movie producers had begun competing about who could up the filth factor," Boyreau points out. This pushed the crazitude of poster art to a higher level, porny…

  Cathy Malkasian thinks we're dirty. What else can we expect when she sends us a box of beautifully-crafted soap? We're working so hard on publishing books; its a sweaty business. To be fair, she sent the box to Eric Reynolds but he is nice and clean enough to share with the rest of us. Each soap is a charcter from Malkasian's 2007 hit, Percy Gloom. Look at those perfectly molded soaps, Percy even has his cute hat on!   Malkasian's next graphic novel is due out in April entitled Wake Up Percy Gloom! S0 get soapy and squeaky clean…

  Here lie the records from The Hypo Pacific Northwest Tour starring Noah Van Sciver. Recently the Fantagraphics store hosted cartoonists David Lasky and Van Sciver as guests of honors for a signing, Larry Reid arranged their gorgeous work out on the wall. The two signings were perfect, graphics novels about a young depressed Abraham Lincoln struggling to be a great politician and a young family in a depressed era struggling as music makers. The Hypo is available on our website while The Carter Family by Lasky is available at Abrams.  Frank M. Young, David Lasky, Ellen Forney and Noah…

 The first bit of frost of Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Review (video): Last Gasp's John Longhi reviews The Lost Art of Ah Pook by Malcom McNeill, a story originally created with William Burroughs. Longhi says, "I can see why Burroughs wanted to work with McNeill because he's one of the few guys who could capture the crazy wacked out details of his story writing. . . [It contains] all the wonderful social discord that made his writing fantastic." • Review: Blacklung by Chris Wright gets high marks on Paste Magazine. Sean Edgar says, "Blacklung is a weird, compelling creation,…

The wait is over. Jordan Crane's long sold-out Uptight issues #1 and 2 (plus 3 and 4) are now available via comiXology for your eyes' delight. Adult melancholia and delightful all-ages adventures go side-by-side in this versatile, masterful one-man anthology in stunning black and white detail. Each volume has its own jewels like the tragic ghost story "Take Me Home" in Issue #2. A fan of The Clouds Above? Be sure to check out Simon and Jack's continueing adventures in #4. For the low price of $2.99, you can enjoy solid storytelling and exquisitely drawn comics.  "Luscious… elegant… I fairly…