Fantagraphics Blog Jen Vaughn

November 18th – Waxahachie, TX.  HIDDEN BEHIND THE STARS featuring the artwork of Esther Pearl Watson opens up this Sunday on the plains of Texas at Webb Gallery. From 3-7pm on Sunday November 18th, you can rock out with music by Quintron and Miss Pussycat while gazing at amazing paintings by Ester. At 7pm, see a premiere screening of Quintron and Miss Pussycat's new movie "The Mystery in Old Bathbath." Esther Pearl Watson is one of Webb Galleries favorites. Her work is fantastical, beautiful, witty, colorful, dark and autobiographical all at the same time. Many of the works depict her…

 The first rain-free (HA!) day of Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Review: The Comics Journal looks at Ron Rege Jr.'s The Cartoon Utopia. Katie Haegel writes, "Almost impossible to categorize, the work in Cartoon Utopia is both fully realized in a formal sense and wonderfully idiosyncratic. Like, it’s really out there. . . to me the work is much stronger when it depicts magic in action, which Regé accomplishes by telling us stories about historical figures and their relationship to the natural world." • Review: Robot 6 reviews The Cartoon Utopia by Ron Rege Jr. Chris Mautner writes "with Rege drawing…

Today marks the same-day release of Prison Pit Book 4 from Fantagraphics in bookstores and at comiXology, we're getting into the giving swing of things. In Johnny Ryan's latest 'raging flume of blood and cum' as Joe McCullough says, we find Cannibal Fuckface has just about had it with prisoners messing with him. He discovers the only way to escape the Caligulon is to brainfuck the Slorge and create a giant, brainless oafchild that only knows how to annihilate everything in its path.  116 gristly pages of smackdowns, foaming villians and unsympathetic bowel movements can be yours in the $12.99…

Fantagraphics and comiXology add to your digital Love and Rockets Library today with the release of Book 2 from Locas storyline by Jaime Hernandez, The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. The 30th anniversary Love and Rockets celebration continues with this second of three volumes collecting the adventures of the spunky Maggie; her annoying, pixie-ish best friend and sometime lover Hopey; and their circle of friends, including their bombshell friend Penny Century, Maggie's weirdo mentor Izzy — as well as the aging but still heroic wrestler Rena Titaon and Maggie's handsome love interest, Rand Race. After Maggie the Mechanic, the first volume in…

It was a mad, Mad afternoon when Robin McConnell, MK Reed and I dropped into the Mad Office. Assistant Art Director and comics consumer Ryan Flanders reluctantly fell for my charms and agreed to a tour even though their deadline loomed large a few days later (hey, we don't want to impede a dying medium, right?). Even the guards had a cute shtick that took 5 minutes of my life and a humorless person would have left. Luckily, that's not me. Ryan started off the tour by showing us his first office at MAD, it's near the door, pretty cold…

Serialized since December 2002 in Comic Beam Magazine, Shimura Takako's beautiful take on adolescence and growing up Wandering Son is celebrating its 10th year in Japan. With complex characters who discover they enjoy identifying as a different gender than their own, the story slowly evolves as Nitori and Takatsuki gain confidence. A quiet story that resonates deep with anyone who has felt different or been teased for seeming not manly or girly enough. Matt Thorn and Fantagraphics first made Wandering Son accessible in English in 2011 but we're speeding up the process! Volume 4 comes out at the beginning of…

  Last Saturday, Fantagraphics had the privilege to table at Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival . Our crackin’ new titles included Beta Testing the Apocalypse by Tom Kaczyinski and Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton. Both of which sold out along with Heads or Tails by Lilli Carré and a few older titles. Here is the sexy part of our table. This is what our table looked like for most of the day. It was very busy, just like SPX so we barely left the table for pictures, let alone peeing or eating (one of those could solve the other, you decide…

In November, we are thankful for many things like a re-elected President, food and family coming together, power and heat slowly returning to New York. Fantagraphics and comiXology present a timely story to make you feel thankful for what you do have with the incredible graphic novel by visionary Chris Wright (Inkweed, 2008 from Sparkplug) called Blacklung. One of the most impressive graphic novel debuts in recent years, a sweeping, magisterially conceived, visually startling tale of violence, amorality, fortitude, and redemption, one part Melville, one part Peckinpah, all in 130 pages. In a night of piratical treachery when an arrogant…

 The most feathered pom-pom of Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Interview: Steven Weissman is a popular man with his presurrealidential comic, Barack Hussein Obama. Comic Book Resources and Alex Dueben interviews Weissman on the evolution of a comic and re-engaging your audience.  • Interview: Comics Alliance's J. Caleb Mozzocco interviews Steven Weissman on Barack Hussein Obama. "The Barack Hussein Obama that ultimately emerges from the book is a pretty regular guy trapped in a comic strip, struggling to be all things to all people," states Mozzocco.  • Review: Jim Woodring's sneak peek at his sketchbooks that eventually became Problematic was…

Fantagraphics and Jaime Hernandez release another Love and Rockets treasure via comiXology, this time the 2012 release of God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls. Dressing up as a superhero for Halloween? Then you can't miss this read while waiting for kids to ring your doorbell. Originally serialized in Love and Rockets: New Stories, “Ti-Girls Adventures ” managed to be both a rollickingly creative super-hero joyride (featuring three separate super-teams and over two dozen characters) that ranged from the other side of the universe to Maggie’s shabby apartment, and a genuinely dramatic fable about madness, grief, and motherhood as Penny…