Fantagraphics Blog Jen Vaughn

This month's issue of Booklist reviewed a recent releases by Fantagraphics creators, excerpted below:  Ralph Azham Volume 1: "Why Lie to Someone You Love." by Lewis Trondheim Ian Chipman writes, ". . . Now, English readers can dig into another fantasy series populated by [Trondheim's] distinctive anthropomorphized animals and distinguished by equal parts cutting humor and bizarre plot twists. . . What seems like a good, old-fashioned unlikely-hero tale in the making actually turns out to be more complex and slippery, as Ralph’s past gets sliced in bit by bit as we gradually learn about the world he inhabits, all…

The cuddliest cat at the shelter of Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Review: Body Literature reviews The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 edited by Nico Vassilakis & Crag Hill. Stephan Delbos writes "The Last Vispo Anthology is strange. It is also challenging, eclectic, confounding, erudite, punchy, and, by turns, beautiful. . .overall there is an elegiac note to this anthology, which extends from the title to the feeling, put forth by several of the essays, that visual poetry is facing a turning point.. .visual poetry is the bastard hermaphrodite of arts and letters. In a good way." • Review:…

Last night in Los Angeles at the Public Image Ltd show, Pat Thomas ran into John Lydon backstage (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols). The two have worked together on some album reissues and Lydon was excited to get a copy of Thomas' book, Listen, Whitey! The Sounds of Black Power. In fact he said, "it's like Christmas." Thomas' book moved Lydon to start "digging out my Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron records again." A good read guaranteed.

We're reminding you to check out The Art Institute of Chicago's exhibition entitled Rarely Seen: Contemporary Works on Paper, that is up from now until January 13, 2012. Organized by the Prints and Drawings Department of the museum, the show also includes comics from the Ryerson Library collection including Blexbolex, Mat Brinkman, Charles Burns, R. Crumb (Zap and Weirdo), Hairy Who, Humbug magazine, Al Jaffee, Rory Hayes, Jay Lynch, David Sandlin, Art Spiegelman, S Clay Wilson (Zap), and issues from Raw magazine. The non-comics but still amazing part of the show includes artists such as Ed Ruscha, Martin Kippenberger, Carrol…

 The kissiest babyface on a campaign of Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Review: The Las Vegas Weekly breaks out their ballots and their copies of Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman. J. Calob Mozzococco says, "Weissman’s delicate line work and fine-art design style further remove the narrative from the caricature-style visuals usually associated with comics about politicians, and is perfectly suited to the meandering, poetic, almost meditative comic." •Interview (audio): Steven Weissman talks about comics, math and trying to identify with such public, political characters on the Inkstuds podcast with Robin McConnell. Weissman talks about the impotes impotus for Barack…

Children reveling in piles of leaves, the sharp intake of breath with the brisk morning chill. Just the other day, I was gazing out the window at the prismatic display of fall, we love the colors and splendor even though it represents the slow annual death of our tree friends. But thank god for that because Richard Sala is creating some gorgeous new work inspired by this time of the year. "Autumn and Evil" is a alphabetic collection of 26 drawings (if you go by the English Human alphabet) Sala is gradually posting on his blog. Drawings for letters A-I…

 The rawest wind-hit knuckles of Online Commentaries & Diversions: • Interview: C. Tyler is interviewed by the Phoenix New Times about You'll Never Know Book 3: A Soldier's Heart. Tyler speaks on the book's subject, her parents,"Mom saw the artwork for Soldier's Heart before she died. She cried; it had her seal of approval." • Review: Brigid Alverson and Chris Mautner speak on the CBR about what comics they'd spend their money on, including You'll Never Know Book 3: A Soldier's Heart. "Tyler’s superb storytelling makes this a book to read over and over again," says Alverson while Mautner thinks "Tyler…

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2012, the complete Love and Rockets library is finally going digital with this series of compact, thick, affordable, mass-market volumes that present the whole story in perfect chronological order. Fantagraphics and comiXology release the next book in Gilbert Hernadez' Love and Rockets series Human Diastrophism (following Heartbreak Soup, already available to download). Keeping with the uncomfortable themes that only October can bring, a serial killer stalks the idyllic Central American town of Palomar through 256 pages. This group of stories is Gilbert's sweeping exploration of the importance of individual human actions in a social and…

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS ANNOUNCES NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL AND COMIC BOOK FROM DASH SHAW Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce that it has acquired the new graphic novel, NEW SCHOOL, from acclaimed cartoonist Dash Shaw, who previously created the graphic novels BOTTOMLESS BELLY BUTTON (Fantagraphics, 2008) and BODYWORLD (Pantheon, 2010).  To be published in April 2013, NEW SCHOOL is an all-new, 340 page work of fiction that was loosely inspired by Shaw's experience as a teenaged foreign exchange student. "New School is my most personal book. It's all true (sort of). I dramatized and changed things to make everything closer to how…