Fantagraphics Blog Jen Vaughn

 The most recent ramblin' Online Commentaries & Diversions: •Commentary: ABC News and Amy Bingham picked up a few quotes by a partial interview online by Gary Groth with Maurice Sendak. The full interview will be published in The Comics Journal #302 in December: “Bush was president, I thought, ‘Be brave. Tie a bomb to your shirt. Insist on going to the White House. And I want to  have a big hug with the vice president, definitely." •Commenary: MSNBC's Kurt Schlosser also writes on Maurice Sendak's TCJ #302 interview. In the article, associate publisher Eric Reynolds is also quoted, "[Sendak] was…

The most in vogue Online Commentaries and Diversions: •Interview (audio): Perk up your ears to the soothing interview of Angelman's creator, Nicolas Mahler, on the Inkstuds podcast. Robin McConnell covers all the bases with Mahler: "[My] main influence is American newspaper comics from the 30s, this was what I discovered when I about was 15-16. It was Krazy Kat and Windsor McCay, those were the things that were important to my drawing style. Wouldn't you have guessed from looking at my drawings?" •Preview: JK Parkin, Robot6, talks up a preview of The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. This previously…

Love and Rockets' Jaime Hernandez snapped this quick picture while at HeroesCon this week. You never can get enough of Hopey or Maggie.

 The up-to-the-minute Online Commentaries & Diversion:   •Plug: Our newest Jacques Tardi release, New York Mon Amour is out and available at your favorite comic shops. One of our such shop, Forbidden Planet, is very excited to have it in stock. Joe says, "I’m so glad the Fanta crew has been making these titles available again to English language readers." •Interview: WMFU host of Too Much Information, Benjamin Walker, questions Michael Kupperman about comics as a serious form of literature at his MIT Center for Civic Media conference talk. Kupperman: "You see high points. You have to build to that…

This month's issue of Booklist reviewed two recent releases by Fantagraphics creators, excerpted below: Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion by Hans Rickheit: "Here are early stories by the graphic novelist whose work… comes closer than any other’s (except Nate Powell’s) to the prose stories of Zoran Živkovi, Andrew Crumey, Kelly Link, Ray Vukcevich, Theodora Goss, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and other practitioners of what’s been called slipstream fiction. They feature people, animals, and flesh-and-machine hybrids in all stages of development and dissolution, from fetus and pupa to suppurating near-corpse to skeleton . . . Among their protagonists, a bear-headed man in a…

The most-current Online Commentaries & Diversions:  •Interview: MTV Geek questions Noah Van Sciver about his new graphic novel, The Hypo, and why he chose to focus on the man before the president. ". . . it’s important to see who [Lincoln] became, or I should say how he became is more spectacular when you think about who he was, and where he came from, because I don’t even know if that’s possible anymore, to come from nothing and then become a president, you know?"   •Review: Drew on ComicAttack.net reviews kid-friendly The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. "It’s not…

That's right, the 'Bat-Bandit' will appear in Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 3: High Noon at Inferno Gulch which is now available for to ORDER in the US and Canada. We hope you enjoyed the teasers because it scared the INK outta Mickey (and the interns).    

Found this on front door of Fantagraphics. Guess we've been warned too. . . Someone call Mickey Mouse .

Recently Fantagraphics stopped by Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Columbus. This structural testament to housing and preserving original cartoon strips makes it a one-of-a-kind-place. Curator Jenny Robb said hello but my after-hours and behind the scene tour guide was librarian Caitlin McGurk! Students of OSU and traveling scholars (like me!) can request to see original art and read books in the main reference room. The room itself is lined with popular comics reference material, less Marvel's Anatomy and more History of Chinese Comics that was written by a scholar rather than a draw-er.  Caitlin pulled…

The freshest Online Commentary & Diversions: •Review: Today on the Comics Alliance, writer Matt D. Wilson covers the unique career of Michael Kupperman. The king of one-man anthologies cannot be classified, "There's no need to elaborate on how or why [Mark Twain and Albert Einstein] know each other; Kupperman wants to get straight into the laboratory ghosts and ant colony visits. Kupperman's humor doesn't rest in relationships; it's invested in concepts." •Plug: Fantagraphics creator Michael Kupperman will be performing his own blend of comedy with geek rapper, Adam WarRock, on July 10th (for those of you not going to the…