Re/Read: Inner City Romance

Re/Read in a recurring column by Fantagraphics Bookstore curator Larry Reid that examines backlist titles you may have missed or are worthy of another read. This time we’ll look at Guy Colwell’s essential Inner City Romance. Inner City Romance collects five issues of the transitional underground comic book series of the same name, originally published from 1972 to 1978. Colwell’s comix provide an unvarnished look at the impact of crippling poverty, substance abuse, and violent crime in the aftermath of the Bay Area’s sixties counterculture. His work is informed by his incarceration at McNeil Island federal penitentiary as a Viet…

Congratulations Eisner Award Winners!

Fantagraphics went home with an armful of Eisner Awards this year: Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips The Eternaut, by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Francisco Solano Lòpez, edited by Gary Groth and Kristy Valenti           Best Writer/Artist Bill Griffith, Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist                Best Comics-Related Book Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America, by Bill Schelly               Hall of Fame Inductee- Jacques Tardi                   Shop them all…

Joe Daly fans- get stoked for the release of Highbone Theater

Coming this summer and available for pre-order now: Highbone Theater by Joe Daly: Following a succession of some of the most quirky and outré graphic albums ever conceived, including the ongoing, award-winning RPG-inspired Dungeon Quest series, cartoonist Joe Daly has drawn his most ambitious stand-alone graphic novel yet — the 544 page Highbone Theater. Our protagonist Palmer — wallflower, mystic seeker and paper mill worker — moves into a new apartment with his outwardly self-assured and womanizing friend, Perry, and begins an epic struggle of love, hate, and self preservation. Events take a peculiar turn as Palmer befriends an iconoclastic co-worker,…

Congratulations to Carol Tyler- winner of the 2016 Cartoonist Studio Prize!

 Slate has announced the winners of the 2016 Cartoonist Studio Prize: “The winner of the Best Print Comic prize is Carol Tyler for her momentous Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father, a collection of Tyler’s three mournful, angry, beautiful memoirs about her dad, Chuck Tyler, his experiences on the European front in World War 2, and the PTSD—or “soldier’s heart”—that affected not just the rest of his life but his daughter Carol’s as well.” We congratulate her on this well-deserved honor and encourage everyone to purchase their own copy of this extraordinary work. http://www.fantagraphics.com/soldiersheart

FU Press: Street Scenes by Guy Colwell

Guy Colwell, the seminal underground cartoonist who created Inner City Romance, has been constructing social realist pen and ink drawings for nearly half a century. Street Scenes collects his most moving drawings focusing on both the vile decay and inspirational vibrancy of city life in a series of 36 stand-alone plates. Each portfolio is signed and numbered.         Check out this video preview: And individual prints from the portfolio:    

60 Years of Harold and the Purple Crayon

   Today marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Harold and the Purple Crayon. Harold was created by comics legend Crockett Johnson, who also brought the world the beloved Barnaby series. Add a Barnaby title to your collection: http://www.fantagraphics.com/artists/crockett-johnson/ And find fun ways to celebrate the anniversary: http://www.harpercollins.com/childrens/harold  

Comics Reporter interview Sammy Harkham on Crickets, Kramers and more

“I met the cartoonist and editor Sammy Harkham at a Comic-Con International either late in the period of my working at Fantagraphics or just after. I was younger then; Harkham was legitimately young. His Kramers Ergot series was on its first or second issue then. When the fourth volume of the anthology dropped in 2003, it was one of the stand up and notice moments that comics wasn’t going to let the previous decade’s industry-driven frustrations rob the art form of its momentum. Thoughtful and consistently of a high quality on the page, Kramers has gone on to become what many…

Fantagraphics Spaces Out With Joshua Cotter’s Nod Away

For Immediate Release: July 9, 2015-Seattle, WA-Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce its acquisition of Joshua Cotter’s new sci-fi epic Nod Away, to be released Spring 2016. Nod Away moves back and forth between physical and psychological worlds, utilizing traditional and abstract storytelling styles to explore what consciousness could be, where it’s located, and what function or point it serves.       Nod Away is set on a near-future version of Earth. Deep-space transport has been developed to take a small crew to a habitable planet in a nearby system in an attempt to begin colonization/repopulation. The Internet is now telepathic…

Dame Darcy launches a Patreon!

The ever so talented Dame Darcy has launched a Patreon– an ongoing way to support artists you love. Patrons will receive exclusive access to content from the creator as well as fanciful prizes. A must-see for Meat Cake fans!