Welcome back for another year of tablet-tempting digital releases as well as backlist barnburners. This week, we’ve got both! Up first is the second giant collection in the Complete Crepax project: The Time Eaters and Other Stories. Spanning the 1960s–1980s, this science fiction themed volume features Guido Crepax’s adventuress Valentina as well as two more of the famed Italian erotic artist’s heroines. Marianna is a mysterious friend, Belinda is a motorcycle-driving, pop art action star, and in “The Time Eater,” Valentina meets a curious couple in an asylum and is caught in a Rube Goldberg-like death trap. All of this…
What’s in Store: The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood on January 14
Join us at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday, January 14 as we celebrate one of midcentury America’s most influential artists. The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood debuts with an exhibition and slide talk by J. Michael Catron. Wallace Wood was among the most prolific and diverse artists of his era. His work included colorful covers for 1950s science fiction magazines and romance comics before contributing to the wildly popular war, crime, horror, and suspense comics on the notorious EC imprint, prior to its demise as result of the draconian restrictions imposed by the Comics Code Authority. He went…
The Year’s Last Digital Backlog Bonanza
We’re in the last week of the year, but we’ve got time for one more backlog dump before you hang up the new calendars. Working with comiXology and Google Play, we’re attempting to provide you with the best of our back catalog including these four books that are available digitally for the very first time: Nijigahara Holograph by Inio Asano Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental by Drew Friedman and Josh Alan Friedman From Shadow to Light: The Life and Art of Mort Meskin by Steven Brower Mascots by Ray Fenwick HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU…
What’s in Store: Ed Luce at Fantagraphics Bookstore on January 7
Join us at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday, January 7 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM as Bay Area artist Ed Luce presents his latest comix collection, Wuvable Oaf: Blood & Metal. Luce chronicles the adventures of Oaf Jadwiga, a gay former wrestler looking for love in unlikely places. The oversized Oaf lives in The City with a cluster of kittens and a fondness for Morrissey, queercore, and black metal music. The comical adventures and colorful characters in Luce’s work make for a wildly entertaining modern romance – at once outrageous and charming. With a background in fine art, Luce…
Re/Read: Palestine by Joe Sacco
Re/Read is a regular feature by Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery curator Larry Reid examining backlist books you may have missed or are worth another look. As much of the world’s attention turns to developments in the Middle East over two thousand years ago, I engage in my annual ritual of re-reading Joe Sacco’s Palestine. Shortly after arriving at Fantagraphics Books in 1992 as marketing and promotions director, Kim Thompson handed me blue line proofs of a new project by Joe Sacco. I remember thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” There was precious little precedent for this type of treatment of…
What’s in Store: Top Ten of 2016
It’s come time for Fantagraphics Bookstore curator Larry Reid to select my favorite comix of 2016. A tough task this year with so many wonderful new books – a little like choosing which of my children I love the most. The choices are so close this list could easily be reversed. 10. Hey Lady. With a button affixed to the cover of each issue, I was immediately attracted to Regina Schilling’s zines. When I was able to fully absorb the contents, it became clear there was more to these creations than a clever premise and seductive artwork. Schilling selects a…
Digital WE TOLD YOU SO and more!
It’s here! It’s here! It’s finally here! We Told You So, the book celebrating our 40th anniversary is here and ready to read and enjoy on your tablets. In 1976, a fledgling magazine held forth the idea that comics could be art. In 2016, comics can now be enjoyed by an adult readership and are reviewed favorably in the New York Times. We Told You So: Comics as Art is an oral history about Fantagraphics Books’ key role in helping build and shape an art movement around a discredited, ignored, and fading expression of Americana. It includes appearances by Chris…
Re/Read: Buddy Buys a Dump by Peter Bagge
Re/Read is an occasional column by Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery curator Larry Reid examining backlist books you may have missed or merit another look. This time we’ll focus on Buddy Buys a Dump by Peter Bagge. A generation of comix enthusiasts came of age following the foibles of Buddy Bradley and his crew of lovable losers in Peter Bagge’s Hate. This work came to define the youth movement associated with Seattle’s “grunge” counterculture. Bagge became a central figure in illustrating the attitudes and aesthetics of this global phenomenon. A truly remarkable achievement. Buddy Buys a Dump collects the 9 issues…
Digital Releases by Hanks, Luce, and Wood
Fletcher Hanks, Ed Luce, and Wally Wood make up our digital dream team this week. They are also accompanied by some rather risqué backlist titles. Here we go . . . Fletcher Hanks was the first great comic book auteur: he wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered all his stories between 1939 and 1941. Whether it’s the superhero Stardust dolling out poetic justice or the jungle protectress Fantomah tearing evildoers limb from limb, pop surrealism and violent mayhem are abundant in all of Hanks’s work. Originally featured in two paperbacks, this deluxe volume collects all of Hanks’s previously published material, plus…
We’re Thankful for New Digital Comics
A cornucopia of classic comics and more backlist favorites are on the menu for this week’s digital comics releases. All good things (and when we say good, we mean GREAT) must come to an end and today marks the release of the very last collection in the Complete Peanuts. Volume 26 collects all of Charles Schulz’s rare non-strop Peanuts art from gags to storybooks to recipes — all things no true Peanuts library would be complete without. As a fitting end to the series, Jean Schulz provides an emotional introduction. The Complete Peanuts Vol. 26 can now be found on…
