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After several years under Seattle's soggy skies, author Pat Thomas is making the move to Los Angeles, and what better way to celebrate than with a book signing for Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975! Welcome Pat to town on Wednesday, June 13th at Skylight Books for a signing and presentation, beginning at 7:30 PM. Skylight Books is located at 1818 N. Vermont Avenue, just 3 1/2 blocks north of the Sunset/Vermont Metro station, next to the Los Feliz 3 cinema.

* Other People's Publications** Yeah, You Know Me. "Down With OPP" is our erratically-scheduled column where we spotlight books by other publishers that we carry at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.  And I'm excited to announce we just got in a batch of Darth Vader and Son by Jeffrey Brown, out now from our friends at Chronicle Books! This is a charming little book that depicts what it might've been like if Darth Vader had raised Luke Skywalker as a kid: bedtime stories about Darth Maul, trips to the zoo to see the banthas, afternoon baseball games with the lightsaber. You…

The latest Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Certainly, the comic’s self-contained gag-a-day format, along with the clarity and force of Bushmiller’s compositions, can often make each strip seem like an instance of emphatic singularity, a totem to be worshipped in dumb awe. But Nancy Is Happy returns to this gag-a-day strip precisely its daily qualities, so often overlooked. There is, we rediscover, an aspect of the quotidian to Nancy, a rhythmic unfolding in time, an ordinariness repeated with such unrelenting frequency that we’ve opted to shunt it into the sublime. Reading Nancy in continuity, rather than in isolation, may be an unfamiliar experience,…

Via Forbidden Planet International comes late-breaking news that Olivier Schrauwen has an art show of original drawings and prints opening tomorrow (today actually — it's already Friday in Belgium) at Bries Space in Antwerp. Head to FPI for all the details (except for the misidentification of Olivier's English-language publisher)!

Prince Valiant Vol. 5: 1945-1946 by Hal Foster 112-page full-color 10.5" x 14.25" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-484-9 Ships in: June 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Fully half of this latest volume of Hal Foster’s epic masterpiece — again scanned from superb syndicate proofs — is devoted to the remaining chapters of “The Winning of Aleta,” a 20-month (!) epic in which Valiant obsessively pursues his bride to be. Not surprisingly this is followed by a sequence called “Matrimony,” which ends with a newly wed queen adjusting to the luxurious, exciting court life at Camelot. But Val’s marriage does…

Richard Sala is unlocking the vaults with "Skeleton Key," a career-spanning retrospective dramatis personæ featuring new artwork of characters from his books throughout the years with a short bio in a trading card-esque format. He's posting them in batches on his blog and one by one on his Tumblr, with more to come. It's a real treat for Sala fans (like me)!

In this month's issue of Booklist you can find reviews of two of our recent releases, excerpted below: Cruisin' with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Tooté by Spain Rodriguez: "Rodriguez… had the perfect youth for reality comics. He grew up in an ethnically mixed working- and lower-middle-class neighborhood of Buffalo, and he was self-directed from early on. He went to religious instruction on his own initiative (his parents were indifferent) until a boozy priest chewed him out without hearing his story. He attended public school, discovered EC Comics, turned teenager just as R & B turned to…

Please join us at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery as we welcome two of the country’s most acclaimed contemporary cartoonists: Jeffrey Brown on Saturday, June 2 and Joe Sacco on Saturday, June 9. These remarkable artists represent the current diversity of alternative comix and their potential to impact both popular and political culture. Upon graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, Jeffrey Brown came to the attention of comix readers with works dealing with relationships and romantic misadventures. His primitive rendering style complemented his candid observations in a series of accessible graphic novels comprising the “Girlfriend Trilogy.” His recent work has…

Someone buy THIS  for me? There was a time that we had this painting in the Fanta offices for awhile, during production of the first GHOST WORLD hardcover edition in 1996 or 1997. It's much larger in person than it was ever reproduced. I loved it so much I made a full-size color xerox of it that I still have. I'll just have to get that framed, I guess. *sigh*  

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli 144-page full-color 7.75" x 10.25" softcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-559-4 "…I already have the four Ignatz issues, but I won’t let that stop me from recommending Interiorae, Gabriella Giandelli’s dark and occasionally surreal look at the drab lives of various people living in an apartment complex. This…