Fantagraphics Blog FantaBlog

Via Facebook: "Jim Woodring has finally finished drawing WEATHERCRAFT, a sprawling Manhog epic chock full of torture, tyranny, enlightenment and amnesia, and will celebrate by bringing a carton of Devil Dogs (the confection, not the wurst) to Cafe Racer tonight. Come on down!" Weathercraft is scheduled to come out Spring '10. Photo by Mary Woodring.

One of our most-requested items is Love and Rockets t-shirts… we continue to disappoint on that front, but Stüssy fills in the gap with some Jaime Hernandez t-shirts in their new Fall line — plus they've got a spiffy video interview with Jaime up right now (sorry no direct permalink — their site is totally Flash-ified). Hat tip to Martin Wong of Giant Robot, who adds that "Locas [is] a must for the library of anyone who likes indie comics, punk rock, or well-told fiction."

Attention NYC Thrizzle fans: next Monday, Sept. 28, this happens, with Michael Kupperman (click for larger version):

…And speaking of Tony Millionaire, did you see Jeopardy last week? Where Tony's brother-in-law totally destroyed Wolf Blitzer? It was crazy.

  The Conrad Groth sketchbook is a mammoth thing: at least 12" square with thick glossy art stock and maybe a couple hundred pages to be filled. Fantagraphics Founder, Gary Groth, gets the best cartoonists in the world to do sketches for his young son and it is AMAZING. I can't imagine the pressure of sketching in it. There's no B-Team in this thing. And nobody who sees it can stop turning the pages to see what's next. As Gary is preparing to leave for SPX, he brought in the book, bound for the hands of Gahan Wilson so I…

Hey you guys, it's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Lists: Comic Book Galaxy's "Comics 666" group list-making roundup of top 6 graphic novels, collections or comics of 2009 includes several Fantagraphics selections from contributors Rocco Nigro and Geoff Grogan • Review: "It's nice to see some Tardi, and it's especially nice to see the kind of Tardi present in West Coast Blues: nasty but just, chaotically controlled, hopeful yet hopeless. This graphic novel is a turbo-charged pace car for the likes of Vertigo Noir (which I like, as you'll recall), telling the boys to keep up if they can…. [Is]…

Cambridgeans! You have a rare chance to meet two of the notorious Deitch brothers together at the venerable Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square this Saturday, Sept. 26, from 5-7 PM. Kim and Seth will both be signing Deitch's Pictorama and Kim will be signing his own books of course. Find a bit more info here on the MYP LiveJournal.

Here's snappy-looking gent Paul Karasik at the Strand Bookstore for his Fletcher Hanks Experience presentation last week.

Here's a nice chunk of Online Commentary & Diversions: • Awards: La educación de Hopey Glass (the Spanish edition of The Education of Hopey Glass) by Jaime Hernandez has won yet another Best Foreign Work award at a Spanish festival, this time the XIV Avilés Comic Convention, reports Science Fiction Awards Watch (via the Forbidden Planet International blog) • Review: "These latest tales from the art comics trailblazers are sure to draw readers in with their melancholic tone and the adventurous comic art that has enthralled readers for decades. …[W]e see Jaime's superheroes going wild, both narratively and visually…. 'Sad…

Friday again already? Time for some webcomics! Vaguely inappropriate snack treats are the subject of this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan… At last, the final installment of Steven Weissman's "Blue Jay," an epic 51-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures…. Topics include animals, furniture, and tattoos in our Monday-Friday Rocky strips by Martin Kellerman. Enjoy!