Fantagraphics Blog FantaBlog

Dame Darcy has posted an update to her busy, busy art/music/performance schedule, with no fewer than 10 events scheduled in Portland, Olympia and Seattle between now and the end of October, starting with a cabaret performance in Portland TONIGHT!

Paul Buckley is Art Director at Penguin Books, a publisher known for iconic design (and Art Directors), and he recently started a Flickr page featuring a small sampling of his work. Buckley is also the guy who managed to spearhead all those amazing classics-of-literature-covered-by-cartoonists. It may seem obvious– Chris Ware doing the cover art to Candide, Jason doing Dharma Bums, Charles Burns on The Jungle, and so many more– but getting all that through the marketing teams and other red tape at an enormous publishing house isn't just brilliant, it's tenacious. Looks like the hits just keep coming with the…

Portable Grindhouse won't be out until the late holidays but after a long delay I'm pleased to finally be sending Jacques Boyreau's baby off to press. What seemed like a good suggestion at the time– to present these old beat up video tapes as austere artifacts (my "Richard Avedon" presentation according to Jacques)– turned into a nightmare of production. But at last, rest easy VHS fans, this thing is going to press. Featuring 200 pages of spreads showing the front and back of video boxes selected by Jacques, the book will also come inside a light cardboard slipcase, video box…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Tunes: Inkstuds presents the Jaime Hernandez mixtape: 17 songs selected by Jaime and presented for your listening enjoyment, from N.W.A. to B.Ö.C. to Mötley Crüe to Dölly Partön • Profile: "[Fletcher Hanks's] drawings, while often clunky, have a kind of primal 'rightness' and a narrative logic so wonderfully bizarre that it wins over readers normally skeptical of the kapow, blam, boom sequences of superhero comics. Beyond the comics themselves, though, it's [Paul] Karasik's smart enthusiasm for the work that tells readers in no uncertain terms that here is something to get excited about." –…

Scheduled to hit comics shops in the USA tomorrow: The Comics Journal #299, featuring Bob Levin's amazing investigation into the lost anthology The Someday Funnies, the Journal interview with Josh Cotter, Myron Waldman's Eve and lots more.  Visit our product page for more details and for links to free excerpts on the TCJ.com website. Your local shop can confirm availability if you give them a buzz beforehand.

Check out this awesome bag illustration that our own Tim Lane (of Abandoned Cars fame) did for our pals David & Dave at Secret Headquarters. If you're in Los Angeles, it's worth making a trip to SHQ just to pick up a free bag!   I can't explain the raccoon.   

The must-see comics event of the week. Michael Kupperman will performs his way through several of his comics, including one in 3-D! And yes, glasses will be provided. 

For the world to see, Hans Rickheit presents 14 pages from an earlier, "primordial version" of his graphic novel The Squirrel Machine. (To be clear: this is not the story as it appears in the book.)

Eric sent this to me to post, and I don't know where or how he found it, but it's a pretty great little slice of history: Sam Klemke documents his encounter with Ivan Brunetti at our booth at the 1999 San Diego Comic-Con and gets a good look at Ivan's convention sketchbook of unflattering caricatures (NSFW, needless to say). Dan Clowes, Jaime Hernandez and Richard Sala all make cameo appearances. And Batman. (YouTube link)

Esther Pearl Watson appears on KERA's Think to talk to Art&Seek host Jerome Weeks about her "hilarious and poignant" graphic novel Unlovable. Click here for the streaming video (screen capture above).