Fantagraphics Books — Booth #1721
It’s just around the corner! San Diego Comic-Con returns and Fantagraphics will be there in full force at Booth #1721! Read on for details of panels, programming, special guests, and more!
Special Guests:
Emil Ferris
Writer, artist, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
Emil Ferris grew up in Chicago during the turbulent 1960s and is consequently a devotee of all things monstrous and horrific. In a previous life, she worked as an illustrator and toy sculptor and received her MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. Ferris was a 2010 Toby Devan Lewis Fellow in the Visual Arts and in 2017 received two Ignatz awards for the first volume of her debut graphic novel, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters.
Manuele Fior
Writer, artist, 5000 kM Per Second, The Interview, Blackbird Days
Manuele Fior was born in Cesena in 1975. After getting a degree in architecture in Venice in 2000, he moved to Berlin, where he worked until 2005 as a cartoonist, illustrator and architect. He published the graphic novels The Interview (Futuropolis 2013), Cinq Mille Kilomètres Par Seconde (Atrabile 2010, winner Fauve d’Or, Meilleur Album, Festival International de Angoulême 2011, and Premio Gran Guinigi, Autore Unico, Lucca 2010), Mademoiselle Else (Delcourt 2009, winner, Prix de la ville de Genève 2009), and Les Gens Le Dimanche (Atrabile 2004). His illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Le Monde, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone magazine. He is working on a new comic book titled Celestia. His work appears in English translations from Fantagraphics Books. Manuele lives in Paris.
Trina Robbins
Cartoonist, comics herstorian, Wimmen’s Comix, Last Girl Standing
Trina Robbins has been drawing and writing comics since 1966, when she drew comics for the East Village Other, New York’s iconic underground newspaper. In 1970, she produced the very first all-woman comic book, It Ain’t Me, Babe. In 1972 she was one of the founding mothers of Wimmen’s Comix, the longest-lasting women’s anthology comic book (1972–1992).
In the mid-1980s, tired of hearing publishers and editors say that girls don’t read comics and that women had never drawn comics, she co-wrote (with catherine yronwood) Women and the Comics, the first of what would become a series of histories of women cartoonists. In 1986 she became the first woman to draw a Wonder Woman comic book.
In 2013 Trina was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. In 2017 she was inducted into the Wizard World Hall of Legends, and at the San Diego Comic-Con she received the Eisner Award for editing the two-volume reprint collection of The Complete Wimmin’s Comix.
Carol Tyler
Writer, artist, Fab4Mania, Soldier’s Heart
Carol Tyler is one of the most important autobiographical artist/writers in comics. Her latest, Fab4Mania (2018) is about her Beatlemania.
Tyler started with Weirdo in the ‘80s. Since then, Fantagraphics has published The Job Thing (1993), Late Bloomer (2005), the You’ll Never Know trilogy (2009–2012) which became Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand my WWII Veteran Father, A Daughter’s Memoir (2015). Soldier’s Heart received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, and the Cartoonist Studio Prize from slate.com. It earned 11 Eisner Award nominations, two LA Book Prize nominations, and an Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Tyler’s brilliant “The Hannah Story” is on The Comics Journal’s Top 100 Comics of the 20th Century.
Cartoonist, Fante Bukowski: Struggling Writer series, One Dirty Tree
Noah Van Sciver is an Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist who first came to comic readers’ attention with his critically acclaimed comic book series Blammo. His work has appeared in Spongebob Comics, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Best American Comics, as well as countless graphic anthologies. Van Sciver is a regular contributor to MAD magazine and has created five graphic novels including Johnny Appleseed, Saint Cole, and the Eisner Award-nominated Fante Bukowski: Struggling Writer series for Fantagraphics books. He is currently working on an autobiographical graphic novel titled One Dirty Tree, which will be released by Uncivilized Books.
Robert Williams
Artist, Zap; creator Juxtapoz art magazine
Born March 2, 1943 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Robert Williams moved to Los Angeles in 1963 for a formal art education. As a student at Los Angeles City College, he became the editorial cartoonist for the college paper and received a national award.
In 1968, Williams’ involvement in underground cartooning led to his participation in the Zap Comix collective. During this time, Williams produced cartoon oriented oil paintings as he was determined to stem the tide against academic resistance to naturalistic painting. Standing almost alone, Williams eventually united with artists in the Punk Rock movement who shared his cartoon/fine art sympathies. As a result, Williams was deemed the father of low brow art. Recognizing a need led Williams to create Juxtapoz art magazine in 1994. This, along with a 27-year stint at the prestigious Tony Shafrazi Gallery, gained Williams serious national recognition. Currently he is enjoying a traveling museum tour of his work both here and abroad.
Panels & Programming:
Thursday, July 19
10:00am – 11:00am — Writing and Drawing the Past – Room 32AB
History finds its way into all the stories we tell, whether those are autobiographical, fiction, or nonfiction. These creators open up about how historical factors alter the way their story is researched, the twists and turns history creates in their storytelling, and more. Hillary Chute (Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere) moderates a conversation between Thi Bui (The Best We Could Do), Jason Lutes (Berlin), Noah Van Sciver (Fante Bukowski, Johnny Appleseed), and Jen Wang (The Prince and The Dressmaker), who will delve into the unique considerations facing a cartoonist drawing and writing the past.
1:30pm – 2:30pm — Monsters in Our Midst: Our Favorite Creepy Comics Creators — Room 8
Love things that go bump in the night? Hear what it takes to get those monsters out of your nightmares and onto the page with Comic-Con special guests Rafael Albuquerque, Emil Ferris, Alex Grecian, Jeff Lemire, Terry Moore, and William Stout. Moderated by the Cartoon Art Museum’s Andrew Farago.
2:00pm – 3:00pm — Focus on Robert Williams — Room 32AB
Legendary fine artist, cartoonist, and Comic-Con special guest Robert Williams discusses his storied career in comics, art, hot rods, California culture, and much more in conversation with Fantagraphics associate publisher Eric Reynolds. The two will discuss Zap Comix, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s studio, the underground comics heyday, the Los Angeles punk scene, and everything else all the way up to the present.
4:00pm – 5:00pm — Splashing Ink on Museum Walls — Room 29AB
Do comics belong in museums? Lots of major art and cultural institutions seem to think so, with ambitious new shows and comic art museums springing up everywhere, including one spearheaded by Comic-Con itself. Artist/writer Emil Ferris (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters), Kim Munson (editor, From Comics to Frames: Comic Art in Museums), writer/editor and exhibition consultant Ann Nocenti, and SDCC museum director Adam Smith converse about the future of comics on display, moderated by Rob Salkowitz (Forbes, Full Bleed).
7:00pm – 8:00pm – How to Read Nancy – Room 28DE
Comics scholars Paul Karasik (City of Glass) and Mark Newgarden (We All Die Alone) present their Eisner Award-nominated work How to Read Nancy, which ingeniously isolates the separate building blocks of the language of comics through the deconstruction of a single Nancy strip.
Friday, July 20
10:30am – 11:30am — Graphic Novels: From Eisner to Explosion! — Room 24ABC
Will Eisner revolutionized the comics medium with the publication of A Contract with God. Graphic novel annual sales have now outgrown comic book sales and can be found in an amazing array of genres. Comic-Con special guests Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics, The Sculptor), Jeff Smith (Bone, RASL), and Emil Ferris (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters) discuss the evolution of the graphic novel and what the future holds with moderator Paul Levitz (Brooklyn Blood, Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel).
11:30am – 12:30pm:— Forever Fantagraphics — Room 24ABC
Founder Gary Groth, associate publisher Eric Reynolds, cartoonists Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets), and graphic novelist Carol Tyler (Soldier’s Heart) present a brief history of the publisher of the world’s greatest cartoonists.
12:00pm – 1:00pm — Comics Arts Conference #6: Two Women and Wonder Woman — Room 26AB
Trina Robbins (Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists, 1896-2013) and Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson (DC Comics Before Superman: Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s Pulp Comics) confront constructions of Wonder Woman. Nicholson, in a critique of Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman,writes about the importance of Greek mythology to the birth of Wonder Woman and the use of that mythology in the stories. Robbins discusses the politics present in the Golden Age Wonder Woman stories.
12:00pm – 1:00pm — Spotlight on Manuele Fior — Room 29AB
1:00pm – :00pm — Spotlight on Noah Van Sciver —Room 28DE
1:30pm – 2:30pm — Revolutionary Ink: The 50th Anniversary of Underground Comix — Room 8
Meet the radical creators who made underground comix a revolution in American art and culture! Emerging from the 1960s counterculture, Underground Comix threw out all the rules, developing a new ethic for comics that celebrated absolutely unrestricted freedom of expression. From frank and erudite explorations of politics, sex, and drugs to twisted scatological expressions of the unrepressed id, underground comix were a snapshot of a turbulent America whose influence can still be felt today. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from the creators who were there and the next generation they inspired at this once-in-a-lifetime panel. Featuring Trina Robbins of It Ain’t Me Babe, the first all-women’s comics anthology; cartoonist and publisher Denis Kitchen; Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner; Zap contributor and Juxtapoz founder Robert Williams; and graphic novelists Mary Fleener and Carol Tyler, whose work was made possible by the trail blazed by the undergrounds. Moderated by historian and author Charles Brownstein, executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
Steve Ditko’s profound impact on the comic book medium cannot be overstated. His art touched people in one way or another, from casual fan to fellow professional, and will continue to do so for generations to come. Come see Gary Groth, Steve Leialoha, Paul Levitz, Nick Lowe, David Schwartz, and moderator Scott Dunbier as they discuss Ditko the artist and Ditko the man (while screening a video loop of nearly 150 images).
Emil Ferris is the cartoonist behind 2017’s most acclaimed graphic novel, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. She will discuss the influences of horror in fine art, film, literature and pop culture on her work. Moderating the discussion is NPR Books editor Petra Mayer.
3:30pm – 4:30pm — Wimmen’s Comix — Room 26AB
In the early 1970s, a group of women proved to the world that underground comix-and mainstream comics-wasn’t just a boy’s club by publishing the first and longest-running all-women comics anthology, Wimmen’s Comix. Trina Robbins, Mary Fleener, Lee Marrs, and Carol Tyler discuss of how they made herstory addressing menstruation, reproductive rights, and countless other topics that their male counterparts were unwilling or unable to tackle. Moderated by Betsy Gomez (CBLDF Presents She Changed Comics).
4:00pm – 5:00pm — Drawing Distinctive Characters — Room 23ABC
There are those artists whose work you always recognize and are immediately drawn to. How have these prolific artists crafted their unique style and stayed true to themselves while creating comics? Aspen’s Vince Hernandez finds out with Comic-Con special guests Andy Fish, Jeff Lemire, Jen Wang, Liniers, Manuele Fior, and Veronica Fish.
4:30pm – 5:30pm — Alternative Comics Anthologies, Then and Now — Room 26AB
Eric Reynolds (editor, Mome, Now), Justin Hall (editor, No Straight Lines), Carol Tyler (contributor, Wimmen’s Comics, Weirdo), Robert Goodin (editor, Oden), and Manuele Fior (5,000 Kilometers Per Second, The Interview)-all editors and artists behind some of the medium’s best anthologies-will talk about finding the future masters of the artform, the thrill of seeing great work getting published, and finding its audience. Moderated by Rob Salkowitz.
6:00pm – 7:00pm — Fantagraphics Disney Masters — Room 4
A presentation by veteran editor Mike Catron introduces the exciting new series from Fantagraphics Books, Disney Masters. This series highlights acclaimed artists from around the world working in the grand Walt Disney tradition. Many of these stories are new to American readers and will now be available for the first time in English.
