Fantagraphics Blog

Hotwire Comics Vol. 2Various artists; edited by Glenn Head The cartoon anthology that puts the kicks back in comics strikes again. Climb on board the Hotwire express for another electrifying joyride — from the sublime to the ridiculous, and all parts in between. Hotwire Vol. 2 includes some of the strongest narrative comics around. Tim Lane's epic autobiographical strip, "Spirit," portrays the grittiness, desperation, and terror that accompanied him as he went on the bum, riding the rails. "Niacin" by Mary Fleener is the sordid but hilarious story of a hallucinatory date with a drug dealer. Mack White brilliantly deconstructs…

I haven't had a chance to really check this out yet, but Noah Berlatsky has, with the help of a few friends, put together this thing called the Gay Utopia symposium. Both Johnny Ryan and Dame Darcy contributed. There's lots of other comics related stuff too; contributions by Ariel Schrag, Michael Manning, Lilli Carré, Edie Fake, Dewayne Slightweight, and Nishizaka Hiromi, as well as essays and more.

Linda Medley is on a whirlwind tour of six French cities celebrating the release of CHATEAU L'ATTENTE, the French edition of CASTLE WAITING. Here she is in Paris (her first leg of the tour), where a comics store/gallery is holding a CASTLE WAITING art show (yes, those are all originals on the wall). After this it will be on to Angouleme, where CHATEAU L'ATTENTE is a nominee in contention for best French language graphic novel of the year. You can tell she's signing in France because she has been given a plate of cheese for sustenance. Over on this side of the…

The latest "Daniel Clowes is working on a movie" story involves Clowes writing the screenplay for an animated film directed by Michel Gondry based on a story and artwork by Gondry's son Paul. More here and here.

  I meant to blog this over the holidays and simply forgot: a ten-minute documentary about Mark Morris' version of the Nutcracker, The Hard Nut. The Hard Nut was designed by Charles Burns, and Morris discusses their collaboration in detail.

  That's right: skating with Anders Nilsen. And some not so nice behavior at the end. Shame on you, Anders.

Beto-esque image found on Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin.

The latest Inkstuds interview features a fine talk with three fellas I consider friends but also have great respect for as writers and thinkers about comics: Jeet Heer, Tom Spurgeon, and Dan Nadel. It starts off a bit shaky – the show doesn't even start until ten minutes in, and then Dan and Tom are both late and the dialogue kind of stalls all over again when each one joins. But once they get going it's a great, thoughtful listen.

Since I started as a book designer here at Fantagraphics, one of the most common questions I get is "Where can I find a good comic book font?" And usually I just say "Look Chris, you've been bugging me about that every month since about Acme #3 and I just don't know!" But now I finally have that answer: Comic Book Fonts from the REAL pros!   Okay but obvious jokes aside: I really DO get that question and I guess that's my answer now. I can only think of one of our regular artists who doesn't hand-letter his/her own work. We…

Jacob Covey emailed myself, Adam Grano and Mike Baehr a few minutes ago with THIS link to an eBay auction that ends in 22 hours, promising to wear this item to work EVERY DAY if we buy it for him. We don't make enough to go in on $4K three ways, but if there's a wealthy benefactor out there with a sick sense of humor, we would really like to call his bluff. You have no idea how much this would improve office morale (for most of us, anyway). P.S. Adam said he'd go $100 easy, as would I, and…