Fantagraphics Blog

{mosimage}Roger Langridge was born in New Zealand in 1967. He decided to become a cartoonist when he was six years old; for some reason it stuck (perhaps because it was more attainable than his previous career goal of “mad scientist”). Since 1990, when he moved to London to pursue his career, Roger Langridge has worked for most of the major comic publishers in the English-speaking world, as well as sustaining a parallel career as an illustrator. His self-published title “Fred the Clown” (collected into one volume by Fantagraphics in 2004) has been nominated for Eisner, Harvey, Ignatz and Reuben Awards….

{mosimage}Kaz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1959. During the 1980s he studied comics under Art Spiegelman and contributed to the early issues of Raw magazine, eventually releasing his first anthology collection, the oversized (and now out of print and highly sought-after) Buzzbomb, with Fantagraphics Books. In 1991 he started the weekly self-syndicated comic strip: Underworld. Fantagraphics began collecting Underworld into book form in April of 1995, with five collections released to date. Sidetrack City and other Tales, a collection of longer comic strips, was published by Fantagraphics in 1996. The Underworld comic strip has been nominated for a…

{mosimage}The Norwegian cartoonist Jason combines a poker-faced minimalist anthropomorphic style with more than a passing nod to the “clear-line” ethos of Hergé. As he has shown in a series of acclaimed graphic novels, this seemingly limited approach has proven amazingly versatile, allowing Jason to create gag comedy (Meow, Baby!), romantic melodramas (Tell Me Something), dramas (Hey, Wait…), and genuine thrillers (the period detective novel The Iron Wagon) — often without even the benefit of words, and using a stylishly minimalist color palette to boot. Jason won the Norwegian “Sproing” Award for “Best Norwegian Comic Book” twice, in 1995 and 2000….

{mosimage}Bill Griffith grew up in Levittown, New York. He attended Pratt Institute and studied painting and graphic arts concurrently with Kim Deitch — they dropped out about the same time. Inspired by Zap, Griffith began making underground comics in 1969, and joined the cartoonists in San Francisco in 1970. Griffith’s famous character Zippy the Pinhead made his initial appearances in early underground comic books, morphing into a syndicated weekly strip in 1976 and then a nationally-syndicated daily strip a decade later. Griffith is married to cartoonist and editor Diane Noomin. They live in Connecticut. “In two decades, Bill Griffith’s Zippy…

{mosimage}Kim Deitch has a reserved place at the first table of underground cartoonists. The son of UPA and Terrytoons animator Gene Deitch, Kim was born in 1944 and grew up around the animation business. He began doing comic strips for the East Village Other in 1967, introducing two of his more famous characters, Waldo the Cat and Uncle Ed, the India Rubber Man. In 1969 he succeeded Vaughn Bodé as editor of Gothic Blimp Works, the Other’s underground comics tabloid. During this period he married fellow cartoonist Trina Robbins and had a daughter, Casey. “The Mishkin Saga” was named one…

{mosimage}Jordan Crane grew up in Long Beach, CA. Warning signs of his renaissance-man abilities were evident in his sojourn at his college newspaper, the Daily Trojan, at the University of Southern California, where he functioned at various times as a cartoonist, art director and columnist (not to mention his engineering studies). Crane went on to publish both his own and other people’s comics through his press, Red Ink, and edit and design the ambitious anthology NON (which won several AIGA 365 awards), among other projects (which included silk-screening and a record label). His current Fantagraphics work consists of the semi-regular…

Mark Bodé was born in Utica, New York. He is the son of the legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bodé. Bodé attended The Art School in Oakland, California. His first professional job was for Heavy Metal Magazine when he was asked to color his father’s black and white strip “Zooks, the First Lizard in Orbit” when he was fifteen. He was a fine arts major at The School of Visual Arts in New York City and studied animation and etching at San Francisco State University. His publications include Gyro Comics, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cobalt 60, the graphic novel. Mark’s work…