Fantagraphics Blog

For my dad's recent 60th birthday I thought I was being very thoughtful when I sent him a mousepad featuring a picture of his first car– a damaged picture that I had reconstructed for him in Photoshop. When I called him he laughed since even he hasn't used a mousepad in years. BUT that's all the more reason to get your highly collectible Jordan Crane mousepad before everyone realizes that it's the last mousepad that will ever be made. PLUS you help out Jenny Ryan's Felt Club. Or, at the same site, you can buy a pretty mirror with art…

This report of Joe's recent visit with the Walker Art Center Teen Program is really great.

While you wait for the Simpsons to air on Sunday night, enjoy the latest chapter of Daniel Clowes' Mister Wonderful.

My new favorite diversion: Mary In Comic Con Land. Artist Mary Fleener lives just north of San Diego and as such has attended a *lot* of Comicons over the last 25 years, and now she's sharing a quarter-century of photos. It's a treasure trove featuring just about every alt comix luminary you can think of from the last three decades, from Spiegelman to Bagge to Seda to Clowes to to Groening to Eisner and dozens more. And they're all so young and fresh-faced, positioned against faded convention center walls and faux-wood paneling, with none of the glitzy excess of today's…

I have absolutely no use for the perfect coin purse. But Ray Fenwick makes me want things I don't need.

Ray recently guest blogged on one of my favorite sites, Book By Its Cover. There he has summarized his love of Mat Brinkman as such: "I'm always searching for art that gives me both something I understand and something I don't."

I proudly own this enormous etching by Lizz Hickey of an unsettling, beautiful and overwhelming slice of extraterrestrial landscape. It's one of the most dense worlds I could imagine creating, brimming with details that all seem to insinuate life-going-on. Unfortunately that image is not on her Flickr page. BUT, now she's cranking out nearly 100 different prints that seem to be microcosms within that crazy world. Close-ups of vague organic forms doing uncertain things. I like it. As an acquaintance of mine might say, I understand it and I don't understand it.

Finally! This Sunday night (8PM/7C) is the long-awaited airing of The Simpsons episode featuring Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore and Jack Black. Reportedly, the episode finds Jack Black's character opening "Coolsville," a hipster comic shop that threatens the Comic Book Guy and Android's Dungeon. How Clowes, Spiegelman and Moore factor in we can only guess, but can't wait to find out. Set those Tivos early.

NEWSARAMA has the scoop. UPDATE: Adam Grano pointed out to me that in that Newsarama thread, commenter Alex Cruz really sums it up when he says, "Wou, Allred is hallucinate hard with the marihuana, is traveling in same flight that Moebius." Couldn't have put it better myself.

We were extremely pleased to learn that Ellen Forney and Sherman Alexie won a National Book Award for young people's literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Alexie and illustrated by Forney. Hearty congratulations! You can congratulate Ellen in person tonight at Richard Hugo House, or, if you're patient and/or cheap, at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on February 9th at the opening of her exhibit "Lust," celebrating the release of her new book Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads from Seattle's The Stranger. More details TBA.