Fantagraphics Blog

"Esther's consistently original, hilarious and heart-felt work evokes the travails of puberty with painful accuracy. After perusing Unlovable Vol. 3 we immediately broke out in zits and had clumsy beginner sex." – Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman "Tammy's enchanting smile and dazzling eyes are a gift of grace from Esther Watson." – Pendleton Ward, creator of Adventure Time "Unlovable is the great teen comic tragedy of our time!" – Matt Groening "A modest masterpiece, affecting and funny." – Booklist “GOOD!!!” – Lynda Barry “Unlovable is why we all want to forget about our high school years, but we just can't…

  Fantagraphics Books Digitally DebutsPeter Bagge's Hate & Dame Darcy's Meat Cake On ComiXology Today Two classic series now available digitally for the first time ever on comiXology First issue of Hate and Meat Cake FREE for limited time! April 9, 2014 – Seattle, WA / New York, NY – Fantagraphics Books, publishers of the world's greatest cartoonists and comiXology, the revolutionary cloud-based digital comics platform, today digitally debuted two fan-favorite comic series: Peter Bagge's Hate and Dame Darcy's Meat Cake. The first 10 issues of Peter Bagge's Hate and the first 7 issues of Dame Darcy's Meat Cake are…

If you've been collecting our definitive Love and Rockets Library softcover collections, make some room on the Gilbert Hernandez side of the shelf for Luba and Her Family, due in 2 1/2-3 months from now. This volume gathers material from the pages of Gilbert's solo comics post-L&R Vol. 1 as well as from the Measles anthology, presenting the narrative in a way never it's never been collected before. After the catastrophe in Palomar, Luba settles in to her new home in America and gets reacquainted with her sisters Fritz and Petra, with an extensive supporting cast of family, friends, and…

Cushlamochree, our advance copies of Barnaby Vol. 2 are here! It's two full years of Crockett Johnson's charming and witty daily strip, with the requisite scholarly bonus materials in the front and back. Looks great, huh? Daniel Clowes is designing this series of 5 hardcovers for us with a spare look that echoes the original paperback collections and perfectly suits Johnson's clear-line drawing style. Also, we mightn't've mentioned previously, this volume boasts a foreword by the great Jules Feiffer! Copies should be available about 2 months from now — you can pre-order yours and read a free excerpt we just…

What we have here in our upcoming book Cork High and Bottle Deep is a whole bunch of hilarious and surreal gag cartoons about booze — the acquisition thereof, the consumption thereof, the effects thereof — from the mid-20th century by the prolific and popular Virgil Partch, known by his signature "Vip." You don't see many businessmen in fedoras or bartenders wearing bow ties these days, but intoxication is a timeless topic and these panels will still have you falling off your barstool decades after their creation. You can read about 18 of them in our downloadable excerpt, which includes…

At four volumes and counting, our Steve Ditko Archives series continues collecting the early work by this prolific comics legend, and now we go back to the beginning for a new paperback edition of the sold-out first volume, Strange Suspense. This is the earliest, pre-Code stuff, which means that it's the grisliest and most horrifying, just like you like it! Our downloadable excerpt includes the Table of Contents and two complete short stories: "Library of Horror" ("Good heavens! I've trespassed into the beyond — and there's no escape!") and "Die Laughing!" ("I-I'm clearing out! This joke of Chandler's is too…

It's a great pleasure to reveal the final cover artwork for one of our most anticipated books of 2014. How to Be Happy collects short comics by Eleanor Davis and it will floor you with its beauty and depth. You've seen some of this work in Best American Comics, Mome, Nobrow, and Lucky Peach (if you're tuned in to the hip print outlets) and on the web (if you're tuned in to Tumblr), and now it's collected in one gorgeous book, due out this Summer. Pre-sale is on now, and more previews are in the pipeline. For now, we thought you might like a…

Portland is priviledged to host the next installment of the national Illustration Conference, ICON, and on Saturday, July 12th, they welcome special guest, visual journalist Janet Hamlin! "Author and illustrator Janet Hamlin has been where very few journalists or artists have dared to tread. Ms. Hamlin has had a front seat to history as the only courtroom artist to sketch the military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Her drawings and accompanying text provide rare insight to the military court and are the only visuals the world is allowed to see." Experience her collection, Sketching Guantanamo: Court Sketches of the Military…

COMICS IN A MOVIE ALERT! FINDING NEIGHBORS is coming to a film festival near you, as soon as this weekend and it's about a cartoonist. There is some Fantagraphics fun sprinkled in here and there so keep your eyes peeled for the Fanta-Look-and-Find. FINDING NEIGHBORS is showing this weekend at the Florida Film Festival in Orlando and the Boston LGBT Film Festival as well as Dallas and California later this month so check their site for more details. FINDING NEIGHBORS is a comedic drama about Sam Tucker (Oscar® nominee Michael O'Keefe, The Great Santini), a successful stay-at-home graphic novelist, who…

Judgment Day and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library)illustrated by Joe Orlando; written by Al Feldstein, Ray Bradbury et al. 192-page black & white 7.25" x 10.25" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-727-7 Ships in: May 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Joe Orlando was a mainstay at EC, especially on science fiction, and this collects 23 of his best sci-fi stories. All of them, most scripted by Al Feldstein, serve up classic O. Henry-style endings, such as “I, Robot,” and “Fallen Idol.” The title story is one of EC’s most famous, with its blunt anti-racism message. When it was printed…