Fantagraphics Blog

Buz Sawyer Vol. 3: Typhoons and Honeymoonsby Roy Crane 232-page black & white/color 9.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-703-1 Ships in: March 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Buz Sawyer — adventurer, bon vivant, and former bachelor — can't let a little thing like romance and marriage slow him down. Buz knows that Christy is the only woman for him — brave, beautiful, and able to handle herself when the going gets tough, and just the kind of woman Buz needs when the chips are down — a lover and a fighter. And indeed, Christy has her mettle…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.Stranger Than Life: Cartoons and Comics 1970-2013 by M.K. Brown 248-page black & white/color 8.5" x 11" softcover • $35.00ISBN: 978-1-60699-708-6 "Brown has a natural feel for the kind of raised-consciousness-twist gags on which so much of the best panel cartooning depends after 1960, but she also has a unique sense…

Our recent book Vip: The Mad World of Virgil Partch, massive as it is, still only skims the surface of Partch's work. With Cork High and Bottle Deep, coming this summer, we plunge a swizzle stick into the depths of one aspect of his prolific career: boozy cartoons! Nothing amplifies the human comedy more than liquorous libations, and nobody captured mankind's firewater-fueled foibles like Vip. We've bottled the bacchanal up in this classy, minimalist cover worthy of your top shelf. Put it on your tab now and we'll serve it up to you as soon as it's available.

(Image: Summer Vacation 1999 © 1988 Argo Pictures) A student has committed suicide at a boys-only boarding school leaving only an enigmatic note behing. During the summer vacation of 1999, only three students remain and one day, a boy who looks exactly like the dead student shows up… Starting this week, the Japan Society in NYC is hosting a film series titled A Tribute to Donald Richie, Part 2: Richie's Electric Eight: The Bold & The Daring. On Thursday, March 13th at 7pm the opening night film is SUMMER VACATION 1999 better known to you as The Heart of Thomas!…

Coming RIGHT UP, Elysian Brewing Company is releasing the new Jim Woodring Oddland brew: Ginger Berry Brown Ale! This new crispy brew features "a thicket of raspberry, blackberry and boysenberry with a thorny touch of ginger." It joins the past brews like the Peppercorn Saison and Spice Pear Ale and on cold refrigerator shelves everywhere (and Charles Burns' 12 Beers of the Apocalypse from 2012). Elysian Brewing Company will be tapping their Woodring Oddland kegs on Thursday, March 13th at all their Seattle locations so be sure to pull up a bar stool (maybe with your favorite Frank graphic novel…

Yo, Jersey! Several Fantagraphics artists will be guests of honor at the 2014 Asbury Park Comicon on Saturday, April 12th and Sunday, April 13th! This year's special guests include Peter Bagge, Bob Fingerman, Charles Forsman, and Miss Lasko-Gross, among many others, but these are clearly the best.  Not only can you get your books signed by these folks, but you can also catch some panels throughout the weekend, particularly on Saturday, on the lower level of the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel. Such as: Saturday •  1:00 PM // The World of Harvey Kurtzman: Denis Kitchen on the life and art of…

A beautiful little book about god-awful occurrences, Conor Stechschulte's debut The Amateurs has arrived at the office in a bundle of advance copies. Two butchers in rural, pre-industrial America are afflicted with mysterious selective amnesia and an inexplicable dedication to their job; the results are absurd and disastrous, and the story is framed with hints of the supernatural. It would be a comedy of errors if it weren't all so horrifying. This unsettling, kinetic, and breathtaking graphic novella arrives in stores in May; read an 8-page excerpt and pre-order your copy right here.

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Young Romance 2: The Early Simon & Kirby Romance Comicsby Joe Simon & Jack Kirby 200-page full-color 7.75" x 10" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-732-1 See Previews / Order Now BARGAIN COMBO: Young Romance + Young Romance 2 Gift Set Price: $59.98 $47.98 From tears to soda fountains, from mobsters to pretty ingénues in freshly pressed dresses, the stories of love and betrayal in Young Romance 2 will prompt you to grab a tissue box or swoon in delight. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's sensational romance comics continue in this sequel to…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Stranger Than Life: Cartoons and Comics 1970-2013 by M.K. Brown 248-page black & white/color 8.5" x 11" softcover • $35.00ISBN: 978-1-60699-708-6 See Previews / Order Now M.K. Brown is one of the funniest cartoonists of the last four decades — or ever, take your pick — and her body of work has long been savored by aficionados but never comprehensively collected — until now. Stranger Than Life is the first retrospective of Brown's cartoons and comics from their original appearances in the National Lampoon, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, Playboy, and other…

In celebration of what would've been Jim Flora's 100th birthday, the Rowayton Arts Center in Rowayton, CT, presents the exhibit The Amazing Art of Jim Flora. This wonderful show is truly a family affair: it's curated by Jim's son, Joel Flora, and both Jim and his wife, Jane, were founding members of the RAC, and active members until their deaths (she in 1985; he in 1998). About a dozen large pieces that represent just a fraction of Flora's long career will be displayed in the Portside Gallery. Of his father's work, Joel Flora says, “My father had a wonderfully open…