Fantagraphics Blog

Please join us in Georgetown at Fantagraphics Bookstore on Saturday, December 28 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM as we host a reception and book signing with Janet Hamlin. Her fascinating book, Sketching Guantanamo, captures the conditions faced by detainees in the makeshift island internment compound. Journalists at Guantanamo were subject to draconian security measures. Courtroom photography was banned. As a result, Hamlin's deft imagery provides the only visual record of these unparalleled proceedings. According to The New York Times, "When future historians search back in time to 'Camp Justice' and the rigidly controlled, tightly censored terrorist trials in Guantánamo, Cuba, they will…

"Kamen's art is deceptive in its seeming sweetness. It positioned him perfectly to go over the line into perversity, the hapless reader having no warning…. I look at him as being a seed of a style we'd later associate with David Lynch." – John Linton Roberson "All of these books are essential purchases for comics fans… These are the books that best show off how EC took genre stories seriously, striving to create comics that didn’t treat readers as naive or ignorant." – Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times "…I am not only appreciative…but also very impressed. [The books] are spectacular…

"No one could draw a rotted, walking corpse like Graham Ingels." – Donald Vaughan, (Florida) Sun-Sentinel "I love Ingels …" – George A. Romero "All of these books are essential purchases for comics fans… These are the books that best show off how EC took genre stories seriously, striving to create comics that didn’t treat readers as naive or ignorant." – Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times "…I am not only appreciative…but also very impressed. [The books] are spectacular packages of their featured artist and their stories." – Al Feldstein Sucker Bait and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library)Illustrated by Graham Ingels;…

Every year at this time, as much of the world turns its attention to momentous events in the small West Bank town of Bethlehem two millennia ago, I ritually read Joe Sacco’s Palestine. Sacco’s comic book serial was among the first projects I was asked to promote when I was hired as Fantagraphics marketing and promotions director. At the time, even referring to the occupied territories as Palestine was considered by many to be provocative. While the semantics of the discussion may have changed, the situation in Palestine has remained remarkably unchanged since Sacco visited the region and the first…

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is pleased to present The Cartoon Utopia, an exhibition and book signing with visionary cartoonist Ron Regé, Jr. opening Saturday, January 11 with a festive reception for the artist. The show continues through February 5, 2014. In The Cartoon Utopia, Regé examines religious, mystical, and spiritual philosophies employing an imaginative narrative construct. The subject ideally suits the artist’s intriguing rendering technique. In the words of cartoonist Chris Ware, Regé is "One of a handful of cartoonists in the history of the medium to not only reinvent comics to suit his own idiosyncratic impulses and inspirations as an artist,…

Jacob Covey was cleaning out some files and found these great photos he took of Kim & Gary posing outside our glamorous offices and with our old warehouse van. We miss ya, Kim. 

Zero Hour and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library)Illustrated by Jack Kamen; written by Al Feldstein et al. 170-page black & white 7.25" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-704-8 Ships in: January 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now BARGAIN COMBO: Sucker Bait + Zero Hour Gift Set Price: $57.98 $46.38 With his wholesome approach, Jack Kamen stood out amongst the grand-guignol grunge, gritty realism, or futuristic dazzle of his fellow EC cartoonists — but his brilliant editor/writer Al Feldstein found a way to exploit the surface innocence of his style with seemingly nice stories of romance gone horribly wrong, or future fantasies…

Sucker Bait and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library)Illustrated by Graham Ingels; written by Al Feldstein et al. 216-page black & white 7.25" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-689-8 Ships in: January 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now BARGAIN COMBO: Sucker Bait + Zero Hour Gift Set Price: $57.98 $46.38 Even sixty years after their original release, in a post-Saw-and-Hostel era of explicit horror, EC Comics superstar Graham "Ghastly" Ingels's grisly pages retain the power to shock. His loving depictions of the endless corruption of flesh and nature made him the go-to guy for stories involving swamps, maniacs, and dismemberment — and…

Next month's issue of Booklist will include a review of a recent release by Fantagraphics creators, excerpted below:    Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays Vol. 2: Robin Hood Rides Again by Floyd Gottfredson   "Reflecting the domestication of his big-screen incarnation, the mischievous scamp of the earlier strips is giving way to a more decorous rodent who increasingly turns the broad humor over to his dim-witted sidekick, Goofy. In contrast to the daily episodes, which largely featured adventure-oriented story lines that extended for weeks, these Sunday installments are mostly self-contained gags… With their retro appeal, Gottfredson's buoyant drawings might just…