“While most manga about cross-dressing involve lots of shrieking and embarrassment, Wandering Son takes a quieter, more introspective approach…. It’s a very sweet manga with realistic characters — no dead parents or crazy teachers, just ordinary, loving families and supportive friends. This manga is a beautifully produced, hardcover book, and… it’s worth every penny.” — Brigid Alverson, MTV.com “Wandering Son is meticulously accurate in its details, but universal in its emotions. Gay or not, readers shouldn’t find it too difficult to identify with kids who feel like their bodies and their friends are equally culpable in the worst kind of…
Get off the Couch to go to Floating World
Get Off The Couch With Couch Tag Jesse Reklaw's Launches His New Graphic Novel at Floating World WHAT: Get Off The Couch Book Tour for Jesse Reklaw's Couch TagWHEN: Thursday Nov. 19th, 6-9pmWHERE: Floating World Comics, 400 NW Couch St Join Jesse Reklaw at Floating World Comics in Portland, OR on December 19th for a night to remember. From 6pm to 9pm, Reklaw will be signing copies of his twisted graphic novel, Couch Tag. Let him know which of his 13 cats was your favorite. Veteran alternative cartoonist Jesse Reklaw, creator of the long-running weekly comic strip Slow Wave, delivers a…
Zero Hour and Other Stories by Jack Kamen, Al Feldstein et al. (EC Comics Library) – Excerpt
A new volume in our EC Comics Library series beams your way next month: Zero Hour and Other Stories, drawn by Jack Kamen and mostly scripted by Al Feldstein, with 22 pulpy sci-fi & suspense shockers full of Cold War paranoia, barely-suppressed sexual urges, desperation, alien invaders, bioengineering gone wrong, mass extinctions, lovelorn automatons, and man's folly in the face of technology he can't fully understand or control. In our downloadable excerpt you'll find the haunting title story, adapted from a story by Ray Bradbury, sandwiched between the ultimate self-loathing tale "The Parallel" and the teleportational "Hot-Rod!"
Wandering Son Vol. 6 by Shimura Takako – Video/Photo Slideshow Preview
Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko / 放浪息子) Vol. 6 by Shimura Takako 220-page black & white (with some color) 7" x 9.5" hardcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-707-9 Ships in: December 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now SPECIAL OFFER: Add Wandering Son Vol. 7 (coming Summer 2014) or Vols. 7 & 8 (coming Winter 2014/2015) to your pre-order for just $19.99 each, a savings of at least $5 off the cover price! Use the option menu on the product page to make your selection. Shimura Takako's sensitive and charming series about two middle schoolers wrestling with their gender identities continues, with more role-reversal play fun this time around. The success…
Pretty in Ink: Acknowledgments
From the editor: Unfortunately, Trina Robbins' acknowledgments were accidentally ommitted from her new book, Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1886-2013. They will be included in the (knock on wood) next printing. Until then, Trina Robbins: A heartfelt thank you to Kyle Ryan, Ellen Klages, Shaun Clancy, Jonathan Warm Day Coming, Patrick Ford, Bill McGrath, Christine Chambers, and Allan Holtz (and his great website, http://strippersguide.blogspot.com), for the priceless material that they provided; to Alexa Dickman, for her detective work that resulted in my finding Fran Hopper; and to Steve Leialoha, for putting together the pieces. This would still be a book…
Umpteen Millionaire Club: Jim Woodring’s Fran
[The Umpteen Millionaire Club is our series which puts forth book club discussion questions for Fantagraphics titles. The Comics Journal interns Keith Baralato, Eli Powell, and Evans Winters put together this set of questions. – Ed.] Written by Keith Barbalato, Lillian Beaty, and Sonya Selbach Rendered in vivid black and white (though it evokes psychedelia), Fran: The Preceding and Continuing Congress of the Animals depicts a story of love, loss, and healing – all in wordless panels. From one page to the next, Woodring builds a fantastical world Frank readers will be familiar with: the Unifactor is the landscape against which Fran…
COUCH TAG RELEASE PARTY at DESERT ISLAND
Join Jesse Reklaw, Desert Island's Gabe Fowler and and friends tonight at Desert Island for a rockin' good time. From 7 to 9pm, Reklaw will be signing copies of his new graphic novel, Couch Tag, just for you! Let him know which of his 13 cats was your favorite. He'll also be signing at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle on December 14th while gracing the shelves of Portland's Floating World on December 19th! See you at every single location!
The Umpteen Millionaire Club: Discussion Questions for Fran
[The Umpteen Millionaire Club is our series which puts forth book club discussion questions for Fantagraphics titles. Our interns Keith Barbalato, Lillian Beaty, and Sonya Selbach put together this set of questions. – Ed.] Rendered in vivid black and white (though it evokes psychedelia), Jim Woodring's Fran depicts a story of love, loss, and healing — all in wordless panels. From one page to the next, Woodring builds a fantastical world Frank readers will be familiar with: the Unifactor is the landscape against which Fran and Frank's love plays out. In Fran, the impetuous titular character drags reluctant Frank along on adventures that clearly…
New Comics Day 12.4.13
This week's comic shop shipment included 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. Black is the Color by Julia Gfrörer 72-page black & white 6" x 9" softcover • $14.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-717-8 "Beautiful. Gfrörer has a light touch in finding the yearning and humor amongst life's hard luck and even harder truths. A genuinely romantic and sensitive book." –Sammy Harkham "Gfrörer's most moving comic to date, Black Is the Color…
Spring-Summer 2014 Pre-Order Parade
Now that our Kickstarter campaign has wrapped up, we're starting to offer our Spring-Summer 2014 books as plain old regular pre-orders. Our first batch is listed below, and more will become available as they're built into our bookkeeping system (which can be an irregular process). We've also set up a few discounted gift sets to help you save some bucks while building your collection. Be among the first to reserve your copies — hit those links to learn more about each title and start building your shopping cart! The Complete Peanuts 1991-1992 (Vol. 21) by Charles M. Schulzforeword by Tom Tomorrow…
