Fantagraphics Blog

Monday, November 4th • Pasadena, CA:  The great Jaime Hernandez comes to The Crawford Family Forum for an evening of art, books, and conversation. KPCC FM "Off-Ramp" producer Kevin Ferguson talks with Hernandez about his latest work, how it relates to Love and Rockets, and where his future's taking him. (more info) • New York City, NY: Author Pat Thomas will be spinning albums, and signing and lecturing about Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 at the appropriately-named Revolution Books at 7:00 PM. (more info) Tuesday, November 5th • Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn, you're not left out…

"Charles Schulz was an American treasure — an artist, philosopher, and keen observer of human life." — Bill Clinton "Charles Schulz was an innovative genius of American comics and also the marathon man, drawing strip after four-panel strip, batch after batch, writing the storyboards for the TV specials, year after year, creating a fantasy world that connected to kids as well as adults and all based on powerful iconic characters who express deep feelings of loneliness and resentment and despair. The feeling that everything is against us. The craving for love. An enormous earnestness about doing the right thing. There…

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1952-1955 (Vol. 1) by Charles M. Schulz 224-page full-color 13.25" x 9.5" hardcover • $49.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-692-8 Ships in: November 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Since their original publication, Peanuts Sundays have almost always been collected and reprinted in black and white, and generations of Peanuts fans have grown up enjoying this iteration of these strips. But many who read Peanuts in their original Sunday papers remain fond of the striking coloring, which makes for a surprisingly different reading experience. It is for these fans (and for Peanuts fans in general who want to experience this alternate/original version)…

The various plot points and mysteries that Johnny Ryan has been sprinkling between disembowelings, pummelings, severed limbs, freakouts, transmogrifications, defecation, and messed-up genitals over the first four installments of his hit series Prison Pit begin to come together in Book 5. In our downloadable excerpt, meet the asshole Prison Boss and his dumbshit minions, who witness what they think is the destruction of Cannibal Fuckface. But their premature celebration is interrupted with some bad news. This book should arrive in time to grab the scythe away from the withered fingers of 2013 and hack baby 2014 into flying gobbets of meat. Pre-order (and get…

"Being in an Ed Piskor comic is cool enough to freeze hot water." – Fab Five Freddy "This is the comic of all time." – Biz Markie "This is the comic I've been waiting 40 years to read." – Harry Allen (Public Enemy Media Assassin) "If ever a chapter of modern American history were ripe for the Classics Illustrated comic book treatment, it is hip-hop's first decade. Ed Piskor, a talented writer and artist who has long savored the connections between comic books and hip-hop, has now written that chapter in the seductive and entertaining form of Hip Hop Family…

Will Elder: "Robert Crumb said that he's gotten everything he needed from me. That son of a gun." William Gaines: "I've never believed in any kind of censorship against anything in any way for anybody nohow." Al Feldstein: "It was an industry of a few innovators and a lot of followers." Johnny Craig: "The Code insisted that we put in the last sentence, about how 'he knew in his heart she could not escape, for he wouldn't rest until she was punished.' And that made me angry at the time…" Frank Frazetta: "I didn't realize you could actually paint for…

The Pacific Northwest has become the center of a growing movement of handcrafted small press publishing. “Short Run Small Press Fest” is one of the country’s leading gatherings of self-publishing communities. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery curator Larry Reid has selected two dozen artists to represent this movement in “Marathon: A Short Run Art Show.” This show of original drawings, prints and publications opens on Saturday, November 9 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. The exhibition continues through December 11, 2013. The Marathon title implies the epic effort often required to create a career in comix. To illustrate this concept, Reid has…

A gender-swapped class production of Romeo and Juliet… what could possibly be more fraught for a couple of gender-questioning junior high schoolers? Maybe shopping for underwear for their changing bodies? That's the territory Shimura Takako sends her heroes Nitori-kun and Takatsuki-san into in the new volume of Wandering Son, with their idiosyncratic cast of friends, rivals, mentors, teachers and families adding to the drama, embarrassment and laughs. In our free downloadable excerpt of the complete first chapter, see what the kids are up to on the first half of their summer vacation. The book should be out right around Christmas or New Year's,…

Hip Hop Family Tree (Vol. 1) by Ed Piskor 112-page full-color 9" x 13" Flexibound softcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-690-4 Ships in: November 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The lore of the early days of hip hop has become the stuff of myth, so what better way to document this fascinating, epic true story than in another great American mythological medium — the comic book? From exciting young talent and self-proclaimed hip hop nerd Ed Piskor, acclaimed for his hacker graphic novel Wizzywig, comes this explosively entertaining, encyclopedic history of the formative years of the music genre that changed global culture….