Fantagraphics Blog

Thursday, October 31st • San Francisco, CA: Kick off Halloween with Ben Catmull! He'll be signing his gorgeous new book Ghosts and Ruins at Mission: Comics & Art starting at 5:30 PM. (more info) Friday, November 1st • Tacoma, WA:  Our Marketing, PR, and Outreach Maven Jen Vaughn will be part of the panel "Drawing for a Living: Making Money as an Artist" at Pacific Lutheran University from 2:00 to 4:00 PM! This event is totally free, with no reservations necessary. (more info) Saturday, November 2nd • Tacoma, WA:  And Jen Vaughn returns to Tacoma for the Jet City Comic…

So many new readers of all ages discover Stan Sakai's wonderful, multiple-award-winning, now-classic Usagi Yojimbo as the years go on that we keep having to go back to press — twelve times on Book 1: The Ronin now! Read the rabbit ronin's first adventures in this compact softcover, sporting the new trade dress designed by Jacob Covey a few years back. Fresh copies in stock now and in stores soon!

Things will be getting naughty in San Diego when Monte Schulz brings his latest novel Naughty to town! Join him on Friday, November 22nd at 7:00 PM as he presents a story of love, deceit, and insanity, and how our lives are too often directed by the inexplicable vagaries of fate. Inspired by the true story of Iva Kroeger and her husband Ralph, indicted for the murders of Mildred and Jay Arneson in 1962, Naughty culminates in a sensational trial that captivated the Bay area. Mysterious Galaxy is located at 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, Suite #302, in San Diego, just…

It's no trick! It'll be a treat to spend Halloween evening with Ben Catmull! Kick off a spooky Thursday, October 31st at Mission: Comics & Art starting at 5:30 PM. Catmull will sign his gorgeous new book Ghosts and Ruins. With a rendering style suggestive of Edward Gorey's gothic masterworks, Catmull ingeniously imagines haunted dwellings and the circumstances of their otherworldly occupants. With just the right touch of humor to balance the terror, Ghosts and Ruins is sure to please fans of Edward Gorey or Tim Burton, and makes a perfect gift book for the ghost story fan in your…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Vip: The Mad World of Virgil Partch by Jonathan Barli 208-page full-color 10.25" x 12.25" hardcover • $49.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-664-5 See Previews / Order Now Virgil Partch burst onto the scene in the nation’s magazines with his zany, sometimes surreal, but always hilarious cartoons, catapulting his career virtually overnight. Known to millions by his signature, “Vip,” this comedic genius was unlike anything the world had seen before. His unique brand of humor and trendsetting approach to cartooning ushered in a new era of the gag cartoon and pioneered a standard of madcap…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department:  Maria M. Book 1 by Gilbert Hernandez 140-page black & white 5.75" x 8.5" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-719-2 See Previews / Order Now Gilbert Hernandez continues his metafictional realization of the film career of his troubled heroine Rosalba "Fritz" Martinez, who abandoned her psychotherapy practice to become queen of the Z-grade exploitation movies. Now she's starring in the role she was literally born to play, in a dramatization of her own mother's life! The "true" story of Maria M. was told in Hernandez's classic Poison River, collected from the pages of Love…

  Joe Sacco's latest book is The Great War, published by our distributor W.W. Norton. This BEAUTIFUL book is actually one large illustration 24 feet in length. Get your self this beautiful accordian folded book today and catch Sacco out on the town(s) to get it signed.   Nov. 10th – Powell's Bookstore at 7:30pm, Portland OR Nov. 12th – Los Angeles Public Library (Mark Taper Auditorium-Central Library) at 7:15pm, Los Angeles, CA (with Gene Luen Yang and Charles Hatfield) Nov. 14th – Town Hall at 7:30pm, Seattle, WA  Nov. 18th – 92nd Street Y / Unterberg Poetry Center at 8:15pm, NYC (with Geoff Dyer) Nov. 19th – McNally…

Next month's issue of Booklist will include reviews of two recent releases by Fantagraphics creators, excerpted below:       The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley by Deitch, Kim (Starred Review)   "The yarn Deitch spins around that outrageous premise includes surprisingly less of the supernatural and many more words than usual, which wrap around the panels and are carefully chosen to project the heroine's personality-that of a smart but unpretentious woman who once had an utterly fantastic adventure. Even more riveting than Deitch's other spellbinders." –Ray Olson        Fran by Jim Woodring   "the heightened emotional stakes are new: Frank's…

From rock and roll rebel to revered iconoclast, Lou Reed left an indelible mark on international pop culture. His experimental work was influential beyond the standard measure of commercial success. Musician Brian Eno observed, "Only a few thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground, album, but every one of them formed a band. I should know. I was one of those people."   Reed pursued an adventurous aesthetic throughout his storied career. At the turn of this century, Reed's reimagining of Edgar Allen Poe's verse debuted as a theatrical production, POEtry, under the direction of Robert Wilson. A double album…

Praise for other books in the "Fritz B-Movie" series: "I picture Gilbert Hernandez approaching his drawing board these days like Lawrence of Arabia approaching a Turkish convoy: 'NO PRISONERS! NO PRISONERS!'" – Sean T. Collins, Robot 6 "Gilbert Hernandez is one of the great craftsmen of modern comics… Hernandez’s new Fritz book, Love from the Shadows, is as bracing as a slug of bottom-shelf rotgut…." – Douglas Wolk, The New York Times Sunday Book Review "If alternative comics can be equated to independent film, then Hernandez has become the medium's David Lynch or Guy Maddin, rolling his personal obsessions and…