Fantagraphics Blog

Wednesday, October 2nd • Chicago, IL: The magnificent Danny Bland presents his debut novel, In Case We Die, at Quimby's, starting at 7:00 PM! Don't miss it! (more info) Thursday, October 3rd • Lincoln, NE: Wow! If you live in the area, you simply cannot miss this talk with the great Al Columbia at Lucas Hall at Nebraska Wesleyan University! Saturday, October 5th • Philadelphia, PA: Don't miss the great Kim Deitch and Michael Kupperman at the 2013 Locust Moon Comics Festival! I want someone to film a buddy comedy of their trip this weekend. (more info)

Not resting on the laurels of her 2013 Eisner Hall of Fame induction, Trina Robbins has taken her epochal history of women in comics and completely revised and updated it into a new volume, Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013, scheduled to hit stores this November. Here we bring you a downloadable excerpt of Chapter 1, "The Queens of Cute," which introduces you to the creators of American icons the Kewpies (also the creator of the first known comic strip by an American woman), the Campbell Kids, and other cherubic characters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Later…

Julia Gfrörer's Black Is the Color is sure to be one of the most talked-about graphic novel debuts of the season, having already garnered raves in its serialized webcomic form. With spare storytelling, dry, dark humor, and detailed, spidery ink lines, this swoon-worthy tale of sailors and mermaids, love and death lingers in the mind long after the last page is read. Black Is the Color will be ready to join our other recent acclaimed sea-faring debuts Blacklung and Set to Sea on your bookshelves in about 2 months; an excerpt and pre-order details can be found right here.

Remember last summer when when Scott Kirkpatrick made that awesome drink inspired by Love and Rockets Ghost of Hoppers (scroll way down) was created and featured at the Rye on Market in Louisville, KY today? Well, he's back with another recipe! This time based on Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez. Quite the mixologist, Kirkpatrick says "I wanted something that contained elements that would be available to Julio in his world and also ingredients that represented youth and old age." Julio's Day 1 oz. Cazadores Blanco (young tequila) 1 oz. Cazadores Añejo (aged tequila) .75 oz "Marquez Syrup" .5 oz Dolin…

  Following a line of Fantagraphics' cartoonists like last year's Joe Sacco and 2011's Daniel Clowes, the great Gilbert Hernandez has won the Pen Graphic Literature Award for outstanding body of work. Judged by panels of distinguished writers, critics, and editors, Hernandez's 30 years of work in comics includes FIVE books out this year! It's nothing to sneeze at. The 23rd Annual Literary Awards Festival takes place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA on Monday, October 14th, 2013.  

The second and final volume of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays by the great Floyd Gottfredson, remastered in sparkling color and loaded with unmissable bonus features, will be debuting in just a few weeks. In our downloadable preview you'll read the Table of Contents, a chapter introduction, and a sequence of strips wherein that no-good Mortimer Mouse tries to steal Minnie from Mickey by hook or by crook, and later, Mickey, Donald and Goofy do a little DIY home improvement… what could possibly go wrong? Will hilarity ensue? (Spoiler: Yes.) Don't forget, if you pre-order the two-volume Mickey Mouse Color Sundays box set…

It's the coffee-table book for people with tiny coffee tables! Paul Hornschemeier's Artists Authors Thinkers Directors collects Paul's stylistically diverse sketchbook portraits from his Daily Forlorn blog in a cute, compact hardcover, with brief writeups in the back explaining why each subject was chosen. It surely includes some of your favorite creative people. And when you're done enjoying it, you can leave it laying around your house to class up the place and show off your excellent taste. This book is due to arrive in November or early December; pre-order now so you'll have plenty of time to wrap it up for stocking-stuffing season.

Janet Hamlin has worked as a sketch artist like no other, in an American court like no other: at the Defense Department’s Military Commissions, the tribunal chambers at Guantanamo Bay. In Sketching Guantanamo, you can take a look at the young Canadian who grew into manhood behind the barbed wire of Guantanamo — beard and all — claiming his innocence, and that he was tortured, until he ultimately confessed to committing a war crime when he was 15. Then peer through double-glazed soundproof glass as Hamlin gives the world its first look at the man who boasted that he orchestrated…

Galerie Champaka in Brussels is proud to present an exhibition dedicated to the work of Maurice Tillieux! This public art show features our favorite private eye, Gil Jordan, among the 48 original pages of artwork, and 8 large-format color prints. The Galerie Champaka Bruxelles is located at 27, rue Ernest Allard, Brussels. Can't make it to Belgium? Enjoy Tillieux's art in Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder by High Tide, and hang in there for the forthcoming release of Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Ten Thousand Years in Hell. Tillieux

Sketching Guantanamo: Court Sketches of the Military Tribunals, 2006-2013 by Janet Hamlin 172-page full-color 11.25" x 8.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-691-1 Ships in: October 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Camp X-Ray in the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, opened in January, 2002 in the wake of the 9-11 attacks to house alleged terrorists — off the American mainland, unaccountable to the U.S. judiciary — in "indefinite detention." Newer and more permanent prisons were later built miles away, and continue to house terrorist suspects today. The United States government does not allow photographs of the military trials at Guantanamo,…