Fantagraphics Blog

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include 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. The End of the Fucking World (TEOTFW) by Charles Forsman 176-page black & white 5" x 6.5" softcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-667-6 "[It] pulls you in like no other comic this year. Stunning in its simplicity and brave in its subject matter. Charles Forsman is a future force. . . [it]…

Author Monte Schulz vigorously smudges the lines between fact, pulp fiction and literary fiction in Naughty, his first novel after completing his Jazz Age trilogy. Sexy, sociopathic Ida Krueger draws her husband Joe into an escalating web of deception and death. A fictionalized account of a real-life series of crimes and subsequent sensational murder trial that electrified California in the mid-20th century, told in Schulz's exquisitely wrought prose, Naughty is literary noir as you like it. Get sucked in by our 36-page excerpt, which you can read and download for free, and once you're hooked, pre-order the book or find it on shelves in October.

The approach of Fall always means one thing around here (at least for another couple of years), and that's the imminent arrival of the latest volume of The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. The ol' blockhead graces the cover of the 20th installment of the long-running series, covering the years 1989-1990. Schulz continues to stretch his wings and experiment with the new variable format of his daily strips, and the jokes are just as warm and funny as ever, and increasingly reflective. Enigmatic author Lemony Snicket provides the introduction. Our 17-page excerpt (for reading and downloading) includes strips for the entire month of January…

If you're lucky enough to be in Seattle this weekend, don't miss the Bumbershoot Arts Festival. One of many highlights will be Fantagraphics Follies, an evening of eclectic entertainment featuring some of the country's most creative cartoonists, writers, artists, and musicians. The show begins with Jim Woodring demonstrating his prowess with a giant pen. Over the course of the program, Jim will produce a drawing on paper that publisher Gary Groth procured from none other than Ralph Steadman! We'll check in on Jim's progress throughout the evening. Ellen Forney will show a clip of a new animation and talk about…

After dropping the first photos of Vip: The Mad World of Virgil Partch on you yesterday, we hustled to put together this 26-page excerpt for you to read and download. Peruse the Table of Contents, read the first 2 chapters, marvel at the wealth of photos, and ogle Vip's undulating line in copious examples of original artwork. This fabulous and impressive book comes out in November and is sure to have a Very Important Place on your shelf or coffee table!

We're about a month from the arrival of the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2010's hit Newave!: Treasury of Mini Comics Vol. 1 gives you over 800 pages dedicated to collecting and showcasing nearly 6 decades of the best DIY comics in a compact, brick-like hardcover. A jam-packed book calls for a jam-packed preview and that's what we're giving you: 52 pages (including the Table of Contents) with samples from nearly every contributor! Give it a skim, download it, and pre-order the book here. (And if you don't have the essential Newave! yet, get both books in a set for 20% off!)

  The National Book Festival takes place September 21st and 22nd on the National Mall in Washington D.C. and your two favorite cartoonists will be there! Gilbert Hernandez's will be at the Graphic Novels & Science Fiction Pavilion: Sunday, September 22Presentation 12:55 pm – 1:40 pmSigning: 3-4pm   And Jaime Hernandez will also be at the Graphic Novels & Science Fiction Pavilion:Sunday, September 22Presentation: 1:50 pm – 2:35 pmSigning: 3-4pm that same day  

"Not your standard spookshow, but rather a surreal, grotesque Victorian creep-out, Hans Rickheit's 2009 Squirrel Machine introduces us to the world of William and Edward Topor, brothers with a penchant for exploring the otherworldly bowels of their disturbing, maze-like mansion, when not making musical instruments and other devices out of animal parts. Rickheit's detailed black and white illustrations provide the unforgettable backdrop to his ultimately tragic and gruesome tale." – Rue Morgue "This carefully constructed tale… strikes me as being one of the few original works of art that I’ve seen published in North America over the last two decades,…

Vip, Vip, hooray! One of the weirdest and funniest cartoonists of the 20th century finally gets his due in VIP: The Mad World of Virgil Partch by Jonathan Barli. This weighty coffee-table tome celebrates the man and his art across over 200 oversized, lavishly illustrated pages. Partch revolutionized the single-panel gag cartoon as we know it by injecting a healthy dose of absurdity and adult subject matter — namely sex and booze — and became hugely successful along the way. And yet his life and work has never been comprehensively examined, until now! Archivist, editor, writer and designer Jonathan Barli has…