Fantagraphics Blog

A quick rundown of a few scenes in the Fantagraphics booth (#1718) at Comic-Con International Day 1: Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez make final adjustments for the first signing of the day. Line for the Hernandez signing about halfway through. Esther Pearl Watson and Trina Robbins draw in fans' sketchbooks while Kristy & Ian share a laugh in the background. Don Rosa regales Kristy & Janice. Comic-Con exclusive: Natalia's new mini-comic! T-shirts going fast! Hernandez family portrait: Carol, Natalia, Gilbert & Jaime. Most adorable family ever? (Special background guest: Eddie Campbell.) Malachi Ward chats with John Pham. Gary Groth (fresh from…

I've been going to Comic-Con for almost 30 years now, god help me. Sometimes I think I know downtown San Diego better than any town I've actually lived in. These are some of the things I think of when I think about Comic-Con: • The Picadilly • HateBall Tour 1993  • Scary bail bondsmen offices • When you could easily park in the convention garage • When Hall H was just a grassy knoll where you could hang out before the con opened • When I cared about the Marvel and DC booths • When I first met Gary Groth…

…so come on a-knockin'! Our Comic-Con International booth (#1718), all set up and ready for the doors to open. Bursting with books! We had a brisk Preview Night and stuff is already disappearing into the hands of eager fans. The new Love and Rockets t-shirts are going like hotcakes, to the surprise of no one! Mario & Gilbert Hernandez hung out for our first-ever Preview Night signing and much fun is being had by all. Keeping it short for now but there's lots more to come! Keep it tuned here and especially to our Twitter feed!

Every year, on the last day of Comic-Con, as our thoughts turn to the arduous task of packing up all of our leftover books for shipping back to our warehouse, desperation creeps in and the discounts start flying left and right. Last year we decided to spread this fun to our mail-order customers and this year we're doing it again! We are not only offering 20% OFF EVERYTHING on our website — use coupon code FANTACON12 at checkout — but a whopping 50% OFF ALL our biggest and heaviest books (see them all here — note that items are discounted…

Hello from San Diego! As you can see in the blurry camera-phone-pic of Marketing Mix Master Mike Baehr above, we're getting Booth #1718 all ready for you! Hopefully you're following us on Twitter to get all the up-to-the-minute (seconds, really!) photos and news from the scene! Tonight is Preview Night, and we're so excited to offer our first-ever Preview Night signings! As we mentioned on the FLOG, we've met a lot of customers who were only able to score passes for tonight to the con, so this is a little bonus from us to you, in celebration of the Love &…

Hello from San Diego, where we've unpacked the following never-before-seen debut books today (which will all be available to non-Comic-Con-goers in a couple of months at most): Love and Rockets: New Stories #5 by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez! Our esteemed colleague Heidi MacDonald of The Beat happened by as we were unpacking, saw our stacks of this new volume, and declared it "book of the show" already — you heard it here first! Buz Sawyer Vol. 2: Sultry's Tiger by Roy Crane — The adventures don't slow down for our flyboy hero in the post-war years as he tangles with…

We're thrilled to announce the Fantagraphics signing schedule for San Diego Comic-Con 2012! We're also extra-excited to announce our first-ever Preview Night signing!!! That's right! Last year, we met a lot of customers who lamented that they were only able to score a pass for Preview Night and they were missing out on all the signings. So, we've got the great Gilbert Hernandez, Mario Hernandez, and Gilbert's talented daughter Natalia signing at our booth that evening! You complained; we listened! Yeah, don't get too used to that. And in honor of our Love & Rockets 30th Anniversary Celebration, we're doubling…

30 Years. Three. Zero. In 1982, Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez published their first comic with Fantagraphics, which debuted at that year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego. In 2012, Fantagraphics Books announces the best anniversary present you can give the comics making trio: a year of celebrating Love and Rockets. Jaime Hernandez remembers his first Comic-Con well. “The first time we spotted Love and Rockets some guy was already selling it for half-off.” Fellow professionals took an interest in the Hernandez brothers’ creation. “Chris Claremont walked up and joked that all the women on the cover should have ‘X’es on…