Fantagraphics Blog

It's time to go back to school with Professor DeStefano! Our award-nominated Lucky In Love artist Stephen DeStefano is heading back to the podium at MoCCA, and this time, he'll be laying down the laws of "Drawing for Animated Cartoons" — something he knows a thing or two about, as the storyboard and design supervisor on Adult Swim's The Venture Brothers, only one of the best cartoons out there! Stephen will focus on design and composition for characters, backgrounds and storyboards — in other words, on the overall drawing process for an animated production. The course will show you how to…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Critic Rob Clough names his Top Fifteen Comic Books of 2011 on his High-Low blog, including Love & Rockets: New Stories #4 at #1… "Gilbert's stories are typically excellent in this issue, as he manages a certain luridness in one story that brings sexuality to the fore, and goes the other direction in a more oblique, subtle story. Of course, the story that got everyone buzzing was the second half of Jaime's "The Love Bunglers", which is an ending for this thirty-year cycle of stories–and one where Jaime sticks the landing with authority."…

Before there was Frank & Estelle Costanza on Seinfeld there was Leo & Sylvia Schauzer on Car 54, Where Are You?, portrayed by Charlotte Rae and Al Lewis. Car 54 aficionado Drew Friedman brings the bickering couple to life in this new illustration, available now as a signed, limited-edition print from Drew Friedman Fine Art Prints.

The Best Show on WFMU gets even better this Tuesday, February 14th, as host Tom Scharpling welcomes our own Michael Kupperman to the airwaves! WFMU streams their broadcasts online in multiple formats, so anyone can listen, from anywhere in the world — just tune in at 9:00 PM EST and await the awesome! And just so y'know, it's the WFMU 2012 Marathon through March 4th, and freeform radio is a good, good thing!

For Valentine's Day we've teamed up with ComicsAlliance to give you a chance to win copies of two of our recent books about lovin' in its various forms: Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics and Dave McKean's erotic opus Celluloid. Contest details and your chance to enter are all over at the ComicsAlliance blog. Good luck!

Wednesday, February 15th • Los Angeles, CA: It's your last chance to see the Year of the Dragon group art exhibit at Giant Robot, featuring work from Fantagraphics artists Andrice Arp, Renee French, and Steven Weissman, among many others!  (more info) Joe Sacco at the Fantagraphics office, 04/09/07 // photo credit: Jacob Covey Saturday, February 18th • Portland, OR: Come hear Joe Sacco speak at the Portland Central Library from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Tickets for this event are free, and will be available 30 minutes prior to the program. Space at programs is limited, and seating is available on…

75 years ago today Hal Foster's Prince Valiant debuted in newspapers with the strip above (click to see it bigger) and quickly one of the most beloved comic strips of all time. To celebrate this milestone anniversary we are offering all of our Prince Valiant books at a 30% discount today only! This includes our new series of hardcover volumes (including pre-orders on Volume 5), which critics and fans agree are the definitive collections of Foster's masterpiece; it also includes our recent editions of the Prince Valiant Companion and the handful of our previous softcover editions we have left in…

If you want your Cannibal Fuckface collectible vinyl dolly to resemble the interior pages of the Prison Pit comics it springs from, good news: it's now available for pre-order in a black & white colorway from toy purveyors Monster Worship. Meanwhile, at VICE, Johnny has a new comic which reveals the horrifying truth about the iPad. UPDATE: Oh snap, Monster Worship is also taking pre-orders for a t-shirt!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…[T]hese comics are among the best in their genre without a doubt. …[This] period was certainly the period of Jack Kirby’s greatest commercial success, and also the period of work which posterity has most neglected. For that this book [Young Romance ] is to be cheered, though there is much else to be happy about in it. There is the excellence of Gagné’s restoration work. It’s of a kind of cleanness which in the past, in archival projects by others, has often resulted in garishness. …[I]t appears that Fantagraphics, perhaps by accident more…

Kupperman's back! Plus a new Mahler page and links to strips from around the web: — Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size): Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): And elsewhere: The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum at ACT-I-VATE: Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane: Humblug by Arnold Roth (two new updates): Lucky by Gabrielle Bell : Maakies by Tony Millionaire: The Pain — When Will It End? (plus answers to last week's "Ghandi or Batman?") by Tim Kreider: Les Petits Riens by Lewis Trondheim: Truth Serum by Jon Adams: What's in the…