Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 is ComicsAlliance's Best Comic of 2011, with Jason Michelitch saying "The final 15 pages of 'The Love Bunglers' isn't just the end of a great new issue of a Bros. Hernanadez comic book. It isn't just the sixth part of a fantastic serialized graphic novel that's run since last year. It is the culmination of nearly thirty years worth of nuance, gesture, shading, pacing and dialogue — of angst, mania, fear, friendship, anger, and love. It is the finale to an epic of human scale feeling and…
Swamp Talk
This is the last week to view the sensational exhibition "Playing Possum: The Pogo Art of Walt Kelly" at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. The critical and popular response to this show has been nothing short of phenomenal. The exhibition will be on view through next Wednesday, January 4. We'll be open every day 11:30 to 8:00 PM except Sunday, January 1, when we'll be closed for New Years Day. Kelly's historic strips are being offered for sale at remarkably affordable prices. Several of these wonderful works remain available. If you can't make it to the space, feel free to call Fantagraphics curator…
Tony Millionaire Art Show & Book Signing at Floating World, Portland
Break out the beer, Portland, 'cause the great Tony Millionaire is headed your way on Thursday, January 5th! Our friends at Floating World Comics will be helping him toast his latest masterpiece, the gorgeous collection 500 Portraits! Not only will Tony be signing, but there will be an art show of work from the book, spanning two decades of illustrations that Tony created for The Believer, as well as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Ephemera Press Historical Maps, The Wall Street Journal, and others. So, come celebrate with our masterful millionaire from 6:00 to 10:00 PM at…
What’s in the January 2012 Diamond Previews
The new Diamond Previews catalog came out yesterday and in it you'll find our usual 2-page spread (download the PDF) with our releases scheduled to arrive in your local comic shop in March 2012 (give or take — some release dates may have changed since the issue went to press). We're pleased to offer additional and updated information about these upcoming releases here on our website, to help shops and customers alike make more informed ordering decisions. This month's Spotlight item is Nicolas Mahler's superhero spoof Angelman: Fallen Angel, an excerpt of which we are currently serializing here on our…
Daily OCD: 12/28/11
Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: The National Post's David Berry names The Best Graphic Novels of 2011, saying of his #3 choice "This does feel somewhat like cheating, since there’s only a few sequences of proper graphic work here, but why quibble about format: Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010 is, quite simply, one of the funniest things you’ll read in any genre. Kupperman has a child’s free-ranging imagination and an aging intellectual’s dry wit… This supposed telling of Mark Twain’s 20th-century life… would be an awe-inspiring work of imagination if it wasn’t so absurdly hilarious. Somewhere between John Hodgman…
Daily OCD: 12/27/11
Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: The first part of Comic Book Resources' Top 100 Comics of 2011 countdown includes Jim Woodring's Congress of the Animals at #88… "It takes a bit of daring to be willing to alter the status quo in a respected body of work and considerable talent to be able to do so in as assured manner as Woodring does here." – Chris Mautner …Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman at #87… "Through war, animal make-out sessions and film writing, Kupperman takes Twain through the ringer in a hilariously catastrophic epic that the real-life…
Things to See: new Tim Lane story page
At last, a new page of Tim Lane's story in progress "Notes of a Second-Class Citizen (Into the Basement)." See more from his forthcoming collection Folktales here. [Follow our Tumblr blog for lots more Things to See every day.]
Kim Thompson interview at The Comics Reporter
Your must-read of the day: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon talks to our second-in-command Kim Thompson. This, from Kim's very first answer: "…[I]t was more the one-two combination of [Carl] Barks's duck stories and the acquisition of the EC material that gave me a sort of 'holy shit' moment of realizing that if you take, say, the Comics Journal's Top 100 list of yore and go down it, Fantagraphics is now so dominant it becomes almost ridiculous. I think the current Fantagraphics list is unambiguously the greatest list of cartoonists ever to be assembled under one publishing roof, period. I'm…
Inventory Reduction Sale – 40% off overstocked items 4 days only!
You have all that Xmas cash burning a hole in your pocket. We've got teetering piles of books in our warehouse. Let's make a deal! We've put together a list of titles we have too many of and we've slashed the prices on these books by 40% for 4 days only — Tuesday December 27, 2011 through Friday, December 30. (Sale not in effect at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.) This is a HUGE assortment including some primo stuff from your favorite artists: Bagge! Clowes! Cooper! Crane! Foster! Friedman! Hernandez! Herriman! Jason! Kelso! Millionaire! Ryan! Sacco! Sala! Sakai! Tyler! And many…
Crime Stoppers with Michael Kupperman Tomorrow in NYC!
50 years from now, if you say "I was at the Crimestoppers Club show in the East Village Dec 27th, 2011" your grandkids may stop kicking you! –Michael Kupperman Protect your shins in the future, and be there at Luca Lounge [ 222 Avenue B, NYC ] for the latest installment in the monthly comedy series The Crime Stoppers Club, with your hosts Michael Kupperman and Kate Beaton! photo credit: Edwina Hay All sorts of mid-holiday-week merriment is in store for Tuesday, December 27th, with special guests Julia Wertz, Anthony DeVito, Mitch Magee, and Mark Twain, star of the acclaimed…
