Fantagraphics Blog

Michael Kupperman is helping Comic Book Jones celebrate their 4th anniversary! Join Michael tomorrow Friday, December 16th at this Staten Island comic book store for a fun-filled afternoon of signings, plus 25% off everything in the store! Why, that happens to include Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 and Tales Designed to Thrizzle! As of this typing, there's no set signing times, but we'll keep you updated on Twitter and Facebook as soon as we get more details! Comic Book Jones is located at 2220 Forest Avenue, Staten Island, NY. UPDATE: Comic Book Jones let us know “He will be appearing at…

The eagerly-awaited new issue of Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle hits comic shops next week and Diamond's PREVIEWSworld website offers up an exclusive peek at 3 pages from the issue!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "The book is lovingly made and the strips presented with care and pleasure. But is it any good? Oh yes. It's funny and charming, bursting with witty wordplay and vivid characters you love immediately. You can see the influence the Marx Brothers and Krazy Kat and Mark Twain had on Pogo and its love of silly grammatical puns and Southern dialect. And you can see the influence Pogo had on Doonesbury and Calvin & Hobbes… In short, read Pogo and you can immediately see it slide into the pop cultural matrix and how…

Drew Friedman has a wonderful, photo-packed account of his time with the great Jack Davis in New York City a couple of weeks ago at the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival, including a recap of the panel discussion with Davis he co-hosted at the festival with Gary Groth. Go, read, be delighted! (Photo by Ryan Flanders.)

We were thrilled to be able to present living legend of comics and illustration Jack Davis in conversation with Gary Groth at the Strand Book Store in NYC a couple of weeks ago, and now we can share the excitement via the Strand's video of the event posted on their YouTube account!

So, I've been in Florida for the past week visiting my wife's family for the holidays. Needless to say, I did a doubletake when I noticed this Honda parked next to our rental car outside a shopping mall in Naples: I am dying to know whose car this is. Mort Walker? Jeff Mason? The guy from CrossGen? Anyone?  

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new title. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about it (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the link, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. 500 Portraits by Tony Millionaire 192-page black & white 5.75" x 7.5" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-473-3 "500 Portraits is a collection of drawings by the mighty Tony Millionaire of various people, some famous, some not so famous. I’m sure it all will be exquisitely rendered." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6…

Provocative cartoonist Tony Millionaire will appear in Seattle at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday, January 7 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM for a book signing and art show. He'll be exhibiting brilliantly sedate work from his new book 500 Portraits, recently released by Fantagraphics Books. 500 Portraits collects over two decades of work by the beloved creator of Drinky Crow's Maakies, Sock Monkey and Billy Hazelnuts. Tony Millionaire's gorgeous fountain pen illustrations, which combine naturalistic detail with strong doses of the fanciful and grotesque, include the famous (Bob Dylan), the infamous (Abu Ghraib soldier/model Lynndie England), the fictional (Yoda),…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas tops Deb Aoki's list of the Most-Anticipated New Manga of 2012 at About.com Manga: "This 3-volume story from 1974 has been on many manga connoisseur's wish lists for years, so it's a real joy to see that Fantagraphics will be publishing the entire saga in English in one volume." • List/Review: Manga Worth Reading's Johanna Draper Carlson ranks Wandering Son the #2 Best New Manga of 2011 and recommends Volume 2 in her review: "Shimura Takako’s young figures are adorable. They look unspoiled, with their future ahead of…