Fantagraphics Blog

Gahan Wilson signing at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, Jan. 13, 2010 If you live in the Boston area, make plans now to attend the 2011 Boston Comic Con, this Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1, at the Hynes Convention Center! We're excited to announce that the legendary Gahan Wilson will have his own table there, and will be signing all day, on both days! Our friends from The Million Year Picnic will be on site, with copies of our beautiful box set Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons. If you have not seen this thing in person, lemme…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Clemente blazed trails and provided a role model to millions who needed one. Santiago's work here manages to capture the magic and mystery of that position by putting Clemente on something of a pedestal, but it all hangs together very well. It's exciting and incredibly easy to read. Santiago's art is fantastic. […] Santiago's 21 is a treat. Its 200 pages fly by, the visuals are great, and the dialogue dead-on. The last few pages are heartbreaking and effective." – David Brothers, Comics Alliance • Review: "Unlovable by Esther Pearl Watson has to…

Yow indeed! Who better embodies "lust for life" than Zippy the Pinhead? Image (and post title) provided by our warehouse manager Nico Vassilakis. This photo is worth a million in prizes! Are we having Fun House yet? Etcetera!

Words cannot describe how much I love this Harry Potter drawing by Steven Weissman. What makes it even better is that it was drawn for a postcard correspondence with a 5th-grade pen pal, who led off with this fantastic opening round:

Dept. of "Whoa": Robot 6 reports on this auction for a piece of never-before-seen artwork by Charles M. Schulz, a "try-out" strip thought to have been done during the transition from Li'l Folks to Peanuts, circa 1949-1950. Click our image above to see it a bit larger (if it looks strangely patched together, that's an artifact of the Flash-based image viewer on the auction page, from which we took screen-grabs). (Our post title is a reference to Unseen Peanuts, our 2007 Free Comic Book Day offering which we are currently sending out free with orders, with some restrictions, while supplies…

The Georgetown Art Attack has become one of the region's most provocative cultural outings, as adventurous residents explore the delightfully rustic industrial arts corridor and discover aesthetic treasures at every turn. Among the many highlights of the May 14 Art Attack installment: Taking Punk to the Masses, seminal Seattle grunge photography by Charles Peterson, joined by cartoonist Peter Bagge signing copies of his new Yeah! collection and Hate Annual #9 at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery; a companion installation of vintage Seattle punk posters, records and ephemera at Georgetown Records followed by a concert with Bagge's combo Can You Imagine? featuring Steve Fisk, with the…

Working my way through the Joost Swarte book, I stumbled across this panel (I'm showing the French version because the Dutch one I have only in black and white, and it needs to be shown in color for the full effect), in which a woman Joost's hero Jopo is trying to pick up leaves him a kiss-off message written in lipstick on a mirror. And I thought, uh-oh. This Swarte book is being printed in a "co-production," which means that two or more publishers simultaneously go to press on the same book in different languages. In order to achieve this,…

This previously unpublished Jim Flora drawing from the 1970s has just been released as a limited-edition print from Jim Flora Art — see it in all its delightful detail and place your order here.

Now available: Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge 32-page full-color comic book • $4.95 — Order Now! Buddy & Lisa — back to Seattle! In the first full-length Buddy story in ten years (and it's a doozy), just when things are starting to look idyllic for our heroes, a family crisis forces Lisa to re-unite with her Seattle-based parents and brings Buddy and their young son Harold along with her — and Buddy quickly learns why she's been avoiding them for 20-odd years! And Lisa has some other unwelcome surprises in her family tree as well… Plus, Pete gets political…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. See more about each book at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge 32-page full-color comic book • $4.95 "It really has been almost exactly a year since #8! Fancy that. Previous Hate Annuals have been a catchall for whatever Peter Bagge's been drawing lately, plus a short check-in with Buddy Bradley as he ages in real time; this time, the Buddy-and-Lisa story is longer than usual. There's something I really admire about Bagge's sticktoitiveness." – Douglas Wolk,…