Fantagraphics Blog

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,…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery — due out this November from Fantagraphic Books — is an absolutely riveting and (I think) important read. …I'm only halfway through the book at the moment, but I can tell you that Avery has done an absolutely smashing job of research and that there's a lot to chew on here about all sorts of issues… I'll have more to say about it later in the year, when it's actually in print, but rest assured that this would be…

Concerning the progress of Dash's Kickstarter campaign for his film The Ruined Cast.

Thomas Rehhoff passes along another fun piece from his collection of original Hernandez Bros. art: this 1994 New Yorker illustration by Jaime illustrating the good ol' Kirk vs. Picard debate, presumably for the magazine's review of Star Trek: Generations — whatta stinker that movie was.

Publishers Weekly's Ada Price actually found some SFW pages from Dave McKean's new erotic graphic novel Celluloid to share on the PW website! The sample shows just one of the many diverse styles McKean employs throughout the book.

Here's your first look at the final cover design for Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954, the first comprehensive collection of the great graphic storyteller's work from the era. Editor Greg Sadowski is wrapping up his meticulous restoration of the pages and we're looking at a July/August release for this 416-page full-color tome. (Everything's coming up Toth today: at TCJ.com, Dan Nadel posted his interview with Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell about their mammoth upcoming Toth monograph Genius, Isolated.)

Between my own (ahem) vast accumulated knowledge and the marvels of the internet, it's rare that I find myself genuinely stumped by a line in a book I'm translating, but when I came across this particular panel in the Joost Swarte book Is That All There Is? that will (yes, it will!) be coming out later this year, I was mystified: Jopo de Pojo is trying to slip out of a movie theatre midshow, and while the latter two patrons' comments are are self-evident enough (an irate "hush!" and a complaint about Jopo's trademark quiff, mistaken for a hat), the…

• I didn't know Tony Millionaire has been doing portraits for The Chiseler, like this one of 1930s character actor Allen Jenkins • "Dead Mickey" and "Walking the Dog," plus reviews of Michael Caine movies by Jason at his Cats Without Dogs blog • Lilli Carré covers the Chicago Reader, plus a new animated drawing • Laura Park has been busy drawing spot illos for an 826 Chicago project (like Joey & Johnny Ramone buying $20 worth of Brussels sprouts, above) and rescuing cats with fellow cartoonist Julia Wertz — it's all documented on her Flickr page • Renee French…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Exuberantly expressive…, Santiago imbues his biography of famed Puerto Rican baseballer Roberto Clemente [21] with the furious energy of a Clemente triple. […] Santiago evokes the world Clemente lived in, from the dusty Puerto Rican streets where he played baseball with bottle caps and tree branches to his years as a perennial All-Star. The art is scratchy and abstract when it’s dealing with home and homesickness, and then hardens into the stuff of superhero comics whenever Clemente steps to the plate." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club • Review: "…The Complete Peanuts: 1979-1980……