Fantagraphics Blog

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This previously unpublished Jim Flora drawing from the 1970s has just been released as a limited-edition print from Jim Flora Art — see it in all its delightful detail and place your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

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…