Fantagraphics Blog

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review/Interview: It's baseball's opening day, and The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon notes the occasion with his look at 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente and chat with the book's creator, Wilfred Santiago. Spurgeon's comments on the book: "Santiago brings the same playful complexity to the story of the Puerto Rican baseball slugger and humanitarian that he's put on thrilling display in previous comics. Many of the pages are to die-for gorgeous, and Santiago routinely finds compelling visual solutions to communicating the physicality and grace of a player whose heyday was long enough ago we…

Turn Handle by Gary Panter, part of the Gumption art show at the ZieherSmith gallery opening tonight. (Via Gary's blog.)

As we've been working on M. Tillieux's Murder by High Tide I've become gripped by Tillieux's cartooning, especially his panel composition and pitch-perfect, push-pull blend of "naturalist" and "cartoony" figure work.  What follows are a series of panels from Catch as Catch Can (the second story featured in Murder by High Tide) that I've been particularly struck by. Note: these panels, in their finished form, will be colored and lettered. This panel reminds me of Toth or Xaime, what with how the acting, lighting and composition leads the eye to read Gil Jordan's darkened face and arm as he slowly…

(not final cover)  Fantagraphics is proud to announce Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. Author Kevin Avery spent four years researching and writing this unique anthology-biography. This book compiles Nelson's best works and also provides a vivid account of his life. In the '60s, Paul Nelson pioneered rock & roll criticism with a first-person style of writing later coined "New Journalism." During a five-year detour at Mercury Records, he signed the New York Dolls to their first recording contract, and then settled back down to music criticism at Rolling Stone. Through his writing, Nelson championed…

Yeah! written by Peter Bagge; art by Gilbert Hernandez 224-page black & white 7" x 10.25" softcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-412-2 Ships in: May 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Move over, Josie & the Pussycats! At last, a girl-centered comic book that actually appeals to girls (and even their parents)! Co-created by comics living legends Peter Bagge (Hate) and Gilbert Hernandez (Love and Rockets) on writer and artist duties respectively*, Yeah! is a unique masterpiece of all-ages fun. Originally published as a nine-issue comic book series from 1999-2000 by DC’s Wildstorm imprint, this all-ages gem (approved by the Comics…

Follow the #hourou_pic hashtag on Twitter to see some wonderful Wandering Son fan art being done for a contest being run by the producers of the Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son) anime series. The above entry was posted by @niko9_niku9; below by @pippupgiii a.k.a. Akari (I can't resist a giraffe).

Michael Kupperman’s star-studded and hilarious Snake ‘N’ Bacon [adult swim] pilot from 2009 is now on YouTube! Hooray!

Lewis Trondheim is posting new pages from his forthcoming chronicle of his time with L'Association. (Of course, there's plenty of behind-the-scenes scoop from the French comics scene in the coming-soon Approximate Continuum Comics as well.)

Ooh, McSweeney's took one of Renee French's trap drawings and turned it into a t-shirt that you can buy. (They just have the one small image, and Renee said it was too dark so I brightened it up for posting here.)