Fantagraphics Blog

Tickets officially go on sale today for the Emerald City Comicon, which takes place March 4 through 6, 2011 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. The popularity of the convention allowed producers to expand to 3 days next year. Advance tickets, ranging from $15 to $35, are available at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Featured guests this year include Star Trek's William Shatner from the original series and Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes from The Next Generation, as well as a substantial presence by alternative comix publishers and artists. [Image from Destroy All Movies!!! – Ed.]

As you hopefully know, many of our books are available with exclusive signed bookplates as a free bonus when you order direct from us — there's a whole great big list here, and we're currently adding and replenishing plates for many titles, including (in no particular order): • 8 different titles by Jason • Buddy Does Seattle and Buddy Does Jersey by Peter Bagge• Temperance by Cathy Malkasian• Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso• The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. by Dash Shaw• Zippy: Ding Dong Daddy from Dingburg by Bill Griffith• The Search for Smilin' Ed and Deitch's…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "A snapshot of Jason's career from 1997-2001, the stories in What I Did are also loosely thematically collected, circling around guilt as their central emotion. […] There are many pleasures to be had from Jason's work, among them a wealth of clever cartoon metaphors and a impressively economic storytelling tricks. […] At his best, Jason pieces together representations of complex thoughts and emotions through simple visual building blocks." – David Michelitch, Comics Alliance • Review: "Somebody up there likes us. You need Destroy All Movies!!! in your life. It’s heartening to know that…

This is your last week to view the exquisite exhibition by Charles Burns at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle. Don't miss out on an opportunity to attend his first show in his hometown in over a decade — a career-spanning body of work, with prints starting as low as $30. It's also the last week to bid on Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt's private collection of pristine RAW magazines and the original Charles Burns drawing for Sub Pop #5 cassette zine — the direct predecessor to the legendary record label. The silent auction bid for this historic piece currently…

Ray Fenwick offers this image, available as a print-quality download, via his Flickr page. Merry oblivion, everyone!

  Pioneering underground cartoonist Joyce Farmer will be making her first west coast appearance in support of her new graphic novel, SPECIAL EXITS, this Saturday in her hometown of Laguna Beach, CA at Latitude 33 Bookstore at 5PM.  SPECIAL EXITS is a remarkable book, one that none other than R. Crumb calls "One of the best long-narrative comics I've ever read, right up there with Gen of Hiroshima and Maus. It had a powerful effect on me… towards the end I actually found myself moved to tears."  The book has been garnering a slew of praise this week, including this write-up in last Sunday's LA Times, and this heartfelt…

Tom Spurgeon at the Comics Reporter has the scoop: Fantagraphics will begin publishing Crockett Johnson's BARNABY in April 2012, almost 70 years to the day that the strip premiered in the leftist newspaper PM. Yours truly will edit the series, in close coordination with Philip Nel, whose biography of Johnson, The Purple Crayon And A Hole To Dig: The Lives Of Crockett Johnson And Ruth Krauss, will be published by the University Press Of Mississippi the same month. The series will be designed by none other than massive Barnaby fan and master cartoonist Daniel Clowes. Nel will provide essays for each volume, and each volume…

An interview with cartoonist, publisher, musician, professor and friend Zak Sally. Prompted by the release of Sammy The Mouse #3 and Zak's forthcoming appearance and performance at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 4th Anniversary Party.

JASON T. MILES: Sammy The Mouse is one of the funnest comics I've read.

I think it's hilarious, it makes me laugh out loud and I find myself happier after reading and re-reading each issue to date. How much fun is it for you to make these comics? Is the process as excruciating as you describe in Like A Dog?

ZAK SALLY: Yeah, Sammy is a totally different deal; I really and truly enjoy writing and drawing the thing. I won't say that it's all roses, there's always still the problem solving and running up against your own limitations and inevitable crises of faith, but, you know: that's COMICS! There definitely is a feeling of "holy crap this is great there's nothing I'd rather be doing" more often than not while working on Sammy.

And yeah, in a lot of ways Sammy was a reaction to the whole thing I had going on with comics up until the Like A Dog and Recidivist material; by the time I finished Recidivist #3 I just thought – this is ridiculous. If I can't find some way to get some kind of happiness through this then I ought to just give up, for real. I'm supposed to LOVE comics, not hate them. I wasn't sure it'd work at the time, but it did, somehow.

I think I'd gotten too wrapped up in that "comics are SERIOUS" thing, and forgotten what a great medium comics are for just…telling a story. That writing an entertaining, engaging comic is… as big a deal as some snooty-assed art comic. Like those old issues of Hate … man, each one came out and it was JAM PACKED– after reading it you felt like you'd been to the free buffet at the casino but all the food was GOOD: more story than you could handle, at least a couple for-real-laugh-out-loud moments, great characters and art, a LETTERS PAGE… GOD that was a great comic book. Pete Bagge is an AMERICAN TREASURE!!

Sammy is still pretty slow and boring compared to that stuff, but what you wrote there at the top makes me feel really good; I want it to be fun, and funny.

I think it's funny, and it makes ME happy, so…

My only problem is that I can't find more time to work on them, get out at least a couple a year or something.

MILES: As you know, I'm also a big Bagge fan and similar to his work Sammy possesses a real sense of terror and consequence. In Sammy I think the hardest laffs quiver shoulder to shoulder with disaster. Can you speak a little more to how you're making comedy with dread and horror in Sammy? I mean, the skeletal bastard is simply awful! and when Pat the rabbit bartender hammers a nail into Feekes forehead…!!!

SALLY: Actually, I'm not entirely sure I can speak to that. Again, sort of in response to how I used to make comics, I really consciously set out with Sammy to not… over-think too much (as that hadn't got me anywhere all that useful in the past). I mean, yeah– I've got a tendency to take stuff too seriously in real life, but I don't really walk around all day in a haze of existential dread, you know? I'm a FUNNY GUY, and… I think really hard about the story, and the structure and the mood and all that; I really do sweat the details but when I'm writing and drawing the thing, a lot of it is really, "Does this feel right?" If it does you nail it to the ground and if not you burn it off (note: this is harder than it sounds).

If something makes ME laugh, then… it's right, period. Thinking TOO much about it will kill it dead (I know this from experience).

And, you know: the "terror" of life is so subjective, and so is humor.

some folks will say that ALL humor is based on suffering… but all those people are pretentious, insufferable windbags, and can go get fucked.

With that said, I think when Sammy's all said and done, what it might be "about" is consequence. Maybe. We'll see I guess.

I need to work on being more inscrutable and mysterious: it increases sales.

How am i doing so far?

MILES: I think you're doing good– wait! Do you mean "how am I doing at being inscrutable and mysterious?" or "how am I doing sales-wise?"

SALLY: (long, uncomfortable pause.)

I'm not telling.

Jim Woodring provides another glimpse of Congress of the Animals (Spring 2011) at The Woodring Monitor.