Fantagraphics Blog

Flog exclusive (unless you're Drew's friend on Facebook)! Drew Friedman shared this new portrait of the great Will Elder, commissioned by Elder's son-in-law Gary VandenBergh (quite possibly related to the documentary on Elder he's directing). Click the image to embiggen it slightly.

If you're on our mailing list, the Fantagraphics Winter 2011 Catalog should be arriving in your mailbox right around now! If you're not on our list you can get your free copy by calling 1-800-657-1100 (206-524-1967 outside the U.S.) or by emailing us — or download it as a PDF (8.3 MB). It's 100 pages jam-packed with hundreds of new, upcoming, and backlist titles, including exciting exclusive items — A Century of Comic Strips, Comic Books, Graphic Novels and More!

Online Commentary & Diversions, back from the U.S. holiday: • Gift Guides: Rob McMonigal of Panel Patter goes through our new mail-order catalog (about which more soon!) to pick out his holiday gift-giving recommendations; The Beat and The Comics Reporter both post guides to holiday gift books with several of our books mentioned • Review: "Freakazoid producer Mitch Schauer's debut graphic novel Rip M.D. is a warm and spooky tale for monster kids of all ages. […] Drawn and inked in pitch-perfect EC Comics monster style, Rip M.D. pushes every one of my monster-loving buttons. The writing is witty, the…

Norman Pettingill is the subject of a newly-opened art exhibit in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. From the announcement, as reported by NewsoftheNorth.Net: "Forty Pettingill drawings, now part of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center collection in Sheboygan, are on display or the first time in 15 years and will remain so until Jan. 16. More than 100 drawings from this renowned collection are featured in Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist, a new hardcover book published by Fantagraphics." (Note that the JMKAC website seems to be down at press time.)

Chapter 10 of Kurt Wolfgang's serialized story "Nothing Eve" will run in Mome Vol. 22 (the Spring 2011 issue); Kurt presents the first two pages (1, 2) at the New Bodega blog.

Would you like to watch Jacques Tardi draw for three minutes? Sure you would! Here he is working up a panel from his recently-published semi-sequel to IT WAS THE WAR OF THE TRENCHES, PUTAIN DE GUERRE. (My best translation: FUCKING WAR. Will need to rethink that for when we do our edition of the book.) Around  0:50 Tardi complains that he always screws up the boots and has to bring out the Wite-Out. So he is not a god. But almost.

The Comics Journal's Tom Crippen presents some samples of Gahan Wilson's National Lampoon strip "Nuts" (to be released in a complete collected edition by your pals here at Fantagraphics in the not-too-distant future).

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Drew Weing's slender, hand-sized debut graphic novel Set to Sea is a crosshatched masterpiece. […] Weing draws in an elaborate, crosshatched style that's half Popeye, half Maakies, and it meshes brilliantly with the subject matter and the storytelling. Set to Sea is so lovely in places that I found myself exclaiming aloud — it's got a naive-but-self-conscious grace that is impossible to describe and that few have ever mastered. This one is highly recommended." – Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing • Review: "In the first and the second volume [of Mome] there are a…

It's time for a new episode of Yikes! animated adventures! Look at all those familiar names in the credits: Steven Weissman (creator), Martin Cendreda (animation), Johnny Ryan & Walt Holcombe (voices)… it's an explosion of talent and hilariousness!