Fantagraphics Blog

The City of Seattle's Office of Economic Development wants you to visit Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. The store is featured on this city-sponsored website and other promotional materials as part of their "Only in Seattle" campaign to encourage local commerce in the city's neighborhoods. The store's curator (misidentified as the owner) Larry Reid (pictured above) talked to Rose Egge of KOMO News about the campaign. Who says government doesn't work?

The organizers of the Festival International de la Bande Desinée in Angoulême France (you know, the big one) have announced their Official Selections for the festival, including the French edition of The Man Who Grew His Beard (L'homme qui se laissait pousser la barbe) by Olivier Schrauwen, which we will be publishing in English in August 2011. Congratulations Olivier! (The list also includes recent books by our homeys Charles Burns, Dan Clowes, Joe Sacco & Dash Shaw. Nice work, boys.)

Gabrielle Bell, Jeffrey Brown, Dash Shaw, and several Abstract Comics contributors including editor Andrei Molotiu are among the artists featured in a group exhibit opening in Arlington, VA this Friday, November 19, 2010. The announcement describes the exhibit thusly: "PARTY CRASHERS mashes up comic art and contemporary gallery culture, and features artists who pass back and forth between the two worlds. This massive two venue show results from a crosstown collaboration between AAC Director of Exhibitions Jeffry Cudlin and Artisphere Gallery Director Cynthia Connolly. The show’s two independent halves feature different types of work: Connolly’s show presents fine artists who…

Tony Millionaire's National Ransom Photoshop contest has concluded and Tony has announced the winners. The above entry by William Creswell is not the actual "A#1 winner" — we didn't want to give that away, so you'll have to head to Tony's site to see it and all the other hilarious and impressive entries.

Mascots by Ray Fenwick 136-page full-color 5.25" x 7.75" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-400-9 Ships in: December 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The second book from Ray Fenwick, author of 2008’s acclaimed Hall of Best Knowledge. In Mascots, a collection of impressionistic stories combine to create a wildly absurd — yet vaguely familiar — parallel world. Like Fenwick’s previous work, the acclaimed Hall of Best Knowledge (one of Booklist’s “Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2008”), Mascots is driven by lettering and language, part art and part comics, this time taking the form of bright, full color paintings on found…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators are saying about our releases this week, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. [UPDATED with more blurbs.] Castle Waiting Vol. 2 384-page black & white 5.75" x 8.25" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-405-4 "…[A] second thick (384-page) hardcover compilation of Linda Medley’s well-regarded folkloric/fairy story exploration, now as pertinent a bridge between ’90s comic book self-publishing and current YA comics interest as its former publishing cousin Bone. I presume this includes all of the Fantagraphics-published Vol. II material thus…

We've mentioned Simon Pegg's Eightball #23 t-shirt in the upcoming film Paul before; now it's shown up on the UK one-sheet for the film (thanks to Graham Sigurdson for the tip-off): Enhance! Before you ask: no, it's not commercially available. To answer your other question: Dan Clowes recently mentioned in public a desire to reprint the issue, but no actual plans have been made as of yet.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Tardi's art [in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec Vol. 1] well deserves the praise that he's a grandmaster of comics. It's detailed, expressive, authentic, and distinctive. His world-building is thorough, the setting established through both background art and scene selection. Frequent recaps keep the reader up to speed, while emphasizing how amusingly convoluted everything quickly becomes. Tardi knows the conventions of this kind of rollicking, complicated adventure, and the story points out how ridiculous they are at the same time it's engaging in them." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) • Review: "Jason…

See a nice juicy 10-page excerpt from Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition by Stan Sakai at Comics Alliance, whose David Brothers writes "Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition… is a release worth paying attention to. It often flies under the radar, but Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo has been one of the most consistently well-written and well-drawn comics over the past twenty-five years. Sakai has created a long-running series that doesn't need jumping on points or events to tell good stories. He simply creates classic tales, month-in, month-out."

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: What I Did by Jason 272-page black & white/duotone 6.5" x 8.75" hardcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-414-6 Ordering Info & Previews A matching volume to 2009’s Almost Silent, What I Did collects three of Jason’s acclaimed 1990s graphic novels into a handsome, definitive omnibus format. "Hey, Wait…," which was the first of Jason's books to be translated to English, tells the story of two childhood friends. A dreadful event midway through the story changes their lives forever, and the story becomes the summary of lives lived, wasted, and lost. Jason's sparse dialogue,…