Fantagraphics Blog

Courtesy of Kristy Valenti, lead copyeditor for Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film, some highlights of the book's editorial style guide: Punctuation, etc. video game titles in quotation marks Spelling afterschool special arthouse badass blond for both sexes, unless is a noun for a female (the blonde kicked the monster, she has a blond mohawk, his liberty spikes are blond). blow-dried boombox buzzcut chrissakes not christ's sakes ’dos drug runner but gunrunner eyeshadow facepaint, facepainted "fairytale" g-string machine guns (but machine-gunning when verb) RoboCop shitstorm (1 word, no hyphen) wack (as in slang, not to hit)

Daniel Clowes provides cover illustrations (and, presumably, yet-to-be-revealed interior art) for two upcoming (early 2011) Criterion Collection releases: The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor, both directed by Samuel Fuller. (Via Chris Mautner.)

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "The Sanctuary is a powerful story, telling of the timeless conflict between learning and ignorance.  Nate Neal provides readers with an insightful look at the tension in a community when the balance is challenged by new thinking.  In short, The Sanctuary is a very promising debut, and probably one of the best new comics of the year." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama • Review: "In Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s, editors John Benson and Greg Sadowski and publisher Fantagraphics drive a stake into the notion that EC was the…

Jeezum crow! Colin Batty's fully-modeled renderings of some of Basil Wolverton's most infamous cartoon grotesques add a whole new dimension of GYAAAAH. Believe me, the one above is one of the least horrifying. (Via Bleeding Cool.)

Oh nuts, I'm about to start today's Online Commentary & Diversions and noticed I never published yesterday's in my APE prep frenzy. Here it is: • Review: "Rip M.D. is near perfect. …[T]he art is fantastic; with original and distinct designs that border realistic and cartoony, with the best qualities of both carrying a jovial wit, which never balking on making the subject matter truly scary. And the story by Mitch Schauer is told in a clear and concise manner, taking on a sort of fairy tale tone in the beginning that sort of fades by the end. The book…

We're on our way to the Alternative Press Expo this weekend in San Francisco and we decided at the last minute to bring display-only copies of a few of our upcoming releases with us for lucky fans to peruse: Unfortunately they won't be for sale at the show (and they're not available for pre-order here on our site just yet) but at least they'll be there for the looking!

We are sorry to announce that several experts have confirmed that what we thought was a sketchbook of early versions of several years' worth of Krazy Kat strips created by George Herriman — and had planned to publish as such — is almost certainly the work of a very intense (perhaps contemporary with Herriman?) fan who diligently, even maniacally, copied each new strip into his sketchbook over a period of three years. The telltale signs of this became apparent only when we had a chance to take a closer look at high-resolution scans made as part of the pre-press process,…

Thank you, Chris Ware. This, the penultimate KRAZY + IGNATZ Sundays volume (covering 1919-1921), will be available in February 2011. We should be able to wrap up the series with the 1922-1924 volume by the end of that year, leaving us free to focus on… the dailies!

In all the APE excitement we nearly overlooked PIX: The Pittsburgh Indy Comics Expo, also happening this weekend and featuring special guests Kevin Huizenga and Frank Santoro, among others. Looks like a good time — there's been a welcome proliferation of these regional shows lately, it seems.