Fantagraphics Blog

Online Commentary & Diversions for today: • List: Carol Borden of The Cultural Gutter names Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 as one of "10 Comics I Liked in 2009," calling it "an amazing collection of Golden Age comics and heroes, beautifully restored." • Review: "It’s weird and it’s different and it immediately showed me that Ganges #2 is not what I thought it was. I was expecting mopey autobio, a distant cousin of Blankets with better artwork, and instead got something that was well worth the hype. …It’s a comic about people and how they interact,…

The Previews website is featuring 8 interior pages from It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi, available at comic shops, bookstores and of course right here on our website this Spring.

Exciting news: Steven Weissman has joined the What Things Do webcomics collective alongside founders/charter contributors Jordan Crane, Sammy Harkham and Ted May. The first page of his brand new story "This Already Happened" is up now!

  Fantagraphics' co-leader and secret weapon Kim Thompson speaks to Chris Marshall of the Collected Comics Podcast about our line of classic strip reprints and foreign translations. 

Missed it: yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of the relaunch of our website in its current form. Whoopee! Thanks to everybody who has visited, shopped, and offered feedback during this time. One modification we've recently made to the site is that now we can list items in our web shop without offering them for sale (in other words, without the "add to cart" button). We did this for a couple of reasons: one, so we can continue to have info about certain of our books available online even if they go out of stock (and other sites can continue to…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "I opened [West Coast Blues], got sucked in and blew through it in one sitting. Then I went back a few weeks later, in preparation for this review, and re-read it. I found that I liked it even better the second time around, as I was able to spend a little more time with it and take in the subtleties of the work. I suspect I will read it again soon and I would definitely recommend it. Fans of great artwork and crime stories should give this book a shot." – Chad Derdowski, Mania…

Now available for preview and pre-order: Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s. This chunky little hardcover weighs in at nearly 900 pages of the best small press cartoonists to emerge in the 1970s, documenting the explosive, unrestrained output of underground comix' DIY second generation with comix galore as well as several informative interviews. Click here to read the full Table of Contents, and here to read the Introduction by editor Michael Dowers. Download an exclusive 36-page PDF excerpt with samples from throughout the book right here (2 MB). This book is scheduled to be in stock and ready…

 If, like me, you enjoy baseball almost as much as comics, this is one of the coolest posts I've seen in awhile. Wezen-ball uses The Complete Peanuts to calculate the Peanuts gang's baseball record from 1950-1970. I love the idea of Kim Thompson's awesome Complete Peanuts indexes being useful to sabermetricians. 

Check out these photos by Daniel Seth Pagel of Sunday night's classy-looking launch party for Mome Vol. 17 at Bergen Street Comics which I ganked from Nate Neal's Facebook page. Sara Edward-Corbett and Nate Neal Gabrielle Bell and Sara Edward-Corbett Nate Neal, Gabrielle Bell, Derek Van Gieson Derek Van Gieson and Nate Neal