Fantagraphics Blog

The talented and lovely Femke Hiemstra visits Seattle from Amsterdam showing new paintings on Friday at Roq la Rue and as a guest at the wild 3rd anniversary party at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday. Roq la Rue proprietor and lowbrow culture maven Kirsten Anderson observes, "Drawing on a range of influences from firework wrappers to Japanese woodblock prints, Femke's use of both pop culture detritus and child-like fantasy create a vibrant playground for the imagination, with each piece looking like a portal for a fantastic adventure. It is left to the viewer to imagine the story that lies…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Your Official Selection nominees at the 37th Festival International de la Bande Desinée d'Angoulême include the French editions of Dungeon Quest Book 1 by Joe Daly (coming in May from Fantagraphics), Eightball by Daniel Clowes (a collection with no English analogue), and Misery Loves Comedy by Ivan Brunetti • Lists: The Comics Reporter asked its readers to "Name Five Comics You Enjoyed This Year" — spot the Fantagraphics releases in the results • Gift Guide/List/Plug: At Comic Book Resources, Kelly Thompson's "Awesome Women in Comics Holiday Gift List 2009" includes Ghost World by Daniel…

Speaking of Kevin Huizenga, his conversation with Art Spiegelman (moderated by Gary Groth) from The Comics Journal #300 is now available to read on the new TCJ.com website (about which more later).

Kevin Huizenga presents the first part of a presumably new Glenn Ganges strip on his blog.

You want to make art with a medium that restricts your ability to make said art? Try an Etch-A-Sketch instead of glorified finger-painting. Knock yourself out with an iPhone for studies and sketches — just please don't present it to me as finished art.* Thanks! * Exceptions may apply, but I haven't seen any yet. (Spider-man by Keith Drake from Wanderline.com.)

Tomorrow at 6:30 PM at the Multnomah County Central Library in Portland OR, T. Edward Bak gives a presentation about his in-progress story "Wild Man," about naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, currently being serialized in our quarterly anthology Mome. More info here. If I lived there I would totally go!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box By Jacques Boyreau Harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the advent of rental videos astonished the movie-going consumer who could only feed his addiction by going to the theater or watching chopped up movies in between commercials on TV. Like vinyl, here is the revenge of another analog cast-off: the VHS is once again insinuating itself into American culture, and this book celebrates the anarchic design art of those early VHS boxes. Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the…

Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan resume their joint book tour behind their respective new releases All and Sundry and Animals and Objects In and Out of Water with a West Coast leg beginning tonight in L.A. and wrapping up at our blowout Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 3rd Anniversary party on Saturday. Full list of West Coast dates: Mon., Dec. 7, 6pmGiant Robot2062 Sawtelle Blvd.LOS ANGELES, CA Tues., Dec. 8, 7pmFoundation Editions@NOMAD1993 Blake Ave.LOS ANGELES, CA Wed., Dec. 9, 6-8pmGiant Robot618 Shrader St.SAN FRANCISCO, CA Thurs., Dec. 10, 7pmD. King Gallery2284 Fulton St.BERKELEY, CA Fri., Dec. 11, 6pmGoodfoot Gallery2845 SE StarkPORTLAND,…

Now available for preview and pre-order: the new 3rd volume of our anything-goes, eyeball-poking, laff-inducing, psyche-jolting comics anthology Hotwire Comics, brought to you by editor (and cover artist) Glenn Head. This edition features contributions from two dozen creators including Michael Kupperman, Mary Fleener, R. Sikoryak (with some brand-new "Masterpiece Comics"), Onsmith, Mats!?, Stephane Blanquet and many more! Download an exclusive 15-page PDF excerpt containing a page each from a sampling of contributors right here (16.5 MB). This book is scheduled to be in stock and ready to ship later this month and in stores shortly thereafter (subject to change). View…

In today's New York Times Sunday Book Review, Douglas Wolk turns in some short reviews of recommended comics for the holidays, including: "The blandly didactic sobriety of old educational comics and earnest advertisements… is Michael Kupper­man’s default tone for the deranged, gaspingly funny work collected in Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume One. Kupperman has a stiff, deadpan drawing style that suggests the textures of woodcuts, clip-art and old 'Mary Worth' strips; his writing, on the other hand, jumps the rails at every opportunity."  "The artists assembled by Andrei Molotiu for his anthology Abstract Comics push 'cartooning' to its limits: the…