Fantagraphics Blog

The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora By Jim Flora; edited by Irwin Chusid & Barbara Economon A third collection of amusing nightmares from the demonic wand of Jim Flora Jim Flora (1914­-1998), long admired for boisterous 1940s and ’50s record cover illustrations and a later series of best-selling children’s books, has been rediscovered in recent years as an alchemist of bizarre and politely disturbing imagery. The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora burnishes the reputation of one of the great overlooked paintbox fantasists of the twentieth century. Like its two predecessors (The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora and The…

A fresh heap of Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!… collects all the [Fletcher] Hanks material not included in the first book. Hanks' hyperactive, colorful, robust, and crazily disproportionate art is perfectly matched to his over-the-top storytelling… There are few artists, from the Golden Age to today, that so deftly blended goofy dialogue with terrifying violence and surreal situations; for better or worse, Hanks was a real original. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club • Review: "[Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti] is a brutally funny and disturbing attempt to…

Above: cover of Amazing Heroes #117, published by Fantagraphics Books, May 1987 (artwork by Tom Yeates, I think; scan from Comic Collectors Live). Below: MJ strip by Paul Hornschemeier from the Wall Street Journal, 2008, as collected in the forthcoming book All and Sundry. Yes, Jackson's cultural influence extends all the way to Fantagraphics.

I just stumbled across this on Flickr today. Devlin Thompson says "I scanned this for possible inclusion in the book, but it didn't make it. You should buy the book anyway." Click for larger.

A quiet day for Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "There's always a touch of melancholy in everything that Jason writes, but there's a bleakness in some of these stories [in Low Moon] that I haven't seen since Hey, Wait…. All told, this is still a book every Jason fan should read…" – Rob Clough • Plug: "Buy [Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1]! It's amazingly good." – Jackson Publick (co-creator, The Venture Bros.) • News: Robot 6 reports that Michael Kupperman will provide the cover for the 2009 Best American Comics volume edited by Charles Burns • Sincerest form…

Ellen Forney makes a triumphant return to the pages of our hometown newsweekly The Stranger in the new annual "Queer Issue" with the full-page strip "How to Have a Mind-Blowing, Decadent, All-Day Threesome!" They've made it available as a downloadable PDF file, enabling you to print out one copy to laminate for future reference and one to insert with her other "how-to" strips in your copy of I Love Led Zeppelin.

Mome contributor Ollie Schrauwen posts intriguing images on his blog. (Hat tip: Spurge)

Here's a special blog post from our fearless co-captain, Kim Thompson… Kim, take it away… A shoutout to our buddy Jason, who returned to France last week after a whirlwind tour of the U.S. (New York/Portland/Seattle) to promote his new book LOW MOON and to visit his old haunts (he's lived in all three cities). He manfully signed and sketched for many fans in all three locales despite a persistent miserable cold – a true cartooning hero! This seems like a good time to answer the "what's next" question from Jason fans… Jason and I were so enamored of the LOW MOON format…

From Jim Flora archivist & doyen Irwin Chusid comes the following announcement: Jim Flora Art has released a limited-edition fine art print of a hyperactive 1960s painting entitled THE BIG BANK ROBBERY. This three-tiered tableau depicts characteristic Flora mayhem: inscrutable monsters with misshapen features, Lego architecture, bug-eyed buildings, gumdrop color fills, and — yes — a bank robbery. http://tinyurl.com/flora-bankrobbery Only thirty (30) prints of Big Bank Robbery were produced for this edition, and the first five (5) are available at a launch price of $165 each. Prices will increase for subsequent prints as the edition depletes. Produced by Flora archivist…

From Journalista: Now online for subscribers — and available soon in better bookstore and comics shop shelves nationwide — The Comics Journal #298, chock full of all the comicky goodness you need to get through the summer. Check it out: Diego Assis presents a full-length interview with breakout comic-book stars Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, who discuss their self-publishing apprenticeship in Brazil, their entry into the North American comics scene, their work on such titles as Casanova and The Umbrella Academy, and exactly who does what on their various projects. Shaennon Garrity sits down for a chat with Perry Bible…