Fantagraphics Blog

A few weeks ago, I attended SPX for the first time in a few years. Better yet, I attended it as a fan rather than a retail employee of Fantagraphics for the first time in over a decade, and I had a really great time. Best of all, my family was with me and it was great to come and go and visit with people at my leisure and then go leave with them. I saw many old friends and made a ton of new friends and met and inordinate amount of folks I only knew online or by phone — all…

Here's your first glimpse at the feature interviews with Norwegian graphic novelist Jason and Lio cartoonist Mark Tartulli, the special portfolio of cartoonists' holiday cards, the comics section of Barney Google strips, and more that can be found in the upcoming Comics Journal #294. Click this link if the embedded slideshow doesn't appear above, and/or to open it in a new window.

Available tomorrow exclusively at participating comic shops: A Peanuts Halloween, a special 12-page comic produced as a free Halloween trick-or-treat giveaway! This little pamphlet reproduces Great Pumpkin-themed Peanuts strips from the last two volumes of The Complete Peanuts and is notable for being the first time Fantagraphics has presented Sunday Peanuts strips in color! Your local comic shop is the only place to get this nifty little item – be sure to call ahead and confirm availability.

• BBC News talks to Zippy the Pinhead creator (and, next week, Seattle visitor) Bill Griffith (streaming audio) • Austin English poses 20 questions to Dash Shaw • Blog Flume looks at Charles Schulz's use of punctuation in Peanuts • More sketchbook pages from Anders Nilsen

  Thursday night at NYC's MoCCA Museum, Kim Deitch will host a Cartoon Movie Night featuring rarely seen animated cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s hand-picked for the occasion from Deitch's own personal collection. This period of animation inspired Deitch's signature character Waldo the Cat and is the subject of his acclaimed graphic novel The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which is featured in the ongoing Deitch exhibit currently on display at MoCCA. As a special Halloween treat, MoCCA will also display for one night only selected specimens from Deitch and spouse Pam Butler's extensive collection of antique toy cats. The blurring of fact, fiction and autobiography in Deitch's work is a major…

The stupidest, ugliest, stubbliest girl in grade number two returns in the third collection of Johnny Ryan's Blecky Yuckerella: Comics Are for Idiots!  Click this link if the embedded slideshow doesn't appear above, and/or to open it in a new window.

• Photo proof of Daniel Clowes at the Ghost World screening at the Pacific Film Archive this past Sunday: inconclusive, conclusive • Three Steps Over Japan gives an overview of the work of Tori Miki • This is kind of a tacky list, but we're proud to be doing our part to keep Charles M. Schulz on it • It should come as a surprise to no one that I'm partial to this snowboarding DVD cover designed by John Pham

Former Guilford, CT high school teacher Nate Fisher, who was railroaded out of a job after assigning Daniel Clowes' Eightball #22 to a student, is back on his feet and better than ever.