{product_snapshot:id=1474,true,false,true,left}By the 1950s, the superhero genre had been reduced to a minor piece of the comic-book mosaic. Patriots like Captain America — designed to boost the country’s morale and soothe wartime angst — ran aground of purpose with the end of World War II. The majority of heroes had been retired by the late ’40s, including the entire Timely Comics line, featuring Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and the Human Torch. The industry’s postwar output splintered into several distinct themes — crime, teen, funny animals, Western, war, and romance. Yet in the popular imagination the defining 1950s comics genre was horror. It…
Bottomless Belly Button – Exclusive Preview
A Comedy-Drama Following the Dysfunctional Adventures of the Loony Family {product_snapshot:id=1457,true,false,true,left}After 40-some years of marriage, Maggie and David Loony shock their children with their announcement of a planned divorce. But the reason for splitting isn’t itself shocking: they’re “just not in love any more.” The announcement sparks a week long Loony family reunion at Maggie and David’s creepy (and possibly haunted) beach house. The eldest child, Dennis, struggles with his parents’ decision while facing difficulties of his own in his recent marriage. Believing that his parents are hiding the true reasons behind their estrangement, Dennis embarks on a quest to…
The Production Evolution of a Humbug Page
{product_snapshot:id=1501,true,false,true,left} Fantagraphics’ Humbug collection is due in early 2009. This two-volume slipcased hardcover set assembles the never-before-collected, complete, original 11-issue run (1957-58) of the satirical magazine conceived and edited by Harvey Kurtzman and created by Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Jaffee (Kurtzman’s MAD magazine cohorts one and all) and Arnold Roth. This feature, conceived by Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth and written by our production ace Paul Baresh, will give you a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the restoration of a Humbug page. – Ed. This is the original artwork. You can see all the items are pasted on and there are…
Rebel Visions – Introduction by Patrick Rosenkranz
{product_snapshot:id=1456,true,false,true,left} Foreword I was a student at Columbia University when I started reading the East Village Other in 1966. It was full of outrageous and libelous stories, bawdy language, wild accusations, and doctored photographs. Best of all, it had totally crazy comics, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Every week I’d pick up a new issue at a Village newsstand, along with a slightly larger New York Post, and, unsure of how my fellow Gothamites might react to its lurid covers, I would read EVO camouflaged on the subway ride uptown to Morningside Heights. {mosimage} Like many of…
Rebel Visions (Softcover Edition) – Exclusive Preview
A New Revised and Expanded Edition of the Definitive History of Underground Comix {product_snapshot:id=1456,true,false,true,left}Now available in a newly designed and affordable softcover edition! This is a provocative chronicle of the guerilla art movement that changed comics forever. This comprehensive book follows the movements of 50 artists from 1967 to 1972, the heyday of the underground comix movement. Through interviews with the participants and other materials, Rebel Visions is the most intimate look ever at the people and events that forged the phenomenon known as underground comix, from New York to San Francisco, from the corn belt to deep in the…
Explainers – Exclusive Preview
The First Volume in a Major Archival Collection from Cartooning Legend Jules Feiffer {product_snapshot:id=532,true,false,true,left}In 1956, a relatively unknown cartoonist by the name of Jules Feiffer started contributing a strip to the only alternative weekly published in the US, a small radical newspaper called The Village Voice. His strip tackled just about every issue, private and public, that affected the sentient American: relationships, sexuality, love, family, parents, children, psychoanalysis, neuroses, presidents, politicians, media, race, class, labor, religiion, foreign policy, war, and one or two other existential questions. It was the first time that the American public had been subjected to a…
