Fantagraphics Books publishes comics for thinking readers - readers who like to put their minds to work, who have a sophisticated understanding of art and culture, and appreciate personal expression unfettered by uncritical use of cliché. Fantagraphics will practically always reject any submissions that fit neatly into (or combine in a gimmicky fashion) the mainstream genres of superhero, vigilante, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. While some of our publications are suitable for young readers, we do not publish children's picture books.

Take note of the originality and diversity of the themes and approaches to drawing in such Fantagraphics titles as Love & Rockets (stories of life in Latin America and Chicano L.A. which draw on influences as diverse as Luis Buñuel, Frida Kahlo, and Hank Ketcham); Palestine (journalistic autobiography in the Middle East); Eightball (surrealism mixed with kitsch culture in stories alternately humorous and painfully personal); and our Ignatz series of comics (contemplative literary pieces that explore the limits of the medium). Try to develop your own, equally individual voice; originality, aesthetic maturity, and graphic storytelling skill are the signs by which Fantagraphics judges whether or not your submission is ripe for publication.

We publish books of all dimensions and page counts (within reason) — there is no standard format. In recent years we have published very few comics in the standard comic book format (6-5/8" wide by 10-1/4" tall; 24, 32, or 48 pages plus covers, one-shot or series), though we certainly don't rule that out. The format should serve the story.

We want to see an idea that is fully fleshed-out in your mind, at least, if not on paper. Please submit a minimum of five pages of completed art (high-quality reproductions only, please — no original art!) so that we can get an idea of what you deem a finished product and so that we can adequately evaluate your skill at blending visual and textual storytelling elements. Please also include a synopsis of your storyline and indicate the length of the work (projected final page count). Please note that we do NOT look at work submitted in digital format, whether via internet (email, web, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or disc.

Fantagraphics is an independent company with a modus operandi different from larger, factory-like corporate comics publishers. If your talents are limited to a specific area of expertise (i.e. writing, inking, pencilling etc.), then you will need to develop your own team before submitting a project to us. No matter how brilliant your idea, we will not pair you with another creator.

We do not assume responsibility for unsolicited submissions. This means sending nothing that you'd mind us throwing away, since we have neither the room to store rejected submissions nor the manpower to return them. Any return postage included with submissions should be considered forfeit to us.

Do not send original art, portfolios, or other expensive packages. Sending your work by any of the various express-mailing services will not speed our decision, so please save your money. Again, we do not look at digital and/or electronically transmitted submissions — printed material only, please.

Unless your submission is so brilliant we jump at the opportunity to publish it or, slightly less brilliant but good enough for us to want to keep our eye on you for a future project, due to a lack of manpower, it is unlikely we will reply. Repeatedly contacting us to check on the status of your submission will be futile (and may annoy us).

While we request that you include a cover letter (stating your name, address, etc.) with your submission, we need no resumé — your work stands or falls on its own merits.

Address all submissions to:
Submissions Editor, c/o Fantagraphics Books, 7563 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 USA.

We know you have a lot of options when purchasing our publications and we're big supporters of the "Direct Market" (comic shops) and the book market. Buying our books in stores helps keep our books in stores. When you buy direct from us, it puts a little more money in our coffers, since we get the full retail price and not the wholesale price. (Our authors receive the same royalty no matter where you buy from and how much of a discount you buy at.) And as far as ordering online, other online retailers may offer hefty discounts, but your book may come rattling around in a box with just a few of those clear plastic pillow things to "protect" it. We lovingly pack and ship all our orders with the utmost care to ensure that your books arrive in the best, mintiest, most collectible condition possible. (See below for more info on that.)

We don't make any secret of it when we do! Be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter and/or follow us on Flog, Twitter, and/or Facebook for the latest news on sales and discounts. And we also have well-stocked bargain sections of Clearance Sale items, Closeout Deals and Dents & Dings — check them out for some great deals!

If you had a login on our old website, you will need to create a new registration; the old user accounts were not transferred to the new site. If you have registered on the new website but are still unable to log in, the following is most likely the problem: When you register, you should receive an e-mail requesting that you confirm your registration. Some people find that this message gets caught in their spam filter by mistake, so check to see if the message is in your spam folder. Once you find it, please follow the instructions in the message. If you do not find the message, please contact us and we will unblock your registration. You might also want to add "fantagraphics.com" to your e-mail whitelist to ensure delivery of future messages.

Please contact us and we will send you a new password (we cannot recover old passwords, but once you log in with your new password you can change it to whatever you like).

Just follow these steps:
1: Log in with your old password
2: On the top menu, highlight My Account and then click My Account Info
3: On the following page, click the "Account Information" link
OR
2-3: Just click here
4: On the following page, enter and confirm new password, then click the diskette icon to save

When you register on our website, your billing and shipping information is recalled when you log in, saving you the trouble of re-entering all that information every time you place an order. Even if you never visit our website again, you still would have had to provide that information to us in order for us to complete your order. And be assured that we have no nefarious plans for your registration information; we do not share it with any other parties, and we will not do anything with that information that you tell us not to do. If these terms are still unacceptable to you, you may place your order by calling our toll-free Customer Service line at 800-657-1100 (206-524-1967 outside of the U.S.) — our representatives will be happy to take your call.

Please make sure that your credit card information, including the card number, expiration date, confirmation code (the 3-digit number on the back of the card) and billing address are correct. If your billing address does not match the address on your credit card statement, your order will not be completed. If you are sure all these things are correct but you still receive an error, please copy the error message that you receive and contact us with the error pasted into your message — we will investigate and get back to you.

Orders are almost always sent out the next business day for rush delivery and within a couple days for standard delivery. The best way to find out the status of your order is to call us at 1-800-657-1100 (206-524-1967 outside the U.S.) Monday-Friday 9:00 am - 5:00 pm Pacific time, or send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Someone in our Customer Service bullpen will help you right out!

If you're local, i.e. in the Seattle area, we have an even better option for you: visit the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery located at 1201 S. Vale Street in the Georgetown district of Seattle. (See here for more info.) There you'll find our entire catalog of in-print books and comics in stock and ready to buy! To make sure the Bookstore has something in stock before you visit, give a call at 206-658-0110.

Ordering online requires the use of a credit card (Visa or Mastercard). If you prefer to order with a check or money order, download our printable order form (PDF format), print it out, fill it in using our website as a catalog, and mail it with your payment to Fantagraphics Books, 7563 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115.

Contractually, we're only allowed to sell Peanuts in North America. This is because licensors (such as United Media, who licenses Peanuts) sell their properties to publisher by specific "territory" and if a licensee is allowed to sell his version outside his "territory" this can harm the licensor's attempts to sell their licenses. For instance, a British publisher recently picked up the rights to The Complete Peanuts; if Fantagraphics had been allowed to sell to the United Kingdom these past few years, it's possible the British publisher would have been discouraged. But the bottom line is, OUR CONTRACT PROHIBITS US FROM SELLING PEANUTS OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA. That said, if you really want a Complete Peanuts and live outside North America you can probably get them from one or the other mail-order service (Amazon.com ships internationally, for instance); you just can't get them from us.

We are open from 9 am West Coast time. We try to specify this in all our ads; if you found an ad that said we were open from 9:00 a.m. that didn't specify Pacific Standard Time we apologize.

We know this can be a touchy subject, especially for collectors. Our warehouse staff is extremely skilled at carefully packaging orders to minimize damage. That said, even fresh off the press, there are bound to be slight flaws here and there, and trying to upgrade a brand-new book to a "minter" copy is a gamble at best.

The increased expense of using reinforced boxes would force us to increase our shipping charges, something that most of our customers would NOT want to happen. We do try our best to pack all orders with the materials we have available in the most secure manner.

If you join the 20/20 Club and do not receive your membership card with your order, do not be alarmed! It will arrive separately within two weeks. Our orders ship from our warehouse, while the membership cards are mailed in batches from our office.

We are currently slowly developing our digital comics strategy and anticipate that our publications will eventually be available via multiple platforms for various devices. For more information, see Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds's December 24, 2010 interview with Comics Alliance.

Of course there was the Ghost World film, adapted by Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff from the graphic novel by Clowes. Charles Burns's Black Hole is currently in development as a major motion picture with David Fincher attached as director. Dash Shaw and his collaborators created a series of animated shorts for IFC.com called "The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.," art from which can be found in the book of the same name; they are currently developing an original animated feature called The Ruined Cast with producer John Cameron Mitchell. Harvey Pekar's collaborations with Robert Crumb, as depicted in the American Splendor film, can be found in our Complete Crumb Comics series. An animated short of Peter Bagge's Hate can be found on the DVD of the documentary Hype. On the small screen, Tony Millionaire's Maakies appeared as animated shorts on Saturday Night Live and later on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim as the series The Drinky Crow Show, which ran for one season (2008-2009). Adult Swim also commissioned and aired a pilot episode of Michael Kupperman's Snake 'n' Bacon in 2009; Kupperman has also created shorts for SNL. The cable network Oxygen recently ran a series of animated shorts starring Roberta Gregory's "Bitchy Bitch." Back in the 1990s, MTV's animation anthology series Liquid Television included Charles Burns's "Dog Boy" and Richard Sala's "Invisible Hands" (which was an original creation not based on a book or strip). For more information about these various projects, check Google, YouTube and the IMDb.

Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with all foreign licensing requests.

Are you planning to publish a comic? Congratulations! All of our printers are overseas and deal with print runs of several thousand or more. If this sounds appropriate for your needs, contact Fantagraphics Co-Publisher This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and he'll be happy to give you a referral.

If it's not listed here on our website or in our catalog of upcoming releases (see our home page for a catalog download link) then chances are that a) we don't plan to, b) we've considered it but haven't made any plans, or c) we plan to but can't make an announcement yet. We encourage you to follow us on Flog! The Fantagraphics Blog and our various social networks for all the latest announcements.

While we realize fans would gobble our classic strip collections up like M&M's if we released one a month, we don't think the general market could absorb more than two relatively expensive books a year.

Yes, we used to offer empty slipcases for both The Complete Peanuts and Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace, for collectors who purchased the volumes individually and wanted to assemble their own box sets. However, due to a relocation of our warehouse and shipping facilities in 2010, and despite the fact that they were very popular among collectors, we simply no longer have room to store them.

While we are planning more volumes of Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace, we are also considering other Dennis the Menace-related books and the series is on hiatus until we finalize these plans. We will make an announcement as soon as we can.

Right here! Available now!

More good news! This book is on the schedule for early 2012: Yes, Joost has turned in all the files and publishers in three countries are synchronizing their watches! The title has changed from Modern Swarte, as originally solicited, to Is That All There Is? See more about the book here.

This book was originally delayed out of deference to Picturebox's Gary Panter two-volume art book, and then was further delayed due to Gary's busy schedule, but it's back on our schedule now for Spring 2012! Here's the announcement.

Yes! Click here!

The second volume of the series having been concluded, Linda Medley has no plans at present for a third volume. Sometimes cartoonists just burn out on long-running projects, and Linda needed a break from Castle Waiting. She has been working on other possible projects but nothing that is anywhere near publication or that can be announced. (But remember, there was a four-year hiatus between Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Castle Waiting.)

No, but stay tuned.

Believe us, if we had any, they would be available for sale on the website. Or eBay. Or our storefront in Seattle, where you can often find a few copies of rare gems that are technically out of stock. And no, our personal copies are not for sale.

It's priceless.

When Kim finally loses his mind.

Just contact us and your message will be forwarded to the responsible party.

Really now, you should know better than to even ask.

Not telling.

No.

A panel or two, sure. Anything more, you need our written permission.

We do not grant licenses for any of the following artists: Daniel Clowes, Robert Crumb, Chris Ware or Joe Sacco. There are far too many similar requests for us to accommodate all of these. Please submit all other queries in writing to us via our contact page.

We may be able to help, but be open to suggestions. The more high-profile the artist is, the busier and more expensive they are. We publish a ton of great cartoonists and while they might not be superstars like Clowes, Crumb, Burns, Ware et al., they can draw real purdy and would likely work for much less money and on a much tighter deadline.

This is a different proposition altogether, as a graphic novel can take years for an artist to draw and most of our artists are busy with their own projects. Before you follow through on this query we refer you to our friend Stephen Bissette's comments on this very subject.

About 20.

We have a whole page of information just for you!

Quite possibly.