As you can see, Jason's new graphic novel Lost Cat (coming in July) is presented in the same handsome hardcover format as his story collections Low Moon and Athos in America and the reprint volumes What I Did and Almost Silent. His longest, and dare we say one of his best, works to date deserves no less.
A detective story with multiple mysteries, romantic longing, and a head-spinning finale all delivered in trademark understated Jason style, it's a thrilling, heart-tugging, satisfying read. And there's a cute kitty cat. See for yourself with our free 15-page excerpt, and pre-order yours right here.
Jaime will discuss the lives and loves of his crazy ‘locas’ -- Maggie and Hopey -- and other much-loved characters from the independent phenomenon Love and Rockets.
Doors open at 6:00 PM, and the event starts at 6:30 PM sharp! The discussion runs through 8:00 PM, followed by a signing.
Tickets are selling FAST, and they've already moved the event to a larger venue to accomodate all you Love and Rockets fans! Do not sleep on this: get your tickets today either online, or by calling the box office at 020 7871 3515.
Don't let the name fool you: the Ciné Lumière Cinema at the Institut Francais is located in London at 17 Queensberry Place. The nearest tube station is at South Kensington on the Piccadilly, Circle & District lines.
At last, the announcement we've been waiting for since 2010: Luc Besson's film adaptation of Jacques Tardi's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is finally getting released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the United States! It comes out from Shout! Factory on August 13 and you'll be able to watch it dubbed into English or with subtitles. Here's a trailer:
Bringing you the absolute best in alternative comics, Fantagraphics and comiXology have released Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s for your digital reading delight. Edited by Michael Dowers, Newave! is a gigantic collection of the best small press cartoonists to emerge after the first generation of underground cartoonists (such as R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and Art Spiegelman) paved the way. These cartoonists, inspired by the freewheeling creative energy of the underground comix movement, began drawing and printing their own comix seen here.
This gigantor collection has 856 pages of comics by your favorite artists of today and yesterday for only $19.99. Get Newave! on comiXology and settle in for the night, hell, make it the whole weekend!
"...[A] fascinating treasure trove of an anthology... In addition to work by greats like Artie Romero, Rick Geary, and Mary Fleener, and 50 or so others, [Newave!] serves as the history of a movement." -- Publishers Weekly
"Back in the days of Factsheet Five, I used to order tons of minicomix. Most were mediocre, but a few were terrifically good and that made it worth the risk to send in the fifty cents or so that they cost. ... Fantagraphics just released a massively thick (900 pages!) anthology of minicomix called Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s, and it's a treat." – Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing
It's been twenty years since comics legend Jaime Hernandez visited London, and we are making up for it in a big way!
Not only will Jaime be a guest of honor at COMICA: The London International Comics Festival, but he kicks off his UK visit on Wednesday, May 29th with a special appearance at Gosh! Comics! This signing and the COMICA talk are Jaime’s only two engagements in London, so catch him at one, or both, or miss out entirely!
Jaime will be signing from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, and our friends at Gosh! state:
As yet we do not have a limit of how many things can be signed other than the usual ‘Please be polite to your fellow fans and do not bring a suitcase full of stuff’. We’ll have a look at the line on the day and see if we need to put a limit on – if we do it will probably be something like three items. Also! Because we’ve only got Jaime for a couple of hours, we will not be able to take signed requests for this one, sorry. If you can’t make it just bribe your friend with beer or chocolate (those new Malteaser bars are pretty good) or owe them a dinner. If Jaime’s got a spare ten minutes before he’s whisked away to his own dinner we will ask him to sign some stock for us, and if that happens we will announce it. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.
Gosh! Comics is located at 1 Berwick Street in London. Miss this, and risk waiting another twenty years to meet him!
Here's your first sneak peek of an advance copy of The Love and Rockets Companion, edited by Marc Sobel & Kristy Valenti and coming in July. This book fits nicely on your shelf with the Love and Rockets Library volumes and serves as your guide to the L&R universe, with 3 major interviews with the Hernandez brothers, character guides, previously unpublished artwork, Locas and Palomar timelines, a complete bibliography, and letter column excerpts. All this wrapped in a fold-out jacket with a poster on one side and character family trees on the other! We'll show you that in action along with more views of the book soon.
Our free 32-page preview assembles short excerpts from each of the major sections; read it here, where you can also place your pre-order. And you can pre-order a set of the Companion, Covers, and Reader books at a nice discount here.
Advance copies are in and here's a quick peek at The Daniel Clowes Reader: A Critical Edition of Ghost World and Other Stories, with Essays, Interviews, and Annotations. True to the title, it's got the whole Ghost World graphic novel in it, plus a bunch more stories, interviews with Clowes, and a bunch of smart people writing a bunch of smart stuff about the stories, all wrangled and partly written by Ken Parille and packaged up in this smart-looking compact flexi-bound softcover designed by Alvin Buenaventura. It's a must for every Clowes fan and for any serious reader of comics, which means you!
The book's due out in July; you can pre-order and sample the contents with a free 31-page excerpt right here.
This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.
224-page black & white 7" x 9.5" hardcover • $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-605-8
"Wandering Son is not the kind of manga in which a happy ending is guaranteed… You'll thus be grateful for the moments of realistic, untempered joy Shimura allows her two protagonists here, as you wait with nervous anticipations for the travails that lie ahead for them…" –Glen Weldon, NPR
Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown here as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.
Good Dog marks the welcome return of alternative cartoonist Graham Chaffee, who, after his successful 2003 collection of short stories, The Most Important Thing and Other Stories, took a detour to devote himself to the art of tattooing, before charging back with his new, beautifully conceived graphic novel.
Ivan, who is plagued by terrible nightmares about chickens and rabbits, is a good dog — if only someone would notice. Readers accompany the stray as he navigates dog society, weathers pack politics, and surveys canine-human interactions.
Good Dog's story and pen-and-ink art are deceptively simple, but Chaffee uses the approachability of the subject matter as a device to explore topics such as independence, security, assimilation, loyalty, and violence. Preteen-and-up dog fanciers, especially, will warm to the well-meaning Ivan and his exploits with a motley assortment of Scotties, Bulldogs, and mutts. Chaffee combines illustrative gravitas with cartooning verve and creates a richly textured, dog’s-eye view of the world. The story is a rousing Jack London-esque adventure as well as a moral parable.
Advance Praise:
"Graham Chaffee has been one of my favorite cartoonists since I fell in love with his 1997 debut graphic novel, Big Wheels. Combining tremendous empathy towards his characters, concise storytelling and exquisite detail, Chaffee's comics are sublime. I am eagerly awaiting Good Dog. I'll plan my week around reading it." – James Sturm (Market Day)
"Good Dog is a book as seemingly lost in time as its canine hero Ivan. Graham Chaffee has a real talent for charming anthropomorphic cartooning and his clean, appealing storytelling and expressive brushwork evoke the work of an alternative golden age of comics; an age perhaps in which superheroes never existed and the medium told more straightforward, poignant stories." – James Romberger
"Getting into the mind of a dog — that's a real trick. I know, I've tried. Getting into the whole heart and soul of a dog is another whole feat. Graham Chaffee not only does it with aplomb (he draws GREAT dogs), he gets into the whole dog's life — and so should you." – Nick Abadzis (Laika)
"I got choked up a couple of times which is the one of the best things a comic can do to me. Compliments to Mr. Graham Chaffee. Really solid storytelling and excellent art. Reminiscent the best way of Jack London's The Call of the Wild." – Farel Dalrymple (Pop Gun War)
On the long road to becoming an Oscar-winning animation director, Gene Deitch became an intense jazz fan. At the age of 21, he discovered The Record Changer magazine, a jazz collector's magazine filled with fanatical, scholarly, and purist essays about jazz as well as listings of hard-to-find jazz albums. Every jazz swinger in the '40s was called a cat (as in "cool cat"), so Gene Deitch created a cartoon feature for Record Changer titled "The Cat," which quickly became a fixture of the magazine. He also started drawing the covers, which graced almost every issue from 1945 to 1951 along with "The Cat." Deitch's stylistically virtuoso images exquisitely embodied the essence of jazz and became a visual paean to the joy of collecting and appreciating jazz.
Fantagraphics Books is proud to collect all of Deitch's Record Changer covers and "Cat" cartoons in one coffee-table, landscape-format art book, reproducing his covers in the same gorgeous colors in which they first appeared as well as the black-and-white Cat cartoons, with commentary and reminiscences by Deitch himself. Originally published in 2003 in hardcover and out of print for years, this redesigned, first-ever paperback edition will delight a new generation of fans.