We love all of our books but are especially happy for the creators of the Eisner-nominated books. You can vote until June 12 online. If you haven't read all of them, check 'em out individually or via our list!

Best Short Story: "Moon 1969: The True Story of the 1969 Moon Launch," by Michael Kupperman, in Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8

"Rainbow Moment," by Lilli Carré, in Heads or Tails

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot): Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8, by Michael Kupperman

Best Humor Publication: Naked Cartoonists, edited by Gary Groth

Best Anthology: No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, edited by Justin Hall

Best Reality-Based Work: You'll Never Know, Book 3: A Soldier's Heart, by C. Tyler

Best Graphic Album-New: You'll Never Know, Book 3: A Soldier's Heart, by C. Tyler

Best Graphic Album-Reprint: Cruisin' with the Hound, by Spain

Heads or Tails, by Lilli Carré

Best Archival Collection/Project-Strips: Mister Twee Deedle: Raggedy Ann's Sprightly Cousin, by Johnny Gruelle, edited by Rick Marschall

Pogo, Vol. 2: Bona Fide Balderdash, by Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly and Kim Thompson

Roy Crane's Captain Easy: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips, vol. 3, edited by Rick Norwood

Best Archival Collection/Project-Comic Books: Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man, by Carl Barks, edited by Gary Groth

Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics, edited by Michel Gagné

Best U.S. Edition of International Material: Athos in America, by Jason

New York Mon Amour, by Benjamin LeGrand, Dominique Grange, and Jacques Tardi

Best Writer/Artist: Gilbert Hernandez, Love and Rockets New Stories, vol. 5

Jaime Hernandez, Love and Rockets New Stories, vol. 5

C. Tyler, You'll Never Know, Book 3: A Soldier's Heart

Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art): Lorenzo Mattotti, The Crackle of the Frost

Best Lettering: C. Tyler, You'll Never Know, Book 3: A Soldier's Heart

Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism: tcj.com, edited by Timothy Hodler and Dan Nadel

Best Publication Design: Dal Tokyo, designed by Gary Panter and Family Sohn

Mister Twee Deedle: Raggedy Ann's Sprightly Cousin, designed by Tony Ong

Still no sure which to read? Heidi MacDonald, Cal Reid and company discuss the nominations on the Publishers Weekly podcast. Meanwhile, Chris Sims, Matt D. Wilson and more of War Rocket Ajax discuss the nominations, although I'm not sure how long the podcast will be up at this link. 

Some of the nominations gather in our mail room. See you in JULY!

We may have mentioned this before, but Michel Gagné, the editor behind Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics, is also a lovely artist in his own right!

And this Saturday, May 11th, Portlanders can see it for themselves as ASIFA Portland and the Art Institute’s Inkwell Animation Club present Michel Gagné: An Insanely Twisted Animation Saga!

Gagné will give a special presentation about his life in the pop-culture art world from 1:00 to 4:00 PM at the Art Institute of Portland [ 1122 NW Davis Street ]. Tell him we say hi!

Come one, come all and bring your ale mugs! Thursday, May 16 is the OFFICIAL ODDLAND RELEASE - BEER AND ART TOUR

Join Fantagraphics and Elysian Brewing in celebrating Oddland Peppercorn Saison - the first beer release in our Oddland Series - a creative venture from the warped minds of Elysian Brewing and Seattle artist, Jim Woodring. Start with an Elysian brewery tour and continue to CoCA Georgetown Gallery for beer, bites and art, including handpicked works from Jim Woodring, who will also be in attendance. 

4-5PM - Brewery tours at Elysian Airport Way: 5510 Airport Way S., 98108
5:30-9PM - Art, Beer and Bites at CoCA Gallery Georgetown: 5701 6th Ave. S., 98108

For those who must know more about the beer, Oddland Saison is a Belgian farmhouse-style ale brewed with four varieties of peppercorns: The fire of black and green, the sparkle of white and the pungent fruitiness of pink create a playful landscape of taste and aromatics. Brewed with Pale, Munich, Cara-Munich and wheat malts, bittered with German Northern Brewer and finished with Czech Saaz hops. 7% ABV so don't forget to eat.

The ODDLAND SERIES is a journey through the strange ingredients and imaginations of Elysian brewers and Seattle cartoonist, Jim Woodring. Invite your friends via our Facebook event.

“Bill Griffith has helped to redefine the [comics] medium for an entire generation. Zippy has traditionally held a strong appeal for free thinkers and life’s improvisers, and attracts discerning readers of all stripes.” – Sequential Highway

Zippy: The Dingburg Diaries 
by Bill Griffith

232-page black & white/color 8” x 10” softcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-641-6

Due to arrive in about 4-6 weeks. Click the thumbnails for larger versions; get more info, see more previews and pre-order your copy here:

http://www.fantagraphics.com/dingburgdiaries

We're excited to show off this advance copy of our handsome hardcover presentation of Bread & Wine by Samuel R. Delany and Mia Wolff, coming in about 2 months. Here's what some people had to say about the original, long out of print 1999 edition:

"Samuel R. Delany is one of the finest living American writers. In this revealing autobiographical love story, told in collaboration with fine artist Mia Wolff, Delany's brilliance shines." – Neil Gaiman

"Wildly eccentric artwork, a storyline that'd make Capote blush... Bread & Wine is smoking-gun proof that comics can go anywhere - and do anything." – Frank Miller

"Told simply and methodically like Delany's 1996 memoir, The Motion of Light in Water, the story is subdued yet acutely emotional. It reaches across the boundaries of race and class — as well as across hilariously opposed standards of personal hygiene — to capture two people in the process of building a life together." – Publishers Weekly

More previews are forthcoming, including a look at the spectacular surprise under the dust jacket. Preview a 6-page excerpt and pre-order a copy right here.

Toronto is rolling out the rainbow carpet for Justin Hall, our wonderful editor/artist behind the stellar anthology, No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics! 

On Friday, May 10th, the Glad Day Bookshop (the world's oldest LGBTQ bookshop) will be hosting a special evening with Justin, starting at 7:00 PM.  Beat the (non-straight) lines at his TCAF table, and come out (no pun intended) and get your books signed!

The Glad Day Bookshop is located at 598 Yonge Street, located on the West side, just north of Wellesley Street.

Yeah, dudes, we love fan art. We all know that's why Tumblr exists. But we wanted to highlight a great drawing by Zach Worton (Klondike, D&Q) of Richard Sala's The Chuckling Whatsit: scary and somber, the quiet before the storm. This art is part of a 'super-villains' fundraising auction, with proceeds going to the towards the Doug Wright Awards.

SPEAKING of up for sale, Johnny Ryan has some super cheap work up including an homage to the Simpsons. 

[The Umpteen Millionaire Club is our series which puts forth book club discussion questions for Fantagraphics titles. The Comics Journal interns Brooke Chin, Tom Graham and Toby Liebowitz put together this set of questions. As this is intended for those who have read the book and contains spoilers, questions can be found behind the jump. - Ed.]

Julio’s Day is a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez that spans the hundred-year life of one man. It opens with his birth; it follows Julio and his family and friends in a small farming village as successive generations are born and die. Packed within the pages is a range of human experience: a soldier goes to war and is changed; evil in the family goes unaddressed; and there’s the blue worm. We follow Julio to the end, which is much as the beginning, or, to quote Samuel Beckett, "the same day, the same second."

[Read more...]

Zippy: The Dingburg Diaries
by Bill Griffith

232-page black & white/color 8" x 10" softcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-641-6

Ships in: June 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Comprising a full two and a half years' worth of dailies and full-color Sundays, The Dingburg Diaries is the third Zippy book featuring tales of "Dingburg, the City Inhabited Entirely by Pinheads" — Zippy’s home town. There’s even a long series of "Historical Dingburg" strips, chronicling the pinhead population through the years, from 1840, when Dingburg’s "Town Fool" accidentally invented disco, to 1958 when Dingburg Beatniks flourished in the town’s Bohemian neighborhood. Like, Yowl, man.

God also has his own chapter (and verse). In the guise of a clip art "authority figure," he dispenses unwanted advice and conditional love upon the citizens of Dingburg. His tendency to cross-dress reaches new heights when he appears in a performance of "Swine Lake," wearing a tutu. Sacrilegious, yet sensitive.

There are large chunks of Mr. The Toad, Zerbina, Little Zippy and the rest of Griffith's cast of characters throughout this expanded collection. Published in a larger 8" by 10" format, The Dingburg Diaries also features a big color section, showcasing Griffith's inventive palette. There are parodies of the paintings of Edward Hopper and Film Noir, and "Griffy’s Top Ten List On Comics and Their Creation," a semi-serious mini-tutorial on everything (well, ten things) he’s learned in over forty years at the drawing board.

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Praise for recent volumes:

"Contemporary readers of Bill Griffith’s comic strip, Zippy the Pinhead, know with certainty that the illustrator is one of the most accomplished draftsmen working in comics today, his talents on a par with those of Robert Crumb. His art — nuanced shading; economical linework; evocative textures; fidelity to dress, gesture, expression, architecture, automotive design, and the thousand and one other accoutrements of modern life — is an unfailing daily marvel, especially considering the speed and regularity at which the strip is produced.” – Paul Di Filippo, Barnes & Noble Review

"If you're already a fan, you'll love this new collection. If you're not afraid to dip into Zippy's unique style of humor, philosophy and social critique, this book may make you a fan." – S.C. Ringgenberg, Heavy Metal

"I am so thankful for these collections... they're so good I wonder if Griffith isn't in the middle of one of those late-period renaissances that sometimes grip strip cartoonists, where everything kind of comes together in a considered fashion that's somehow more vital than the dozen or so years of comics that precede it." – The Comics Reporter

Our own Gary Groth and Mike Catron will be pillaging and plundering at VikingCon 2013 in Bellingham, WA, on Saturday, May 11th! 

VikingCon describe themselves as, "a cultural convention that serves as a place for individuals involved in the comic world across all levels of experience to come together and engage in meaningful conversations and explorations." And with that in mind, go engage in meaningful conversations with Gary and Mike in the following panels!

11:00 - 12:00 PM // The Age of Modern Comic: The Modern Age of Comics is a period in the history of American comic-books that began in the mid-1980s around the time of the publication of Watchmen, and has gone on to see the revival of the comics industry in the twenty-first century. This panel is a round-table discussion about the Modern Age, focusing on the multimedia popularity of comic books and addressing key issues about the changing nature of comics today. (Room VU 565A)

1:45 - 2:45 PM // Getting Into the Industry: Come meet industry professionals from many different aspects of the comic world, and learn what it takes to get in the business. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, artist, publisher/editor, or simply interested in how to get a career in the film, gaming, comic and graphic novel-inspired industry, this panel is a unique opportunity to ask and learn from people who have been in your shoes. (Room VU 565A)

VikingCon 2013 will be held in the Viking Union building at Western Washington University [ 516 High Street, Bellingham ].  Click here for driving and parking instructions. Parking is free of charge.