• Review: "If war is hell, Blazing Combat is heaven. ...[A]lthough the subject matter is bleak, the presentation it’s been given is beautiful. This is as good as war comics get." - Rod Lott, Bookgasm

• Review: "Adam Grano’s bold cover design is the perfect complement to Fantagraphics’ comprehensive collection of [Blazing Combat]... It’s remarkable how little these stories have aged, as many cover thematic ground that resonates to this day." - Kevin Church

• Review: "Anders Nilsen's comics have the rare power to generate queasy laughter... Random cruelty, futility, ennui, and an implied assault on human complacency are the order of the day [in Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes]. When Nilsen wants you to feel his boredom, or taunt you for your own, he's merciless... Nilsen is a relentlessly interesting comics creator. ...I'm looking forward to his next performance in the wasteland." - Byron Kerman, PLAYBACK:stl

• Review: "The Lagoon is a peculiar book, continually confounding the reader's expectations. It starts out in many ways like a mystery or thriller novel does... But as the book progresses, it turns into a very different beast (no pun intended); a hidden romance, a story about longings, and family relationships... [T]his is a story that feels lush and moody in a way that comics often try to be but rarely succeed... The art in The Lagoon is a beautiful, lush, textured affair from [Lilli] Carré. It's almost like a cross between Charles Burns and Craig Thompson... The Lagoon is a beautiful graphic novel, ...a very solid, well-crafted book, and whatever Carré’s next project is, it’ll be one to keep an eye out for." - Greg McElhatton, Read About Comics

• Review: "I love love love Unlovable... The cover has glitter, too. LOVE it!... [Tammy] Pierce's earnest attempts to fit in at school and with her friends [are] funny and endearing, and sometimes embarrassing... Those days were such a pain in the ass, but they were the best." - MacKenzieLand

• Interview: SciFiPulse.Net talks to Greg Sadowski, editor of Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941. Choice quote: "Some have written that I chose artists strictly for their name value, but the truth is that after you’ve gone through hundreds of golden age books, the same guys stop you time after time: Cole, Eisner, Everett, Fine, Hanks, Kirby, Wolverton, and every now and then a few others. That’s how they became 'name' artists in the first place - because they were the best."

• Plug: Our pal J.R. Williams hypes Supermen! on his Flickr feed

• Things to see: Speaking of Flickr, here's a photo of Andrice Arp posing with a blowup of her cover art for Mome Vol. 15 (which I'm going to get up on the site here for pre-order real soon, I promise) from the good folks at Tugboat Press

We hope you've enjoyed our sneak peek at our Fall 2009 - Winter 2010 schedule of releases! Today's final excerpt from our latest book distributor's catalog, taking you through March of next year, includes Temperance, Cathy Malkasian's follow-up to the acclaimed Percy Gloom; The Search for Smilin' Ed by Kim Deitch; and Our Gang Vol. 4, continuing to collect Walt Kelly's 1940s kids' comic. (Note that all the info in this catalog is subject to change along the way to the books' release, including release dates, prices, cover art, book specs, etc.) Click here to download the PDF!

Today we celebrate the diversity of office cultures in alternative comics, as evidenced by sequential posts on Twitter:

Rivaling even the masterful European cartoonist Jason, Nicolas Mahler makes some of the most patiently deadpan comics around. A lot of cartoonists make use of padded out comic timing but Mahler takes it into a meditative state with a resolute willingness (or perhaps wilfullness) to draw and redraw a scene ad infinitum. He has, for example, hundreds of three-panel comics focused flatly on a man in a recliner wrapped in an electric blanket and his conversations with an alcoholic mother, wherein the only things that ever seem to change are whether the television set is on or the mother is conscious. And where most any other cartoonist would come off as self-indulgent or tedious Mahler pulls off an advent calendar of mundane windows on the world that pay off every time.

Mahler is Austrian and very little of his work has been available in the States. Top Shelf smartly published "Van Helsing's Day Off" (one of my favorite comics), and one other book, "Lone Racer". Otherwise it's been a matter of mail ordering his books, very few of which are even in English, which is the only language I can read. Still, I've collected all those French and German comics just to admire them. While I've heard complaints about his scratchy, abstracted forms, I love the unique, personal quality of the work that demands the viewer pay attention but not over-analyze. 

I am also a big fan of "silent" comics that work and Mahler (who calls them "mute comics") is one of the best artists around with silence. "Van Helsing" is a prime example. So is a gorgeous upcoming book that I've seen a little of-- seven stories of the sea, which may be the title (I forget). Hilarious in the way of other minimalist European cartoonists like Jason or Tom Gauld, the thrust of Mahler's work is the absurd and mundane humor in the everyday. I have no idea why those three cartoonists aren't more appreciated by American audiences. (Though Jason has built up a formidable following, I can't help but wonder why he's not on every comic fan's shelf.) 

Recently Mahler launched a blog to promote his latest book from Reprodukt, a collection of illustrations of junk emails he's received (such as that up top of this post). Check it out, then go to the Mahler Museum site and poke about to discover all kinds of gems, most of which are even more valuable. 

But if, like me, you're an English-language-only fan hoping for more Mahler stateside, the editors of MOME (Eric Reynolds and Gary Groth) have good news: the Fantagraphics anthology will be serializing comics from his Austrian "Madame Goldgruber" books. These stories are the bizarre auto-biographical strips about Mahler's experiences as a cartoonist justifying his work to the IRS-equivalent of Austria (I think), as well as vignettes of time spent at European comic conventions with other cartoonists (such as the also-great Killoffer). Translated by Kim Thompson, these will eventually be collected in book form by Fantagraphics. 

Mahler is making comics with all the immediacy, humor, and existential fixation that I most love in the medium. Just the fact that his main character in the Flaschko strips is solely defined by an electric blanket is so succinct, smart, and absurd that I would hope everyone reading this post would buy his books on principle.

Luba
By Gilbert Hernandez

Here at last, the long-awaited sequel to Palomar.

Now older but perhaps not so very much wiser, the hammer-wielding matriarch Luba has relocated to the United States of America, where she continues to contend not only, as an immigrant, with a brand new and not always welcoming culture but also her tempestuous extended family — her eccentric sisters Fritz and Petra, her nurturing but often disapproving cousin Ofelia, her many children ranging from the fully grown (Guadalupe and Doralis) to the latest brood sired by her husband Khamo (Casimira, Socorro, Joselito, and Conchita) — many of them in turn each with her own network of family members, lovers, and friends (including a number of other escapees from Palomar).

These “America” stories — over 100 of them, ranging from quick one-page blackout sketches to bona fide graphic novellas — were originally published in a number of different comics and reprinted in a trilogy of oversized paperbacks. Luba finally collects in one compact, affordable hardcover the entirety of these tales, showcasing Gilbert Hernandez’s wicked wit, great compassion, and uncanny understanding of how human beings love, squabble, and ultimately find a way to make it through this life. Tales of sex, violence and rock and roll rub elbows with stories of love, sensitivity, and understanding — and thanks to the miraculous alchemy of Hernandez’s peerless storytelling, what emerges is a coherent, exciting, funny portrait of one of the richest group of fictional characters ever to spring from a cartoonist’s mind.

600-page black & white 7" x 10.25" hardcover • $39.99
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

NOTE: Stay tuned for the future announcement of the Collectors Edition of Luba, signed by Gilbert Hernandez, with a special binding, and strictly limited to 30 copies, which will most likely be a convention exclusive starting this summer!

Connective Tissue
By Bob Fingerman

Video store clerk Darla Vogel is fed up — fed up with her job, fed up with her wake-and-bake roommate, fed up with everything. But when one of the customers at Kwok's Video offers her some of his meat-flavored candies, Darla takes a plunge down the rabbit hole into a surreal world of throbbing, veinous buildings, compulsory public nudity, weird creatures, and more. If William Burroughs, Lewis Carroll, H.P. Lovecraft, and Harvey Kurtzman ever collaborated, the result might resemble Bob Fingerman's bold confection of words and pictures — the copiously illustrated prose novel Connective Tissue.

134-page duotone 7.25" x 8.25" hardcover, available with FREE signed bookplate • $22.99
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

• Review: "The publication of I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets by Fantagraphics is a perfect example of publishers saving comics from obscurity. Hanks’ figures are blocky, the anatomy can be clumsy, and the writing is simplistic, yet on each page there is at least one panel that takes your breath away with its energy and power... There are terrifying images amidst his clunky compositions and strange leering grimaces in the faces of the heroes and villains alike. On top of all these aesthetic challenges and rewards, they are great stories, ...lively with a passionate definition of right and wrong, which gives them an infectious dynamism and excitement." - Christian Zabriskie, The Graphic Novel Reporter

• Review: "The line-up is mind-boggling..." - Rob Clough, in a 2002 review of the comics section in The Comics Journal Special Edition Vol. 2 (currently 50% off!) which originally ran in Savant

• Plug: Portland OR radio personality Daria from 105.1 The Buzz has selected Maggie the Mechanic by Jaime Hernandez as her Graphic Novel Pick of the Week

• Plug: "Released at last! America's finest comic book: Tales Designed to Thrizzle #5" - retailer Mike Sterling, spotlighting this week's new comics

• Plug: Fluxtumblr spotlights a joke from Tales Designed to Thrizzle #5

• Interviews: Someone identified only as Telebob sends along this compilation of video interview footage with original undergrounder Jack Jackson, which we are happy to share

• Shout-out: Hey Tucker Stone, let us buy you a drink (at the 9:32 mark)

• This just in: Jean Schulz is awesome

All last week and this week we're bringing you a sneak peek at our Fall 2009 - Winter 2010 schedule of releases! Today's excerpt from our latest book distributor's catalog includes Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist, the outsider cartoonist's first retrospective; King of the Flies Vol. 1: Hallorave by Pirus and Mezzo; Scream Queen: Sand and Fury by Ho Che Anderson; and The High Soft Lisp, a new Love and Rockets collection from Gilbert Hernandez. (Note that all the info in this catalog is subject to change along the way to the books' release, including release dates, prices, cover art, book specs, etc.) Click here to download the PDF!

• Review: "A sweet bouquet of [Nell Brinkley's] images have been collected by Trina Robbins and Fantagraphics in The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons from 1913-1940... [T]hese full-page cartoons provide a glimpse of the color and spectacle that newspapers trafficked in before publishers decided we were worth no more than our dwindling supply of classified ads." - Steve Duin, The Oregonian

• Preview: "I can't imagine in a week this light on substantial comics offerings that you couldn't find a place in your backpack or on your car seat for the latest issue of Michael Kupperman's great series [Tales Designed to Thrizzle]." - Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter, spotlighting the week's new comics

• Staff: Seattle Weekly has word on a couple of Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery doyen (and Seattle rock scene mainstay) Larry Reid's interesting extracurricular activities