Visit Paul Hornschemeier's blog to learn the story behind this lemur poet illustration and find out which famous author resembles which beloved Fantagraphics staff member.

We are pleased to present this animated video trailer created by artist Dash Shaw for his graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button. He sent it to us last week and our jaws have been on the floor ever since. Watch the streaming video above; you can also download the original, higher-res Quicktime file (68.5 MB). Note that the video is silent, so there is no need to adjust your audio settings. If you wish to link to this video, please direct your link to this permanent archive page.

We let Steven Weissman have a day off from the "Chocolate Cheeks" grind last Friday but he put his nose back to the grindstone and turned it in yesterday. In this week's strip: a quest to the frozen aisle! (Remember, you must be registered and logged in to read.)

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today's installment features another debut from a Xeric Grant winner, Alex Fellows:

Canvas

During a camping trip one weekend, Canvas, a fourteen-year old girl born to a pig and a frog, suffers the attraction of two young guys, goes on a shocking double date, and gets drunk for the first time. Her parents, despite their odd appearance, have a very typical fear of their daughter's new experiences. Hot upstart cartoonist (and Xeric Grant winner to boot) Alex Fellows compels the reader with this teenage girl's decisions based on the only quality she's had time to develop: curiosity.

80-page black & white 7.5" x 9" softcover
regularly $9.95 • ON SALE $7.46
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Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today's installment features a recent book from South African cartoonist Joe Daly which didn't quite escape notice, having garnered a 2007 Eisner Award nomination for "Best Graphic Album - New," but we're turning the spotlight on it again anyway:

Scrublands

This debut collection is the first book Fantagraphics has published by a South African cartoonist. Daly's earlier work has been described as "Tintin meets the Freak Brothers in the Cape of Good Dope." Indeed, Daly's cartoons, offbeat, hallucinatory, and often hilarious, seem descended from and in some cases an amalgamation of the substance-induced work of Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Victor Moscoso, and S. Clay Wilson, filtered through the artist's own unique vision and sense of the absurd. Stories alternate between full color and black-and-white and range from representational Jim Jarmusch-like scenarios to wild visual excursions, albeit linear ones. We are pleased to introduce a unique new voice to the world of cartooning and predict Daly's mix of deadpan absurdity and surreal imagery will be greeted with enthusiasm by readers and critics alike.

128-page color/b&w 8.5" x 11" softcover
regularly $16.95 • ON SALE $12.71
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Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today's installment features the Xeric Grant-winning debut from artist and animator Santiago Cohen:

The Fifth Name

Based on a 1920s Austrian novella by Stefan Zweig, this story is a reaction to the politics of the time. A personal story of a man searching for a sense of justice and responsibility towards the others, it takes place in India before Buddha when people had very different moral values. Divided into 5 sections, each section deals with different aspects of the life of the main character Virata as he tries to be righteous. Stefan Zweig was a humanist and after seeing what became of his beloved Europe when the Nazis took over he eventually committed suicide in Brazil in 1942 when he couldn't bear it any longer. Xeric Grant winner Santiago Cohen's personal connection with the story is evident in each line of this wonderful book. This engrossing tale of an ancient soldier's quest for wisdom and justice amidst the chaos of medieval life resonates with the archetypical immediacy of a children's fable, but don't let that fool you. Behind the simple but expressive art is a profound meditation on life, loss, guilt and the search for enlightenment that will stay with you long after you've finished reading.

128-page two-color softcover
regularly $14.95 • ON SALE $11.21
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Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today's installment features the accomplished 1997 debut by Brian Biggs:

Frederick & Eloise: A Love Story

Brian Biggs is a talented illustrator whose first comic is a strange and hypnotic love story that maneuvers around Paris and Frederick's dreams with a light touch that belies its grisly subject matter. Told in a strict format of two panels per page, it features Biggs's elegant and surreal drawings. Consider a comic written by Roman Polanski and drawn by Alfred Hitchcock and you'll have some idea of what to expect: dreamlike and perverse (though not in the least bit explicit), it engages the senses and lingers in the mind. This stunning debut is presented in a unique, deluxe mini-book format, printed on high-quality, enamel-coated art paper, with full-color painted covers and a beautifully executed halftone interior. This is one of the most accomplished works by a new talent we've ever been privileged to publish.

32-page black & white 8" x 7" comic
regularly $4.95 • ON SALE $3.71
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Have a great holiday weekend, America. Remember: light fuse, get away.

• The blogger known as Polinees on Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories by Jason

• Winnipeg's Uptown Magazine says Jason's The Last Musketeer is "great fun"

• The North Adams Transcript on Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco

• Kevin Church posts his favorite page from The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez

• Writer Reading looks at R. Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz's Kafka

• Cool Aggregator recommends Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button, and Panels and Pixels includes it in a graphic-novel roundup post

• The Suit Ling Library on The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott

• Flog commentor Derik Badman points out his 2006 review of Romance Without Tears

• Stripper's Guide takes a thoughtful look at Bill Mauldin's Willie & Joe: The WWII Years

Plus...

• Sean T. Collins rescues his 2007 WizardUniverse.com interview with Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez from archive-dump oblivion by re-posting it on his own site

• Comics Comics recaps the Heroes Con "Craft in Comics" panel featuring Jaime Hernandez - part 1, part 1.5, part 1.75

• Javier Hernandez (no relation) talks about interviewing Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko author Blake Bell for the Planet Comic Book Radio program; meanwhile, Rick Klaw, grandson of Irving Klaw, learns something new about his grandfather from Strange and Stranger

• Syndicate Product Covert HQ and Super Doomed Planet both examine the Schulz and Peanuts roundtable in The Comics Journal #290 (we're sold out of that issue, by the way) 

From me, to Irwin Chusid, back to me, to you... I had the luck to find this great, seldom-seen Jim Flora illustration in a copy of the June, 1964 issue of Venture: The Travelers World that I stumbled upon at a thrift store last weekend. Our Paul Baresh scanned it up real pretty and I sent it to Irwin, who posted it on the Jim Flora art blog, where you can see a larger version.

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today's installment features a great collection of classic '50s romance comics compiled and edited by John Benson:

Romance Without Tears

A first-time collection of the best romance comics of the 1950s. These bright, naturalistic tales (originally published by Archer St. John and written by unrecognized comics master Dana Dutch) are about high school girls who may be inexperienced but definitely have minds of their own. Many of these stories are illustrated by Matt Baker, who achieved fame for his work on Phantom Lady and other sexy female characters in the '40s and '50s.

"With bold writing and smooth, graceful artwork, these tales are fun and visually compelling stories — not just relics of the past, but good comics that hold up." – Publishers Weekly

160-page full-color 8" x 10" softcover
regularly $22.95 • ON SALE $17.21
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