•Interview: Creator of the epic series Dungeon Quest, Joe Daly, is interviewed about the third graphic novel on The Comics Journal by our own Eric Buckler. "I liked the idea of creating a character without shame, and a almost healthy polymorphous sexuality, and within that a kind of an innocence, or at least a pureness. I also try to challenge myself to see what cartooning can achieve, what it can get away with. There seem to be things that cartoon characters can get away with, that would be far less acceptable if they were real people."

•Interview: David Gerstein, editor of the Mickey Mouse books (with Gary Groth) is interviewed on Comics Alliance. Chris Sims asks, "[Sorcerer's Apprentice] Mickey seems like a completey different chaacter than the one we see in Gottfredson's work." To which Gerstein replies, ". . .  Mickey didn't need to share as much screen time with his supporting cast in his early days; he got adventure shorts largely to himself, and got to be this urgent, driven little squirt in a wild, swashbuckling world."

•Commentary: Filmmaker Magazine makes a nice comparision to Gabriella Giandelli's Interiorae and David Lynch's Blue Velvet film. ". . . a sudden surge the perspective into one of the panels suddenly seems impossible, breaking with the traditional formula of one panel = one captured frame of time. [In the example panel] the character exists in unfolding time not in separate spaces, but the same space all at once." It is also a classic Burne Hogarth tool!

•Plug: Steven Heller, top designer and professor, posted his summer reading list at the SVA school site which included *drumroll please* Significant Objects. "Contributions from writers explaining why things like a rabbit candle, mermaid figurine and Santa nutcracker are worth writing about."

•Review: HeroesCon Online reviews Jaime Hernandez's God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls. Andy Mansell says, "The story is fun, exciting, fast paced and way over the top, but it is not a satire of superheroes. The difference between Jaime’s work and a genre parody is one of tone. God and Science is a genuine love letter to super-hero comic books."

•Plug: Our friends at Love & Maggie have compiled a lovely list of Love and Rockets related-links for your perusal.

•Review: D&Q's storefront, Librairie Bookstore, enjoyed Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons. Jade says, "In terms of artistic ability, she’s far from the genius of woodcut and linocut artists Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Giocomo Patri. Yet considering how O’Connor produced these works during her teenage years, there is some undeniable talent here."

•Interview: Comics Book Resources covers the Gilbert Shelton interview conducted by Gary Groth at Comic-Con International. Bridget Alverson quotes Shelton, "I could only have animal comics and Little Lulu, but Donald Duck and Little Lulu are great stuff."

Dal Tokyo
by Gary Panter

220-page black & white 16.25" x 6.25" hardcover • $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-56097-886-2

Ships in: August 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Gary Panter began imagining Dal Tokyo, a future Mars that is terraformed by Texan and Japanese workers, as far back as 1972, appropriating a friend’s idea about “cultural and temporal collision” (the “Dal” is short for Dallas).

Why Texan and Japanese? Panter says, “Because they are trapped in Texas, Texans are self-mythologizing. Because I was trapped in Texas at the time, I needed to believe that the broken tractor out back was a car of the future. Japanese, I’ll say, because of the exotic far-awayness of Japan from Texas, and because of the Japanese monster movies and woodblock prints that reached out to me in Texas. Japanese monster movies are part of the fabric of Texas.”

In 1983, Panter finally got a chance to fully explore this world, and share it with an audience, when the L.A. Reader published the first 63 strips. A few years later, the Japanese reggae magazine Riddim picked up the strip, and Panter continued the saga of Dal Tokyo in monthly installments for over a decade. But none of these conceptual descriptions will prepare the reader for the confounding visual and verbal richness of Dal Tokyo, as Panter’s famous “ratty line” collides and colludes with near-Joycean wordplay, veering from more or less intelligible jokes to dizzying non-sequiturs to surreal eruptions that can engulf the entire panel in scribbles. One doesn’t read Dal Tokyo; one is absorbed into it and spit out the other side.

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

Charles Forsman of future Fantagraphics titles Celebrated Summer and The End of the Fucking World, is a mini-comics publisher in his own right. Forsman is curating a great set of cartoonists and publishing their work via his Oily Comics Boutique. If you become a "Friend of Oily Comics" you get ANY publication created from July - September ($30) or July - December ($60) via monthly deliveries through September or December (respectively). Check out what our local mailmain delivered this month!

Comics by Max de Radigues, Aaron Cockle, Melissa Mendes, Forsman and Andy Burkholder. Forsman was recently interviewed about his comic creations plus publishing & distributing excursions on Comic Book Resources and on the Inkstuds podcast with Robin McConnell.

When de Radigues gave Forsman Moose #1, he couldn't believe it, "I could tell he wasn't laboring over the artwork and he was having fun. I wanted to have fun again. . . Readers responded to it almost immediately." Here is the first page of Belgian cartoonist, Max de Radigues' Moose #9. 

And one more taste of FOOC: east coast cartoonist Melissa Mendes.

While Forsman's The End of the Fucking World will be printed via Fantagraphics next year but you can still get a taste of the mini-comic by subscribing to Friends of Oily Comics.

TODAY is the last day to get the fancy subscription supersale complete with buttons, patchs, etc. Plus, you get a membership card with a personalized portrait. Just sayin'. It's worth it.

Fantagraphics goes geeky at the 2nd annual GeekGirlCon in Seattle!

Visit us at Booth 214 on Saturday, August 11th and Sunday, August 12th! We're excited to announce our special guests who will be joining us on Saturday: Ellen Forney, Megan Kelso, Justin Hall, and Roberta Gregory!

Saturday, August 11th:
12:00 - 2:00 PM    Ellen Forney / Megan Kelso

Saturday, August 11th:
3:00 - 5:00 PM    Justin Hall / Roberta Gregory

You can find us at Booth 214:

We're selling tickets for GeekGirlCon at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery -- no service charge, cash only! The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at Airport Way South. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM.

GeekGirlCon ‘12 takes place at The Conference Center, located at 8th and Pike in downtown Seattle, WA, right across the street from the Washington State Convention Center (where Emerald City Comicon is held). Come say hi to our wonderful new marketing wizard Jen Vaughn, as well as myself and Jacq!

THE COMPLETE COMICS JOURNAL ARCHIVES JOIN THE UNDERGROUND AND INDEPENDENT COMICS ARCHIVE FROM ALEXANDER STREET PRESS

Fantagraphics Books, publisher of The Comics Journal, has announced a partnership with Alexander Street Press to make the complete archive of the The Comics Journal available as part of its Underground and Independent Comics online collection. This is the first-ever scholarly online collection for researchers and students of literary and underground comic books and graphic novels, and the inclusion of more than 25,000 pages of interviews, commentary, theory and criticism from the 35 year history of The Comics Journal marks a significant contribution to the academic study of the comics form.

“Most back issues of The Comics Journal are sold out and unavailable,” says Comics Journal founder and Fantagraphics President Gary Groth. “This will allow academics, critics, and historians access to the magazine that's covered the widest range of cartooning for the longest period of time. We believe Alexander Street Press' project serves an important cultural function and we're very pleased to be part of it.”

The Underground and Independent Comics online collection covers the works that inspired the first underground comix from the 1960s (such as works by Basil Wolverton and Harvey Kurtzman), to the first generation of underground cartoonists (including R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Spain Rodriguez and many others) and encompasses modern sequential artists like Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez and Daniel Clowes, with over 75,000 pages of comics from the 1950s to present. With the inclusion of The Comics Journal archives, scholars can now similarly trace the roots of comics criticism and have access to the Journal’s incomparable oral history of the field.

Institutions who have already subscribed or purchased the archive include the Library of Congress, British Library, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Notre Dame and many others.

Comics have become an increasingly popular area of academic study, and yet the typical library has only a small selection of graphic novels in the catalog. Underground and Independent Comics solves this problem, collecting thousands of comics and related texts in one, easy-to-use online collection. With multiple combinable search fields, users can sort the materials in the collection by type, coloring, publication date, writer, penciler, inker, character, genre, publisher and more. Scholarship never before possible is now just a few keystrokes away.

“The chance to have access to 100,000 pages of underground and new wave comics in ways that were unimaginable a short time ago should change the face of comics research completely.” — James Danky, faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Just when you think Professor Van Sciver couldn't find a more complicated member of the extended Todd-Lincoln family, BLAMMO: Ninian Wirt Edwards arrives. "Ninian married Elizabeth Porter Todd, Mary Todd’s older sister, and played a key role in Mary and Abraham Lincoln’s marriage. . . After the Whig party’s successes, Ninian would invite all of his friends over to the house for oysters and cigars to celebrate." And this is where Mr. Lincoln started to really garner some attention. Read more about Noah Van Sciver's historical research for The Hypo on his blog and preorder The Hypo today!

Max Clotfelter, Ben Horak, Tim Miller, and a student from their comics class with 826 Seattle. // photo credit: Kelly Froh

While we were at Comic-Con, the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery launched the “The Massive World of Mini-Comix,” an exhibition featuring art created by young students who attended an 826 Seattle workshop! 

I finally had a chance to view the show this past weekend, and it was so inspiring! I loved getting to see artwork by 12-year-olds next to work by people 2-to-3x their age, their teachers, Seattle cartoonists Max Clotfelter, Ben Horak and Tim Miller. 

The show closes on Thursday, August 9th, so if you live in Seattle, you still have a chance to see it! The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at Airport Way South. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM.

Local artists Eroyn Franklin and Max Clotfelter check out the show! // photo credit: John Ohannesian

Or, if you live outside of the Seattle area, you can check out more photos of the show on the Fantagraphics Flickr!

If you can read that flyer, you should go to this! 

Jason is back in North America, and will be signing on Saturday, August 11th at the Planète BD [ 3883 St-Denis ] in Montréal, Quebec! Join him at 2:00 PM for this special event!

Monday, July 30th

• Portland, OR: Northwesterners should not miss the chance to see Tim Kreider while he's on our side of the coast! Tim will be doing a reading at 7:30 PM at the infamous Powell's Books! (more info)

Wednesday, August 1st

• Bothell, WA: And then, Tim Kreider will be doing a reading at 7:00 PM at Third Place Books! (more info)

• Snoqualmie, WA: And our own Jim Blanchard is launching his art show Primitiva at The Black Dog. Ten or so of his acrylic paintings will be adorning their walls through September 15th. Check it out if you're in the area! (more info)

Love and Rockets by the Hernandez Brothers is filled from indicia to back cover with a love of music, creating jams, going to concerts and odes to punk songs. Robert Boyd recently compiled a nice list of songs in Jaime and Gilbert's comics. Then LA-based comic store, Secret Headquarters, went ahead and built a playlist around said list of music. Listen away on Spotify, whether you are drawing, walking around town, hanging with friends or generally being a badass. Playlists Locas by Jaime and Palomar by Gilbert.