In an ongoing effort to nurture young talent and provide a showcase for emerging artists, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery presents “The Massive World of Mini Comics.” This exhibition features art created by young students who attended an 826 Seattle workshop devoted to comic zines taught by Seattle cartoonists Max Clotfelter, Ben Horak and Tim Miller, and facilitated by Fantagraphics Books and Alex Bleecker, program coordinator for 826 Seattle. The opening on Saturday, July 14, and the work will remain on display through August 9.

Instructors Clotfelter, Horak and Miller are active participants in Seattle’s lively small press and self-publishing comics movement. 826 Seattle is a nonprofit writing and tutoring center dedicated to helping youth, ages 6-18, improve their creative and expository writing skills, in addition to helping teachers inspire students to write. The Seattle chapter is part of 826 National, founded in 2002 by acclaimed author Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari.

The opening on Saturday, July 14 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM coincides with the colorful Georgetown Art Attack featuring visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic arts community. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at Airport Way S. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Swing on by July 14th or after to experience youth developing their writing skills through the medium of comics!

Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips Vol. 3 (1938-1940)
by Roy Crane

152-page full-color 10.5" x 14.75" hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-529-7

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

SPECIAL OFFER:

Order this volume and get Vol. 1 and/or Vol. 2 for $29.99 each; that's 25% off! Make your selection using the menu above.

“Crane’s work is sheer energy. It’s somewhere between Crane and E.C. Segar that (Carl Barks’ beloved) Donald Duck got forged; the kind of ruddy-cheeked adventurousness that underlies the content is certainly the same work that moves Donald and his nephews through their stories.” —Art Spiegelman

The third volume in Fantagraphics’ ongoing reprint of Roy Crane’s legendary comedy-action series features what many consider the absolute peak of the series: “Temple of the Swinks,” in which Wash and Easy discover an ancient temple with statues of an unknown animal called a swink... a real-life specimen of which shows up!

In other stories, Wash and Easy sail for Singapore aboard a dhow with a cargo of wild animals, crash land a plane on an island inhabited by (inevitably) pirates and (just as inevitably) beautiful women, and sail the South Seas in a schooner whose villainous captain plans to rob them. When they return to America, Wash Tubbs’ pet swink draws huge crowds and a reputation for being worth a million dollars. Then Wash and Easy travel to Peru to rescue an American lost in the jungle and, in the cover-featured story, Easy goes deep sea diving in search of a beautiful girl’s lost diamond.

10-page excerpt (download 23.7 MB PDF):

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

A new and improved website is ready to be feasted on by your eyes! Tim Lane, of Abandoned Cars and Hotwire, recently vamped his site, JackieNoName, which features original comics, as well as illustrations made for The New York Times and alt-weekly papers like the OC Weekly and Seattle Weekly.

Delivered fresh this morning: advance copies of Noah Van Sciver's debut graphic novel The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln, a bracing and evocative account of the President-to-be's struggles with depression as a young man. Having garnered advance praise from both Chester Brown and Lincoln biographer Joshua Wolf Shenk, this is a major work by a prolific rising talent. Stay tuned for more previews and pre-order your copy today to make sure you're among the first to get the book when it's released in September.

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new title (contact your local shop to confirm availability and U.S. holiday hours), which is also now available and shipping from our mail-order department:

Castle Waiting Vol. II #17
by Linda Medley

24-page black & white comic book • $3.95

Also available: 2-issue subscription to #17-18 • $5.50 postpaid

Linda Medley continues to gather loose ends and drop new hints in this new issue of the beloved series. Chess has a surprising revelation about the identity of baby Pinter's father — could it be tied in with the war? The Hammerlings Dayne & Tolly bid farewell to the castle, but not before leaving behind a surprise gift which Rackham discovers later (along with the strange gift Dr. Fell left in an earlier issue). Sister Peace has a tete-a-tete with the demon Leeds regarding religious artifacts — did you know demons collect them? Simon struggles with his reading lessons until Jain helps him have a breakthrough. And Jain faces off with the castle ghost!

Preview the first 3 pages (click each image to enlarge):

 The rawest Online Commentaries & Diversions:

•Interview: Christopher Irving questions the ineffable Pete Bagge on his vast body of work on NYC Graphic. Bagge says, "With the style of work that I do, I like it to look on the surface like it’s shallow and stupid, but when you read it, the context is really sweet. . ." Christopher Irving reports: "Part of what makes Pete Bagge such an effective writer is his ability to tap into personal experiences that are universal. . . being jilted by a lover, getting angry at traffic, or trying to hide something from your parents."

•Review: Tom Spurgeon sits down for a good read with God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls on The Comics Reporter: "It's only when you try to unpack the story that you realize what a graceful and economical storyteller Jaime Hernandez has become no matter what genre he might choose to utilize."

•Review: On the Spandexless Reads, Josh Simmons' newest work gets a thorough once-over. Shawn Starr on horror book, The Furry Trap: "The Furry Trap is what your parents warned you about. It’s what Fredric Wertham warned America about. . . Simmons takes the normal, the stale, and adds an “edge” like none other, taking the tropes of each genre to the edge of a sharp cliff and then hurling them off so he can re-examine their splattered remains."

•Review: In a one-two punch by Tucker Stone, both Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes and Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man are reviewed on comiXology. Stone continues on about Carl Barks' work: "Everything I could want out of a comic is there--it's funny, gorgeous, and I'd make a smoke alarm wait just so I could read it in one sitting. . . I'm not blind to the fact that the stories were created with the intent of engaging with children, in fact, I have to wonder how much of what I perceive to be their greatness stems from that basic restriction."

•Plug: Stumptown Trade Review enjoys the book based on Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker's experiment, Significant Objects: "The experiment, in short, was a smash hit. The Significant Objects book features 100 moving, absurd, surprising, and always entertaining stories from the project’s three volumes."

Before there was Mome, before the current explosion of small-press anthologies, there was Blood Orange, the short-lived mid-'00s series edited by Chris Polkki which gathered rising stars of the art-comics scene in four distinctive, beautifully designed 48-page issues. Blood Orange captured the pulse of alt-comics circa 2004-2005. We recently recovered a small quantity of shrink-wrapped packs of all 4 issues from the distributor, and we're now offering them via mail-order for the special low price of $17.85 — that's 3 issues for the price of 4! (You can also get the individual issues for $5.95 each.)

In the first issue: Nicolas Mahler, Rick Altergott, Michael Kupperman, Lauren Weinstein, Typex, David Collier, Maaike Hartjes, Allison Cole, Tobias Tak, Dan James, Marc Bell, John Hankiewicz, Matthew Thurber, Kevin Huizenga, Ron Regé Jr., a sketchbook from Gary "Teacher's Pet" Baseman, and covers by Andrew Brandou.

The second issue continues to encourage experimentation, pushing the medium in new directions. Look for innovative stories from groundbreakers such as Archer Prewitt, Rebecca Dart, Chris Wright (with a full-length 18-page story), Ron Regé Jr., Jeffrey Brown, Matti Hagelberg, Lauren Weinstein, Cole Johnson, Helge Reumann, and Fabio Viscogliosi, along with drawings by Renee French... all wrapped in a lovely cover designed by the one and only Steven Weissman.

The third issue of this always-surprising quarterly anthology series features European cartoonists Pakito Bolino and Caroline Sury (of France's Le Dernier Cri), Ulf K., Alex Baladi, Nicolas Mahler, Olaf Ladousse, and Fabio Zimbres; as well the homegrown talents of Anders Nilsen, Renee French and Ben Jones (Paper Rad). Also includes a brand-new 11-pager by Jeffrey Brown! With an eye-popping cover by French illustrator Olivier Douzou.

Blood Orange #4 wraps up the series with exclusive new stories by Brian Ralph, Lark Pien, Tobias Tak, Rebecca Dart and Ted May. Covers by Lark Pien.

More Mattotti coming soon! Here's a first glimpse of a recently-arrived advance copy of The Crackle of the Frost, our new English edition of 2003's El rumor de la escarcha by Lorenzo Mattotti & Jorge Zentner. Wait until you see the stunning full-color interiors... keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming previews! The book should be out around the end of August, maybe the beginning of September — you can be among the first to get it by pre-ordering it now.

Please note Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, as well as our administrative offices and mail order department will be closed on Wednesday, the Fourth of July. Back in action on Thursday, July 5.

Friday, July 6th

• Los Angeles, CA:  Check out the opening of "Freak Scene," featuring Johnny Ryan, Mome-vet Jim Rugg, and our very own Jason T. Miles! This collection of underground comix opens at Synchronicity Space [ 713 N. Heliotrope ] (more info)