We have a stack of copies of this award-winning book which are missing the dustjacket but are otherwise in perfect condition. Rather than having them languish in our warehouse we're offering them at the discounted price of $20.00 — nearly 60% off! Quantities are limited so order quick!

B. Krigstein Vol. 1 [Without Dustjacket]
by Greg Sadowski

240-page full-color 9" x 11" hardcover • $49.95 $20.00

Ten years in the making, this exhaustively researched tome is a giant biography and career retrospective of one of the most important cartoonists in the history of comics. Following his life from early childhood to his acclaimed run at EC Comics, B. Krigstein traces the development of an artist who, despite having left only a relative handful of works behind him when he finally abandoned the comics field for the world of fine art, nonetheless served as an influence on many of the most acclaimed of the cartoonists to follow in his footsteps. This book also reproduces a generous sampling of art and illustration, plus six complete stories (including the famed "Master Race"), many of them newly-recolored by noted EC artist Marie Severin from Krigstein's own specifications!

2003 Eisner Award Winner, Best Comics-Related Publication

2003 Harvey Award Winner, Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Yes, [It Was the War of the Trenches] is an unpleasant book (even extending to the art, which does its job as well as everything else in making the war look ugly, muddy, dirty, and bloody; defining each character well but making sure to show the awfulness of their circumstances), but one that everyone should read, not only for a sense of history, but to see the horror of death and the suffering of those forced to partake in it." – Matthew J. Brady, Warren Peace Sings the Blues

• Review: "In terms of its writing and its art, [It Was the War of the] Trenches is a masterful work. The stories are elegantly and convincingly told. The images show, at once, deep horror and real beauty — though the one is often so visceral that the other becomes abstract. But the book’s true victory is a moral one. For it shows us, clearly and terribly, the thorough destruction of values inherent in modern war." – Kristian Williams, The Comics Journal

• Review: "Episodes such as [New Tales of Old Palomar] are the pieces that complete a puzzle, apparently, full of questions and constantly growing. Each answer calls for a new mystery." – Little Nemo's Kat (translated from Spanish)

• Review: "At the end of its second decade, Peanuts was still one of the best things on the comics page, and as likely to be concerned with loss, pain, and depression as it ever was. As others have said many times before, it really is astonishing how one of the best and most popular works in a very popular medium was almost entirely about loss and failure." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Interview: At Comic Book Resources, Alex Dueben talks to Megan Kelso about her new graphic novel Artichoke Tales: "That was just on my mind. That it's a whole subset of comics and storytelling, making up your own world and playing inside of it. I just thought this would be a really fun world to do a whole involved family saga. I planned out the skeleton of the story pretty much right from the beginning. At first, I thought it was going to be a three chapter thing, and then it got more complicated, but always I had this idea of this family and these generations."

• Interview: Newsarama's J. Caleb Mozzocco talks to Tim Hensley about his new graphic novel Wally Gropius: "Well, it's not like those trapped in derivative mortgages are turning to Carl Barks and Harvey artist Ernie Colon for succor. When I started the story in 2005, I was reacting more to Bush's war money siphon, not predicting the bank collapse/executive bonus siphon we have now. And actually none of the few rich people I know are anything like Wally; they have much different problems as far as I can tell." (At his own blog, Mozzocco adds "if you're wondering, 'Hey Caleb, is this book any good? Should I read it?' Then I would answer, 'Yes, yes that book is very good, and you should totally read it.'")

• Preview: "It's cool to see that those behind the Significant Objects projects are still trying to do more with the concept. The auctions apparently are still going on, but now they're trying something different as well. They're taking those stories and compiling them into a book (scarce). In fact, the story behind the book (infinite) makes the physical book more valuable as well. To make it even more 'valuable,' they've brought on some top artists to illustrate the stories — so even if you read them for free online, there's now more value in buying the physical book to have the physical artwork as well." – Mike Masnick, Techdirt

Join Esther Pearl Watson at Skylight Books in Los Angeles on Friday, July 9 at 7:30 PM for a signing and what is sure to be a hilarious and delightful discussion with what Esther promises to be "an awesome slideshow of inspiration, sketches and behind-the-scenes craziness" for Unlovable Vols. 1 & 2. More info here. (This is a rescheduling of the event that was originally slated for May 12.)

Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• Gonked, Glooked & Slurped! share a recently-acquired original Eightball page by Daniel Clowes

• Michael Kupperman hijacks Beetle Bailey — according to this recent TCJ article I think Mort Walker would approve

• The Paris Review presents a gallery of Robert Crumb self-portraits through the years (via The Comics Reporter)

• It's your all-new weekly installment of "Cartoon Boy" from John Kerschbaum

• J.R. Williams has zillions of great prints for sale at his new J.R.'s Prints of Darkness site

• Robot 6 reports: Jon Adams does a Chick-style strip to promote a video game; also from Jon, a new Truth Serum strip

• From Kevin Huizenga: a new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond strip; new Fight or Run action; new New Construction business

• From Steven Weissman: this week's "I, Anonymous" and three more Post-Its

• Three ironically-labeled "copies from famous artists " from the sketchbook of John Hankiewicz

• Aha! All those teasers from Frank Santoro have been leading up to this, "page 1 of a comic for Internazionale, an Italian independent weekly newsmagazine. Coming soon!"

• Speaking of Internazionale, Marco Corona has an illustration in this week's issue

• Richard Sala presents the original art for the cover of Evil Eye #10 and a 1987 rarity called "Haircut"

• From Tim Lane, this week's Belligerent Piano and this illustration for the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase

• On the Jim Flora Art Blog: Electromechanical Design sales brochure; a children's book illustration detail; half of a 1950s business card illustration (above); and a link to the 1959 UPA animated adaptation of Flora's The Fabulous Firework Family produced by Gene Deitch

• Johnny Ryan's Lovecraftian creatures, coming soon to a Stinckers machine near you

• "Girl in Black Dress and Scarf " by Mark Kalesniko

• It's Paul Hornschemeier's new weekly t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop and it incorporates the logo from his 2007 art show at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery

• From Josh Simmons, various Quackers blog shenanigans and Randy Gander tomfoolery with Wendy Chin (including her version of Josh's "Jesus Christ" from his Mome story of the same name)

• So much great new stuff from Renee French — just go to her main blog page, there's too much to link individually

• Buy a drawing of two Popeyes punching by Stephen DeStefano to benefit Gulf Coast cleanup

• Speaking of the Gulf, this is just one of a trio of videos by Steve Brodner on the topic, including his latest segment on Need to Know on PBS

• Two of Anders Nilsen's entries in Post-It V

• Page 29 of Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary

Johnny Ryan, Jordan Crane and Steven Weissman are among the guests at Indy Euphoria, the awesome-sounding "indy comics/DIY/vinyl toy/lowbrow art/music convention" in Sacramento this coming Sunday, June 27! Jeez that sounds fun.

Photos & video from Jim Woodring's appearance at Desert Island in Brooklyn on Saturday, June 19, 2010. Yoinked from Desert Island's Flickr photostream. More pics here.

Don't miss the Hazard Factory's fantastic Power Tool Races this Saturday, June 26 -part of the fabulous Artopia arts extravaganza and Georgetown Music Festival from 2:00 to 10:00 PM.

Fantagraphics Bookstore curator Larry Reid created a demonic chainsaw-powered racer fashioned from an autographed 1991 Daniel Clowes-designed Corey O'Brian Santa Cruz skateboard.

Come cheer for our racer (just don't get too close), see dozens of bands (featuring Fantagraphics favorites the Tom Price Desert Classic right outside our space), art exhibitions (including Megan Kelso's wonderful new work inside our store), carnival games, aerial acts, food, drinks, and a special appearance by demented actor/comedian/filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwait. It's all FREE!

[Ed. Note: see our Power Tool Racer from 2007 here!]

Online Commentary & Diversions, back after a short respite:

• Review: "Almost to a story, the bits and pieces of Mome [Vol. 18] just suck the careful reader in. Indeed, almost every contribution practically begs for critical examination, not to mention a different frame of mind. ... Some of the individual stories are just stunning. ... This is great art, good comics, and, in my opinion, odd when taken as a collection." – Jeremy Nisen, Under the Radar

• Review: "Right up front let’s admit this: Wally Gropius is a terrifying comic book and everyone reading this should buy it immediately. Tim Henlsey has crammed more horror into these 64 pages than any comic in recent memory. ... It is also a terrifying book to talk about, because its level of craft is so high, its surface so impenetrable, that it’s like trying to write about Kubrick or something: You know it’s all in there, but it’s hard to find a foothold. ... Hensley’s drawings... and are so fluid and articulate that it’s hard to believe he could or does draw or even hand write any other way. ... In his hands [the book's aesthetic] is a complete language. It’s a bracing, enervating way of making comics because there’s so much dissonance between what I want to read the lines as and what the drawings those lines form actually mean." – Dan Nadel, Comics Comics

• Review: "[Jim Woodring] has been called one of the great cartoonists of his generation and at this point, there’s little doubt of his visual storytelling prowess. But it’s the intense, visionary images and worlds that spring from his mind and on to his pages that truly separates him from his peers. ... Weathercraft, like all his Unifactor stories, is absolutely wordless. It’s a quiet, cosmic adventure that relies on Woodring’s extraordinary control of visual language and blends his understanding of Vedantic beliefs with stylized, Max Fleischer nightmares to explore ideas about the evolution of consciousness." – Paul Rios

• Review: "Read [Weathercraft] a third time, thinking about Woodring’s video commentary, and recognize how cohesive it is. There’s a real clarity to the plot and to Woodring’s character designs and panel compositions. You will think that, in some way, the key to much of this is the artist's omnipresent wavy line, but will be unsure." – Ken Parille, Blog Flume

• Review: "Kupperman’s all over the map, and manages to amuse with all the non sequiturs more often as not... If you have a soft spot for this sort of shenanigans, kinda like much of Adult Swim but smarter than the run of that mill, you could do worse than to pick [Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6] up..." – Johnny Bacardi, Popdose

• Review: "...Sand & Fury: A Scream Queen Adventure... is a romp concocted of homage to the weird horrors of filmmakers David Lynch and Dario Argento, with a shout out even to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. But it also features the signature Anderson political subtlety. ... A graphic text is, by nature, more explicit — graphic — than it can be subtle. So, Anderson’s love scenes verge on kink, while the death scenes owe much to the gore of recent vampire flicks and George Romero’s Zombie franchise. ... Sand & Fury is not classic literature, but it is fine pop art. Check it out." – George Elliott Clarke, The Chronicle Herald

• Review: "The story booms with Deitch's explosive composition techniques and the narrative recoil — somehow even the genetically modified beavers here make perfect sense — is no less compelling. The Search For Smilin’ Ed! offers perhaps not as discrete a narrative as those found in Alias the Cat (2002) and The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2007), but the joy of Deitch is that his work is almost impossible to tug apart. And who doesn't want their demons, time travelers, midgets and voyeuristic aliens in one oily melee?" – John Reed, Los Angeles Times

• Review: "Did you know the Earth is honeycombed with tunnels containing archives of the entire history of popular culture, as recorded on alien-designed microchips by a council of pygmies? Leave it to underground-comics legend Kim Deitch to make that concept simultaneously deeply attractive and deeply creepy in The Search For Smilin’ Ed... The story gets more twisted with every page, though it always makes sense in a Deitch-ian way. Deitch has trod this ground many times before... but he retains an astonishing ability to tap into the deepest desires of pop-culture junkies, and to show how the satisfaction we seek from nostalgia can lead us to some dark corners of our collective showbiz past. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "The second in the proposed Billy Hazelnuts trilogy by Tony Millionaire finds the Popeye-strong, sentient cake fed up with the 'filthy world of beasts,' made up as they are from 'disgusting blobs of meat.' The first Billy was about his origins; Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird is about the responsibilities of parenthood, and how they don’t necessarily sync up with maturity." – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Everybody dies in [It Was the War of the Trenches]. It's sad, gory, brutal, depressing, visceral, and overwhelming. It brings those poor soldiers back to life and, instead of celebrating any victories or glorifying any heroic acts, just shoots them in the gut all over again and leaves them to die in the mud and filth of no man's land. It's an impressive work of art that floods the reader with a feeling of hopelessness. How Tardi managed this feat without having participated in the first world war is really quite amazing. It is worth reading." – Sandy Bilus, I Love Rob Liefeld

• Interview: Robin McConnell, host of the Inkstuds radio program, calls up Dash Shaw to catch up on his latest projects

• Reviewer: For the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux reviews Bret Easton Ellis's sequel to Less Than Zero

• Reviewer: At Husband vs. Wife, Kevin Huizenga eviscerates Logicomix and notes that he's read Weathercraft 3 times

iBerkshires.com reports that Comic and Cartoon Art Comes Alive: The Art of Mark Martin will be on view July 31 - August 29, 2010 at the Storefront Artist Project in Pittsfield MA, and "As a precursor to the exhibit, the Storefront Artist Project will be hosting a special United States Postal Service stamp cancellation ceremony... The cancel was created by Martin with his own characters and will be used by the USPS on July 16, 2010 as part of the 'Sunday Funnies' 2010 Stamp Program. A series of related workshops and programs will also be offered to the community in conjunction with the exhibition."

It just came to my attention that the silkscreen poster for Grandma Zapp's Rolling Thunderheart Mountain Variety Show, featuring Artichoke Tales artwork by Megan Kelso and lettering by Raleigh Briggs, is still available to order online! 100% of the proceeds go to benefit ZAPP.