Celebrated Seattle cartoonist Megan Kelso unveils her latest masterpiece ARTICHOKE TALES this Saturday from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Megan burst onto the comics scene in the early 90s with her provocative self-published zine Girlhero. She has since proven herself to be a master storyteller..
The New York Times' recent rave called her new book “…surprising and wonderful” with a “consistently sweet and airy approach [that] provides a likable surface for a story with much darker and stickier depths…” The Stranger says “Artichoke Tales feels like series of expansions. The characters and their world grow to envelop the reader in a singular, charming way.”
Please join us on Saturday to celebrate the work is this remarkable artist. DJ Russ "Fallout" Battaglia will spin platters and complimentary beverages will be provided. The reception coincides with the colorful Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack featuring visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic industrial arts district.
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at Airport Way S. in the heart of Georgetown. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.
• Review: "...[O]ne of the collection’s great strengths [is that] it offers an extremely wide range of writing produced over eight years. ... While there’s a great deal to be learned by reading any such collection, Schwartz’s editorial approach makes The Best American Comics Criticism far more entertaining than I would have thought a collection of criticism could be." – Ken Parille, Blog Flume
• Review: "Giraffes [in My Hair]... is a personal lesson in history, love, redemption and all that other crap we look for in a good story — all that, and it's a lovingly illustrated graphic novel that breathes characterization and intrigue from the first page to the last. ... When you toss in Carol Swain's trademark pencil-scratch panels, the whole thing comes together as a great piece of art and story. Sure, it's about sex, drugs and rock and roll, but it's somehow still a new and fresh experience. I wish I'd come across it sooner." – Thorin Klosowski, Denver Westword
• Appreciation: "Even though a variety of comics initially got me interested in graphic novels (or comics for grown ups), the Hernandez brothers created a world which intrigued me the most. ...[W]ith Love and Rockets Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez struck a chord with me. Life, love, sex, action, punk, weirdness, sci-fi, death, art etc it’s all there. ... Overall all of the characters and stories are highly 'recognizable' from real life, in the way that they are human. Some stories are simple and some are surreal, just like life itself." – Matto Fredriksson, Music for Mechanics
• Interviewer:Johnny Ryan's already-legendary onstage interview with Lawrence "Real Deal" Hubbard (along with Dan Nadel's Art in Time panel) is now available for audio download at Comics Comics
This t-shirt design by Paul Hornschemeier made its debut on shirt.woot! yesterday and is still available as of right now. To celebrate its release, Paul has put all of the shirts in his own Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop on sale for a limited time. More info on Paul's News and Head Lice blog. Go! Buy!
Do ideas of war and enemies hold a people together? Is a culture of conflict too seductive not to be irresistible? These are the questions Cathy Malkasian explores in her second graphic novel, Temperance.
Malkasian creates, as she did in the critically acclaimed Percy Gloom, a fully realized, multi-layered world, inhabited by vividly realized characters. After a brutal injury in battle, Lester has no memory of his prior life. For the next thirty years his wife does everything to keep him from remembering — and re-constructing — a society, Blessedbowl, that elevates him as a hero. Blessedbowl is a cultural convergence of lies, memories, stories, and beliefs. Its people thrive on ideas of persecution, exceptionality, and enemies, convinced that war lurks just outside their walls. They have come to depend on Lester, their greatest war hero, to lead the charge once the Final Battle begins.
What kind of enemy could topple such a people and its walls? Mere memory, it seems, as Lester gradually emerges from his amnesia. Temperance is an eyewitness’s account of recovery and awakening. The graphic novel works on two levels. It considers the concepts of violence, stories, and belief, and their place in holding a culture together, slyly echoing contemporary political issues in a nation at a stressful time currently at war with a ubiquitous enemy. Secondly, the fissures in Lester and Minerva’s marriage is echoed in the greater political upheaval around them.
Malkasian creates a densely textured social context, masterfully conveying the idiosyncratic physical domain with its spiraling structures and quasi-medieval architecture along with intimate yet plastic portraits of her characters in a rich, tonal pencil line. Temperance is a galvanizing work of empathy and violence by one of today’s most thoughtful and accomplished cartoonists.
2008 Eisner Award Winner: Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award — Cathy Malkasian
Download an EXCLUSIVE 16-page PDF excerpt (18.7 MB).
Bonus Savings: Order Cathy Malkasian's Temperance + Percy Gloom together for a discounted price of $33.99 (a savings of about 8 bucks)!
For a limited time, receive a FREE issue of the Meat Cake comic when you order the collection! Choose from issues 14, 16 or 17 (15 is sold out) when placing your order.
COLLECTING THE BEST STORIES FROM THE FIRST DECADE OF MEAT CAKE COMICS
Dame Darcy is one of the most beguiling presences on the comics scene — musician, actress, cable TV star, fortune teller, dollmaker, and last but not least, cartoonist to the core — and has been bewitching readers for over 15 years with her neo-Victorian horror/humor/romance comic Meat Cake. Alternating between one-off (often cruelly tragic) fairy tales and ongoing romps starring her eclectic cast of characters, including Effluvia the Mermaid, the roguish roué Wax Wolf, Igpay the Pig-Latin pig, Stregapez (a women who speaks by dispensing Pez-like tablets through a bloody hole in her throat), the mischievous Siamese twins Hindrance and Perfidia, Scampi the Selfish Shellfish, the stalwart Friend the Girl, and the blonde bombshell Richard Dirt, all delineated in her inimitable luxurious scrawl, Meat Cake is like a peek into the most creative, deranged dollhouse you ever saw. Meat Cake is an expanded reprint of the out of print hardcover with more stories assembling the very best of Darcy’s work (including “Hungry Is the Heart,” the legendary collaboration with Watchmen’s Alan Moore) from the first 11 issues of the beloved comic.
Download an EXCLUSIVE 20-page PDF excerpt featuring all the highlights of issue 4 (3.5 MB), PLUS a 6-page PDF including the Table of Contents, Foreword by Margaret Cho, Introduction by Dame Darcy, and "An Interview with the Meat Cake Characters" (1.4 MB), PLUS 4 pages of "Paper Doll Fun" (1.6 MB) that you can print, color & cut out without ruining your book!
"[Darcy] has created a childlike, otherworldly realm, a land that hovers in the twilight space between the whimsical and the macabre. Ghosts and goblins, foul-tempered stepmothers, lovesick mermaids and charmed forests are all rendered in Darcy's distinctive hand, loose and flowing lines reminiscent of the work of Edward Gorey." – Los Angeles Times
"Darcy's comics are aesthetic manifestos… Darcy is a star. Mark my words. Meat Cake will prevail, as luxury takes over America. And the world beyond." — The New York Times
"I think she's exquisite, let's put it that way. I wish I knew her in high school." — Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth)
This collection features over 120 pages of vintage Crumb comics starring the white-bearded, diminutive sage-cum-charlatan, ranging from charming, free-wheeling early '70s stories to the disturbing, controversial '90s stories (as seen in the Crumb movie), including the entire 40-page "Mr. Natural and Devil Girl" saga from Hup! (collected here for the first time in book form). Crumb's Mr. Natural is probably the most famous underground character of all (topping even Fritz the Cat and the Freak Brothers), recognizable even to "civilians." Don't miss this opportunity to snatch up this jam-packed collection of comics from one of the all-time masters, now available in hardcover for the very first time!
Download an EXCLUSIVE 11-page PDF excerpt (958 KB).
Billy Hazelnuts is back for the first time since his acclaimed 2006 Eisner Award-winning debut. Life has settled back to normal in the old house. Becky and her mom are getting used to having Billy around, as he performs various household chores, utilizing his amazing strength. Nothing could be better, aside from a jumpy relationship with the cat. Until one day Billy hears screeching in the back yard and runs out to find a very large owl attacking his housemate. “I hate that cat, but it’s OUR CAT!” yells Billy, and chases the owl off.
Billy soon discovers that the owl he has just scared off has left an egg in his nest. When the egg hatches, it’s up to Billy to reunite the baby owl with his mother, and the two head off into the deep, deep woods in search of her. The resulting adventure is a crazy potion of all-ages fun, humor, thrills and chills like only Tony Millionaire is capable of.
Download an EXCLUSIVE 11-page PDF excerpt (1.1 MB).
Megan Kelso has proved herself a master of the cartoon short story with Queen of the Black Black (1998) and The Squirrel Mother (2006). With Artichoke Tales, six years in the making, Kelso expands her range (and her page count) by creating a family saga spanning three generations and an entire continent.
Artichoke Tales is a coming-of-age story about a young girl named Brigitte whose family is caught between the two warring sides of a civil war, a graphic novel that takes place in a world that echoes our own, but whose people have artichoke leaves instead of hair. Influenced in equal parts by Little House on the Prairie, The Thorn Birds, Dharma Bums, and Cold Mountain, Kelso weaves a moving story about family amidst war. Kelso’s visual storytelling, uniquely combining delicate linework with rhythmic, musical page compositions, creates a dramatic tension between intimate, ruminative character studies and the unflinching depiction of the consequences of war and carnage, lending cohesion and resonance to a generational epic. This is Kelso’s first new work in four years; the widespread critical reception of her previous work makes Artichoke Tales one of the most eagerly anticipated graphic novels of 2010.
Download an EXCLUSIVE 16-page PDF excerpt (1.9 MB).
• Review: "Saving the best for last, there’s Blazing Combat, an amazing collection of the stories from the short-lived cutting-edge mid-1960s Warren Publications series. ... They’re all written by the outstanding Archie Goodwin, with a few assists, which for most fans would be reason enough to buy this comic all by itself. But then you throw in some of the most amazing art, all of it sharply and expertly reproduced, and you’ve got some real dynamite here. ... And there’s fantastic bonus features... If all that doesn’t sell you on this as a must-buy, then you may need professional help." – Tom McLean, Bags and Boards
• Plug:Suvudu spotlights the 2010 Eisner Award nominees for Best Anthology, including Abstract Comics
• Interview: Andrea Queirolo of Conversazioni sul Fumetto has a twopart Q&A with Paul Hornschemeier: "Both of my parents have degrees in Philosophy, and I’ve always been sort of a lonely kid, so I think spending lots of time thinking about things just came naturally to me as a child, for better or worse (probably for worse). Over-thinking things was something I could never get rid of, so I decided to go ahead and get a Bachelor’s Degree in it."
• Education:Ellen Forney will be teaching summer comics courses for teens and adults at Cornish College in Seattle — see her blog for more info and enrollment links
The 2013 Fantagraphics Ultimate Catalog of Comics is available now! Contact us to get your free copy, or download the PDF version (9 MB).
Preview upcoming releases in the Fantagraphics Spring/Summer 2013 Distributors Catalog. Read it here or download the PDF (26.8 MB). Note that all contents are subject to change.
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