• It's a new New Character Parade strip from Johnny Ryan

• Kevin Huizenga gives us perhaps the kookiest installment of Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond yet

• Frank Santoro's views of Pittsburgh, PA

• David Paleo presents his portrait of Rickie Lee Jones from the book Talk to Her

• Gabrielle Bell gets a haircut in her new Lucky strip

• A recent book cover illustration by Sergio Ponchione

• A peek, an escape from Renee French

• Usagi Yojimbo art by Stan Sakai for the Comix Experience 21st Anniversary CLBDF Benefit auction

• So, one of those Apple Council creeps got to Kevin Huizenga too, huh?

• Mark Kalesniko captures a woman on her cell phone

• Sayeth Hans Rickheit: "I like Page 15 [of Ectopiary] simply because it contains a stuffy old lady denigrating beatniks and artists; that is always a winning ingredient of any succsessful book, in my opinion."

• Fresh off the drawing board, new pages from Derek Van Gieson

• The "structure" drawings from Tom Kaczynski keep on a-coming: "fossilized bloom," "batholitic vessel," and "decay as propellant" (above)

• A new chunk of Jordan Crane at What Things Do

• The last word today goes to Jeremy Eaton, with this illustration for a (now out-of-date) Seattle Weekly article about that whole Amazon/Diamond foofarah. 'Nuff said!

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: For Library Journal, Tom Batten recommends a handful of recent "Classic Graphic Novels," including The Left Bank Gang by Jason: "Supporting his highly imaginative and quirky storytelling, Jason's deceptively simple cartooning carries a great deal of intensity in each line."

• Review: "Winning a coveted Jury prize at the 2010 Angouleme festival, Dungeon Quest succeeds on so many levels: the art and character design are superb, the dialogue is acerbic yet measured, the page construction has a flow to it that verges on perfection, the meter of the storytelling is spot-on, and, most importantly, it’s actually really funny. ... As the first volume in a series projected to last for a good few books yet, readers are advised to party-up with the cast of Dungeon Quest immediately." – Martin Steenton, Avoid the Future

• Review: "The series only lasted four issues, but it is among the high points of 1960s comics, and this handsome collection is one of the most welcome reprint volumes of the last few years. ... Blazing Combat showed comics readers the gritty downside of war..." – Robert Martin, The Comics Journal

• Review: "...[S]ome books just leave a reviewer pointing and jabbering, unable to coherently explain what he's just been through or to find any words that will adequately explain what he has seen. The Squirrel Machine is a book of [this] kind... Reading The Squirrel Machine is very much like watching some German Expressionist movie: it's a series of alternately wondrous and appalling scenes, clearly connected by some kind of logic, the true meaning of which resolutely remains beyond the knowledge of the viewer." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Plug: The fine folks at Librairie D&Q say "Now in store is this little jewel just published by Fantagraphics Books. On top of being a well-researched collection of underground mini-comix of the 1980's, this book compiles pages and pages of interviews and commentary on the creative, edgy, weird and free-spirited post-Crumb scene. While it may not necessarily represent the global landscape of underground comix in the 80's (one could argue it needs more wemin-ahtists, for example), Newave! is definitely a praise-worthy sampler of work most often hidden in the shadows of the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s."

• Plug: Roberto C. Madruga of Evolve Happy on Luba by Gilbert Hernandez: "The story is Hernandez at his best and the artwork is simplistically gorgeous."

• Plugs: The latest Robot 6 "What Are You Reading?" roundup includes several Fantagraphics mentions, and guest contributor Ng Suat Tong on the black & white Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938 from Libri Impressi, available in the U.S. exclusively from us: "The new Fantagraphics and Portugese books are the only way one should read Foster's masterwork."

• Analysis: At PopMatters, Oliver Ho compares and contrasts two stories from B. Krigstein Comics and Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1: "The strangeness comes not so much from the individual stories, but from the way each comic and artist appears to be a sort of mirror image of the other."

• Links: Love & Maggie begins their detailed, annotated breakdown of the second entry on their list of the top 10 issues of The Comics Journal, #59

• Profile: Comic Book Resources' Kelly Thompson looks at the work of Gabrielle Bell

• Interview: The Comics Journal's Kent Worcester presents an edited transcript of his on-stage interview with Tom Kaczynski from the 2009 MoCCA festival

Congratulations to Emily Nason of Lake Forest Park, WA (which just so happens to be where our Fearless Leader Gary Groth lives, as well) for being the lucky winner of a $100 gift certificate to the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Emily was chosen at random from folks who signed up at Emerald City Con to be on our mailing list. Emily, your gift certificate is in the mail, and we hope to see you down at the store soon!

Our pal Jonas Seamen comes through yet again with another great set of photos from a Fantagraphics Bookstore event, this time from Gilbert Hernandez's exhibit opening & book signing on Saturday. Thanks to everybody who came out for it — it was hoppin'!

Abandoned Cars (Softcover Edition)
by Tim Lane

168-page black & white 7.5" x 9" softcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-341-5

Ships in: April 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

This item is available with two different cover designs. Please indicate your preference when ordering.

THE ACCLAIMED 2008 DEBUT, BACK IN PRINT IN A 2010 SOFTCOVER!

Abandoned Cars is Tim Lane’s first collection of graphic short stories, noir-ish narratives that are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama by way of the desperate and haunted characters that populate its pages. Lane’s characters exist on the margins of society—alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair, confused but introspective. Some of them are experiencing the aftermath of an existential car crash—those surreal moments after a car accident, when time slows down and you’re trying to determine what just happened and how badly you’re hurt. Others have gone off the deep end, or were never anywhere but the deep end. Some are ridiculous, others dignified in their efforts to struggle to make sense of, and cope with, the absurdities, outrages, ghosts, and poisons in their lives.

The writing is straightforward, the stories mainstream but told in a pulpy idiom with an existential edge, often in the first person, reminiscent of David Goodis’s or Jim Thompson’s prose or of films like Pick-Up on South Street or Out of the Past. Visually, Lane’s drawing is in a realistic mode, reminiscent of Charles Burns, that heightens the tension in stories that veer between naturalism on the one hand and the comical, nightmarish, and hallucinatory on the other. Here, American culture is a thrift store and the characters are thrift store junkies living among the clutter. It’s an America depicted as a subdued and haunted Coney Island, made up of lost characters—boozing, brawling, haplessly shooting themselves in the face, and hopping freight trains in search of Elvis.

Abandoned Cars is an impressive debut of a major young American cartoonist.

2009 Ignatz Award Nominee: Outstanding Anthology or Collection

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Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." (We don't know what the procedure is for iPhones, but if you have one, you probably do, right?) More wallpapers...

Blazing Combat (Softcover Edition)
by Archie Goodwin & various artists

208-page black & white 8" x 10" softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-366-8

Ships in: April 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

THE LEGENDARY ANTI-WAR COMIC COLLECTED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ITS ENTIRETY, NOW IN A 2010 SOFTCOVER EDITION.

Written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by such luminaries as Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, John Severin, Alex Toth, Al Williamson, Russ Heath, Reed Crandall, and Gene Colan, Blazing Combat was originally published by independent comics publisher James Warren in 1965 and ’66. Following in the tradition of Harvey Kurtzman’s Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, Goodwin’s stories reflected the human realities and personal costs of war rather than exploiting the clichés of the traditional men’s adventure genre. They were among the best comics stories about war ever published.

Blazing Combat ended after its fourth issue when military post exchanges refused to sell the title due to their perception that it was an anti-war comic. Their hostility was fueled by the depiction of the then-current Vietnam War, especially a story entitled “Landscape,” which follows the thoughts of a simple Vietnamese peasant rice-farmer who pays the ultimate price simply for living where he does — and which was considered anti-war agitprop by the more hawkish members of the business community.

Writer Archie Goodwin and the original publisher James Warren discuss the death of Blazing Combat and market censorship as well as the creative gestation of the series in exclusive interviews.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 19-page PDF excerpt (3.4 MB) containing the first three stories. Also, click here to read Michael Catron's introduction to the book.

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The Culture Corner
by Basil Wolverton

160-page full-color 9" x 6.75" hardcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-308-8

Ships in: April 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Did you ever wonder how to stop brooding if your ears are protruding? Or how to indulge yourself and snore without being a bore? Or for the masochists among you, how to sit on a tack? Or for the narcissists, how to contemplate the back of your pate? Or something as simple as how to get out of bed gracefully? Or something a bit more challenging like how to boot a fly off your snoot? Or, if you’re the violent type, what’s the best way to kick someone in the teeth? Or, for those striving for greater refinement, how to be particular and is perpendicular?

If these conundrums have perplexed and mystified you, the remedy is at hand: cartooning genius Basil Wolverton’s “Culture Corner,” an indispensable guide to demystifying life’s most worrisome and disconcerting social quandaries. With his fictional host, Croucher K. Conk, Q.O.C (Queer Old Coot), Wolverton would posit the problem and offer a uniquely Wolvertonian solution over seven or eight panels, each one a miniature masterpiece of scandalous visual humor.

Wolverton’s feature “Culture Corner” originally appeared every month in Fawcett’s Whiz Comics (featuring the adventures of Captain Marvel) from 1945 to 1952. Each episode would tackle a different subject from the practical to the pixilated — ”How to cross a busy street” to “How to tweak a beak.” Fantagraphics’ collection of the complete strips is the first time the little known feature has been reprinted since its original publication over 60 years ago! Revered by aficionados, it contains some of Wolverton’s most outrageous drawing and his trademarked lexicon of wacky wordplay.

The Fantagraphics edition also contains Wolverton’s original pencil versions of each strip, which have been carefully preserved over the years, and demonstrate a looser, more spontaneous interpretation of the finished strips.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 13-page PDF excerpt (15.9 MB).

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Hate Annual #8
by Peter Bagge

32-page color/b&w  6.75" x 10.25" comic book • $4.95
ISBN: 978-1-60699-373-6

Ships in: April 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Hate Annual #8 features a whopping new 20 page Buddy Bradley story where Lisa (everyone’s favorite psycho!) makes her first foray into show biz and gets way more than she bargained for! This issue of P. Bagge’s annual Hate also features strips compiled from his Discover Magazine gig: 5 biographies of scientists you’ve never heard of! — other than maybe Walter Reed, who’s well known only for that hell of a hospital named after him, and not for the handy yet forgotten fact that he discovered how malaria is spread... All that and many other odds and ends from hither and tither (see below for details). Why love when you can Hate!

Check out a gallery of 3 preview pages from the issue. More previews coming soon.

Here's the new trailer for Luc Besson's movie adaptation of Jacques Tardi's Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec (hat tip to Boing Boing). Man that looks like a fun movie. As we've teased a bit in the past, our new translated editions of the Adele stories start coming out later this year. No U.S. release for the film has been announced yet, unfortunately.

Here comes your weekly batch of new online strips:

An awkward dinner date in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson...

...seriously, kids, don't try the stunt in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan....

...and Steven Weissman says "first one to say 'Broccili Obama' is a rotten  - oH SHIT" regarding this week's Barack Hussein Obama strip.