Check out this amazing array of cakes featuring characters and artwork from Rip M.D. created by the Culinary Art Institute and Chef Rick Royal for their Halloween Cake Contest. Wow! See the photo album on the Lincoln Butterfield Animation Facebook page.

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Bent
by Dave Cooper

80-page full-color 10.25" x 9" hardcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-378-1

Ordering Info & Previews

Fine artist Dave Cooper offers us a window into the wobbly dollhouse that is his mind’s eye. The work in Bent gathers a diverse mix of imagery that is also strangely focussed in its single-mindedness. This work has found a devoted and passionate following with visitors to Cooper’s solo gallery shows in Los Angeles and New York in recent years.

Cooper continues to obsess and fixate over his bizarre procession of milky figures as they crawl and wriggle into hidden meadows, jungles and cities. Everything in this world seems to be undulating and overripe — the multi-coloured Jell-O vegetation, the billowing clouds, and the twitching, agitated women, whether thin like sinewy rubber, or fat and bursting with doughy flesh.

The characters in Cooper’s work have been likened to a dog chasing its tail. Or maybe it’s as though they’re like someone on drugs who can stare at their own hand for 20 minutes; either way, these girls are hypnotized by wriggling around on the ground, twisting in on themselves, walking on their hands, squeezing and chewing one another. It may sound hellish, but to the demons, hell must seem like heaven. So maybe Cooper’s landscapes are more like a weird kind of utopia where all those insane facial expressions and physical contortions are more an experession of elation or giddiness.

This monograph collects Cooper’s finest, most revealing paintings, ink drawings, pencil sketches, and photographs from the past five years, many of which enjoy homes in the collections of influential collectors and some of Hollywood’s elite. Among this esteemed crowd is the great auteur, Oscar-nominated Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), who provides an enthusiastic introduction for Bent.

Bonus Savings: To celebrate the release of his latest book, for a limited time all in-stock Dave Cooper backlist titles are 1/3 off!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Mome Vol. 20 - Fall 2010
by various artists; edited by Eric Reynolds

120-page color/b&w 7" x 9" softcover • $14.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-365-1

Ordering Info & Previews

We have reached the landmark 20th volume of Mome. For those of you who read the box scores, that’s 5 years, 20 volumes, 72 artists, and 2,352 pages of comics.

Much is new in this anniversary volume. Fantagraphics' flagship anthology now boasts a new design courtesy of art director Adam Grano (who also chips in a few pages of art), and we have 4 other artists making their Mome debuts: Steven "Ribs" Weissman's haunting story "This Already Happened" makes its first appearance in print after being serialized at What Things Do; Sergio Ponchione provides a full-color prequel story to his acclaimed series Grotesque (translated from its appearance in Italy's Linus magazine); and we welcome Chicago stalwart Jeremy Tinder and Portland illustrator Aidan Koch to the fold with their new stories.

From our returning champions: another "Blind Date" from Dash Shaw; a forest fable from Sara Edward-Corbett; part 2 of "The White Rhinoceros" from Josh Simmons and The Partridge in the Pear Tree; the continuation of T. Edward Bak's "Wild Man," Derek Van Gieson's "Devil Doll," and cover-boy Ted Stearn's "Fuzz and Pluck in: The Moolah Tree" serials; another atmospheric Conor O'Keefe story; a star-studded story in verse from Nate Neal; and more autobiographical vignettes by Nicolas Mahler. It all adds up to another diverse and rewarding volume of this literary comics juggernaut.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...[T]he third annual volume proves to be the best yet, combining eccentric drama, bright fantasy, captivating whimsy and appalling human frailty into a package of stunning graphic intensity. [...] Stark, challenging, charming and irresistibly seductive, Love and Rockets: New Stories is a grown up comics fan’s dream come true and remains as valid and groundbreaking as its earlier incarnations — the cutting edge of American graphic narrative." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Review: "What to say that others haven’t? I’m not steeped enough in Jaime’s work to say that his contribution to this volume [of Love and Rockets: New Stories] was his best ever, but it was very, very strong work, and the reveal at the end so surprised me that I immediately reread the story. [...] I’ve been enjoying the way that Gilbert’s stories and stories-within-stories have interacted, though without being entirely sure why. This volume also led me to wonder to what degree the brothers are aware of what the other is up to, since the stories seemed to strangely reflect each other in ways that previous volumes haven’t." – Brendan Wright, The Wright Opinion

• Commentary: Chris Limb of Catmachine pens a heartfelt ode to las locas: "My old friends are two women who live in a Latina neighborhood in California; I've known them since we were all teenagers. Their names are Maggie Chascarillo and Hopey Glass."

• Plug: Pulitzer Prize-winning author and noted Love and Rockets fan Junot Díaz was talking up the Bros again at the New York Times recently, reports Jennifer B. McDonald at the NYT's Paper Cuts blog

• Plug: At Techland, Douglas Wolk spotlights Jason in a slideshow of "70 Years of Frankenstein Comics": "The brief, wordless 2004 graphic novel You Can't Get There from Here, by the Norwegian cartoonist Jason, concerns a love triangle involving Frankenstein (the Doctor), the Monster, and the beehive-hairdo'ed Bride. It's since been collected in Jason's anthology Almost Silent."

• Commentary: At Comics Comics, Joe McCulloch discusses panel layouts and other matters pertaining to the work of Carol Swain

Michael Kupperman dukes it out with a gaggle of other NYC-based cartoonists in FISTICUFFS!, a cartoonists battle royale at 92YTribeca on November 18 at 9 PM. "It’s like Iron Chef, but the secret ingredient is punch lines instead of asparagus," says the description. Click here for more info & tickets.

Thanks to Love and Rockets fan "Endometria Jones" for sharing this snap of "my old chevy wagon, circa early 90s" on the L&R Facebook page!

Thanks to Charles Burns fan Harris Smith for sharing this pic of his tattoo based on the cover of Black Hole #7! Show us your Burns tattoos at his exhibit opening & signing on Saturday!

SPX 2010 - Spotlight - Jaime Hernandez from Small Press Expo on Vimeo.

Bill Kartalopoulos provides the intro and Jaime & Gary take it from there. 'Nuff said!

The Littlest Pirate King
by David B.

48-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-403-0

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

For decades they have roamed the seas, this shipload of undead pirates. They are desperate to die, but every time they try to dash their ship to splinters and end their miserable existence, a malevolent God scoops them out of danger. And so they have no choice but to continue to sail the seas, looting and killing.

Until one day, having exterminated yet another ship of the living, they come across a little pink baby. Adopting him as their mascot and dubbing him their "Littlest King," they continue their journeys. But eventually the King begins to grow up...

Adapted by David B., the acclaimed creator of Epileptic, from a short story by Pierre Mac Orlan (which was published decades before the release of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, thank you very much), The Littlest Pirate King is David B.'s first full-color graphic novel to be released in English, and his vivid palette combines with his stunningly elegant graphics to create a magical yarn that can be enjoyed by young and old alike.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 5-page PDF excerpt (1.6 MB).

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

Bonus Savings: Order The Littlest Pirate King together with Toys in the Basement by Stéphane Blanquet and save 20%! That's two new all-ages graphic albums by modern-day French masters at a great discounted price.

Toys in the Basement
by Stéphane Blanquet

32-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $14.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-402-3

Ships in: November 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
http://www.fantagraphics.com/toysinthebasement

With appearances in such anthologies as Zero Zero, Blab! and Kramer's Ergot, Stéphane Blanquet has been delighting and terrifying American readers with his superslick, ultradetailed creepiness.

So it makes perfect sense that his first graphic novel to be published in the U.S. would be... a children's book? Yes indeed.

Our hero, attending a Halloween party in an embarrassing pink bunny costume (he wanted to be a pirate) stumbles across a secret underground society of damaged, forgotten, and pissed-off toys in the basement of his friend's house — including the terrifying Amelia, a towering sentient assemblage of broken toy parts out for revenge!

Imagine Toy Story as reimagined by David Lynch and Charles Burns and you'll have a good idea of what this story is like. And yes, it is for kids!

Click here to see 3 preview pages!

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

Bonus Savings: Order Toys in the Basement together with The Littlest Pirate King by David B. and save 20%! That's two new all-ages graphic albums by modern-day French masters at a great discounted price.