FLOG! Entries - September 2010

Johnny Ryan motion comic, sorta

mike

Look what I stumbled on when I went to watch a funny cat video: Johnny Ryan's illustration for the Found Footage Festival has been animated motion-comic style for the intro to the FFF's series of videos for The A.V. Club (see it following the commercial). Neat. Also: you tell 'em, kitty.

Daily OCD: 9/30/10

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review/Roundtable: TIME/Techland's "Comic Book Club" roundtable of critics (Douglas Wolk, Graeme McMillan, Evan Narcisse and Mike Williams) discusses You'll Never Know Book 2: Collateral Damage by C. Tyler. Wolk leads off: "The first volume of You'll Never Know, Carol Tyler's projected three-volume series about her father's experiences in World War II — and all the family history connected to it — was my favorite graphic novel of last year. The new volume, Collateral Damage, is even stronger in a lot of ways."

• Photo of the Week: That's a funny one of Stuart Immonen at Robot 6

• Breaking News/Quote of the Week: "I think I was more opposed to the show moving to Los Angeles/Anaheim than I was in favor of it staying in SD or going anywhere else. I'm not even sure why I was opposed to it, because I love visiting L.A. But it would just feel like we let the terrorists win at that point." – our own Eric Reynolds, quoted at The Comics Reporter

Dave Cooper's Bent gets Wired

mike

At Wired.com Scott Thill presents a gallery of 8 images from Dave Cooper's Bent and writes "Canadian artist Dave Cooper's latest comic book collection, Bent, is stuffed to the breaking point with surreal, sexual grotesques and caricatures. Which is probably why Hollywood's own resident king of magical horror Guillermo Del Toro wrote the book's glowing introduction (and, like some of the city's other creative talents, snapped up Cooper's work for his own personal collection). [...] Bent, out Oct. 27 from indie comics powerhouse Fantagraphics, collates Cooper's nightmarish nudes and bizarro dreamscapes from recent solo gallery shows in New York and Los Angeles, just in time for Halloween."

The Sanctuary promo film #2: learn cave-speak

mike

The Sanctuary pt II from Andrew Perrine on Vimeo.

Nate Neal and Chenukee offer a tutorial on the language in Nate's new graphic novel The Sanctuary. (Follow the link for a higher-def version... or just hit the full-screen button.)

Fantagraphics Is Looking for a few Good NANCY Boys!

kimt

...Or girls, for that matter.

As work progresses on our first volume of Ernie Bushmiller's NANCY (yes, it's late, we admit it), collecting 1942 through 1945, we belatedly realize that our source for most of the strips is missing the first year. Oops. So we are sending out the plea to NANCY collectors: If you have clippings for 1942's NANCY daily strips, we would love to hear from you. (For that matter, as we are missing a handful of strips from 1943-1945, and some of the ones we do have are a little rough around the edges in terms of repro quality, if you have ANY NANCY tearsheets from this period...)

Contact editor Kim Thompson at kimt@fantagraphics.com (and yes, we are in contact with the Ohio State Library, but even they have significant holes in their NANCY run) — and be sure to pass on this plea to anyone else you think might have contacts, message boards, what have you. NANCY fans unite!

If we can't get our hands on the elusive 1942 we'll probably just switch the first volume to 1943 through 1946 (we do have all of 1946) and get back to 1942 in the future when we've had more time to dig, dig, dig for source material.

In other NANCY news, the much-anticipated HOW TO READ NANCY by Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden has unfortunately been delayed 'til next Summer or Fall, as Paul and Mark have been vastly expanding the contents with additional images, additional interviews, additional research, and additional fact-checking. This will be a completely mind-blowing book when it is finished, so we ask that eager fans adopt a Bushmiller-like serenity and it'll be there before you can say "three rocks."

Society of Publication Designers praises & previews Drew Friedman's Too Soon?

mike

At Grids, the official blog of the Society of Publication Designers, Robert Newman presents a selection of images from Drew Friedman's new book and says "Over the past 15 years, Drew Friedman has been one of the most popular and prolific illustrators in the magazine world. [...] Now Friedman has a brilliant new collection of his magazine work, Too Soon?: Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010, published by Fantagraphics Books. It's hardcover, 200+ pages, packed with hundreds of comics and caricatures and even more laughs. And it's graced with a wonderful introductory essay by Friedman that is a great history of both his illustration career and magazine illustration in general over the past 15 years."

Stephen DeStefano art show photos

mike

Stephen DeStefano has posted some great photos (taken by Siobhan DeStefano) from his exhibit opening 2 weeks ago in NYC. Here are just a few; click here for more on Stephen's blog.

Crowd:

Lucky in Love writer George Chieffet:

Stephen drawing Lucky Testaduda outside on the sidewalk:

Love and Rockets Book 3 first printing, signed!

mike

Remember a month ago today when we were touting the availability of the 1987 first hardcover edition of Love and Rockets Book 3 (Las Mujeres Perdidas, as it was known for subsequent editions)? Turns out, these copies have an original signature plate signed by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez! They're still offered at a deeply discounted price — just try and resist!

Two new Mome bargain multi-packs available for pre-order

mike

With the imminent arrival of the landmark Mome Vol. 20 we are pleased to offer two new additions to our selection of bargain-priced Mome multi-packs: the Mome Vol. 11-20 Mega-Bundle for $99.99 and the Mome Vol. 16-20 Five-Pack for $49.99 — each priced at nearly 1/3 OFF the combined cover prices! Pre-order now and we'll ship the whole pack(s) to you when Vol. 20 arrives in our warehouse.

If you're interested in what's "happening" and "now" in comics, there's one place to turn: Mome, our quarterly anthology of the best in contemporary, cutting-edge cartooning from around the world. With so many volumes in print, it can be difficult to know where to start... so we've made it easy for you by offering these convenient, affordable multi-packs. They also make an amazing gift. Don't miss out on this incredible deal.

Johnny Ryan's new website

mike

Johnny Ryan done went and got hisself a fancy-pants new website. News, merch, artwork, comix, it's all there. Bookmark it, RSS it, live it, love it.

Bookmark: The Art of Robert Pollard website

mike

The collage art of Robert Pollard is now available to view and purchase at The Art of Robert Pollard website (still a bit under construction), including originals, prints, and the upcoming issue of Eat. (I don't see the Town of Mirrors book on there, so get that from us.) Art show announcements and other news will be posted there as well.

Daily OCD: 9/29/10

mike

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions (with one carried over from yesterday's post-less day):

• Review: "Normally I wouldn’t put in a spoiler warning for a few blog notes, but this is a special case. I’m going to be talking about Love and Rockets: New Stories #3, which contains what is arguably one of the best comics stories ever... It’s so easy to take the Hernandez Bros. for granted: they’ve been around so long, put out work regularly, and often use the same characters. So the temptation is to just think that they’re a stable public resource, like the library or a museum: they’ll always be there and we can ignore them for years, checking in on them only when we need to. But really, these guys are among the best cartoonists who have ever lived. Like Seth, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, and Kim Deitch, they are constantly pushing themselves to do better work, and are now at a career peak. We need to give thanks for this, loudly and publicly." – Jeet Heer, Comics Comics

• Review: "Really, it’s hard to know what to make of [Norman Pettingill:] Backwoods Humorist, the first time you flip through its lovingly-curated pages. [...] I fell in love with it almost immediately, first caught completely off guard by the amateurish art in a book compiled by Fantagraphics. Why, precisely had the publisher chosen to compile these works in such a beautiful volume? There is, however, something disarmingly bewitching amongst Pettingill’s grotesque caricatures of country life. [...] In the great scheme of 20th century art, it’s difficult to imagine that Pettingill’s work will ever be regarded as much more than a somewhat high profile curiosity. For those seeking to discover an utterly fascinating body of work, however, that curiosity is certainly worth the price of admission." – Brian Heater, The Daily Cross Hatch

• Review: "Greg Sadowski and John Benson did a superb job on this collection of early 1950s horror stories [Four Color Fear]... In addition to Greg's attractive design throughout, he delivers meticulous, pixel-perfect restorations... There are 25 pages of fascinating, informative notes by both Greg and John. [...] This book is like time-traveling, a document of an era. [...] This will stand as an important reference work that should be shelved alongside David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague." – Bhob Stewart, Potrzebie

• Review: "...Mome 19... is the best volume of the series so far. [...] Josh Simmons' 'White Rhinocerous Part 1'... is short, makes sense, is funny: great comic. The rest of Mome 19 doesn't fall apart on the job either... But the real prize here is DJ Bryant... Alongside a group of contemporaries who possess some of comic's most innovative talents, he chose refinement. It fucking worked." – Tucker Stone, The Factual Opinion

• Review: The Hooded Utilitarian's Noah Berlatsky continues his story-by-story examination of Moto Hagio's A Drunken Dream and Other Stories with the title story

• Plugs: "Fire & Water... is a look at the life and body of work created by Bill Everett, the man who created the Sub-Mariner - the character upon which Marvel Comics would be built. [... In] The Sanctuary [Nate] Neal uses a cave-dwelling tribe to explore themes of communication and language and reveals himself to be a master storyteller. [...] Ding Dong Daddy from Dingburg... is the newest collection of comics legend Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead comic strip. In this volume — Joan Rivers, Charles Bukowski, God, riboflavin, and more! Surreal and absurd yuks abound." – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

• Plug: "...[I]f you’re in the mood for some dazzling, filthy violence then perhaps Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit Volume 2 is... up your alley. It’s got CF the barbarian from outer space on the cover, dripping in blood and wearing nowt but pants." – The Gosh! Comics Blog

• Plug: At Comix 411, Tom Mason, profiling Leslie Turner, Roy Crane's successor on Captain Easy, notes "For those interested in the origins of Captain Easy, you can’t do better than Fantagraphics Books which is reprinting Roy Crane’s classic strip, starting at the beginning."

• Almost Plug: The 1930s "Human Centipede" image that Mark Frauenfelder Boing Boinged today happens to be found in our book Catalog No. 439: Burlesque Paraphernalia and Side Degree Specialties and Costumes

Georgetown Art Attack Treats Visitors to Thrilling Art on Saturday, October 9

LarryR

The Georgetown Art Attack returns to its old haunt on Saturday, October 9 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM with the diverse array of challenging visual and performing arts that have come to characterize this unique cultural outing since its inception in 2007. Please join us to celebrate the creativity of this singular Seattle arts community.

Among the highlights of the October 9 Art Attack: "Developing a Translation of Relation," prints and drawings by Jameson Hubbard at the Georgetown Arts and Cultural Center; the haunted Georgetown Trailer Park will be granting treats to visitors in costume and Comet Lodge Mercantile is featuring new work by artist Eric Edwards in the Rocket Trailer; the Nautilus studio will present a special installation in the Steam Room by Steve Roumas; a rare open studio at Matt Stiger's colorful neon facility at nearby 6321 Corgiat St.; a solo show of Kat Houseman 's oil paintings at Calamity Jane's; "Bent" drawings by Dave Cooper with "Prison Pit" prints by Johnny Ryan at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery; open studios including watercolors by Mark La Falce and works by Mark Tedin, Kyle Abernethy, Julie Baroh and Michael Hoppe at Krab Jab Studio in the historic Rainier Cold Storage complex; and much more.

The Georgetown Art Attack, held on the second Saturday each month, is a promotion of the Georgetown Merchants' Association. For more information contact Art Attack coordinator Larry Reid at numbers above. For map of participants visit www.georgetownartattack.com.

Drew Friedman's new Village Voice cover

mike

Behold Drew Friedman's glorious cover illustration for today's issue of The Village Voice, showing Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart, and Dr. Laura in their natural habitat. See it unsullied by typography (and read a comment from someone purporting to be Breitbart) on Drew's blog.

Jean Schulz on the Today show

mike

Al Roker talked to Jean Schulz about the upcoming 60th anniversary of Peanuts on NBC's Today show this morning. Watch video above or here.

Best. Webcomic. Ever.

Eric

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Uni Keratin's VIVIAN VAGICORN.

Own a piece of The Squirrel Machine

mike

Hans Rickheit is selling the original pages for his 2009 graphic novel The Squirrel Machine, so if you're a fan of exquisitely crafted, highly detailed, mind-bending artwork, go pick out your favorite page before it's gone.

Things to see: 9/29/10

mike

Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing and possible artist commentary at the sources:

• Jason presents two cover illustrations: one for a biography of Henrik Ibsen, the other for a 1989 issue of a Norwegian fanzine (oh yeah, and the cover for his next Fanta collection What I Did is in there too)

• Steven Weissman's latest "I, Anonymous" spot and some sketchbook pages here and here

• A couple of witty recent entries on the Covered blog: Valerie Fletcher's version of The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970 and Anthony Vukojevich's take on Eightball #2

• Dave Cooper gives a peek at a few of the 96 little drawings he's bringing on his West Coast book tour, with commentary

• An unpleasant new Jim Woodring panel

• The final part of Jordan Crane's "Chapter Two: Unraveling" at What Things Do

• A bit of Dungeon fan art by Drew Weing

"Greetings, stranger of the future. If you are reading this, it means the written word has survived, that the world of tomorrow still exists, and that for some reason my ramblings are still considered worth reading. My name is Mark Twain, and I write these words to you in the good old days of August 2010."

• A prose story from Michael Kupperman: "From the Newly Discovered Second Autobiography of Mark Twain"

• Richard Sala presents a whole bunch of production, concept, and storyboard art from his animated serial "Invisible Hands" from MTV's Liquid Television, in 4 installments (so far) here here here and here, with commentary

• "Benemerenze di satana" by Marco Corona

• A woodcut illustration of Cincinnati (1941), an uncompleted sketchbook drawing (circa 1950) and a magazine proposal sketch (1956), all at the Jim Flora blog (with commentary from Irwin Chusid)

• A black phoebe and some ground squirrels from Debbie Drechsler's nature sketchbook, with commentary

• It's part 8 of Gabrielle Bell's "San Diego Comic-Con Comicumentary"

• Noah Van Sciver's historical strip "Elijah Lovejoy November 7 1837" part 1 and part 2

• Laura Park gets anatomical with a how-to and a note to her doctor

• From Renee French: hairy girl, fly with stick, dog, Ikea roof, guys (photo), baby, rodents, thing roofs

• Dash Shaw's Daily Drawing nos. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 & 20

• Recent Steve Brodner sketches, with commentary, of Dinesh d'Souza, cowardly Karl Rove, the corpse of Harry Truman giving Obama what-for, and Truman's bones revisited

• It looks like Kevin Huizenga is sending Glenn Ganges on some kind of Hardy Boys adventure or something

• I didn't know that Roger Langridge had done rejected cover comps for our Jules Feiffer novel reprints (one of which got canceled anyway)

• New sketchbook pages from Anders Nilsen

• Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary page 43; Hans also has a song for you

• The cover to Derek Van Gieson's evocatively titled upcoming publication

• Tigers clustered and solo by Andrice Arp for an old Giant Robot art show

• From Wilfred Santiago, page 91 of 21, plus process images for pages 120 & 121, and a postcard illustration

• Two weeks worth of Tony Millionaire's Maakies

• Work in progress (presumably) by Joe Kimball

• Recent spot illos by Ray Fenwick for Cottage Life Magazine

New Comics Day 9/29/10: Rip M.D., The Sanctuary, You'll Never Know 2

mike

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators are saying about our releases this week, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

Rip M.D.
by Mitch Schauer & Michael Vosburg et al.

88-page full-color 7.5" x 9.25" softcover • $12.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-369-9

"[Rip M.D.] seems to be a comic more geared to a juvenile public, but should be pretty cool because there are a lot of monsters, really violent werewolves, zombies, and best of all, vampires that do not sparkle!" – Submundo Mamão (translated from Portuguese)

"Rip M.D. is a creepy, fun-filled all-ages adventure saga... [Mitch] Schauer told ICv2 that the inspiration for Rip M.D. was all those horror and monster movies he saw as a child — movies that made him care more about the fate of the colorful monsters and fiends than the B movies' human characters who always seemed to triumph in the end. Rip M.D. is the logical emotional outgrowth of those accumulated cinematic disappointments, the story of a boy who is able to help the horror and monster movie characters that he loves the most." – ICv2

"A 'full-color, all-ages adventure' with an animated cartoon series in development, a promising bet for reluctant readers." – Martha Cornog, Library Journal

The Sanctuary
by Nate Neal

208-page black & white 8" x 10" softcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-388-0

"It’s probably insultingly reductive to refer to Nate Neal’s debut graphic novel as 'caveman comics,' but that’s generally the sort of two-word phrase that tends to get me excited to read something. The subject matter is indeed a 'Paleolithic cave-dwelling tribe,' but the way Neal handles the verbal aspects of a pre-linguistic, vocal communication seem to be a big part of the work as well." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

"Nate Neal's first graphic novel is dumbfoundingly ambitious: it takes as its subject nothing less than the invention of comics, in the sense of narrative-in-pictures, meaning that its cast is a bunch of cave-people. Cave-people who speak a cave-person language that Neal has invented himself (he offers the translation of a few key words on its jacket copy, but that's it). The working title of the book was a drawing of a bison. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

You'll Never Know, Book 2: Collateral Damage
by C. Tyler

104-page full-color 12" x 10.25" hardcover • $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-418-4

"Cartoonist C. Tyler continues her comics biography of her Greatest Generation father, wrapped in around a memoir of her own life at the time she was learning his story for herself. If it’s as good as the first book, I imagine it will be one of, if not the, best comics available this week." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

"Being the follow-up to one of the most widely appreciated comics of 2009, Carol Tyler’s expansive portrait of life rippling from the submerged stone of her father’s WWII experiences. I understand this volume will incorporate an expanded presentation of Tyler’s also-widely-appreciated 1994 short The Hannah Story directly into the larger work. [True. – Ed.]" – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"The best book of the week: a way to have your heart torn out while your eyes feast. The second volume of C. Tyler's project about discovering what her father did in World War II expands its scope to other painful parts of her family dynamics, and incorporates Tyler's extraordinary 1995 short story 'The Hannah Story.' If I started going off about how much I love Tyler's artwork and design and storytelling, we'd be here all afternoon--there's really nobody else doing what she does in comics..." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"Your book of the week. I still think this is something that will read 10X better in one volume as opposed to these three serialized books, but wanting to get a book out when its subjects can still read and enjoy it is of course an admirable thing. Plus I'm disenfranchised when it comes to that particular vote. The scary thing is, these books are already stupendous. This new Carol Tyler supposedly has within its pages one of the 100 best comics of the 20th Century, and I practically guarantee you it won't be out of place." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"I liked the first volume of Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know, the story of her father’s experiences in the war, but it left me wanting more, so I definitely want to read the second volume, Collateral Damage." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6

The Allen Ginsberg Beat Poet Figurine

mike

Quite possibly the world's first Beat Poet action figure, now available to order from Presspop in Japan! The figurine, packaging and accessories were all designed by Archer Prewitt (also responsible for their previous figurines of music pioneers Raymond Scott and Robert Moog) and feature a cloth jacket, glasses, beaded necklace, papercraft Uncle Sam hat and book, and a CD of live poetry readings. It's adorable!