Advance copies are in and here's a quick peek at The Daniel Clowes Reader: A Critical Edition of Ghost World and Other Stories, with Essays, Interviews, and Annotations. True to the title, it's got the whole Ghost World graphic novel in it, plus a bunch more stories, interviews with Clowes, and a bunch of smart people writing a bunch of smart stuff about the stories, all wrangled and partly written by Ken Parille and packaged up in this smart-looking compact flexi-bound softcover designed by Alvin Buenaventura. It's a must for every Clowes fan and for any serious reader of comics, which means you!
The book's due out in July; you can pre-order and sample the contents with a free 31-page excerpt right here.
This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.
224-page black & white 7" x 9.5" hardcover • $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-605-8
"Wandering Son is not the kind of manga in which a happy ending is guaranteed… You'll thus be grateful for the moments of realistic, untempered joy Shimura allows her two protagonists here, as you wait with nervous anticipations for the travails that lie ahead for them…" –Glen Weldon, NPR
Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown here as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.
Good Dog marks the welcome return of alternative cartoonist Graham Chaffee, who, after his successful 2003 collection of short stories, The Most Important Thing and Other Stories, took a detour to devote himself to the art of tattooing, before charging back with his new, beautifully conceived graphic novel.
Ivan, who is plagued by terrible nightmares about chickens and rabbits, is a good dog — if only someone would notice. Readers accompany the stray as he navigates dog society, weathers pack politics, and surveys canine-human interactions.
Good Dog's story and pen-and-ink art are deceptively simple, but Chaffee uses the approachability of the subject matter as a device to explore topics such as independence, security, assimilation, loyalty, and violence. Preteen-and-up dog fanciers, especially, will warm to the well-meaning Ivan and his exploits with a motley assortment of Scotties, Bulldogs, and mutts. Chaffee combines illustrative gravitas with cartooning verve and creates a richly textured, dog’s-eye view of the world. The story is a rousing Jack London-esque adventure as well as a moral parable.
Advance Praise:
"Graham Chaffee has been one of my favorite cartoonists since I fell in love with his 1997 debut graphic novel, Big Wheels. Combining tremendous empathy towards his characters, concise storytelling and exquisite detail, Chaffee's comics are sublime. I am eagerly awaiting Good Dog. I'll plan my week around reading it." – James Sturm (Market Day)
"Good Dog is a book as seemingly lost in time as its canine hero Ivan. Graham Chaffee has a real talent for charming anthropomorphic cartooning and his clean, appealing storytelling and expressive brushwork evoke the work of an alternative golden age of comics; an age perhaps in which superheroes never existed and the medium told more straightforward, poignant stories." – James Romberger
"Getting into the mind of a dog — that's a real trick. I know, I've tried. Getting into the whole heart and soul of a dog is another whole feat. Graham Chaffee not only does it with aplomb (he draws GREAT dogs), he gets into the whole dog's life — and so should you." – Nick Abadzis (Laika)
"I got choked up a couple of times which is the one of the best things a comic can do to me. Compliments to Mr. Graham Chaffee. Really solid storytelling and excellent art. Reminiscent the best way of Jack London's The Call of the Wild." – Farel Dalrymple (Pop Gun War)
On the long road to becoming an Oscar-winning animation director, Gene Deitch became an intense jazz fan. At the age of 21, he discovered The Record Changer magazine, a jazz collector's magazine filled with fanatical, scholarly, and purist essays about jazz as well as listings of hard-to-find jazz albums. Every jazz swinger in the '40s was called a cat (as in "cool cat"), so Gene Deitch created a cartoon feature for Record Changer titled "The Cat," which quickly became a fixture of the magazine. He also started drawing the covers, which graced almost every issue from 1945 to 1951 along with "The Cat." Deitch's stylistically virtuoso images exquisitely embodied the essence of jazz and became a visual paean to the joy of collecting and appreciating jazz.
Fantagraphics Books is proud to collect all of Deitch's Record Changer covers and "Cat" cartoons in one coffee-table, landscape-format art book, reproducing his covers in the same gorgeous colors in which they first appeared as well as the black-and-white Cat cartoons, with commentary and reminiscences by Deitch himself. Originally published in 2003 in hardcover and out of print for years, this redesigned, first-ever paperback edition will delight a new generation of fans.
A century ago in sleepy Lumberton, the moving pictures, with their daring heroines, were the most exciting thing to happen to young Katherine Whaley. When a movie production came to town, her life took a most unexpected turn.
Decades later, Whaley recounted her wild, weird years in the company of the mysterious eccentric Charles Varnay and his uncannily intelligent dog Rousseau. Varnay aimed to produce a movie serial, with Katherine as its destined star, propounding a message about the future of the human race — a message he claimed was recorded on ancient artifacts in the voice of Jesus Christ himself!
Oh, what a treat! We couldn't be happier that the great Gahan Wilson did this all-new illustration for the cover of our upcoming collection of Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics, his 1974-1976 funny-pages feature. Yep, it's another great but short-lived comic strip by one of cartooning's best, fished from the deep waters of obscurity and given the loving Fantagraphics treatment! These darkly delightful, subversively satirical strips have been carefully spiffed up and will be presented in a "widescreen" hardcover format hitting shelves in July. More sneak peeks are on the way, and you can pre-order now.
The genius Dash Shaw has been touring across the country in support of his latest graphic novel, New School, as well as the one-shot comic book, 3 New Stories. On Tuesday, May 21st, he brings at all back home to Brooklyn with an animation screening at Light Industry in the lovely Greenpoint neighborhood.
Dash will screen his animation works, from cinematic permutations of his own comics, as well as adaptations of game shows and reality tv that marry their source materials' original audio tracks with a series of static illustrations to uncanny effect — Wheel of Fortune never seemed so heartbreaking, or so strange.
Rounding out the lineup is a film chosen by Shaw that he finds resonant with the concerns of his particular hand-drawn animation techniques: Bobby’s Girl, an '80s anime rarity about a teenage biker, his pen pal, and his death drive.
I have to tell you: having seen Dash's presentation at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery earlier this month, I cannot encourage you more to go! The entire audience was hanging on his every word, and his explanations on his process were absolutely fascinating. You don't want to miss this, Brooklynites.
Please note: seating is limited, and first-come, first-served, so get there early! Box office opens at 7:00 PM. Tickets are $7.00, and are available at door.
Light Industry is located at 155 Freeman Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in a ground-floor space shared with Triple Canopy and The Public School New York.
This Friday, May 17th, at the appropriately named Pure Evil Gallery, VICE will be holding an exhibition of work from some of their favorite illustrators, including Johnny -- "just so we can stick all their drawings up on a wall and show everybody else how great they are," they say.
The exhibition is going to include a selection of new prints, work that's been featured in VICE and original drawings especially for the show, which are designed to give an insight into how the people who do drawings for them go about doing their drawings.
The Pure Evil Gallery is located at 108 Leonard Street in London. The show runs through Sunday, June 2nd.
Holy smokes, has it really been 20 years since the "Hateball" tour with Peter Bagge & Dan Clowes? Our old pal Devlin Thompson of Bizarro Wuxtry in Athens, GA shares memories and photos of their stop there.
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