320-page black & white (with some color) 11"x 6.75" hardcover • $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-60699-522-8 

"Johnson combined low-impact serialized adventure with some gentle comedy based around the ways that adults and kids diverge in their perspectives. The result is a compulsively readable strip with a winningly off-kilter point-of-view-and a cultural treasure that's been long-overdue for this kind of prestige archival project... " –Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

"Fantagraphics deserves a Nobel Prize in Literature for their efforts to reprint complete runs of classic American comic strips... There is rarely an attempt at more than 2-dimensions but that flatness provides a late art deco elegance to [Barnaby]....This strip is fun, funny, I'm so glad its back and Fantagraphics is giving it their usual top-notch presentation," –Kevin Lauderdale, It Has Come To My Attention

The last thing you'll read before the San Diego PR Storm 2013:

• Review: The AV Club looks at Ulli Lust's Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life. Noel Murray writes, "Today Is The Last Day Of The Rest Of Your Life takes the form of a post-apocalyptic horror story, wherein the heroine ekes out a meager existence by day and then fights off monsters by night.…Lust takes readers inside her experiences, letting them feel how high hopes can devolve into raw survival."

• Review: Ulli Lust's Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life is reviewed in the New York Times by Douglas Wolk. "the book ripples with exuberance:… Lust’s pen-and-ink work (augmented by the pale green tint of European paperbacks) depicts the stretched and crimped features of the people from whom she bummed change, the architecture of St. Peter’s Basilica and the chaos of a Clash concert with equally manic panache, and her line is as seemingly unkempt but as deliberately molded as her younger self’s punk-rock shock of hair."

• Plug: Whitney Matheson on USA Today's Pop Candy thinks Ulli Lust's new book, Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life, is right for you. "This epic memoir from the Austrian cartoonist (now translated into English) tells the story of her crazy travels through Italy as a true punk-rock girl in the '80s."

• Review: Booklist Online spends the day with Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks. "The applause-worthy effort… Oodles of shorter pieces provide more evidence yet that this series is an essential addition to any serious (or just plain fun) comics collection" writes Ian Chipman.

• Review: The New York Journal of Books reads Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret by Carl Barks. "There is no tantrum like a Donald Duck tantrum…Every single page of this new collection of classic Donald Duck stories is filled with silliness and slapstick and adventure…Try not smiling at Carl Barks’ work. It’s impossible," says Mark Squirek.

• Interview: Zak Sally on The Comics Journal interviews on Peter Bagge and The Beat follows up. Bagge states, "I like the way [a pamphlet or floppy comic] feel. To me it's an ideal format, the traditional comic book format. It's the perfect amount of material to read in one sitting." 

• Commentary: The Beat and Hannah Means-Shannon discuss the humor panel from HeroesCon 2013 featuring Peter Bagge (there promoting his new book, Other Stuff). When asked advice from a younger cartoonist Bagge replied, “If you’re goal is to be a starving artist, it’s an easy road ahead." 

• Review: Dead Canary Comics look at Prison Pit series by Johnny Ryan. "It's so extremely excessive in its hilarity it draws stifled belly laughs from your gut on packed trains as parents and politicians glance witheringly at images of monsters shitting themselves, ghouls eviscerating ghouls... in an age when we've got more X Men titles than people on the planet it's refreshing to just have a comic book that's all about entertainment!"

• Plug: Speaking of Johnny Ryan, show off how you don't fucking mess around with a PRISON PIT patch! Only $5 (plus shipping). 

• Review: Brian Heater of BoingBoing looks at Leslie Stein's Eye of the Majestic Creature Vol. 2."It’s a sort of childlike forgiveness of life’s darker corners, which carries on into grown up stories…Stein's is a welcomingly unique take on the well-trod world of autobiographical comics, and once you've excepted her rhythms as your own, it can be a hard world to step away from." 

• Review (audio): NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour enjoy Dash Shaw's New School. Glen Weldon states, "Instead of a tidy narrative, [New School] is about art, about the art that's in the book itself…There's stuff going on at other levels, the intuitive, the leve of the unconscious, the subconscious I guess you could say.…This book is just fascinating."

• Review: Booklist Online reviews Goddamn This War by Jacques Tardi and Jean-Pierre Verney. "…six years of hopelessly indistinguishable trenches, explosions, corpses, mud, and maggots, all of it depicted via three panoramic panels per page rendered in smoky grays and foggy blues—with blood accents… The pages are strewn with images of dead bodies and midexplosion terrors, but the unforgettable centerpiece is two wordless pages of disfigured postwar faces"

• Review: About.com looks at Anders Nilsen's The End. Jeff Alford writes "these pages come from such a raw emotional place that they'll reverberate like an echo from a well....It's a message we've heard before, but its majestic delivery and the difficult path that led to this revelation make The End all the more exceptional."

• Review: Comic Pusher looks at Anders Nilsen's The End. "This isn't a non-fictional description of grief written after the fact, this is grief, unfiltered and complete…The best sequences are where Nilsen breaks away from the heartbreaking emotional literalism and opens out into almost abstract expressions of the nature of grief."

• Review: Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading unpacks Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Color Sundays by Floyd Gottfredson. "The lighter approach makes this book a better choice to share with your young ones. They should love the timeless highjinks of the mouse and his friends. And anyone can appreciate the skilled cartooning and astounding art, so well-done it almost seems to move on paper."

• Commentary: Heidi MacDonald of The Beat talks about Lorenzo Mattotti at BEA. "In Italy Mattotti is pretty much an all around art and design god, and he's known here for his New Yorker covers, and Fantagraphics has been putting out his recent work in Englias." 

 • Review: Wandering Son Vol. 4 by Shimura Takako gets reviewed by Read Comic Books. "…what continues to make Wandering Son a fantastic read is the frankness it presents developmental sexual identity…Few comics will challenge you like Wandering Son. It covers a topic not widely written about or discussed, and does so in a tactful, warm, embracing manner," concludes Nick Rowe.

• Review: The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center gives Wandering Son Vol. 4 a whirl.  Terry Hong comments," ‘Fresh' is exactly the right word to describe this gentle gender-bender series…Creator Shimura Takako is a compassionate, empathetic storyteller without judgment or guile. Her young characters face their inescapable maturity as best as they can in a brave new world of ‘gender-fluid'."

• Review (audio): It Has Come to My Attention recorded a short 7-minute review of Barnaby Vol. 1 by Crockett Johnson. "Fantagraphics deserves a Nobel Prize in Literature for their efforts to reprint complete runs of classic American comic strips… There is rarely an attempt at more than 2-dimensions but that flatness provides a late art deco elegance to [Barnaby].…This strip is fun, funny, I'm so glad its back and Fantagraphics is giving it their usual top-notch presentation,"

• Review: Letterer Todd Klein looks at Pogo Vol. 2 Through the Wild Blue Yonder  by Walt Kelly. "…this strip is perhaps the opposite of 'Peanuts,' which went with a minimalist approach. 'Pogo' is maximalist! Both are great fun and often quite funny.…There’s really not a single thing to fault in this fine book"

• Review: Jack Davis' new collection 'Tain't the Meat reviewed on Sound on Sight. "It's entertaining in the juvenile delight it takes in grossing out readers. You also get to witness Davis' style as it improves with every story: his lines get sharper, there's more detail and contrast in the panels… It might also provide a good trip down memory lane for some, reminding them of late nights spent with smuggled comics contraband and a flashlight under the sheets. It's a good introduction as well to a genre that may today seem corny and hackneyed, but I'll be damned if it still ain't pretty creepy, bad puns an all," writes Chris Auman. 

• Review: Broad Street Review gazes upon 50 Girls 50 by Al Williamson with love. Bob Levin pens, "Williamson's art could infuse aliens and monsters, no matter how hideous, with sympathetic personalities that reinforced Feldstein's feelings about brotherhood and tolerance.…His delicate line, intricately constructed panels and gossamer-like space-station cities and landscapes are fully on display in this book."

• Review: Comics Bulletin on Came the Dawn by Wallace Wood.  "…the true delight and fascination of Came the Dawn will be seeing again Wood's sublime understanding, indeed his enrichment of, the comics language, from panel and page composition to the pacing, direction, of capturing and conveying of mood…Let's face it: No one draws an emaciated corpse - especially in zombie form - better than Wood," pens Eric Hoffman.

• Review: The Last Vispo edited by Crag Hill and Nico Vassilakis is reviewed on Ler BD.

• Plug: The Love and Rockets Library  makes it onto Robot 6's latest edition of Shelf Porn ....with a kitty! Pictures and shelf ownership by Guido Cuadros.

• Commentary: MTV Geek talks about the awesomeness of CAKE and artists like Kim Deitch and Noah Van Sciver appearing to sign books. 

• Commentary: Aside from eating some suspect local food, Noah Van Sciver does great with The Hypo and his one-man anthology BLAMMO at Denver Comic Con on The Beat.

• Plug: Jim Woodring's first beer in the Oddland Series was included in the Best Labels of the week. 

Join us this weekend at CAKE at Center on Halsted in Chicago from Saturday, June 15 through Sunday, June 16th! Table 13-14 is the place to be. We're pumped to announce our special guests, Kim Deitch, Ben Catmull, Charles Forsman, Leslie Stein, Josh Simmons, Tom Kaczynski, Lilli Carré, and Noah Van Sciver! Check out our lush signing schedule:

Saturday, June 15th

Leslie Stein               11:00am-Noon
Chuck Forsman      Noon-1:00pm
Lilli Carré                  1:00pm-2:00pm
Kim Deitch               2:00pm-3:00pm
Ben Catmull             3:00pm-4:00pm
Noah Van Sciver    4:00pm-5:00pm
Josh Simmons        5:00pm-6:00pm

 Sunday, June 16th

Tom Kaczynski      11:00am-noon
Noah Van Sciver   Noon-1:00pm
Kim Deitch              1:00pm-2:00pm
Chuck Forsman     2:00pm-3:00pm
Josh Simmons       3:00pm-4:00pm
Leslie Stein             4:00pm-5:00pm
Ben Catmull           5:00pm-6:00pm

We have some lip-bustin' new books to debut at CAKE.

• The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley by Kim Deitch

• The End of the Fucking World by Charles Forsman

• Eye of the Majestic Creature Vol. 2 by Leslie Stein

• The End by Anders Nilsen

• Wake Up, Percy Gloom by Cathy Malkasian

• Good Dog by Graham Chaffee

• The Daniel Clowes Reader edited by Ken Parille

aaaannnnd Wandering Son Vol. 4 by Shimura Takako

Our cartoonists will be partaking in programming throughout the weekend, so check out their panels! 

On Friday, June 14th Kim Deitch has a signing from 6pm-8pm at Chicago Comics. (3244 N Clark)

Saturday, June 15th

Noon-1:00pm // Chris Ware: Special Guest Chris Ware is the author of Jimmy Corrigan - the Smartest Kid on Earth, which received the Guardian First Book Award and was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial of American Art. His most recent book, Building Stories, was voted a 2012 Top Ten Book of the Year by the New York Times, Time Magazine and Publishers Weekly. Jake Austen, editor of the vital and influential Chicago cultural magazine Roctober, will host Mr. Ware in conversation, speaking on Ware's career and his connection to Chicago and its living comics history.

3:00 - 4:30pm // Eyeworks: Parallel Lines: The Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation is a film festival with a focus on abstract animation and unconventional character animation. The festival programs showcase outstanding experimental animation of all sorts: classic films, new works, and rare masterpieces. Founded in 2010 by Alexander Stewart (Library Book, Sideral) and Lilli Carré (Heads or Tails, The Lagoon), Eyeworks is held annually in Chicago, with additional curated programs presented in Chicago and other cities throughout the year. The Eyeworks program showing at CAKE this year, Parallel Lines, features animated work that highlights an overlap between alternative comics and experimental animation. The screening will include both classic and contemporary works on this theme, showcasing narrative and graphic parallels between the two forms. Immediately following the screening there will be a Q&A, with presented animators Kim Deitch, Kevin Eskew, and Leif Goldberg.

Sunday, June 16th

12:30 - 1:30pm // Mega-Solutions to Micro-Publishing: Oily Comics: In the current expansion of the micro-publishing field, Special Guests Oily Comics is a premiere imprint. Operated by Chuck Forsman (The End of the Fucking World, Snake Oil) and Melissa Mendes (Lou, Freddy), Oily Comics features some of the best talent in alternative comics. Joining them on stage will be fellow Special Guest Michael DeForge (Adventure Time, Elizabeth of Canada, Lose), and German cartoonist, Anna Haifisch (The Buddies, Future Tense). CAKE co-organizer Max Morris will moderate this exciting discussion.

2:00 - 3:00pm // Kim Deitch: Special Guest Kim Deitch came from a legacy in the animation field and continues to form a legacy of his own. From the hey-day of the undergrounds, through the breakthrough of Raw, Kim Deitch remains a seminal force in alternative comics. Deitch will be speaking about his new book, The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley, out this year from Fantagraphics. He will be joined by Caitlin McGurk (Good Morning You), librarian at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

3:30 - 4:30pm // Intimate Anxiety: Beyond the shock tactics of portraying "inappropriate" subject matter in comics, we find the medium is exquisitely suited for grappling with explicit content, unchained from the trappings of taboo. Intimate Anxiety focuses on three artists' ferocious visions of sex and death, made all the more visceral through gorgeous and painstaking details. Special Guest Phoebe Gloeckner sets the standard for work that probes these realms. From her experimental memoir, Diary of a Teenage Girl, to her iconic illustrations for RE/Search to her current work dealing with the ongoing femicide in Cuidad, Juárez, Gloeckner continues to confront difficult realities with groundbreaking graphic integrity. Julia Gfrörer's art vibrates off of the page while crafting oblique erotic worlds laced with terror. Through sparse text and a perfect sense of visual timing, Gfrörer's comics, such as Too Dark to See, Flesh and Bone and Black Is the Color bring language to the unspeakable. Joining them will be Special Guest Heather Benjamin, whose obsessively rendered drawings aim straight for the jugular vein. Author of the cult art zine Sad Sex and contributor to the prolific output of Collective Stench, Benjamin's art delves headfirst into complicated scenarios that are emotionally fraught and sexually feral. Moderated by Caroline Paquita, author of Womanimalistic and founder of Pegacorn Press, Intimate Anxiety is a conversation about the power and truth that lies within impropriety.

So come visit Jacq and all our cartoonists at tables 13-14 this weekend at CAKE! 3656 N Halsted, Chicago, IL 60613

Today is a two-fer digital comics day at Fantagraphics and comiXology! Cathy Malkasian's beautiful Candidesque tales of Percy Gloom and just released Wake Up, Percy Gloom are now available to download. The perfect fable for someone on a journey, Percy Gloom unique gem of a story, humorous and bewitching at the same time. Its diminutive hero is as complex and unique as the fantastical world he inhabits.  Only $12.99 at comiXology for an 180-page adventure.

Meanwhile, in Wake Up, Percy Gloom we find our bulb-headed hero awaken from (what he thinks is) a 200-year nap and finds himself in a strange new land, embarking on a wide-ranging quest to find his mother. This new 116-page book from Malkasian is available both now both in stores and at comiXology to read digitally for $24.99.

"More than a fable, Percy Gloom is part of story telling myth that can be traced back to campfires around a cave. This is an inspiring work that speaks to all levels of our existence." -Diamond Scoop

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.

The End
by Anders Nilsen

80-page two-color (with 16pp. full color) 7.25" x 10.5" hardcover • $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-635-5

"these pages come from such a raw emotional place that they'll reverberate like an echo from a well.…It's a message we've heard before, but its majestic delivery and the difficult path that led to this revelation make The End all the more exceptional." –About.com

Wake Up, Percy Gloom!
by Cathy Malkasian

192-page two-color 8.25" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-638-6

"More than a fable, Percy Gloom is part of story telling myth that can be traced back to campfires around a cave. This is an inspiring work that speaks to all levels of our existence." –Diamond Scoop

How cute is Jason walking by the Jason-inspired mural by Kolstadgata 15? His next book, Lost Cat, comes out soon!

We have a new co-worker here at Fantagraphics, her name is Wanda, she's roommates with Jacq and Tony and she's into comics. She's particularly excited about Lost Cat by Jason. 

Although, she DID protest at this photo because she couldn't read the book. Okay, okay, Wanda. 

There ya go. Jason comics are page-lickingly good, aren't they!

Leslie Stein, cartoonist from Eye of the Majestic Creature Vol. 2 (and Volume 1) recently took this picture stating her new book's cover was "inspired by the bass I never use but love and sabbath VOL 4, which I use all the time." You can pick up a copy of Stein's new book at the Fantagraphics table this weekend at CAKE, signing schedule and details coming soon.

And for the record, Stein DOES use guitars though. Her band, Prince Rupert's Drops, pretty muchs rips shit on the daily.