Michael Kupperman ponders the possibilities of Mark Twain's passing in this positively perfect print for Desert Island in Brooklyn. (My favorite possibility? Shot in the crotch.)

Get your own copy of this historically accurate print on Thursday, October 13th, at the book release party for Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010.  Store owner Gabriel Fowler notes that if there are any prints leftover at the end of the night (unlikely!), they'll be available online.

Keep an eye on all our Twain in the Membrane tour dates on the Fantagraphics Events page!

UPDATE: Corrected with updated date and time!

The Northwest tour for Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind has been hitting some pretty rockin' places, from record stores to college bookstores, but tomorrow's event is totally classy!

Join EMP curator/editor Jacob McMurray on Wednesday, September 28th at the Pan Pacific Hotel in downtown Seattle for a reading and discussion of the "grunge" era in a completely non-grunge-y locale!

Your $30 registration includes a copy of the book, and complimentary appetizers. Seating and noshing starts at 5:30 PM, and the presentation starts at 6:00 PM.  RSVP to 206.654.5005 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Note: seating is limited, so don't delay!

From the pages of Taking Punk to the Masses.

Wanna find out more reasons why Washington State is a cool place to live? Why not visit Seattle? If you book a room at the Pan Pacific Hotel in the "Nirvana Room Package," you'll get a signed copy of Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind, as well as passes to the EMP exhibit! Note: do not treat your hotel room like a rock star.

This is one powerful event, indeed.

This coming Saturday, September 24th, two crazy forces of talent will collide in one evening at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.

Editor Warren Bernard (you may know him as the Executive Director of SPX) will present a slideshow and discussion for his brand-new Fantagraphics title Drawing Power: A Compendium of Cartoon Advertising. The exhibit of vintage advertising material looks tremendous, and Warren's slideshows are not to be missed!

And the evening only intensifies in power with the addition of special guest, L.A.-based artist Tom Neely, who is currently on a west coast tour for his brand-new "painted novel," The Wolf! 

And then we started flipping through it... holy hell. The artwork was so dark and intense and beautiful. I may have caught our warehouse champ Ajax wiping a tear from his eye. (He's gonna kill me for sharing that.) (Okay, in his defense, maybe it was a flake of dried blood.)

The juxtaposition of these two diverse individuals appearing at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on the same night will be a powerful one indeed!

The event starts this Saturday, September 24th at 6:00 PM. Warren Bernard will give a slideshow presentation, followed by a video installation by Tom Neely. Both gentlemen will sign their books throughout the following reception until 8:00 PM.

The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street (at Airport Way S.) in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle.

Even robots need love, too, especially the giant ones.

And on Saturday, September 24th, Giant Robot 2 kicks off the exhibit "Robots," a benefit for their esteemed gallery space in Los Angeles.

Since opening their doors in 2003, GR2 has hosted exhibitions featuring many Fantagraphics artists on their walls, and this upcoming exhibit is no exception, featuring work by Andrice Arp, Eleanor Davis, John Pham, Mark Todd (whose artwork is shown above), and Esther Pearl Watson, among dozens of other incredibly talented folks. 

GR2 shows don't push their artists into contracts, and attendance is always free. If you've ever enjoyed any of their exhibits, we encourage you to support GR2 so they can continue to support independent artists for years to come!

"Robots" runs from September 24th to October 12th at GR2 [ 2062 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles ], with an opening reception this Saturday from 6:30 - 10:00 PM. 

The Taking Punk to the Masses Northwest tour wraps up this Thursday, September 22nd at the University Book Store in Tacoma... a city where apparently this happened:

From the pages of Taking Punk to the Masses

Holy crap, do they mean shoegazer band Lush? With Nirvana? For $5? Less if you brought canned foods?

This is the kind-of amazing paraphernalia of the grunge-era that you can only find in Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind! Join EMP Senior Curator/editor Jacob McMurray at 5:30 PM for a reading and discussion.

The University Bookstore is located at 1754 Pacific Ave in Tacoma. Somebody, ask him about that Nirvana show.

Jaime Hernandez's signing at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn the other week was a total success, no surprise there!  Thank you so much to everyone who came out to celebrate the release of Love & Rockets: New Stories, Vol. 4 with Jaime, and thank you so much to Tom & Amy from BSC* for hosting such a wonderful event!  All photos are courtesy of their Facebook page!

[ * Bergen Street Comics, NOT the "Baby-Sitters Club"... ]

My wish came true!!!  Here's Jaime with my longtime-literary-crush, John Hodgman.

Adrian Tomine also stopped by!

Some happy Love & Rockets fans!  [ l-r: Joe Hughes, Ivan Brandon, Jenny Lee, and Cliff Chiang ]

The store was packed!

 A display of Love & Rockets: New Stories, Volume 4, before it got wiped out by fans! Have you gotten your copy yet? Brooklynites, swing by Bergen Street Comics [ 470 Bergen Street ], or order online today! 

It's been a while since Paul Hornschemeier has had a new t-shirt design, but he's back... and he means business.  As in this t-shirt design. Go get one and go for that promotion, available online at Paul's Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop.

We're still reeling from the amazing weekend Fantagraphics had at the 2011 Small Press Expo earlier this month! Kim's awesome wife has some photos she's gonna share with us later, but in the meantime, here's some photos, thanks to our friends at the SPX Facebook page!

Here's our fearless leader Kim Thompson accepting Jaime Hernandez's "Outstanding Story" Ignatz for "Browntown" from Love and Rockets: New Stories #3!

And here's Mome newcomer Joseph Lambert accepting either the award for "Outstanding Cartoonist" or "Oustanding Collection" for I Will Bite You!

Presiding over the evening's events is SPX Executive Director, Warren Bernard... also, the editor of our collection Drawing Power: An Exhibition of Cartoon Advertising!

Jim Woodring signs a copy of the fancy brand-new edition of The Frank Book. (You can pre-order a copy here, and get a signed bookplate, while supplies last, by the way!)

Here's Johnny Ryan, on panel.

And here's Diane Noomin and Paul Hornschemeier, signing at the Fantagraphics table!

Check out even more pics at the SPX Facebook page. And thank you so much to our artists, the organizers of SPX, and everyone who came by our table and bought books!

The Twain in the Membrane Tour rages on with a reading and signing this Wednesday, September 21st at BookCourt in Brooklyn, NY!

The fun kicks off at 7:00 PM during "Cousin Corinne's Live Comix Block," MC'ed by Jeff Newelt, and curated by Dean Haspiel.

Michael Kupperman will be doing a slideshow and reading of Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010, and Ben Katchor will also be in attendance, signing his latest, The Cardboard Valise.

Time Out New York listed this as one of the 20 Top Book Events this Fall!

Don't miss it!  And keep an eye on the Fantagraphics events page, so you don't miss any future dates on the Twain in the Membrane fall tour!

Earlier this week, we announced the Twain in the Membrane Tour, celebrating the release of Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010. And it kicks off this weekend at the Brooklyn Book Festival!

Author and artist Michael Kupperman will be part of the "Funny Ha-Ha: Comedy in Comics" panel discussion, alongside Keith Knight, Kate Beaton, and Jennifer Hayden, moderated by Heidi MacDonald of The Beat and Publishers Weekly Comics World.

Get ready for some laughs this Sunday, September 18th at the St. Francis Screening Room [ 180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights ]. 

And get ready to go insane for Twain! Complete tour dates can be found on our "Events" page.