School is back in session! And this Thursday, September 15th, EMP curator/editor Jacob McMurray will "school" you all on the Seattle music scene, as documented in Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind!

Join Jacob at the University Book Store in Seattle at 7:00 PM, as he discusses the "grunge" phenomenon... on the very street where a lot of those unwashed musicians first bumped into each other, perhaps reaching for a Mudhoney 7" at Cellophane Square at the exact same time?

Sub Pop poster, from the pages of Taking Punk to the Masses, featuring artwork by Peter Bagge AND one of my all-time favorite bands, Velocity Girl

The University Book Store is located at 4326 University Way, N.E. or "The Ave," as it is called 'round these parts. Flannel optional.

I was pretty excited to get to the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery this past Sunday and see the exhibit is now up for Drawing Power: An Exhibition of Cartoon Advertising!

Where the heck did editor Warren Bernard get all this cool stuff?! Well, we can ask him in person when he makes a special Seattle appearance on Saturday, September 24th at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery!

Make plans now to join us from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Warren will be giving a slideshow presentation and talk. 

And as an extra bonus, we'll be joined by artist Tom Neely, currently on tour for his incredible "painted novel," The Wolf.  I'll be dishing more about that on the Flog later...!

The Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival in Seattle has come and gone, and I'm still recovering from the three-day whirlwind of bands, comedians, and shishkaberries, but for those of you who weren't able to attend, I thought I'd share some snaps from the "Bumber By Number" exhibit, which ran during Bumbershoot weekend!

Curators Marlow Harris and Jo David gave vintage paint-by-number kits to local artists, who were encouraged to customize the works and "paint-outside-the-box," as it were. Here's Jim Blanchard's vibrant piece, which looks like it should be hung in a wood-paneled basement, or perhaps screened on the side of a van...

And here's Jim Woodring's morbid take on a winter scene... Damn, I love it.

You can see larger versions of these photos on the Fantagraphics Flickr page, and be sure to check out all our awesome photos and videos while you're there!

Earlier this month, the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery was thrilled to host a preview screening of the alt-comix documentary series "Hooked on Comix 3," spotlighting our very own Dame Darcy and Tony Millionaire! 

We were very fortunate to have directors David P. Moore and Audry Mandelbaum in attendance, and you can check out an interview David did with Dan Morrill of ComicsForge.com below (or on YouTube)! It's a great look around at our bookstore & gallery, and there's even a lo-fi preview of Tony's interview at the end:

Come visit the Fantagraphics Bookstore and get hooked on comix yourself! We're open daily from 11:30 to 8:00 PM, and open on Sundays until 5:00 PM. You can find us at 1201 S. Vale Street (at Airport Way S.) in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle.

Somewhere out there is an incredibly lucky lady named Susan who received a half-dozen of these one-of-a-kind hand-drawn t-shirts from Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez back in 1982! Gilbert's awesome wife Carol just shared these pics on the Love & Rockets Facebook Fan Page with the note: "I am amazed that she still has them." Whaaat?! I would've been amazed if she didn't!!!

Become a "fan" of the Love & Rockets Facebook Fan Page and see more of these incredible tees, and stay in the loop with The Hernandez Brothers, past and present!

We are so excited to announce this rare east coast appearance by Jaime Hernandez this Saturday, September 10th at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn!

He'll be signing copies of Love & Rockets: New Stories, Vol. 4 -- quite possibly the most highly-anticipated comic book hitting stores this year! Bubbly (and non-alcoholic drinks) will be served at 8:00 PM, so get there and toast this incredible storyteller in person!

Bergen Street Comics is located at 470 Bergen Street in Brooklyn. Do NOT miss this!

Mome 22 is out this week!!! Have you received your copy in the mail yet? Or, have you hit your local comix shop to buy one?!

Well, Mome 22 features quite a few pieces from artists making their first (and last!) appearance in our now-retired anthology. And today, we'd like you to meet Nick Drnaso!

Nick's got a lot of wonderful pieces up on his website...

You can also read the first four pages of his 2010 comic It's A Wonderful Strife on his site... 

And you can see more of this piece in Mome 22!!! It's a humdinger of an issue, so go get one NOW!

Mome 22 has graduated, and is leaving home. I guess they all have to grow up sometimes.

As the swan song volume rolls out into stores and mailboxes, we're shining the spotlight on Mome newbies... who will now never appear in Mome again ever!

Today, we take a look at the work of Joseph Lambert... who was just recently nominated for two (TWO!) Ignatz awards!  One for Outstanding Artist, and one for Outstanding Anthology or Collection (for I Will Bite You! and Other Stories).  Find out at SPX if he wins 'em!

Here's a panel from a comic he'll have in the upcoming NoBrow 6. As Joseph notes on his blog, it may not be yellow in the final printing.

 And here's the original artwork...

...for his extraordinary piece in Mome! DAMN! I'm crazy about his lettering, it makes me think of Ray Fenwick.

By golly, get yourself Mome 22 if you haven't yet already!

This interview was conducted by Fantagraphics intern Sam Chattin. Thanks to Sam and Kevin!

Ganges 4 hits stores in October, or get your mitts on an early copy at SPX, September 10th & 11th in Betheseda, Maryland!  Kevin will be signing at the Fantagraphics table from 1:00-3:00 PM on Saturday, and 3:00-4:30 PM on Sunday. -- janice

NOTE: THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS IN THIS INTERVIEW [esp. #8]. READ THE COMIC FIRST IF YOU DON’T WANT SOME STUFF RUINED FOR YOU. -- Kevin H.

The Wild Kingdom ©2010

SAM CHATTIN: Your stories are marked by this deep comprehension of the various sciences (everything from zoology to physics). Why do you choose to include those expository elements in your stories (which often take up multiple pages)?

KEVIN HUIZENGA: That’s nice of you to say, but I feel like my knowledge of these subjects is still pretty superficial. Laying out things and looking at things is more interesting to me than dramatic storytelling. That’s not a value judgment; it’s how my brain is wired. Other writers I know can effortlessly think up dramatic situations —characters who want things and have conflicts — but my story ideas tend to be more like “what is chlorophyll?” or “walking around/oxytocin” or “terrifying TV commercial,” which are the kinds of things that reveal how solitary and lonely a life I live. I’m terrified that if I really indulged myself and my instincts I would just make comics that are diagrams of how things fit together, like complicated diagrams or giant flowcharts, and become a completely hopeless case.

CHATTIN: The often anti-climatic endings and rambling narratives add a sense of realism to your stories. It feels as though we’re peeping at not only the life but also the working mind of some stranger. What made you go this particular route?

HUIZENGA: I wish I had a more interesting answer, but really it’s just as simple as writing in a way that seems least gross to me. I feel pretty good about how things turn out, for the most part, but at the same time there’s little voices saying “what are you doing?” and “you thought this was a good idea why?” But you have to ignore these voices and start another one and keep moving. Judging by the kinds of ideas I start out with, I maybe could be writing essays or poems, but I got mixed up in comics. I thought it would be a good idea to draw comics and build upon and around Glenn Ganges as a blank character, and now it’s too late. I’m only being half-serious here. Because there are limitations to writing prose without pictures that would be very frustrating to me. I want to see what things look like and I want to see things diagrammed. When I read pictureless prose I’m often imagining illustrations or emblems or diagrams of whatever I’m reading about, and part of me is frustrated that those don’t exist.

Or Else #2 ©2004

CHATTIN: Sometimes your panels veer off into the uncharted areas of the subconscious. They appear to depict the convoluted and distracted thoughts that occur in us daily (well, at least some of us). What is your creative and drawing process for such panels?

HUIZENGA: I write notes, I think about a story, I get irritable and crabby, I eventually start drawing it, etc. I don’t think I go very deep into my subconscious. I’d like to try doing that more in the future. It’s a way of thinking and trusting your gut that’s not my usual method, I guess. In this issue “the Wanderer” was improvised in an attempt to, I don’t know, go from panel to panel with a different kind of story logic than usual.

There’s an interview where Dan Clowes says (this is pre-Ice Haven days, I think) something about how he thought he’d get faster over time as his skills improved but that he found himself getting slower because he kept trying out complicated effects and tricks in each panel. That really fits my experience drawing this issue. It took me a long time. There was a lot of trying something, then changing my mind, then going back and forth, etc. 

CHATTIN: How heavily do the misadventures of your characters (specifically Glenn Ganges) reflect your own personal experiences?

HUIZENGA: It’s not autobiographical. I take things from my life, like any writer does, and I try to make a new thing out of it that others can identify with and hopefully enjoy.

CHATTIN: How do you choose which experiences will work best in the comic medium?

HUIZENGA: You just sort of know. Or sometimes you think it won’t work, and the trick is in finding a way to make it work. The point isn’t really the ostensible subject, the point is figuring out how to package the ideas in an interesting form. It’s like a puzzle. I like puzzles when there’s no pressure, and no one cares about how you perform. I think that explains a lot about my career and my personality.

CHATTIN: Glenn Ganges’ latest adventure concerns a restless night. What is your preferred method for combating these moments of temporary insomnia?

HUIZENGA: A bowl of cereal (low sugar) and a book that is kind of boring and/or hard to read.

CHATTIN: How would describe the structure of Ganges #4?

HUIZENGA: An infinite grid of panels, only some of which you can see and read, but occasionally you catch a glimpse of it fading off into infinity, and also the grid contains itself nested within itself at different levels.

CHATTIN: Was it an aesthetic or symbolic choice — or neither — to break up the panels on the bottom of pages 10-13?  

HUIZENGA: I’m not sure what you’re asking, but I probably wouldn’t want to answer anyhow, since this seems like the kind of thing where I’m being tempted into explaining the thinking behind a story. Obviously I have to do some of that in an interview, but I try to keep it to a minimum. As a reader I often want a writer to explain their thinking behind a short story or a poem, but at the same time I really don’t want to know, either. And the same thing holds for writers too, I think—they often want to know what readers think, but at the same time they don’t, really.

Ganges #4 ©2011

CHATTIN: How did you tackle, visually, working with so much moonlight and shadow in Ganges #4?

HUIZENGA: Experimenting with tones and shadows in Photoshop, making a mess of it, and settling for the least gross-looking version of the panel. I wanted to try to draw Glenn walking around the house at night, and it took some experimentation to get something interesting that worked. I’m still not satisfied with it, but I think I know how to fix it for the collection.

CHATTIN: What are some of the challenges of depicting Death, who appears in your latest work?

HUIZENGA: It didn’t feel like it was a challenge at all. As I understand it, it’s been pretty well established that Death is a skeleton in a cloak with a scythe. I’d like to think that death appears in many of my comics so far.

Ganges #4 ©2011

CHATTIN:  I found the connection with Earth’s calendar and Glenn’s calendar amusing. What kind of thought process goes into making these connections?

There's a fantastic exhibit opening this weekend in Chicago featuring several Fantagraphics artists, including Chris Ware, Lilli Carré, Anders Nilsen, and Jeffrey Brown! 

CartoonInk!: Emerging Comics in Context spotlights the work of students and alumni of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, all curated by SAIC faculty Christa Donner, Surabhi Ghosh, and Mome contributor Jeremy Tinder!

Bump!!!

After a few delays (hence the past date on the poster above, which was gorgeously designed by Marc Bell), CartoonInk! runs this Saturday, September 10th through October 15th at the Betty Rymer Gallery at SAIC. And on Friday, September 9th, there will be an opening reception from 4:30 – 7:00 PM!

Anders reports he'll have a full wall painting there (see pics up on his blog), and Lilli says she'll have some original pages and animation frames on display!

The Betty Rymer Gallery is located at 280 South Columbus Drive, between Jackson Dr & Monroe St. in Chicago.