We're excited to announce the great Daniel Clowes will be the special guest at the Kadist Art Foundation this Wednesday, March 28th!

Join Dan at 6:00 PM as he is interviewed by Rene de Guzman, Senior Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum of California. Don't miss the chance to hear them talk about Dan's career, as well as his upcoming exhibition opening at OMCA on April 14.

The Kadist Art Foundation is located at 3295 20th Street in San Francisco.

Monday, March 26th

• Columbus, OH: Paul Hornschemeier will be leading an adult writing workshop for the graphic novel at Thurber House. (more info)

• Tokyo, Japan:  The group show Three Sides Chicago: Squares, Squirrels & Dots opens at the at Shibuya Parco B1F LIBRO, featuring the work of Archer Prewitt, alongside Sam Prekop and Eric Claridge. (more info)

• Northridge, CA:  Gilbert, Jaime, & Mario Hernandez will be speaking to Professor Charles Hatfield's class on Monday, March 26th at the California State University, Northridge (in greater Los Angeles). This event is open to the public, not just students! (more info)

Tuesday, March 27th

• New York, NY: Get ready for another editior of The Crime Stoppers Club with Michael Kupperman and co-host Kate Beaton! This month, they welcome Dave Hill, Victor Vardnado, Domitille Collardey, Jim Torok, and Corey Pandolphfor a night of laughter and imagery. This free event starts at 7:00 PM at Luca Lounge. (more info) 

Wednesday, March 28th

• Columbus, OH: Paul Hornschemeier will be leading a young writer's studio at Thurber House. (more info) 

• San Francisco, CA: Daniel Clowes will be interviewed by Rene de Guzman, Senior Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum of California, at the Kadist Art Foundation!  More details coming to the FLOG very soon!

Thursday, March 29th 

• New York, NY:  Kim Deitch will be on a panel discussing comic and graphic arts biographies for the 4th Annual Leon Levy Conference!  (more info)

Friday, March 30th   

• Seattle, WA:  Fantagraphics kicks off the weekend at the 10th Annual Emerald City Comicon!  Meet Ellen Forney at 5:00 PM and Jim Woodring at 7:00 PM.  Both artists will be part of our 6:00 PM panel "Northwest Noir: Seattle's Legacy of Counterculture Comix," with Real Comet Press publisher Cathy Hillenbrand, and Fantagraphics Books associate publisher Eric Reynolds. Moderated by Larry Reid of Fantagraphics Bookstore. (more info) 

Saturday, March 31st

• Seattle, WA:  Fantagraphics continues our appearance at the Emerald City Comicon at Booth 704 with special guests: Bill Schelly (editor of The Art of Joe Kubert) at 11:00 AM, Michel Gagné (editor of Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics) at 2:00 PM, and Jim Woodring at 5:00 PM.  (more info) 

• Seattle, WA:  Camille Rose Garcia will be signing her latest at Roq La Rue in the Belltown neighborhood.  (more info) 

• Seattle, WA:  Join Fantagraphics for the Emerald City Comicon Pinball Party at Shorty's, with your host Jim Woodring! Free fun for all comix and pinball enthusiasts over the age of 21! (more info)  

• Columbus, OH:  Otterbein professor of philosophy Andrew Mills will speak about Paul Hornschemeier's work in a philosophical context at this free event at the Columbus Museum of Art.  (more info) 

Sunday, April 1st

• Seattle, WA:  It's your last day to visit us at the Emerald City Comicon!  Stop by our booth between 2:00 to 3:30 PM to meet Jacques Boyreau, editor of Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box!  (more info)   

Sorry this slipped through the cracks last week, everyone!

Last Wednesday's comic shop shipment included 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.

Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943-1945
by Ernie Bushmiller
introduction by Daniel Clowes

336-page black & white 8.5" x 8.5" flexibound softcover • $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-360-6

"This is lovely material, lovingly presented, as satisfying a production-style execution of a strip collection as I've seen in a long while. And that's not exactly a category light on well-executed books." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"A big fat square brick of Ernie Bushmiller's poker-faced masterwork. Fantagraphics has had this on the schedule for eons; good to see it finally coming out!" – Douglas Wolk, ComicsAlliance

"I’ve never really delved into Ernie Bushmiller’s iconic creation before but I know there are plenty of folk who consider it a near-Zen masterpiece and I’m curious as to the effect sitting down with a sizable block of Nancy strips will have on me. Perhaps my third inner eye will finally open!" – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"If you didn’t see it last week, gird your loins for Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943-1945, presenting the Ernie Bushmiller classic from materials scanned mainly from the collection of Dan Clowes, who provides an introduction..." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

"The new @fantagraphics Nancy collection is so goddamn funny I can barely handle it." – Secret Headquarters

"There are other new comics out today, too, I guess, but I don’t know why they bothered." – Mike Sterling

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (8th Printing)
by Daniel Clowes

144-page black & white 7.5" x 11" softcover • $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-56097-116-0

"...the best of the stand-alone new indy/alt printings..." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

I'm not one for popularity contests, but this one is special. VOTE LUCKY #13. There's some stiff competition in Jerry Rice, Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, and even a few non-Jerry/Brown public figures in the Bay Area. But let's face it, none of them wear their smooth pates as well as Mr. Inkstud  himself. 

Earlier this month, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY kicked off their exhibit, LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel, an "examination of the use of sequential art as a significant form of visual communication, placing specific emphasis on the art of the contemporary graphic novel."

The exhibit features more than 200 original art works, including paintings, drawings, storyboards, and more, including work from our own Mark Kalesniko's Mail Order Bride!

And on Thursday, March 22, they'll be screening the film version of the Daniel Clowes classic Ghost World in the museum auditorium, at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM.

LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel runs through Sunday, April 29th. This exhibit is open to the public. Students with valid ID get reduced admission. Children age 6 and under are admitted for free. The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute campus is located at 310 Genesee Street in Utica, New York.

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship to our mail-order customers:

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (8th Printing)
by Daniel Clowes

144-page black & white 7.5" x 11" softcover • $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-56097-116-0

See Previews / Order Now

Like a Velvet Glove... collects all 10 chapters of Eightball's terrifying and fascinating journey into madness that makes Twin Peaks look like Teletubbies. As Clay Loudermilk attempts to unravel the mysteries behind a snuff film, he finds himself involved with an increasingly bizarre cast of characters, including a pair of sadistic cops who carve a strange symbol into the heel of Clay's foot; a horny over-the-hill suburban woman whose sexual encounter with a mysterious water creature produced a grotesquely misshapen, but no less horny, mutant daughter; a dog with no orifices whatsoever (it has to be fed by injection); two ominous victims of extremely bad hair implants; a charismatic Manson-like cult leader who plans to kidnap a famous advice columnist and many more! This edition has a brand new cover, new title and end pages — PLUS — Clowes being the perfectionist that he is, there are tweaked and re-drawn panels that really make this a transcendent piece of storytelling art!

"Stunning, eerie, hilarious and surreal." – Spin

"Essential." – I-D

"Brilliant." – Village Voice

"Must be seen to be believed." – The Washington Post

"Incoherent, but engrossing." – World Art

"A genre-defining masterwork." – Bookforum

"A solid contender for best graphic novel of all time." – Giant

We like the way the Cottesloe Theatre (the smallest of the 3 stages in London's National Theatre) labels their rechargable batteries with the names of Love and Rockets, Hate, Angry Youth Comix and Ghost World characters. Instagram photo (via Twitter) by Mike Winship, who informs us "Sadly, Maggie & Luba have been lost to the great battery dump in the sky*... (*ground)."

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...[T]hese comics are among the best in their genre without a doubt. ...[This] period was certainly the period of Jack Kirby’s greatest commercial success, and also the period of work which posterity has most neglected. For that this book [Young Romance ] is to be cheered, though there is much else to be happy about in it. There is the excellence of Gagné’s restoration work. It’s of a kind of cleanness which in the past, in archival projects by others, has often resulted in garishness. ...[I]t appears that Fantagraphics, perhaps by accident more than planning, is the only publisher to give us any coverage of the long neglected and just about forgotten 1950s genre of romance comics." – Eddie Campbell, The Comics Journal

• Plug: "Activist/musician/writer Pat Thomas has been busy the past five years compiling music, speeches and photos from the height of the Black Power movement, spending much of that time in Oakland, California, the birthplace of the Black Panther Party. The result is Thomas’ forthcoming book, Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 (out March 5 through Fantagraphics Books), which entrenches us in one of the most politically and culturally explosive times in America..." – Mark Lore, The Days of Lore

• Interview: Casey Burchby presents a brief excerpt of an interview with Daniel Clowes conducted last Fall in which Clowes discusses how his collection of Ernie Bushmiller Nancy comic strips became the backbone of Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943-1945: "I found it baffling that I had the best collection of Nancy strips. I bought a bunch of them off eBay in like 1998. It didn’t take any special effort. I just found some dealer that had a whole bunch of them, and I bought all of them I could get my hands on. And when it came time to do the book, they were looking all over and they couldn’t find them anywhere. And I had almost all of them."

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (8th Printing)
by Daniel Clowes

144-page black & white 7.5" x 11" softcover • $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-56097-116-0

Ships in: February 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Like a Velvet Glove... collects all 10 chapters of Eightball's terrifying and fascinating journey into madness that makes Twin Peaks look like Teletubbies. As Clay Loudermilk attempts to unravel the mysteries behind a snuff film, he finds himself involved with an increasingly bizarre cast of characters, including a pair of sadistic cops who carve a strange symbol into the heel of Clay's foot; a horny over-the-hill suburban woman whose sexual encounter with a mysterious water creature produced a grotesquely misshapen, but no less horny, mutant daughter; a dog with no orifices whatsoever (it has to be fed by injection); two ominous victims of extremely bad hair implants; a charismatic Manson-like cult leader who plans to kidnap a famous advice columnist and many more! This edition has a brand new cover, new title and end pages — PLUS — Clowes being the perfectionist that he is, there are tweaked and re-drawn panels that really make this a transcendent piece of storytelling art!

Download and read the complete first chapter in a 13-page PDF excerpt (2.2 MB).

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

"Stunning, eerie, hilarious and surreal." – Spin

"Essential." – I-D

"Brilliant." – Village Voice

"Must be seen to be believed." – The Washington Post

"Incoherent, but engrossing." – World Art

"A genre-defining masterwork." – Bookforum

"A solid contender for best graphic novel of all time." – Giant

"A nightmare told with absolute clarity: Little Nemo in Slumberland as written by Samuel Beckett. Grade: 'A'." – Entertainment Weekly

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Nearly every cover in this collection [Action! Mystery! Thrills! Comic Book Covers of the Golden Age 1933-45] sizzles like a good slice of breakfast bacon. Pop art and the peculiar modernist aesthetic that defined postwar American culture really started here, with the liberation of comics from the funny pages and their metamorphosis into this most dynamic and demented of mediums. As a result, every deli and newsstand in America became its own peculiar gallery exhibit, a nexus of transient mass culture. This magical and immersive communion is now a thing of the past, but flipping through the gory, scary, and often beautiful pages of this discerning and honest anthology is an intoxicating experience." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "If you think you've seen all the best early comic covers, this'll make you think again.... I have a bias here myself...I helped Greg put parts of this together, with rare and fun covers from my own collection. Here you find the really cool and offbeat stuff... And Greg writes a concise bio of every cover and cover artist, putting each in perspective. I can't wait to show this to my Golden Age collecting buddies, it's a must-have book. You have my word on it." – Bud Plant

• Review: "...[N]o publisher has done more to preserve the Great American Newspaper Strip than the Seattle-based Fantagraphics, which has undertaken an audacious program of reprints in the last decade.... The most recent addition to the Fantagraphics line is the most anticipated: Walt Kelly’s unassailable funny-animal strip about Pogo the possum and his cadre of friends and antagonists in the Okefenokee Swamp. ...[I]f the company can pull off a complete edition of Kelly’s masterpiece — especially a full series as lovely as the first volume promises — ...it will be a publishing masterpiece of its own." – Matthew Everett, MetroPulse

• Review: "Is Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 the coolest book ever published? Yes, it is. Just out from the stellar Seattle publisher Fantagraphics, Listen, Whitey! is a gorgeously designed and smartly written coffee table book... Author Pat Thomas has done major archeological work to unearth albums from the era; for people like me who love classic record designs from the 1960s and ’70s, it’s heaven.... The book is a joy to leaf through.... Black music, art, and culture has been assimilated, and it’s made America a better, stronger place. Listen, Whitey! is an archival project, not a modern one. To which I, a white guy, can only say: Right on!" – Mark Judge, The Daily Caller

• Review: "The page in [The Cabbie Vol. 1] where the cabbie brings his father’s sewage covered remains home and puts them in what’s left of the coffin and then puts the coffin on top of his mother’s recently deceased body tells you everything you need to know. Unless you’re a Prince Valiant dude, this is the best reprint of the year. Impregnable would be the best word, EXCELLENT! will have to do." – Tucker Stone, Savage Critics

• Review: "Prince Valiant Vol. 4: 1943-1944 is not only a great book, I think it could also serve well as a good jumping-on point for those curious about the strip. By this point Foster has gotten a strong grip on his characters and the format of the strip, and with a new storyline beginning so early on in this volume you don’t have to worry about being lost. And while this volume doesn’t end at a conclusion for the last storyline (running a whopping 20 months in all, as it turns out, only the first 7 months are present here), there’s so much meat here that you’ll be eager for Prince Valiant Vol. 5 so you can find out how it ends. I, for one, can’t wait." – Greg McElhatton, Read About Comics

• Review: "Are you a fan of Ghost World? You might not have noticed that Seattle-based Fantagraphics has reduced the price of their Ghost World: Special Edition to a bargain-priced $25.... The Special Edition is packed with goodies sure to thrill the Ghost World geek.... It’s a great item to add to your Ghost World collection — or to get it started." – Gillian Gaar, Examiner.com

• List: At Library Journal, Bonnie Brzozowski presents a guide to graphic nonfiction for librarians, spotlighting works including Palestine, It Was the War of the Trenches, Oil and Water, and King, and recommending The Comics Journal as an online resource

• Plug: At Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder shares a beautiful Johnny Gruelle Mr. Twee Deedle panel (via The Pictorial Arts). Hey Mark, we have a whole book of that stuff coming out!