The first 30 customers at Fantagraphics Bookstore's 6th anniversary party on Saturday will receive a free copy of the Before Love and Rockets minicomic, featuring Jaime's pre-Love & Rockets L.A. punk posters and an early Inez story by Gilbert. Have the Bros sign this and other rare merchandise we've uncovered for this momentous occasion, including affordable Love and Rockets posters, prints, tee shirts, and more - much of which has been unavailable for many years. See you all this Saturday at 6:00 PM.

Our Cyber Monday Sale discount has kicked in! See our announcement for all the details. The clock's ticking so don't miss out!

Get ready — it's almost time for our fourth annual Cyber Monday sale! All day Monday, Nov. 26, 2012, all of our regularly-priced, currently-available and pre-orderable 2012 releases are marked down 30%! That's a fantastic deal on over 90 items, including but not limited to:

• Beautiful collections of classic comics material starring beloved characters like Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey Mouse and Pogo Possum, plus the perfect Charlie Brown gift book

• More gorgeous volumes of classic newspaper strips Buz Sawyer, Captain Easy, Krazy Kat, Mr. Twee Deedle, Nancy, Peanuts (two volumes and box set), Popeye, and Prince Valiant (and top it off with some Naked Cartoonists)

• You like European flavor to your comics? With names like Mahler, Sæteroy (Jason to you), Ott, Giandelli, Swarte, Tardi, Trondheim, and Mattotti, not to mention all the umlauts in our Nordic comics anthology, we've got you couveured

• Not to mention Weissman, Kaczynski, Rickheit, Carré, Kupperman, Regé, Van Sciver... ha, fooled ya, they're all 'Merican! They all have new graphic novels and story collections, along with Wright, Daly (South African!), and Simmons

• From the other side of the other ocean, beautiful manga by Moto Hagio and Shimura Takako

• The Alternative Comics Canon: brand new stories, collections and reprints by all-time greats Drew Friedman, Bill Griffith, Peter Bagge, Linda Medley, Spain Rodriguez, Gary Panter, Richard Sala, Diane Noomin, Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime & Gilbert, Jack Jackson, Daniel Clowes, Johnny Ryan, Jim Woodring, Rich Tommaso, R. Crumb, Crumb, and more Crumb, and C. Tyler, plus a historic collection of queer comics

• Explore the intersection of art & literature with art books by Flannery O'Connor & Malcolm McNeill (working with William S. Burroughs), a collection of visual poetry, the Significant Objects book... and plain old literature by Stephen Dixon and Monte Schulz

• Discover aspects of pop-cultural history, from Black Power to vintage skin flicks

• Deluxe collections of vintage comics material by a pantheon of greats: Steve Ditko, Bill Everett, Joe Kubert, Mort Meskin, Simon & Kirby, Basil Wolverton, Jack Davis, Wallace Wood & Harvey Kurzman in the EC Comics Library, MAD-inspired parody comics and the greatest Golden Age covers,  

• And some other stuff too — see the whole selection here!

PLUS: You love our exclusive FBI•MINI comics we give away with qualifying purchases, but maybe there's some you've missed out on. Well during the sale you can get DOUBLE MINIs! That's right, order a book that has an accompanying MINI and get another one of your choice, or get two of your choice instead of one for your purchase of $50 and up. All for FREE! Just indicate your preferences at checkout. And we're announcing FIVE new MINIs just for the occasion:

Angelman Merchandise Catalogue by Nicolas Mahler
Thank You by Ron Regé, Jr.
Sigmund Freud by Hans Rickheit
Ralph Azham Covers by Lewis Trondheim
Even More Problematic by Jim Woodring (available in December)

Whew! 2012 has been our biggest year yet... and here's your best chance to get caught up and spread the love of comics with beautiful gifts for all your friends and family!

The sale runs all day Monday, November 26, and ends at midnight Pacific time. Don't miss out! Order online or by phone (1-800-657-1100; 206-524-1967 outside the U.S., 9AM-6PM Pacific time); this sale does not apply at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.

The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that two of our newest releases come with two brand-new entries in our FBI•MINIs series of free bonus mini-comics:

"Ti-Girls: Roughs & Rejects" is a collection of preliminary and rejected pages for God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls by Jaime Hernandez. It's a rare peek into Jaime's creative process! We didn't have this comic ready when God and Science came out — heck, we didn't even know this stuff existed until Jaime mentioned it at San Diego last month! — but in addition to getting this as a free bonus when you order that book, you can also get it with any issue(s) of Love and Rockets: New Stories, including the brand-new issue #5, or (as with all of the FBI•MINIs) with any mail-order purchase of $50 or more.

Our second new FBI•MINI offering, "Crackle of the Frost: Sketches," is a selection of preliminary roughs and sketches by Lorenzo Mattotti for his and Jorge Zentner's book The Crackle of the Frost and comes free with purchase of that book (or any mail-order purchase of $50 or more). Thumbnails, layouts, alternate panel compositions and more, done in Lorenzo's energetic linear style prior to the final lush pastel renderings seen in the book.

SPECIAL BONUS! Order the new Dungeon Quest Book 3 from Fantagraphics and receive, absolutely free, the full-color, 20-page FBI•MINI "SOH!" featuring page after page of Joe Daly's Dungeon Quest character sketches, rough pencils, and other goodies, plus a hilarious, fully-finished, never-before-seen two-page story in the Dungeon Quest vein by Daly. Click here for more FBI•MINIs!

(a partial assortment)

Last November, we introduced one of our most successful and acclaimed promotions ever: The FBI•MINI project, a series of mini-books exclusively available as premiums via Fantagraphics mail-order. Customers could secure these coveted collectibles either by ordering (or pre-ordering) specific books that went along with the FBI•MINIs, or just placing a general order (for $50 or more). We got in so many orders for FBI•MINIs (close to a thousand!) that we had trouble keeping up with demand!

The FBI•MINIs include first-time-in-English comics by Joost Swarte, David B., Raymond Macherot, and Jacques Tardi (the legendary, 21-page, never-completed Manchette collaboration FATALE); otherwise out-of-print early obscurities by the Hernandez Brothers, Peter Bagge, Bill Griffith, and Stan Sakai; some fantastic sketchbook material by Johnny Ryan, Jim Woodring, Stephen DeStefano, and Kim Deitch; as well as such oddities as a vintage 1938 POPEYE sequence by Segar's assistant, a collection of full-color Richard Sala horror portraits, a facsimile GIL JORDAN page by Maurice Tillieux in full color, Tony Millionaire's hilarious illustrated rant about a failed TV submission, a never-printed Joe Sacco comic strip/book report, and Ivan Brunetti's legendary NANCY try-out strips... and more. Go here for a complete list!

For the month of April we're "doubling down" with this promotion: If you place an order that qualifies you for one of the FBI•MINI's (by ordering one of the qualifying books, or ANYTHING of $50 or more), add a second FBI•MINI to your order. And if your order is $100 or more, you can order FOUR FBI•MINIs... and so on! If ordering by phone or mail, order the FBI•MINIs as you would any other item; if ordering online, list them in the "comments" section.

This special deal will be in effect throughout the rest of April 2012. Place your order today!

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

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

See Previews / Order Now

For many years, Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, with its odd-looking, squat heroine, nearly abstract art, and often super-corny gags, was perceived as the stodgiest, squarest comic strip in the world. Popular with newspaper read- ers, true — but definitely not a strip embraced by comic-strip connoisseurs, like Krazy Kat, Dick Tracy or Terry and the Pirates.

But then those connoisseurs took a closer look, and began to realize that Bushmiller’s art approached its own kind of cartoon perfection, and those corny gags often achieved a striking zen quality. In its own way, it turned out Nancy was in fact the most iconic comic strip of all. (The American Heritage Dictionary actually uses a Nancy strip to illustrate its entry on “comic strip.”)

Charter members of the Nancy revival include Art Spiegelman, who published Mark Newgarden’s famous “Love’s Savage Fury” (featuring Nancy and Bazooka Joe) in an early issue of RAW; Fletcher Hanks anthologist Paul Karasik; Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith; underground publisher Denis Kitchen, who released several volumes of Nancy collections in the 1980s; Understanding Comics’ Scott McCloud, who created the “Five-Card Nancy” card game; Joe Brainard, who produced an entire Nancy Book of paintings in 2008; and Andy Warhol, who produced a painting based on Nancy.

Beginning in the Winter of 2011, fans will be dancing with joy as Fantagraphics unveils an ongoing Nancy reprint project. Each volume will contain a whopping full three years of daily Nancy strips (a Sunday Nancy project looms in the future), collected in a fat, square (what else, for the “squarest” strip in the world?) package designed by Jacob (Popeye, Beasts!, Willie and Joe) Covey.

This first volume will collect every daily strip from 1943 to 1945. (Fantagraphics will eventually release Nancy’s first five years, 1938-1942, but given the scarcity of archival material for these years we are giving ourselves some extra time to collate it all.)

This first Nancy volume will feature an introduction by another stellar Bushmiller fan, Daniel Clowes (from whose collection most of the strips in this volume were scanned), a biography of the artist, and much more.

Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic as a FREE bonus! The very best dailies (and Sundays) from the legendary "audition" by Ivan Brunetti to take over the Nancy strip in a perfect Bushmiller style. Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.

Oh hey! We (I) forgot to tell you when we (I) posted the previews to Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943-1945 by Ernie Bushmiller: when you order that book from us, you'll get The Nancy Auditions V.1, one of our FREE bonus FBI•MINI comics, containing Ivan Brunetti's legendary tryout strips when he auditioned (unsuccessfully) to take over the strip! Ivan made his best, sincere go of it in perfect Bushmiller style and this is the first "official" release of these strips!

Buddy Does Seattle: The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from "Hate" Comics Vol. 1 (1990-'94)
by Peter Bagge

340-page black & white 6" x 9" softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-56097-623-3

Back in stock in a new 4th printing — Order Now!

Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown at left as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.

These legendary stories, from the classic first fifteen issues of Bagge's Hate comic, are a defining icon of Seattle's early 1990s culture (the Seattle Weekly has written, "20 years from now, when people wonder what it was like to be young in 1990s Seattle, the only record we'll have is Hate."), as well as Generation X in general (as seen in such films as Kids and Pecker). This is the first time these hilarious stories, starring the hapless Buddy Bradley and his cast of loser cohorts, have ever been available under one cover, and never have they been available at such a low price (it would have cost at least three times as much to read all of these classic stories in any previous editions). Bagge's riotous tales of the early 1990s subculture are more hilarious now than ever, find out why he has been praised by R. Crumb, Matt Groening, John Kricfalusi, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly and many more. Comedy genius.

Swarte collectors will want to buy their copy of Is That All There Is? directly from us, as every mail-order copy ordered from Fantagraphics will be accompanied by "Actually, That Wasn't All There Was," the FBI•MINI giveaway featuring a half-dozen hilarious Jurassic-era Swarte comics stories that have not been in print for over 40 years, and have never been seen in English! (Even I was totally unfamiliar with them.) I'd hate to pick favorites, but this may be the most collectible FBI•MINI of them all, showcasing Swarte's earliest, pre-Hergé-pastiche, more underground-y style. A revelation!

And if you've already pre-ordered your copy of Is That All There Is? from another source, remember that any FBI•MINI can also be obtained by simply placing an order for $50 or more with Fantagraphics (for any of our books) and picking it as your freebie.