Graham Chaffee created a special companion short story for his new graphic novel Good Dog, titled Bad Dog, just for us! We're happy to make it the latest addition to our FBI•MINI series of free bonus minicomics. Order Good Dog from us (or $50 worth of other merchandise) and you can get Bad Dog for free! (It will also be included with the digital edition of Good Dog on comiXology when it's released there in May.)
Bad Dog stars Kirby, bulldog buddy of Good Dog star Ivan, in his very own adventure! Escaping from his yard, he travels far and wide, makes a new pal, and gets into some fur-raising scrapes. It's a charming, action-packed, wordless story with some surprising twists.
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.
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:
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!
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!
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!
A funny thing happened on the way to comic-strip immortality.
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!
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.
