Wednesday, June 6th

• New York City, NY:  Are you attending BookExpo America? Hey, so are we! Visit us at Booth #3422. Noah Van Sciver will be signing copies of The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln from 1-3 PM, and you can catch him at 11 AM on the Uptown Stage as part of the panel "Meet 2012 Graphic Novel Authors!"

Thursday, June 7th

• New York City, NY:  You've got another chance to meet Noah Van Sciver at Booth #3422 at the BookExpo America. He'll be signing copies of The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln from 10 AM-12 PM.

Saturday, June 9th

• Seattle, WA: The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is pleased to present Joe Sacco celebrating his new book Journalism. Sacco will discuss his unique approach to comix and journalism prior to signing books from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. (more info)

• Worldwide: Our warehouse hero Ajax Wood (occasionally Cannibal Fuckface) can be heard worldwide at 9 PM PT with his old band Last Gasp (cough) on radio station KEXP, streaming online across the globe at KEXP.ORG, or at 90.3 FM if you live in Seattle. (Full disclosure: fine, yeah, I work there, too.)

• Spokane, WA:  And Jen Vaughn, the latest addition to our marvelous marketing team, will be making an appearance at the Saranac Art Projects, giving a talk about life at The Center for Cartoon Studies! She'll also be available to review your portfolios, so head over there at 2 PM! (more info)

The FantaMenace is our entry in Hazardfactory's annual Power Tool Races at the Georgetown Carnival next Saturday. Powered by a Makita disc sander and built by Close Enough Engineering on a concept by Larry and Bella, this tool is wicked quick. We plan a triumphant return to the podium this year after our 2010 victory in the Georgetown Chainsaw Massacre. Don't miss Joe Sacco, Girl Trouble, Bubble Man and so much more. Free fun all day long. Listen to Fantgraphics Bookstore curator Larry Reid discuss the Carnival with Marco Collins on Tuesday at 3:30 PM on Jet City Streamradio.

Please join us at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery as we welcome two of the country’s most acclaimed contemporary cartoonists: Jeffrey Brown on Saturday, June 2 and Joe Sacco on Saturday, June 9. These remarkable artists represent the current diversity of alternative comix and their potential to impact both popular and political culture.

Upon graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, Jeffrey Brown came to the attention of comix readers with works dealing with relationships and romantic misadventures. His primitive rendering style complemented his candid observations in a series of accessible graphic novels comprising the “Girlfriend Trilogy.” His recent work has taken a turn to humor and satire. Public response to his latest book, Darth Vader and Son (Chronicle Books, April 2012), has been nothing short of phenomenal. Brown imagines the Dark Lord in the role of “Father Knows Best” to mischievous young Skywalker. At once ridiculous and revealing, Darth Vader and Son resonates with generations of Star Wars fans. As co-writer of the new movie, Save the Date, Brown will appear at the Seattle International Film Festival with director Michael Mohan following screenings on Thursday, May 31 and Friday, June 1. This romantic comedy, nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, also features Brown’s comics. At his appearance at Fantagraphics Bookstore on June 2 at 6:00 PM, Brown will discuss his comix career followed by a book signing and informal reception.  

Joe Sacco’s journalism studies at the University of Oregon informed his career in comix. Following a trip to the occupied territories of the Middle East in 1991, Fantagraphics Books published his provocative comic book series Palestine. Sacco’s unfiltered portrayal of the tragic consequences of the continuing conflict helped alter American perceptions of Palestinian refugees. Now in its 14th printing, Joe Sacco’s Palestine is widely regarded as one of the transformative works in the comix medium. He has subsequently visited other regions ravaged by war and reported on the suffering of civilian populations, including atrocities in the Balkans (Safe Area Gorazde), Chechnya (Chechen War, Chechen Women), and elsewhere. His latest work, Journalism (Metropolitan Books, June 2012), collects Sacco’s documentary reports from North Africa, India, Iraq, and other areas of social and political unrest. Sacco will discuss his unique approach to comix and journalism prior to signing books at Fantagraphics Bookstore from 6:00 to 8:00 PM on Saturday, June 9. Arrive early and enjoy the colorful Georgetown Carnival arts festival featuring lively visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic neighborhood.

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street (at Airport Way S.) minutes south of downtown Seattle in the heart of the historic Georgetown arts community. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

Listing Information:

Jeffrey Brown discussion and book signing
Saturday, June 2, 6:00 to 8:00 PM

Joe Sacco discussion and book signing
Saturday, June 9, 6:00 to 8:00 PM

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale Street, Seattle
206.658.0110

Join us on consecutive Saturdays in June as Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery welcomes two remarkable cartoonists back to Seattle. Jeffrey Brown will appear on Saturday, June 2 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. He'll discuss his role as co-writer of the romantic comedy "Save the Date" (which will screen the night before at the Seattle International Film Festival) and sign copies of his new book Darth Vader and Son. 

The following Saturday, June 9 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM we're pleased to present Joe Sacco celebrating his new book Journalism. Visitors to this signing will be among the first in the nation to see the book, which will be offically released 10 days later. Don't miss this opportunity to meet this extraordinary artist and pick up an advance copy of the book. Bonus! This event coincides with the colorful and wildly entertaining Georgetown Carnival arts festival.

As the year progesses we'll host appearances by some of the legendary figures in contemporary comix, including Gary Panter, Charles Burns, the Hernandez Brothers, and more!

Attn: Flog Faithful... posting might lessen a bit this week as we continue to navigate the brutal, nine-day convention gauntlet that is Stumptown, MoCCA and TCAF. To ease your cravings, we bring you an exclusive Flog! report from our Tobacco Road Correspondent Rob Clough. -- Ed.

Joe Sacco  gave a lecture and Q&A to an audience of about a hundred at Duke University on 4/24/2012. He said that this was probably the last time he was going to give this particular lecture on Comics Journalism. If you haven't seen it, Sacco gives an account of his working method by talking about the ways in which the comics page is an ideal construct for delivering multiple and often conflicting and contrasting forms of information. For example, in a page from Palestine, there's a heavy background emphasis on how rainy the weather was at the time and how uncomfortable that made everything. In each panel, you could see grey clouds following around Sacco and his friend and mud on their feet. Sacco noted that in prose, it's difficult to emphasize the constant nature of physical discomfort without being awkward. He said that you couldn't simply add the phrase "and there was mud on their feet" at the end of every sentence. Sacco repeatedly said how important accuracy is to him, from gettng the quotes right to trying to find out what a building or neighborhood might have looked like fifty years ago. For some aerial views that he didn't have access to (noting wryly that the governments of Egypt and Israel weren't about to grant him permission to fly over the settlements in Gaza), he simply used drafting skills and perspective to figure out what things would look like from above. Sacco also went into some detail about how he composes each page. On pages where there is violence or chaos, he favored a fractured panel arrangement where the reading order was made deliberately unclear for the reader, to reflect the chaos of the situation. On another such page, there was a spider-web of panels, where you could follow one character along one web to see what's happening with them, but the overall page had no set structure in terms of what order to read things in.

He talked about about how he represents himself in his comics, noting that he hides his eyes as a way of telling the reader that you're not getting every bit of info about him as a part of the story. He said that in choosing how he chooses to represent his experiences, he was conscious of how he affected the narrative, and more to the point, how the story affected him. When asked if he ever felt the urge to intervene or help in particular situations, he said that the works themselves were his form of intervention. Sacco told me that he's quite aware of other comics journalists operating, like Suzie Cagle, Dan Archer, Josh Neufeld, etc, though he wasn't necessarily an avid reader of anyone else in particular. I asked him about his feelings regarding the "embedded journalism" he did with the US military; he said that the experience is what you made of it, but that he didn't encounter a lot of grief in finding out things he was interested in. Similarly, he answered no when I asked him if his long-form journalistic works were a repudiation of the 24-hour, brief news cycle. He said that he depends on that news cycle to a certain extent and that it has its place. Instead, he said that he sees his work as a repudiation of shallow journalism.

Unsurprisingly, Sacco was warm and friendly with the long line of attendees who were having their books signed (many of which were provided by Duke's excellent Gothic Bookshop). He said that one reason why his touring is going to slow down is that he's going back into research and drawing mode. He has not one, but two books coming out this June. The first is Journalism, a collection of his short journalism stories that appeared in a variety of venues, and many of the stories were not published in the US. That one will be 208 pages. Also coming out is a book he's doing with Chris Hedges called Days Of Destruction, Days Of Revolt, which is about urban decay and the rise of a permanently doomed underclass in the US. Finally, he said that his current project involves research into Mesopotamia, partly because he had to get away from doing books about modern war zones. He said that he's going to work in aspects of his long-promised Gentleman's Guide To The Rolling Stones in the book.  -- ROB CLOUGH

photo credit: Jacob Covey

Join Joe Sacco tomorrow, Tuesday, April 24th, for a discussion on "Comics and Journalism" at Duke University in Durham, NC!

He'll be speaking starting at 5:00 PM in Duke's East Campus in the White Lecture Hall, 107. This event is free and open to the public.

This is the week all our heads explode:

 Tuesday, April 24th 

• Portland, OR:  T Edward Bak will deliver a presentation on WILD MAN: The Strange Journey and Fantastic Account of the Naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, which was serialized in Mome!  He'll be joined by artist Vera Brosgol at the Portland Central Library. (more info)

• Durham, NC: Joe Sacco will discuss "Comics and Journalism" at Duke University! More info about this event coming to the FLOG today!

Thursday, April 26th 

• New York City, NY: Award-winning Austrian cartoonist and animator Nicolas Mahler will be a special guest at the Austrian Cultural Forum. It'll be the worldwide debut of Angelman: Fallen Angel, his first book to be released in English in six years! More info about this event on the FLOG soon!

Friday, April 27th  

• Brooklyn, NY: The Scott Eder Gallery hosts the opening reception of Drew Friedman: My Way, his very first New York gallery show of comic strip and illustration art! It's also the official re-release party for the hotly-anticipated Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental, Drew's first anthology, co-written by Josh Alan Friedman.   (more info)

Friday, April 27th  

• Brooklyn, NY: Desert Island hosts a pre-MoCCA International soirée (see?) with Jason, Nicolas Mahler, and Olivier Schrauwen, along with Matt Forsythe and Tom Gauld! More info about this event coming to the FLOG soon!

Saturday, April 28th  

• New York City, NY: Ohmygod, it's the 2012 MoCCA Fest at the Lexington Avenue Armory with special guests Bendik Kaltenborn, Drew Friedman, Fredrik Strömberg, Hans Rickheit, Jason, Josh Simmons, Kim Deitch, Michael Kupperman, Nicolas Mahler, Olivier Schrauwen, and Peter Kielland! More, more MoCCA details are coming to the FLOG today!

• Portland, OR: Holy crap, it's the Stumptown Comics Fest, with special guests Peter Bagge and Stan Sakai! Stay tuned for more details right here on the FLOG!

Sunday, April 29th  

• Detroit, MI: It's the closing day of the acclaimed Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit! (more info)

• Utica, NY: It's your last chance to see the exhibit LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute! (more info)

• New York City, NY: It's your last day to swing by the Lexington Avenue Armory for MoCCA to meet special guests Bendik Kaltenborn, Fredrik Strömberg, Hans Rickheit, Jason, Josh Simmons, Kim Deitch, Michael Kupperman, Nicolas Mahler, Olivier Schrauwen, and Peter Kielland!

• Portland, OR: And it's your last day to hit the Stumptown Comics Fest, with special guests Peter Bagge and Stan Sakai!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: For The Guardian, comics creators Bryan & Mary Talbot select their top 10 graphic memoirs, with Joe Sacco's Palestine at #4: "Sacco was trained as a journalist and singlehandedly created the genre of reportage in graphic novel form. Immersing himself in a situation, his in-depth reports use the medium of comics to its full potential. Like his Safe Area Gorazde or recent Footnotes in Gaza, Palestine follows his experiences as he investigates events and interviews residents, explaining the history, politics and dynamics of the place as he goes along. The palpable sense of place and the feeling that we're in the presence of the people who relate their experiences to him (and therefore to us) is a testament to his storytelling skills, his work being far more intimate than that of a filmed documentary. Sacco is a master of this medium."

• Feature: "Compiling the book was a learning experience for Thomas... 'They (the Panthers) switched from a gun-toting paramilitary organization to a more community-based entity offering free food, clothing, and medical care,' he says. And, perhaps, this may be Listen, Whitey!’s biggest strength — and greatest contribution — to future discourse about this topic that has been so distorted and misrepresented in its presentation to the consciousness of mainstream America. Maybe now, 40 years after the histrionics and exaggeration, enough time has passed so the emergence of Black consciousness can be scrutinized with a measure of clarity." – Gregg Reese, Our Weekly

• Interview: At The Atlantic, Steven Heller has a Q&A with Daniel Clowes: "I was trying to get work as an illustrator in the '80s, but no art directors actually ever called, which is what led me to throw up my hands in despair and slink back to comics. Originally, I was hoping to find a writer to collaborate with, since I was much more interested in the drawing part of the equation, but that didn't work out. And so I began writing my own stories."

• Plug: Lee Wind of the wonderfully-named blog I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell Do I Read? spotlights Shimura Takako's Wandering Son Vol. 1

Hey Chicago! Stop whatever you're doing (yes, that means reading the FLOG) and go register for this NOW! Space is limited, and you do NOT want to miss out.

It's the Comics: Philosophy & Practice conference at the University of Chicago, held May 18th-20th.  And the line-up will make any comics-fan's head spin: it features Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Gary Panter, Joe Sacco, Carol Tyler, and Chris Ware, as well as Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Phoebe Gloeckner, Justin Green, Ben Katchor, Françoise Mouly, Seth, and Art Spiegelman... WOW.

Oh, and did I mention it's FREE? Why are you still reading this?! Registration opens TODAY (Friday, April 13th), but space is limited, so don't delay!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions — now up to date!

• Review: "The Locas grow up. Collecting material from Love and Rockets‘ second volume (previously found in Ghost of Hoppers and The Education of Hopey Glass), the latest in Fantagraphics’ perfectly executed series of L&R digests [Esperanza] finds Maggie, Hopey, Izzy, and Ray D. coming to terms with no longer being the life of the party and the heart of their scene — at least not without exhausting effort.... But if there’s one thing Jaime’s Locas stories in general, and this volume in particular, tell us, it’s that sometimes you have to be a grown-up for a long time before you grow up. It’s worth the work, and the wait." – Sean T. Collins, The Comics Journal

• Review: "In the pages of Palestine, Sacco relates his experiences in the first person, with breathtaking honesty and haunting detail. With a narrative style that’s a little bit stream of consciousness, and a lot of oral tradition, he depicts not only his own experiences, but those of the many Palestinians he meets in his travels.... A comic book, no matter how poignant and groundbreaking, is not going to resolve a decades old stalemate. What Palestine does do is shed some light on a near forgotten people, lost behind the name of a broken nation." – Mike Re, Asbury Park Press

• Review: "Where have you gone Ernie Bushmiller, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. All kidding aside, you sure as shootin' can bet Nancy is happy, and so am I that the crucial years of this strip (or at least the dailies) are FINALLY being reprinted, and in chronological order to boot, by the fine folk at Fantagraphics. ...Nancy continues to deliver on the fun puns 'n great art for us real-life comic strip fans while all of that extraneous junk that's been hitting the comic pages o'er the past few decades does little but mirror the rest of the contents of yer modern day newspaper industry that deserves to die a quick and inglorious death! ...[A] project like this is but one that really brings out that never-suppressed slobbo suburban kid feeling in me, and with more books to look forward to all I can say is...what the hell do we need Gary Trudeau for anyway?" – Chris Stigliano, Blog to Comm (via The Comics Journal)

• Reviews: Would you like to know what Jason thinks of Nancy Is Happy and the Krazy & Ignatz books? You may find out on his Cats Without Dogs blog

• Plug: "Panther power has a way of roaring back to life when you least expect it: Years ago, Mushroom drummer and music archivist Pat Thomas told me he was working on an epic multimedia compilation on the Black Panthers. Now, hot on the heels of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, comes Thomas' equally inspired lyrical documents of the Oakland-bred group: a hefty Fantagraphics tome, Listen, Whitey!... and a CD of spoken word, music and comedy." – Kimberly Chun, San Francisco Chronicle

• Feature: The April issue of Clash magazine includes a feature on Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 in which they call the book a "fascinating, insightful and sometimes shocking tome"; you can read en excerpt (which includes a portion of an excerpt from the book) on their website

• Interview (Audio): Jim Woodring and our own Larry Reid were guests on Weekday with host Steve Scher on KUOW (Seattle's NPR news station) last Friday, March 30, to preview the Northwest comix panel at Emerald City Comicon; you can stream or download the show here

• Commentary: McSweeney's has a terrific essay about Snoopy by guest columnist Robb Fritz that's a must-read for all Peanuts fans