We've added several new books to our roster of titles which are available with FREE signed bookplates as a bonus when you order directly from us! They include:

Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell (signed by Bell, not by Ditko... are you crazy?)
Deitch's Pictorama by Kim, Seth and Simon Deitch (shown below - signed by Kim only)
Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers (shown above - signed by both Gilbert and Jaime!)
The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez
Perla La Loca by Jaime Hernandez
Beyond Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez
Amor Y Cohetes by Gilbert, Jaime & Mario Hernandez (signed by all 3!)

Some conditions apply; click here for more details and the complete list of books available with this FREE premium!

If you live near NYC, this is probably the best comics news you'll read all week:  

Major Retrospective of Work by Underground Cartoonist Kim Deitch Opens at MoCCA on September 12

• Exhibition dates: September 9 – December 5, 2008
• Opening Reception: September 12, 2008, 6 – 9 pm

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) is pleased to announce a major retrospective of work by underground cartoonist and graphic novelist Kim Deitch (b. 1944), opening September 9th and running through December 5th, 2008.

Kim Deitch: A Retrospective will display original comics pages and other work covering the artist's entire career to date, beginning with full-page comic strips drawn for the East Village Other in 1967 up to recent graphic novels including The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Alias the Cat, Shadowland, and Deitch's Pictorama.  The exhibit will also feature rarely seen work including elaborate preparatory drawings, hand-colored originals, lithographs and other prints.

Kim Deitch was born in Los Angeles in 1944, the eldest son of Oscar-wining animator Gene Deitch (Tom Terrific, Munro).  Deitch studied at the Pratt Institute, traveled with the Norwegian Merchant Marines and worked at a mental institution before joining the burgeoning underground press in 1967. As an early contributor to the East Village Other and the editor of Gothic Blimp Works, Kim Deitch was among the first members of the underground comix scene that would explode with the 1968 publication of Robert Crumb's Zap #1.  Forty years later, he stands alongside Crumb, Bill Griffith, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Art Spiegelman as one the most notable and consistently prolific artists to emerge from that milieu.  In addition to his comic books and graphic novels, Deitch's work has appeared in such venues as RAW, Weirdo, Arcade, Details, the L.A. Weekly, McSweeney's, Nickelodeon Magazine, and The New Yorker.

"Kim Deitch's career spans the post-war history of avant-garde comics," said curator Bill Kartalopoulos.  "And throughout it he brilliantly weaves vast intergenerational narratives that enfold a deep history of American popular entertainment, from the past to the present and into the fantastic outer reaches of his meta-fictional universe.  Distinctions between fiction and reality blur in Deitch's work just as real madness bleeds into the visions and schemes of the artists, entertainers, and hustlers who populate his world.  The result is a rich narrative tapestry as compelling and breathtaking as Deitch's densely layered, tightly woven, and intricately detailed
black and white comics pages."

Deitch's body of work stretches outward from comics to embrace a spectrum of visual-narrative modes, including extra-textual single images and illustrated prose modeled after Victorian illustrated fiction.  His most recent book is Deitch's Pictorama, a collection of illustrated fiction produced in collaboration with brothers Seth and Simon Deitch. The exhibit will highlight Deitch's career-long experimentation with text/image modes.

MoCCA will publish an original poster and 1" button featuring Deitch's artwork in association with the exhibit.  The Museum will also host a series of talks and events related to the exhibit.  For more
information please visit: http://www.moccany.org

Please join us at MoCCA on September 12th to celebrate Kim Deitch; A Retrospective.  The artist will be present and refreshments will be served!".

Event: Kim Deitch: Opening Reception
      "Free and open to the public"
What: Opening
Host: Kim Deitch: A Retrospective
Start Time: Friday, September 12 at 6:00pm
End Time: Friday, September 12 at 9:00pm
Where: MoCCA: The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art

Deitch's Pictorama
By Kim Deitch, Simon Deitch and Seth Deitch

Kim Deitch, creator of the acclaimed Fantagraphics collection Shadowland and the Pantheon graphic novels Alias the Cat and Boulevard of Broken Dreams, has recruited his siblings to produce a unique, all-new "picto-fiction" pocket book. Alternating between heavily illustrated near-comics stories and outright prose pieces, Deitch's Pictorama is a testament to the Deitch family's amazing yarn-spinning abilities!

The book leads off with Kim's lengthy picto-story "The Sunshine Girl," a typically Deitchean tall tale involving bottle cap collectors, drug dealers, family secrets, and the innocents who wind up in the middle of the hullaballoo. Then it's time for Seth's prose short story "Children of Aruf," about a man and his very unusual dog; "Unlikely Hours," a paranoid picto-story about a conspiracy of sentient rats written by Seth and illustrated by Kim; the prose novella "The Golem," once again written by Seth and decorated with a series of superb pencil illustrations by Simon; and finally Kim's autobiographical "The Cop on the Beat, the Man in the Moon and Me." This entire "Deitch treat" is wrapped up with an introduction by legendary Academy Award-winning animator, cartoonist and illustrator and proud papa Gene (Tom Terrific, Terr'ble Thompson, Tom and Jerry) Deitch.

240-page black & white 6" x 8" softcover • $18.99
Add to Cart • Read More...

The Comics Journal #292
Edited by Michael Dean and Kristy Valenti; Gary Groth, executive editor

Gary Groth interviews father and son cartoonists Gene and Kim Deitch. Academy-award-winning Gene Deitch, whose wide-ranging career has spanned 60+ years, talks about doing illustrations for The Record Changer, directing cartoons such as Munro and Krazy Kat, and creating his comic strip Terr’ble Thompson. Underground comics pioneer Kim Deitch, touches on his father’s influence, reminisces about the New York-based scene and outlines the evolution of Waldo the Cat. Plus: The innovative Grant Morrison fills us in on his X-Men run, All Star Superman, the ambitious Seven Soldiers “maxiseries” how he became one of the architects of the current DC Comics universe. Our comics gallery presents an historical essay and highlights from the turn-of-the-19th-century work of Puck cartoonist F. M. Howarth.

200-page b&w/color 7.5" x 9.5" squarebound softcover magazine • $11.99
Add to Cart • Read More...

Here's the next entry in our current batch of daily video and photo teasers of upcoming releases: Deitch's Pictorama, a unique and exciting book of "picto-fiction" by brothers Simon, Seth and Kim Deitch. Watch the video above, and take a closer look in our photo gallery. (Note that these images are of my own personal copy, so you'll see a signature and inscription on the Table of Contents page that aren't part of the printed book.)

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS & DESERT ISLAND present:
WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: Celebrating the Comics and Art of RORY HAYES

Join us for a book release party and panel discussion featuring:

KIM DEITCH
BILL GRIFFITH
GEOFFREY HAYES
and moderator
DAN NADEL

Listing information:

WHAT: Book Release Party for WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES, with panel discussion and Q&A
WHO: Dan Nadel, Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith & Geoffrey Hayes
WHERE: DESERT ISLAND • 540 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY • 718.388.5087 • desertislandbrooklyn.com
WHEN: Friday, August 8, 7PM (discussion begins at 8PM)

FREE ADMISSION
An exclusive, limited-edition Hayes silkscreen will be available for this event.

The controversial cartoonist Rory Hayes was a self-taught dynamo of the underground comics revolution. Attracting equal parts derision and praise (the latter from the likes of R. Crumb and Bill Griffith), Hayes emerged as comics’ great primitive, drawing horror comics in a genuinely horrifying and hallucinatory manner (some have called him the Fletcher Hanks of the underground). He has influenced a generation of cartoonists, from RAW to Fort Thunder and back again.

On Friday, Aug. 8, on what would have been Hayes’ 59th birthday (Hayes died of a drug overdose in 1983), Desert Island and Fantagraphics Books will celebrate the life and art of Rory Hayes with a special evening celebrating the release of WHERE DEMENTED WENTED, the first-ever collection of Hayes’ legendary comics and art. Editor Dan Nadel (Gary Panter, The Wilco Book) will moderate a discussion of Hayes’ work with three men who knew and worked with Hayes: Kim Deitch (creator of Waldo the Cat), Bill Griffith (creator of Zippy the Pinhead), and Geoffrey Hayes (brother of Rory and author of the recent Benny and Penny from Toon Books).

WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: THE ART AND COMIX OF RORY HAYES is the first retrospective of Hayes’ career ever published, and features the best of his underground comics output alongside paintings, covers, and artifacts rarely seen by human eyes — as well as astounding, previously unprinted comics from his teenage years and movie posters for his numerous homemade films. The Art and Comix of Rory Hayes also serves as a biography and critique with a memoir of growing up with Rory by his brother, the illustrator Geoffrey Hayes, and a career-spanning essay by Edward Pouncey (a.k.a. Savage Pencil). Also included is a rare interview with Hayes himself.

“Rory Hayes was the real thing; a genuine ‘outsider’ artist. His work retains its raw, primitive power to this day, teetering precariously between chaos and control, madness and oddly endearing teddy bears.” – Bill Griffith

“A great American primitive.” – R. Crumb

WHERE DEMENTED WENTED:
THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES
Edited by Dan Nadel and Glenn Bray
Essays by Geoffrey Hayes and Edwin Pouncey
$22.99 Paperback Original
144 pages, black-and-white (with 48 pp. in color), 8” x 10”
ISBN 978-1-56097-923-4 • PUBLICATION DATE: AUG. 8, 2008

Ah, it's a beautiful day in Seattle and currently the entire top floor of our building is occupied solely by myself and Adam Grano while everyone else gets their nerd on in San Diego. I could get used to not going to Comic-Con. (Note to Adam: can we get a ping pong table in here, toot-sweet?) 

Anyway, we just received advance copies of two new books (these are also debuting at the con) that will hit stores in early September: LOVE & ROCKETS: NEW STORIES #1 and DEITCH'S PICTORAMA. It occured to me that this means we will be releasing two books, on the same day, by two different sets of cartooning/sibling legends. Kind of cool.