The Kat Who Walked in Beauty (2nd Printing)
By George Herriman

Presenting a unique, stand-alone companion to our Krazy & Ignatz series. The Kat Who Walked In Beauty collects many rare and unique dailies from the 1910s and 1920s. Though many readers are aware of Herriman's dynamic Sunday pages, few know that during 1920, in what must have been an editorially unrestrictive period for Herriman, he drew some of the most graphic and brilliantly conceived daily strips ever created; they look like "mini-Sunday" strips. This nine-month stretch of dailies, never-before-reprinted, is among the treasures included in this collection. The collection includes many other Herriman gems, including the very first stand-alone Krazy & Ignatz strips from 1911, and the illustrations from Herriman"s Krazy Kat Jazz pantomime/ballet, performed to captivated New York audiences in 1922. This book fills in several gaps in the daily strip history, reproduced at close to their original size.

The new 2nd printing features an orange spine and interior spot color; we also still have limited quantities of the first printing, with a green spine and interior spot color. Please indicate your choice when ordering.

114-page black & white 15" x 11" hardcover $29.95
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Krazy Kat aficionado Alessandro Santi teaches comics in Italy, and... well, let him tell it: "I am sending you the comics pages some children, aged 7-11, have done in January-March 2006 during my lessons, financed by the city town council. At that time I showed and read your marvellous Krazy & Ignatz volumes — with the Italian version of the first volume of the series — to twelve children in Prato, my home town, and then they created their own Sunday pages and coloured them with watercolours. They loved Krazy Komics since the first lesson! Hope you enjoy our homage to the Great George Herriman!"

This is me again: I've seen lots of cartoonists try to capture the spirit of Herriman or Krazy Kat in their work, from Bobby London and Chris Ware on down, but these may be some of my favorites. Enjoy them!

Alessandro sent so many we're going to break them up over four days. So come back here tomorrow for another batch!

(Click each page for larger sizes on Flickr.) 

Jeet Heer posts an excerpt of his introductory essay from Krazy & Ignatz 1941-1942: "A Ragout of Raspberries" along with some additional tidbits and thoughts. (Hat tip to Spurge.)

Krazy & Ignatz 1927-1928
Krazy & Ignatz 1929-1930
By George Herriman

Just in: brand new printings of these sought-after volumes!

120-page 9" x 12" black & white softcovers $14.95 each

Click the links above for each volume. 

Krazy & Ignatz 1941-1942: "A Ragout of Raspberries"
By George Herriman

George Herriman integrated full, spectacular color into Krazy Kat in June, 1935. The gorgeous evolution continues in our fourth color volume, which includes the Sunday strips from all of 1941 and 1942. The color format opens the floodgates for a massive amount of spectacular, rare color art from series editor Bill Blackbeard and designer Chris Ware's files. Most of these strips in this volume have not seen print since originally running in Hearst newspapers over 60 years ago.

For this volume, critic Jeet Heer contributes an essay about the history and precedents of Herriman's unique use of language, exploring his characters' loquacious lexicography.

120-page 9" x 12" full-color softcover $19.95
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Our final remaining 2007 releases have just been added to the website and made available for pre-order on our Upcoming Releases page. Pictured above: The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo Vol. 2; the 9th volume in our Krazy & Ignatz series, "A Ragout of Raspberries"; and The Comics Journal #287, featuring a cover interview with Jeffrey Brown.

Call 1-800-657-1100 (or 206-524-1967 outside the U.S.) or click the covers above and below to order online right now. Apart from the Journal, most of our books go out to our pre-order customers before they arrive in bookstores and comic shops, which means you can have bragging rights. Whee!

NOVEMBER IS CLASSIC COMIC STRIPS MONTH!

We are truly living in a Golden Age of classic comics strip collections, and as such we're collaborating with CHECKER PUBLISHING (Flash Gordon, Little Nemo, Steve Canyon), DRAWN AND QUARTERLY (Moomin, Oh Skin-nay!, Walt and Skeezix), and IDW (Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates) to produce a cool, oversized promotional sampler that comic shops can distribute in November (cover pictured above). This full-color 11" x 17" tabloid showcases some of the very finest Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates, Dennis the Menace, Flash Gordon, Yellow Kid, Little Orphan Annie, Peanuts and Popeye strips. How can you go wrong?

Designed like an old-time classic newspaper comic strip supplement, Comic Strip Masterpieces will feature superb reproductions, including many stunning full-color Sunday pages! There will also be a "sequel" of sorts to the hugely popular Unseen Peanuts (an annotated spread of Peanuts strips from the upcoming ninth volume of Complete Peanuts that have never been reprinted since their original newspaper release almost 40 years ago), as well as biographical notes on the cartoonists, a checklist of classic comic strip reprints, and more. Reading Comic Strip Masterpieces will be like traveling back in time to an era when comic strips were actually good!

So badger your shop already to stock this! And for those of you unable to get to a comic book store, we're also making a PDF available for download RIGHT HERE. It's a 4.6 MB download, and nowhere near as cool as the actual printed sampler itself, so don't let this electronic version prevent you from getting a physical copy from your favorite retailer. Tell 'em Fantagraphics sent ya!

Yesterday marked 95th anniversary of the debut of George Herriman's Krazy Kat comic strip. Look for our next collection (pictured above) at the end of the year, which is our penultimate Sunday color volume - only one more to go before all of the color Sundays have been collected!