• Review: "Watch your step as we spiral further down the rabbit hole in the second volume in the King of the Flies trilogy, entitled The Origin of the World. [...] The unease that once crept through the residential basements now spreads vulture wings and takes flight. Volume 2 justifies the previous paranoia and displays it in full view... The Origin of the World's plots coil and ceaselessly shift; the characters tasting and testing one another with serpentine instincts. When the whole thing threatens to surrender under its bleakness, the last page morphs to resemble something akin to hope if the reader squints just right." – Alex Carr, Omnivoracious
• Review: "There is perhaps no better medium to capture the life of Roberto Clemente than graphic novel. After all his skill set when it came to playing the game of baseball was almost superhuman, highlighted by a throwing arm that would surely make the son of Jor-El jealous. As such, it is no surprise then that illustrator/author Wilfred Santiago’s 21 — The Story of Roberto Clemente is a must read for anyone awed by the beauty of the sport. […] This graphic novel seeks to give a proper sense of wonder and the fantastic to a player whose tragic ending is often a stark reminder or our own mortality. At that it succeeds terrifically." – Andy Smith, Bugs & Cranks
• Review: "Where Chris Ware draws a billion tiny boxes to retain his feces, [Johnny] Ryan draws borders mostly so the sewage will have something to overflow. In Prison Pit each body is a busted toilet whose stagnant water births some mangled abortion dragging its placenta over the edge of the porcelain to flop wetly on the cold tiles. [...] The protagonist fights ladydactyls, giant eye creatures, robots, toothy monsters wearing Nazi death-hosen, and his own mutinous oozing hand. But really his main enemy is Ryan himself, the artist as diabolous ex machina, squatting over his creation to spew an endless stream of venomous diarrhea." – Noah Berlatsky, The Hooded Utilitarian
• Interview:Robot 6's Chris Mautner writes: "Freeway is an impressive book from an underrated talent and I was happy for the opportunity to talk to [Mark] Kalesniko about the book and his working methods." A bit from Mark: "I used for inspiration the movie Slaughterhouse Five and how the main character, unstuck in time, bounced back and forth though out his life. Also the miniseries Singing Detective where the main character is bedridden with a skin disease and suffers from hallucinations and flashbacks. I also thought that the reader would relate to this because many of us have been stuck in traffic jams or other places where we can’t move but our mind is free to wander."
"Overpass" is a morbidly funny new 3-page "Alex" story posted by Mark Kalesniko over at his blog. I'm not sure if it's an outtake from his new graphic novel Freeway or brand new material but it's a welcome sight either way!
• New artwork, illustrations and handicrafts and other news (she moved to Savannah, Georgia — be her new intern!) in the latest blog update from Dame Darcy
We made a startling discovery in our recently-relocated warehouse not too long ago: a cache of signed, limited-edition bookplates that somehow never got used! These things date back around 10 years or so. Good grief!
Now that they're all present and accounted for, you can have 'em — get one FREE with purchase of their respective books while supplies last! We're running this just like our more recent bonus signed bookplates, which encompasses dozens of recent books — see the full selection and more info here.
420-page black & white 7" x 10" softcover • $28.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-356-9
Ships in: February 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Alex Kalienka is in an awful jam.
Literally, a traffic jam — but figuratively, his whole life is a mess. A dream job turned nightmare at the biggest animation studio in the world. A love affair that is not what he imagined. And possibly someone with a life-threatening grudge against him...
In his first new graphic novel since 2001’s acclaimed Mail Order Bride, Mark Kalesniko compresses an entire life into a single day as the frustrated animator, stewing on a pitiless California freeway, alternately rages, reminisces, fantasizes, and hallucinates — intercut with a series of imagined moments from two generations ago, the Golden Age of animation, when an earlier Alex made his entry into a much different professional world.
Loaded with fascinating insider gossip and historical details on two different eras of animators, skipping seamlessly among the present and several different pasts, reality and fantasy, Freeway is another step forward for a major cartooning talent.
“Kalesniko is an expert at sophisticated, visually efficient narrative renderings of complex emotions. His drawings are spare and cinematic, and each panel underscores the characters’ psychological isolation or another revealing detail.” — Publishers Weekly on Mail Order Bride
Download an EXCLUSIVE 35-page PDF excerpt (7.6 MB).
Exclusive Savings: To celebrate the release of Freeway, we're pleased to offer Mark Kalesniko's critically-acclaimed graphic novels Alex and Mail Order Bride for 25% off for a limited time!
Yeah, we're great, and our books are late. Why, what did you think the headline meant?
Anyway, a new year is upon and it's time to 'fess up about all the late Fantagraphics titles you were expecting to have by now, and don't, because we suck. Specific apologia and weaseling have been added to some titles, others we just pass under mortified silence. 2011 will be better!
The following have been rescheduled: • THE ANTIC CARTOON ART OF T.S. SULLIANT will be reformatted, rethought, re-solicited, and released in early 2012 • FORLORN FUNNIES VOLUME 1 by Paul Hornschemeier will be released in the Summer of 2011 • THE HIDDEN by Richard Sala will be re-solicited and released in July 2011 • HOW TO READ NANCY will be re-solicited and released in 2012 in a vastly expanded version from what we first expected • IS THAT ALL THERE IS? (né MODERN SWARTE, originally announced for 2007) in late Fall 2011: Yes, Joost has turned in all the files and publishers in three countries are synchronizing their watches! • NANCY IS HAPPY will be released in late 2011: It turns out that there was more production work than we anticipated to make the book as perfect as humanly possible.) • POGO VOLUME 1 will be released in the Fall of 2011 - yes, seriously, for real this time
![Prison Pit: Book 2 [Pre-Order]](components/com_virtuemart/show_image_in_imgtag.php?filename=cebb7e003856bc394f3907236c8267bb.jpg&newxsize=145&newysize=&fileout= "Prison Pit: Book 2 [Pre-Order]")
![Freeway [Pre-Order]](components/com_virtuemart/show_image_in_imgtag.php?filename=5322979fa62ffcf9f2d69e4b4c3af907.jpg&newxsize=145&newysize=&fileout= "Freeway [Pre-Order]")
