Xaime!

Beto!

Mario!

My favorite photo of the Con: a next-generation fan enjoying a comic by a next-generation artist (Natalia's The Cat Eyes #1)!

It became a daily thrill seeing what Moto Hagio would draw on our whiteboard for each of her signings:

Stephen DeStefano was very generous with fans:

Final done-in-one Day 4 update coming soon...

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Tunes: At Largehearted Boy, Cathy Malkasian provides a musical playlist for her new graphic novel Temperance

• Interview: Snap Judgment's Stephanie Foo talks to Mome contributors Jon Adams & Robert Goodin, among others, about their superhero juvenilia in a slideshow with audio

• History: At Comics Comics, Tim Hodler posts a 1954 letter from Charles M. Schulz to Walt Kelly provided by Jeet Heer

• Plug: Eat, Sleep & Read! spotlights Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso

• Comic-Con: For MTV IGGY, Deb Aoki covers Moto Hagio's appearance at Comic-Con: "Besides signing copies of her new book and sketching for fans, Hagio also talked about her work at two panels, charming the crowd with her wit and honesty."

• Reviewer: For the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux reviews Gary Shteyngart's new novel Super Sad True Love Story

Jamie Coville of TheComicBooks.com has posted audio of several panels at Comic-Con 2010, including: the Spotlight on Moto Hagio (MP3); the Spotlight on Peter Bagge (MP3); the Comics Criticism panel with R.C. Harvey, Gary Groth and others, moderated by Ben Schwartz (MP3); the Comics Reprints Revolution panel with Gary Groth and others (MP3); and the Bill Everett panel with Blake Bell & Wendy Everett (MP3). Thanks to Blake Bell for the tip-off! Illustration swiped from Johnny Ryan's Facebook page.

Moto Hagio signed in for her second day at our booth with a drawing of her cat Leo, who also stars in her most recent Japanese release.

It's a bit hard to tell here, but the line for Hagio-san goes all the way around the side of the booth. She's accompanied by translator/editor Matt Thorn.

Joining Hagio-san for the first half of her two-hour signing was This Side of Jordan author Monte Schulz.

Hagio-san drew many beautiful sketches for appreciative fans! Apparently this practice is rare at Japanese comics conventions, but Hagio-san was happy to do it.

I thought I could keep up with Online Commentary & Diversions while at Comic-Con. Ha ha ha ha ha.

• Coming Attractions: At Robot 6, Chris Mautner takes a look through the 46 (!!!) upcoming books listed in our Fall/Winter catalog (note: listed release dates may no longer be accurate and are all subject to change)

• History/Profile/Review: "What A Drunken Dream reveals is an author whose childhood passion for Frances Hodgson Burnett, L.M. Montgomery, and Isaac Asimov profoundly influenced the kind of stories she chose to tell as an adult. ... For those new to Hagio’s work, Fantagraphics has prefaced A Drunken Dream with two indispensable articles by noted manga scholar Matt Thorn. ... Taken together with the stories in A Drunken Dream, these essays make an excellent introduction to one of the most literary and original voices working in comics today. Highly recommended." – Katherine Dacey, The Manga Critic

• Review: "Anyone interested in the historical development of manga and the women who’ve contributed to the art form should read this book. I hope A Drunken Dream sells well enough for Fantagraphics or other publishers to consider putting out some of Hagio’s longer works. Her short stories are great, but I’d love to see what she does with a longer storyline." – Anna Neatrour, TangognaT

• Plug: "What Osamu Tezuka is to shonen and seinen manga, Moto Hagio is to shojo manga -- a true innovator who challenged and stretched the conventions of the medium by created touching, memorable and truly artistic comics stories. ...  Fantagraphics had copies of the absolutely gorgeous hardcover edition of A Drunken Dream available for sale at their [Comic-Con] booth..." – Deb Aoki, About.com: Manga

• Interview: The Comics Journal's Shaenon Garrity sat down with Moto Hagio & translator Matt Thorn for a conversation at Comic-Con International: "I find it very embarrassing to read my very early work, but when you see the stories arranged chronologically it gives a good overall impression of my career.  In Japanese, too, it’s common to present an author’s works in a sample spanning his or her whole career, so it’s turned out very much like that."

• Review: "Deadpan dialogue, drawings that move from panel to panel with the strange and deliberate force of kung fu performance art, and a subtle interweaving of humor and angst come together to make [Werewolves of Montpellier] a brief knockout of a book." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

• Review: "...[T]his cartwheeling shaggy-dog story begins, like a lot of metafiction, with the semblance of reality... But by the time a frog demon reanimates a 19th-century French peasant whose brains it has eaten, it’s fairly clear that Deitch is making stuff up. The fun of [The Search for Smilin' Ed] is the way it constantly darts back and forth across the line between genuine show-business lore (a favorite Deitch theme) and delirious whole-cloth invention. There are stories within stories, unreliable explainers, secret passageways that lead from one part of the tale to another." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

• Review: "Wally Gropius is a book that’s constantly lying to the reader, with a terrifying chaos roiling just immediately below its surface. The book is a flood of visual and textual information, but the information itself is near constantly false. ... For me, it’s a book that lies constantly, that lies at its very core, but that nevertheless ends up getting at a greater truth of things. And so, yeah: I thought that was pretty neat." – Abhay Kholsa, The Savage Critics

• Review: "There’s more derring-do [in Prince Valiant Vol. 2: 1939-1940] than you can shake a sword at! Foster’s stories are filled with vivid, colorful characters, none more engaging than the aptly named Valiant and his never-ending quest for adventure. The artwork is breathtaking. Foster’s figures are handsome and graceful whether eating a sumptuous feast or fighting on a crowded battlefield. ... Even if the age of chivalry is not your flask of ale, Foster’s art and storytelling will win you over." — Rich Clabaugh, The Christian Science Monitor

• Review: "This book is why Fantagraphics is one of the best and most important comic publishers in the business today. [Blazing Combat] is a series that could have easily been forgotten to the ages but Fantagraphics always is at the forefront of making sure important works of sequential art are remembered. ... This is a brilliant collection of stories that should be required reading. Intelligent, gripping stories and fantastic art! Grade A +" – Tim Janson, Mania and Newsarama

• Review: "Formally inventive and emotionally acute, Bottomless Belly Button indeed proves to be all those things: as fascinating and affecting a depiction of family ties as Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections or Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums." – Ed Park, Los Angeles Times

• Plugs: Alex Carr of Amazon's Omnivoracious blog has Weathercraft by Jim Woodring ("I am woefully ignorant when it comes to Woodring’s Frank comics, and this looks like the weirdest place to start") and Dungeon Quest Book 1 ("After The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, I will read anything Joe Daly produces") on his summer vacation reading list

• History: For the Los Angeles Times, Ben Schwartz compiles an oral history of the 1980s heyday of L.A. alternative comics with Matt Groening, Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez, David Lynch (!), and Gary Panter

• Comic-Con: ICv2 provides a few additional details (including price and publishing schedule) and The Beat, Cartoon Brew, The Daily Cartoonist, Disney Comics Worldwide, disZine, Publishers Weekly cover our announcement about publishing Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse strips; Sean T. Collins wins for best commentary: "Given Disney's relationships with both Boom and Marvel I'm a little surprised, but only a little. I imagine that if you walk into a conference room with an armful of the Complete Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, Popeye, Krazy & Ignatz, etc., you probably walk back out with a handful of contracts."

• Comic-Con: Anime News Network reports on Moto Hagio being awarded an Inkpot Award last week

• Comic-Con: Read Blake Bell's daily reports from San Diego: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 

• Comic-Con: The San Diego Union Tribune talks to our own Eric Reynolds and other publishers on the floor of Comic-Con about the recent surge in classic comic-strip collections

• Comic-Con: Publishers Weekly's "Photo Mania" from the floor of Comic-Con includes nice shots of Moto Hagio, C. Tyler and Natalia Hernandez with Tio Jaime taken at our booth

• Comic-Con: Bad Lit's Mike Everleth reports on Peter Bagge's Comic-Con Spotlight Panel

• Comic-Con: Making the scene at the USA Today Pop Candy meetup, Dame Darcy

• Comic-Con: Scan The Comics Reporter's "Notes from the Convention Floor" posts for more various tidbits: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

Oh man did it pain me to erase Moto Hagio's unsolicited drawing off of our whiteboard! I console myself with other artwork which followed and the hope that she will do a new drawing each day. She signed copies of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories and drew sketches for a big group of very excited and appreciative fans, with the assistance of Drunken Dream translator/editor Matt Thorn and, behind the scenes, interpreter/personal assistant (and mobile veterinarian, for real) Mari Morimoto. See below (or here) for video of Hagio-sensei sketching a character!

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "A book that sticks with you like a virus, Woodring's newest collection of tales of vague morality and definite oddity [Weathercraft] keeps intact his status as one of comics most eccentric auteurs. ... Woodring's wordless story is a looping and circumstantial affair, concerned more with fantastically rendered backgrounds — his starkly layered landscapes play like minimalist woodcuts of the deepest unconscious — than matters of plot and story. There is a creeping message of sorts, about the wages of greed and what happens to curious cats, but it's mired in a universe of deeply strange beauty and not always easy to divine." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

• Review: "...[A] gorgeously-produced best-of collection from shojo manga creator Moto Hagio, A Drunken Dream and Other Stories... The material showcased here has been assembled from across thirty years of Moto’s career, and shows her switching nimbly between storytelling modes. On the face of the evidence there was very little she could not do, some things she did well, and a few things she did magnificently. ... This book’s further evidence that 'shojo' need not be thought of as closed-ended and insular a category as “science fiction” once was." – Serdar Yegulalp, Genji Press

• Review: "Where most American gag strips were about the silly things that happen every day, Peanuts was about how to keep on living when you don't get what you want. It was still vital and true at this point [1973-1974], even if more and more of the stories focused on Snoopy quaffing root beers with Bill Mauldin, or writing bad novels, or playing tennis." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "Medley has a real talent for character, and she does a wonderful job of exploring and expanding upon standard fairy tale tropes. With her signature creation, Castle Waiting, she takes the bare bones of several well-known stories and redrafts them to account for the human element. ... The first volume of Castle Waiting... is available in a gorgeous hardcover edition from Fantagraphics Books... and the finished product is stunning..." – Stella Matutina

• Plug: "Megan Kelso's Artichoke Tales... is earning comparisons with epics like Cold Mountain and The Thorn Birds, and Kelso's nimble, cartoonish two-color art will remind readers of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. – Michael Bagnulo, Shelf Awareness

• Interview: Stephen DeStefano talks shop in a "Cartoonist Survey" Q&A with David Paccia of David-Wasting-Paper: "I recall when I first got to DC Comics as a teenager, Joe Kubert lectured me on starting my reference file. This way, no matter what I wanted to draw, I always had a photo to reference. In this age of Google Image Search, the idea of a reference folder seems positively quaint!"

• Interview: At HiLobrow, Joshua Glenn presents a previously unseen 2002 Q&A (missing the Qs) with Kim Deitch: "Yeah, Waldo represents individualization. His edges can’t be smoothed off — even by me. That’s why I try not to over-use Waldo. If I haven’t got a good idea with him, I’ll let him sit on the shelf for years." (Via ¡Journalista!)

• Profile: The Cincinnati Enquirer's Lauren Bishop spotlights the Comic-Con-bound Carol Tyler: "It's sure to be quite a different experience from the last time Tyler attended Comic-Con, in 1988, when she received the inaugural Dori Seda Memorial Award for Best New Female Cartoonist. 'When I went, it was pretty small,' she says. 'I slept on somebody's floor.'"

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Instead of bringing to mind old black & white stories and advertisements, the color [Tales Designed to] Thrizzle now mines the endless well of cheap, awful color comics. The color scheme is so heavily into the CMYK scheme of old four-color comics, and employed so luridly, that the reader is once again forced to dig into each panel slowly. ... Kupperman can jab you with a quick joke like a fake ad or a cover for an old comic called 'Cowboy Oscar Wilde,' or he can wrestle you into submission with a shaggy dog joke. ... With... subtle changes, Kupperman has managed to keep the top humor periodical fresh." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Review: "This most recent compilation is the finest presentation of the Mr. Natural strips I’ve ever seen and is a must-buy for any Crumb fan whether they’ve been there since he first made his appearance in Zap or are coming on board with The Book of Genesis. Either way, this is not to be missed." – Joe Keatinge, Neon Monster

• Review: "Reading [Charles M. Schulz's] wonderful comics is enjoyable and comfortable, sort of like wearing a worn, favourite sweater. Fantagraphics Books has done a good job putting Schulz's cartoons together in a nice book. Whether you're watching Peppermint Patty skating and being coached by Snoopy, Snoopy dealing with a broken leg, or Lucy still pulling the football away from Charlie Brown at the last second The Complete Peanuts: 1975 to 1976 is a humourous, welcome reprieve from a stressful, often screwed up, world. Thanks Mr. Schulz!" – Glenn Perrett, Simcoe.com

• Review: "Like some Uncle Wiggly story gone mad — or perhaps Krazy Kat in disguise — Tony Millionaire’s mad cake batter boy goes on a frantic rampage to return a baby owl to its mother and embarks on an adventure that is in no way as linear as my sentence implies. Millionaire really does channel the cartoonists of the early 20th century, while still giving the work [Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird] a quality that’s somewhat reminiscent of ’70s underground comics — and it’s kid-friendly to boot! Good fun with good energy." – John Seven, Worcester Magazine

• Review: "I picked up Carol Tyler's You'll Never Know, Book One: A Good and Decent Man from the library on the strength of recommendations I have seen for it all over the web, and it didn't disappoint me... Tyler has a nice diary style that seems intimate and friendly but is also quite sophisticated. ... There aren't too many comics about middle-aged women, and it was nice to read about something other than youthful rebellion and angst for a change." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6

• Comic-Con: At About.com, manga columnist Deb Aoki talks up Moto Hagio's panels and appearance at our booth (#1718)

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Plug: "Based on reviews, [Werewolves of Montpellier] sounds really good. The art reminds me of Chris Ware or Chris Onstad, and I’m a fan of deadpan, sardonic humour. Do want!" – Werewolf News

• Plug: Joe Gordon of the Forbidden Planet International Blog recommends the works of Jacques Tardi for your Bastille Day reading: "...[W]ith the always fine folks at Fantagraphics translating and publishing Tardi’s work in English several of his works are now easily accessible even to anyone who doesn’t read a word of French. A long-standing interest in the history of World War One and his own family history lead to his It Was the War of the Trenches, recently published in English and one of the most interesting comics on the period since Charley’s War in my book."

• Plugs: The Washington Post's Michael Cavna places the Moto Hagio spotlight panel and the Humor in Comics panel featuring Peter Bagge in his top 10 picks for Comic-Con on Friday and Sunday, respectively

Just dropped off at the office today: our advance copies of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio. It's pretty! Designer Adam Grano has outdone himself on this one, and of course the contents are gorgeous too. Pick up your copy at Comic-Con next week and have it signed by Moto Hagio — she'll be there all 4 days! It should be widely available next month.