Ivan Brunetti, Lilli Carré, and Paul Hornschemeier are also featured in this collection, and they'll be signing (along with Paul Nudd and Onsmith) this coming Friday, June 24th at Quimby’s Bookstore [1854 W. North Ave, Chicago]. The metaphorical punches start flying at 7:00 pm!
• Review: "...[Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse] is not just a great Mickey Mouse comic, it's one of the best comics of all time.... When Gottfredson took over the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip in 1930, he created stories that still hold up eighty years later as solid well-done comics. That alone would be an incredible achievement, especially considering how few stories from the era even seem readable to a modern audience, but Gottfredson takes things to an entirely different level with comedy that's still funny and adventures that are genuinely thrilling.... As to the book itself, Fantagraphics has done their usual amazing job of design on it... The strips are crisp, there's a ton of bonus material (including biographical information, details on the process, and a bunch of additional strips), and the book even feels nice in your hands while you're reading it. They did a seriously remarkable job putting it together, which is fitting considering how good the material is.... It's a great collection, and one of the few that anyone who likes any sort of comics could — and should — pick up and enjoy." – Chris Sims, Comics Alliance (all emphasis his)
• Review: "It feels like there's been an onslaught of pirate stories in the last several years, but Jason's deadpan visual style mixed with Vehlmann's absurdly dark humor make for a special tale of skullduggery.... Hilarity and adventure ensue, but not without a tremendously affecting and emotionally complicated final scene, making [Isle of 100,000 Graves] a wild ride in the truest sense of the term." – John Seven, Worcester Magazine
• Plug: "Legendary writer Bagge (Hate) and artist Hernandez (Love and Rockets) teamed up ten years ago for this comic [Yeah!] about a spunky all-girl, all-universe rock band. Now the whole series has been collected for the punk/sci-fi girl in your life." – Dan Kois, New York
• Interview: Christopher John Farley has a brief Q&A with Paul Hornschemeier at The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog: "I tend to write far more than I draw, I may have an image pop into my head, but those are usually just isolated points of inspiration: from there the writing takes over."
Join us this Saturday, June 18 at 6:00 PM as two of the country’s most gifted young cartoonists debut their recent publications at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Paul Hornschemeier, from Chicago, presents Life with Mr. Dangerous and Seattle’s own Eroyn Franklin premieres the highly anticipated Detained.
Paul Hornschemeier’s latest book, Life with Mr. Dangerous, was serialized in Fantagraphics Books Mome anthology before being collected by Random House/Villard. It follows the saga of a newly single woman in her mid-20s stuck in an unfulfilling job as she struggles to find meaning and order in her life. The story is insightful and often funny, filled with situations that anyone who was ever young will recall.
Eroyn Franklin’s Detained explores immigrant detention centers in Washington State. Each side of the book is a continuous panorama that follows two immigrants as they navigate Seattle’s former INS building and the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma — a powerful and evocative examination of cultural isolationism and the politics of xenophobia. This self-published book is exquisitely topical and extremely cool.
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street in the heart of Seattle’s enchanting Georgetown arts community. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110. See you all soon.
• Surely you're already following Jason's Cats Without Dogs blog where he posts artwork old and new (like his 1989 Elvis Costello illustration above), as well as concise and often very funny film reviews; now he's also posting his juvenilia at The Old Cat and the Dog where you can see his teenage takes on the Punisher, Lucky Luke, the Silver Surfer, Spidey etc.
* Other People's Publications ** Yeah, You Know Me.
Is it a cheat to spotlight Life with Mr. DangerousbyPaul Hornschemeier? I mean, technically, the book was released last month by Random House/Villard, but we did serialize it first in Mome.
Obviously, I think it still counts, as there's something different about reading Life with Mr. Dangerous collected in this stylish hard-bound edition. Without the stops-and-starts of serialization, I found myself far more immersed in the world of Amy Breis, a lonely 26-year-old stuck in a dead-end job, living alone with her cat, and obsessed with the TV show "Mr. Dangerous."
And, honestly, I love this character, and I love this book. It truly belongs on your shelf, next to your well-worn copy of Ghost World. I was even suspicious of whether "Amy Breis" was an anagram of "Hornschemeier" somehow. Like Clowes, Hornschemeier is able to craft a character who's painfully relatable, and ultimately, well... loveable.
Oh, and whaddaya know! You can pick up a copy and get it signed this coming Saturday, June 18th at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, as Hornschemeier will be here from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Seattle’s own Eroyn Franklin will also be debuting her highly anticipated book, Detained, for an evening of artists with hard-to-spell names.
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street in Seattle's Georgetown district. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone: (206) 658-0110. See you there!
Cartoonists Paul Hornschemeier and Eroyn Franklin Present New Books on June 18 at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle.
June 7, 2011 – Seattle, WA – Two of the country’s most gifted young cartoonists will debut their recent publications at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday, June 18 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. Paul Hornschemeier, from Chicago, presents Life with Mr. Dangerous and Seattle’s own Eroyn Franklin debuts the highly anticipated Detained.
Eroyn Franklin’s Detained explores immigrant detention centers in Washington State. Each side of the book is a continuous panorama that follows two immigrants as they navigate Seattle’s former INS building and The Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma — a powerful and evocative examination of cultural isolationism and the politics of xenophobia. The accordion-fold format lends a creative conceptual perspective to the protagonists’ poignant stories. This self-published work was supported in part by Artists Trust of Washington and the 4Culture lodging tax.
Paul Hornschemeier’s latest book, Life with Mr. Dangerous, was serialized in Fantagraphics Books' Mome anthology before being collected by Random House/Villard. It follows the saga of a newly single woman her mid-20s in an unfulfilling job as she struggles to find meaning and order in her life. The story is insightful and often funny, filled with situations that anyone who was ever young will recall. Hornschemeier has previously published three titles on Fantagraphics Books: The Three Paradoxes, All and Sundry, and Mother, Come Home.
Listing Information
Paul Hornschemeier and Eroyn Franklin book signing
Saturday, June 18, 6:00 to 8:00 PM
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 1201 S. Vale Street (at Airport Way S.) Seattle, WA 98108 206.658.0110 Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM
• Review: "It's a smart-looking book, and the choice to go color-free really allows Gilbert Hernandez's cartooning to shine. But make no mistake: this is vintage Bagge. Sure, we're minus the delicious Buddy Bradley angst, and the goofiness is rated PG, but the increasingly ridiculous situations that the girls of Yeah!... get themselves into [are] very much in Bagge's wheelhouse.... Yeah! also has in spades something that HATE! rarely, if ever, did: cuteness. Some of the hijinx and situations that the band finds itself in are, well, adorable. Hernandez's pen is as much to credit for that as is Bagge's turn to the 'pop side.'" – Jeremy Nisen, Under the Radar
• Review: "This slim graphic novel [Toys in the Basement] is nominally for children, but the art of the Frenchman Blanquet takes a children's story to an unexpected level.... This surrealist book by writer-artist Blanquet brings to the young reader a simple message: retribution will come, and you never know from which side." – Ray Garraty, Endless Falls Up
• Interview: At Comic Book Resources, Chris Mautner talks to Dave McKean about his new erotic graphic novel Celluloid: "The depressing majority of comics seem to be about violence of one sort or another, yet how much violence does the average person have to deal with in their everyday lives?... But sex is happily part of most people's lives, and crosses the mind most days, I would say, even if it's just watching your partner get out of bed in the morning."
• Interview:Time Out Chicago's Web Behrens goes back for a second helping with Paul Hornschemeier: "'I remember — well, I don’t actually remember this, but my mom told me this story many times: I was walking with her when I was little, 3 or 4. I looked up at her and said, 'Mom, sometimes I miss you even when you’re here.' What a sad — well, it’s cute, but gosh, I was lonely even then, walking with my mom! It’s just kind of how I’m wired."
• Panel:The Daily Cross Hatch begins transcribing the MoCCA panel on political cartooning that Tim Kreider was on: "My early cartoons were surreal non-sequiturs, but I feel like I was kind of conscripted into duty as a political cartoonist. I didn’t feel like the Bush years were just the opposition in charge. It felt like a true aberration in history, like the McCarthy years. It’s something I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut about. Once it was over, I was very, very happy to quit, but I wasn’t going to quit before George did."
• Review: "21: The Story of Roberto Clemente brings together comics and baseball, two of America's most popular conveyers of epic mythology. Author Wilfred Santiago also incorporates elements of classical and avant-garde jazz in his sinuously illustrated narrative of Clemente's life. It takes an imagination as rich as Mr. Santiago's to tap into various mythological languages to tell the Pittsburgh Pirate's iconic story... Instead of dwelling on sources of obvious resentment, Mr. Santiago defaults to illustrating Clemente's humanity. We're treated to close-ups of his most noble and ignoble moments. The artist refuses to treat him like a plastic saint, because a perfect Clemente would make boring reading, indeed. ...Wilfred Santiago has done as good a job as anyone ever has in reintroducing the longtime Pittsburgh Pirate to a new generation." – Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Review: "You’d be hard-pressed to find a more downright affable character than blithely blitzed Larrybear, the young female focus of Leslie Stein’s ongoing semiautobiographical comic [Eye of the Majestic Creature ], whose first four issues are collected here.... Stein gives us the slackerly, star-eyed alternative to a cadre of 'misanthropic, self-pitying comics about unappreciated cartoonists,' as Tom De Haven characterized it... But where the aforementioned Crumb-descended misanthropes have all more or less grown up, Stein’s Larrybear is a naïve woman on the verge of Whatever, a cute Candide floundering about in an increasingly complicated world. ...[T]his book [is] such a pleasure..." – Richard Gehr, The Comics Journal
• Review: "Lewis Trondheim is one of the world’s best cartoonists.... Approximate Continuum Comics is some of Trondheim’s earliest autobiographical work, dating mostly from 1993 and 1996. If you’re read his more recent slivers of life observations... then you already know the sublime wit and casual self-deprecation of Trondheim’s cartooning. Approximate Continuum Comics is where that [tack] begins." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama
• Review: "Love from the Shadows is a very strange story. Surreal is such an overused word, but it is the best description I can come up with to describe the tone of the work. There is a disjointed, dream-like progression to the narrative.... As with so much of Hernandez's work, it is beautifully illustrated. The art is suffused with emotion and atmosphere and eroticism. The work Hernandez does is a critical component to his examining all of the societal, psychological, and sexual issues. …Love from the Shadows [is] an intriguing, offbeat story that is open to examination and interpretation. …Love from the Shadows is an intellectually stimulating read. And the artwork is magnificent." – Benjamin Herman, Associated Content
• Review: "The Littlest Pirate King is a wonderful phantasmagoria, as likely to entertain a ten year old as a thirty year eight year old (and I say this having had the book pulled off my lap and spirited away by my own ten year old). There is a lovely innocence to proceedings, a seemingly uncalculated desire to thrill and chill and transport... that has had me flicking back through the book a good dozen times since I’ve read it. This is the kind of book that got me reading books when I was a wee nipper, and it’s the kind of book that keeps me reading now that I’m the furthest possible thing from a wee nipper." – Bookmunch
• Review: "Blazing Combat is a book I'm quite proud to have in my collection. It's a work of art, has a message that's strong even over 40 years after the material was first created, and I'll come back to this at least once every few years." – Philip Reed, BattleGrip
• List:Library Journal's Martha Cornog gathers recommended graphic novels dealing with themes of Health & Medicine, including:
Special Exits by Joyce Farmer: "An excellent alert for those new to the path (for themselves or for relatives) and a validation for those already familiar with this normal yet seemly so abnormal life stage."
Alex by Mark Kalesniko: "This exploration of depression, futile escapism, and the healing power of art has been described as a difficult read but very funny."
Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock 'n' Roll Life by Bruce Paley & Carol Swain: "Hanging out here and crashing there, Paley narrates vignettes of debauchery and daily life in a Woodstock version of American Splendor. Partner Swain's smudgy, black-and-white drawings carry his grimy, nostalgic account."
Mother, Come Home by Paul Hornschemeier: "An exquisitely written and beautifully drawn exploration of grief."
Rip M.D. by Mitch Shauer, Mike Vosburg et al.: "A 'full-color, all-ages adventure' with an animated cartoon series in development, and a promising bet for reluctant readers."
• List:Robot 6's Chris Mautner names "Six noteworthy debut comics," saying of R. Kikuo Johnson's Night Fisher "this tale of disaffected adolescence and drug dealing in Hawaii is certainly compelling and suggests that Johnson is an artist capable of producing great work. Unfortunately, he has yet to follow up on that initial promise. But Night Fisher still marks him as an artist to watch out for."
• Profile:Time Out Chicago's Web Behrens catches up with Paul Hornschemeier: "'It is one of those names: You’re destined to either be a writer or scientist,' says local author-artist Paul, the man both blessed and saddled with the brainy surname. 'You’re not going to be a rock star with a name like Hornschemeier.'"
Well here's a pretty sweet illustration gig: Paul Hornschemeier's cover for the super-buzzy book The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel, which collects the super-buzzy @MayorEmanuel Twitter feed. Paul talks a bit about it on his blog.
• List: Joe McCabe of FEARnet names "Five Horror Graphic Novels You Need to Read," including:
"The black-and-white scratchboard art of German comics creator Thomas Ott is without peer among today's comics artists. That Ott can also tell one helluva fun horror short story is almost icing on the cake.... This omnibus volume [R.I.P.: Best of 1985-2004] collects his three out-of-print albums... I've never read a Thomas Ott tale that was anything less than fantastic. Highly recommended."
"...[Richard Sala] has carved his own niche as perhaps the most twisted but brilliant cartoonist working in comics today.... Labyrinthine in its complexity and endlessly imaginative in its designs and characterizations, [The Chuckling Whatsit] tells the story of Broom, an unemployed writer who gets mixed up in a murder plot and the Ghoul Appreciation Society Headquarters (GASH), whose membership boasts more creepy eccentrics than the collected works of Edward Gorey."
• Review/Interview: After reviewing Yeah!, Vice's Nick Gazin asked writer Peter Bagge about some things that troubled him about the comic:
[Gazin:] The main feeling that the comic left me with was a crushing sense of hopelessness. With the exception of the cover art, the girls usually seem unhappy.
[Bagge:] Why?!? Well, I gave them troubled backstories, but they sure have a lot of fun at the same time.
[Gazin:] I guess I feel like Krazy, Honey, and Woo Woo don't usually look like they're having fun. They look troubled, upset, or angry in almost every panel. They go to other planets, but they usually don't enjoy it. Even when Woo Woo gets to date her rockstar crush, Hobo Cappiletto, she's too racked with guilt to be able to enjoy it. It seems like they're only having fun on the front and back cover.
[Bagge:] Good point! I guess I simply enjoy their misery. I'm a monster!
• Opinion: Help put Yeah! in perspective by reading Peter Bagge's essay "Raiding Hannah's Stash: An Appreciation of Late '90s Bubblegum Music" at Scram magazine
• Interview: At Comic Book Resources, Shaun Manning talks to Jason and Fabien Vehlmann about collaborating on their new graphic novel Isle of 100,000 Graves. Says Vehlmann: "I love his incredible and unusual style, and I didn't want to change it totally... So even if I created the entire story and the characters of Isle of 100,000 Graves, I also did kind of a 'forger-job,' trying to write as if I was Jason but also bringing my own private topics (death, childhood, etc...), which was a very exciting challenge." Manning says of the book, "Displaying all of the keen wit, sharp twists and disarming sincerity readers have come to love in books like Werewolves of Montpellier, I Killed Adolf Hitler and others, Isle of 100,000 Graves teams the artist known as Jason with writer Fabien Vehlmann for a wholly original adventure tale that pushes both creators in an intriguing new direction."
• Plug: "Get ready, because if you like comics in which monsters and barbarian wrestlers beat the living shit out of each other (and who doesn’t?), [Prison Pit Book Three] is probably going to be the best book you’ve read since Prison Pit Book Two." – Ben Spencer, Nerd City
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