Lucy Knisley Presents Relish: My Life in the Kitchen at Fantagraphics Bookstore

April 11, 2013 - Seattle, WA. New York cartoonist Lucy Knisley will appear at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Friday, April 19 at 7:00 PM to discuss her new graphic memoir Relish: My Life in the Kitchen.

As the daughter of a chef, the artist examines her life in the context of cooking, from casual childhood comfort food to exotic gourmet cuisine. Knisley's engaging narrative is interspersed with appealing recipes, resulting in readers working up quite an appetite. With that in mind, her slide talk will be followed by a tasting of some of the delicious offerings in the book: Sautéed mushrooms, pasta carbonara, chocolate chip cookies, and more. The perfect complement to a comic book about food!

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street in Seattle's historic Georgetown arts community. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

BAM, BeerAndMovie Fest, returns for its 4th year in the Portland market. Sponsored exclusively by Ninkasi Brewing and Fantagraphics Books, BAM takes place April 5-11 at the Academy Theater, and April 5-May 2 at the Laurelhurst Theater. Sexy Time editor Jacques Boyreau tells you why you need to be there:

With BAM (BeerAndMovie) in its 4th year, can BAB (BeerAndBook) be far off? Let's hope it ain't! If the alignment design (by Olga Lopata) between Fantagraphics Books and Ninkasi Brewing that adorns our marquee is any omen, expect BAB soon.

Back to BAM...as the info posits, we got some cool movies ready to go. Speaking to the mosh of BAM, what fest has ever existed that so neatly connected ANNIE HALL with THE DUELLISTS (portraits of obsession); or HARD BOILED with PATHS OF GLORY (studies of body counts); or WHERE EAGLES DARE with STARSHIP TROOPERS (paragons of WW2 fetish); or ROAD HOUSE with KELLY'S HEROES (macho magical realism meets feminine absurdity). Yes it is so---BAM occupies the most potentially integrated, schizoidal zone of Pop Rep Cinema known to man or venue...Zoinx! All you need do is recall that in our first year we paired BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA with ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING.

The Academy series comprises 4 titles showing every day, April 5-11: ANNIE HALL (1977), STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997), ROAD HOUSE (1989), and HARD BOILED (1992). All Academy titles are on 35mm film.

The Laurelhurst series runs 4 consecutive weeks, with each title playing for the whole week: April 5-11 WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968), April 12-18 PATHS OF GLORY (1957), April 19-25 KELLY'S HEROES(1970), April 26-May 2 THE DUELLISTS (1977). All Laurelhurst titles are digital prints.

So sit your butts in some seats for sweet films and win some Fantagraphics books while you're there! Brew Views says "it’s still a great excuse to gather with a group of friends, the Swayze and some giant bugs for a beer—or six." There's even an art contest called "Interpreting Patrick Swayze" going on during the fest. Wanna draw the Swaze? You can turn in your art in the theater during any show or email it directly to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Here are some of early entries:

Tim Colley captures the Road House homoeroticism between Swayze's "Dalton" character and the mysteriously named "Jimmy" (played by Marshall R. Teague).

Colley goes "meta" with this Swayze-as-tat piece.

Venue Information:

Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark Street
Portland, OR 97215
503.252.0500
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Laurelhurst Theater
2735 East Burnside Street
Portland, OR 97214
503.232.5511
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Just a cool note that some of our artists' work has been appearing on The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. It's friggin' awesome because you (dear reader) have been with us for a long time, supporting the likes of Tony Millionaire or our political comics, this is Janet Hamlin's first book with us, and now they are showing up on your computer monitors or TVs or Google glass. Above, Steve Colbert ran a picture of Tony Millionaire's cover to the classic Moby Dick. Below is a clip of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show discussing Guantanamo Bay detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his reaction to courtroom sketch of himself by Hamlin. Hamlin was the only media allowed to visually document the trials from 2006-early 2013.

 Janet Hamlin's work also appeared on The Colbert Report last month in a piece on censorship of the Guantanamo Bay courtroom trials with Stephen Colbert. You can pre-order her book Sketching Guantanamo from us today. Enjoy the twisted system that is American justice in action.

The creator of the acclaimed graphic novels Bottomless Belly Button and Bodyworld hits the road in support of his new graphic novel, New School, as well as the one-shot comic book, 3 New Stories. At each location, Dash Shaw will be signing copies of his new books before their wide release, often with a gallery full of original artwork and presentations of his animation works (including the Sigur Rós video, "Seraph"). New School is a full-color, classic coming-of-age story that encapsulates the current generation, both trapped and enthralled by pop culture. Shaw dramatizes the story two brothers, one moving to an exotic country where an ambitious new amusement park recreates historical events and the younger one who goes to find his brother after years of little contact. New School is unlike anything in the history of the comics medium: at once funny and deadly serious, easily readable while wildly artistic, personal and political, familiar and completely new.

Here's a trailer for the book with art and animation by Shaw, killer music by Lily Benson and Doron Sadja.

Dash Shaw lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently writing and directing an animated feature film.

"A former student of the genius artist-seer-cartoonist Gary Panter, Dash, it's fair to say, is something of a genius as well." - Chris Ware

Complete Venue Information:

Desert Island
540 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718.388.5087

MoCCA Festival, NYC
69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Avenue
between E. 25th & E. 26th Street
New York, NY 10010

Hub Comics
19 Bow St
Somerville, MA 02143
617.718.0987

Atomic Books
3620 Falls Rd.
Baltimore, MD 21211
410.662.4444

Carnegie Library Comics Conference
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Copacetic Comics Company
3138 Dobson St. - 3rd floor
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
412.251.5421
Event Page

Light Industry
155 Freeman Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222

Stumptown Comics Fest
Oregon Convention Center
777 NE ML King Blvd.
Portland, OR 97232

Floating World
400 NW Couch St
Portland, OR 97209
503.241.0227

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St.
Seattle, WA 98108
206.658.0110

TCAF (Toronto Comics Arts Festival)
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4W 2G8

In keeping with a long-standing hip hop tradition, Ed Piskor has asked a bunch of his pals & peers to "guest" on his new book Hip Hop Family Tree (coming this Fall) by contributing pin-up pages. Traditional Comics maestro (and Gangsta Rap Posse creator) Benjamin Marra just posted up his tribute to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund continues to bless objects with Jaime Hernandez's artwork. They have taken his Libby image from the Membership Card seen below (and shirts and hoodies) to make gorgeous limited edition prints. Utilizing the press at Aardvark Letterpress and help from CBLDF Member Store The Secret Headquarters in LA this 11 x 14 inch print is available to people pledging at the DEFENDER Level ($250) and higher.

Here Jaime is approving the design by cartoonist Malachi Ward to accompany his own artwork. Deputy Director Alex Cox states, "Mr. Hernandez was involved in the design process, and as you can see, an enormous amount of love and care went into to getting these prints just right." Visit their site to see how the prints turned out, here's a hint: GOOOOOOOOOLLLLLDDD.

CBLDF Membership Card:

If you're impatient for us to start tackling Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy Sundays (we're just publishing the dailies right now), follow our pall Scott Allan's new Nancy Every Sunday blog for a regular fix. Above, Nancy's first Sunday appearance in Fritzi Ritz, 1933.

Drew Friedman's illustration of former NYC mayor Ed Koch appears in the current issue of The New Yorker. And now Koch is dead. Correlation... or causation? RIP Hizzoner.

(Post title suggested by Drew himself.) 

This Thursday, Dr. Ana Merino will give the first lecture in spring series at the Ohio State University. "Comic Books and Latino Identities: The Power  of Los Bros Hernandez" is the title of her talk on Thursday, January 31st at the Cartoon Room of the Ohio Union. Join this comics scholar, who has worked as an ICAF Executive Committe member, professor at Dartmouth College and the Center for Cartoon Studies and much more, from 4-5:30pm for her critical analysis of culture, identity and the printed page.

From the OSU press release: In the 1980s, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez transformed the way most comic characters were developed by adding a crucial landscape of alternative identities and cultures to the white mainstrem American. Both Brothers projected aspects of their own experience growing up as Latinos in the USA with "Love and Rockets" They consolidated a rich and inspiring way to develop graphic fiction in their work, strong women, especially US Latina and Latin American characters, became the cornerstone of a new vision for comics. DIversity in every sense was added to the space of comics, bringing a much needed multiethnic vision.

Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez started something grand 30 years ago that Beto and Jaime still produce. Should Dr. Merino's talk spark an interest in a new reader, you know where to find us. Heck, we even made a handy dandy reading guide .

 Cartoonist, animator and story teller Dash Shaw's animated music video for band Sigur Ros entitled "Seraph" will be shown at next year's Sundance Film Festival. This six and half minute film will appear in the animated short section of the festival. For those of you not attending, feel free to watch it here from home in your jam-jams.

Shaw's book graphic novel and comic New School and 3 New Stories are scheduled to come out next March.