We'd like to thank everyone involved in making 2012 a spectacular success at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Gifted artists, authors, musicians, and curators coalesced to create a stimulating cultural atmosphere at the space. 

Thanks to artists Peter Bagge, Gabrielle Bell, Jeffrey Brown, Nathan Bulmer, Charles Burns, Art Chantry, Jack Davis, Michael Dougan, Ellen Forney, Camille Rose Garcia, Ruth Hayes, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Tom Kaczynski, David Lasky, Tony Millionaire, Gary Panter, Joe Sacco, Noah Van Sciver, Chris Ware, and Jim Woodring; authors Jim Demonakos, Susan Kirtley, Mark Long, Pat Thomas, and Nico Vassilakos; musicians Geneviève Castrée, Zachary David, Dennis Driscoll, Lori Goldston, Kyle Hanson, and Molly Nilsson; guest curators J. Michael Catron, Max Clotfelter, Michel Gagne, Ben Horak, Cathy Hillenbrand, Tim Miller, Kristy Valenti, and Jen Vaughn; bookstore interns Lillian Beatty and Lillian Morloch; bookstore staff Janice Headley and Russ Battaglia, as well as our retail partners at Georgetown Records.

Most of all we want to thank you - our wonderful patrons - for your enthusiasm and support over the past six years. Cheers!

In the comics and freelance world, you make your own opportunities and draw for a variety of clients. And sometimes, they happen to be a badass brewing company like Brooklyn Brewery. The Tony Millionaire-designed superhero Brooklyn Defender is also a "draft-only hoppy amber IPA". Kegs will be tapped this September 25th and rolling out to many bars for NYCC (New York Comic-Con). While the drink is draft-only, maybe the Brooklyn Brewery will print out some labels as small posters for that niche cross-over of comics and beer fans? Or some stickers, we looooove stickers. Read more on the origins of the Brooklyn Defender and where you can chug-a-lug while in New York today!

The new prepackaged Online Commentaries & Diversion:

•Commentary: The Huffington Post made it over to the Robert Crumb exhibit called "Crumb: From the Underground to the Genesis" at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris: "Never one to shy away from his love-hate relationship with women, Crumb invited the world into his most perverted fantasies, one which includes riding on his mother's boot."

•Interview: Zachary Hunchar of Technorati questions Pete Bagge about a long life in comics. "People expect their entertainment to be for free now," said Bagge. "Musicians compensate for it by performing live more often, but the only equivalent to that for cartoonists is more comic conventions."

•Interview: WTF Podcast with host Marc Maron digs into the essentials of Tony Millionaire's work: "[Marc's place] is like my place, I have a very small garage, built for a model T, and it's cluttered. I have all the corners I need to work in."

•Commentary: Tom Spurgeon is afraid of all the press releases for San Diego Comic-Con will overwhelm your normall-observant Hernandez Brothers' radar. On the Comics Reporter, he made an impassioned called for Love and Rockets coverage during the 2012 Comic-Con International: "It's vital for the medium we love . . . that we treat San Diego as a place where Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez have been in attendance more than 25 times each more than we treat it as a place Steven Spielberg has been to once. Both Jaime and Gilbert remain vital, exciting cartoonists. . ."

•Plug: Gene Ambaum of Unshelved touches on Oil & Water by Steve Duin, Shannon Wheeler and Michael Rosen: "[an] anti plastic activist and bird enthusiast,” who wears a strange cyclops-like lens to aid his bird watching, says he has 'the poop story to end all poop stories.' He doesn’t tell it until the end of the book, so I had to keep reading."

•Review: From a rather rough translation of Swedien's second largest newspaper, Expressen, Jan Gradvall speaks on Paul Nelson from the book Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery: "Paul Nelson invested all of his feelings [in] records, books, movies. Them he could communicate with - not with live people."

Like Father, like Son? Find out for yourself this Saturday, June 2nd as Howard Richardson presents his son, Scott Richardson, a.k.a. Tony Millionaire, in a presentation of amusing drawings and comics!

It's a benefit for the Gloucester Writers Center in Gloucester, MA, where Tony grew up. The GWC was founded to celebrate, preserve and promote the future of Gloucester's rich literary legacy, which certainly includes our Tony!

Join them starting at 7:30 PM at The Harbor Room [ 8 Norwood Ct, Gloucester ]. Tony’s art will be for sale to support the GWC as well.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Any new work from Norwegian cartoonist Jason is worthy of a comics fan’s full attention, but the new, all-original short-story collection Athos in America is one of the best books of Jason’s career, which automatically makes it one of the best books of this year." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "...Joost Swarte... brought a nose-thumbing avant-garde sensibility to 'ligne claire' style Eurocomics in the ’70s and ’80s, even before he landed stories in the seminal art-comics anthology Raw. Is That All There Is? collects nearly 150 pages of Swarte’s most groundbreaking work... With his architectural sense of design and his punk-rock attitude, Swarte fused craft and nihilistic flippancy in stories about adventurers, harlots, musicians, and scientists, creating true 'modern art.'" – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "About all that was missing from Blake Bell’s 2010 Bill Everett biography Fire & Water was extended samples of Everett’s artist’s actual comics. Bell now remedies that by serving as editor on Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1... These publications rode the superhero wave initiated by the companies that would later become DC and Marvel, and while they didn’t withstand the test of time, they’re still a kick to read, buoyed by their no-nonsense action plots and by Everett’s propensity for drawing narrow figures poised to commit acts of violence." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: At The Unshelved Book Club, Gene Ambaum looks at Joe Daly's The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book in that site's unique format

• Review: "This collection is the ultimate love letter to all those 1960s kid comic books, but with a modern twist.... Each person is a well-defined character with strong flaws and backgrounds. With so much diversity, there is bound to be at least one character you will like.... If you are looking for a kid-friendly book with some charm, go ahead and pick [Yeah!] up." – Kevin Brown, City Book Review

• Profile: Steve Appleford of the Los Angeles Times (via a few of their suburban affiliates like the Glendale News Press) visits Tony Millionaire in his garage studio: "In his introduction to 500 Portraits, Millionaire writes that life experience has taught him that 85% of all people are 'bogus' or worse. In the garage, he describes himself as misanthropic, but admits his drawings often suggest otherwise. 'As it turns out, you can tell by looking at these portraits, I obviously love people — even the [jerks]. Hitler's done very lovingly,' he says. 'I think it's nice to have the juxtaposition of my disgust for humanity mixed with my obvious love for humanity. You can't draw like that if you really hate something.'"

• Profile: The Ottawa Citizen's Bruce Deachman catches up with Dave Cooper: "'There are different facets of my creative mind,' he says. 'I feel I need a lot of contrast, so I have all these things happening, but they’re all necessary to make me feel satisfied. It’s got to be this big pot happening, with everything boiling at once. It’s therapy for me,' he adds. 'I don’t see ever wanting to retire from the thing that I love to death.'" There's a short video, too, which Dave has posted on his blog

• Plug: Robot 6's Brigid Alverson is partway through Jim Woodring's Congress of the Animals: "Woodring’s art has a real solidity to it and like the best surrealists, he creates unreal shapes and figures that seem real—he has figured out how to make new bodily orifices that mimic the old and yet are totally different. Like visions in a dream, they are convincing and false at the same time."

• Plug: CHS Capitol Hill Seattle has a great feature on and chat with Cathy Hillenbrand and our upcoming retrospective celebration of her publishing venture Real Comet Press

• List: Bill Jones of Pads & Panels names his Best Comic Books of 2011 including Isle of 100,000 Graves...

"Jason teams up with Fabien Vehlmann to craft a dark comedy about someone following a mysterious map in a bottle to and island where something strange is happening. The premise itself is a spoiler, as it’s a laugh-out-loud moment when the reader finds out what is going on. Jason’s work is as stellar as ever, just with a lot more dialogue this time around."

...and Safe Area Gorazde: The Special Edition:

"Safe Area Goražde wasn’t a new book in 2011, but the special edition it got last year was enough to earn it a spot on this list. Joe Sacco reigns as the preeminent comics journalist, and Safe Area Goražde is another great reason why."

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview (Audio): On the new episode of the Jordan, Jesse, Go! podcast "Cartoonist Tony Millionaire joins Jordan and Jesse at Thorn Manor to teach us etymology, school dance etiquette, and generational pop culture."

• Interview (Video): A brief 2009 video profile of a then-beardy Peter Bagge produced by Stussy to promote their line of Bagge-illustrated t-shirts has been newly uploaded to their Vimeo page (via Forbidden Planet International)

• Yeesh: The good news: the current issue of Seattle's free CityArts magazine contains an excerpt from Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 by Pat Thomas. The bad news: you might find a white-supremacist tract stapled into your copy, reports The Stranger

Kupperman's back! Plus a new Mahler page and links to strips from around the web:

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Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size):

And elsewhere:

The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum at ACT-I-VATE:

Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane:

Humblug by Arnold Roth (two new updates):

Lucky by Gabrielle Bell :

Maakies by Tony Millionaire:

The Pain — When Will It End? (plus answers to last week's "Ghandi or Batman?") by Tim Kreider:

Les Petits Riens by Lewis Trondheim:

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow:

Running a little thin this week — our only exclusive update is Nicolas Mahler's Angelman — but we've got the usual links to strips from around the web:

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Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

And elsewhere:

The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum at ACT-I-VATE:

Amazing Facts... and Beyond! with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga:

Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane:

Forming by Jesse Moynihan:

Humblug by Arnold Roth (two new updates):

Maakies by Tony Millionaire (and anonymous photographers):

The Pain — When Will It End? (plus answers to last week's "Ghandi or Batman?") by Tim Kreider:

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow:

Our weekly strips from Mahler & Weissman (Kupperman's taking another week off), plus links to other strips from around the web:

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Black Classroom by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

And elsewhere:

The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum at ACT-I-VATE:

Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane:

Forming by Jesse Moynihan:

Humblug by Arnold Roth:

Keeping Two by Jordan Crane:

Maakies by Tony Millionaire (via The Rumpus this week):

The Pain — When Will It End? by Tim Kreider:

Les Petits Riens by Lewis Trondheim (animated!):

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow:

Hey look, photos I took at Tony Millionaire's "Portraits" art show & book signing at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery a couple weeks ago! It's always a blast when Tony's in town and we had a fantastic crowd for the event — thanks to everybody who came out! The show continues for a couple more weeks so get on down to see it.

Everybody who got their copy of 500 Portraits signed got a quickie portrait of themselves in it as well, with Tony barking instructions at the subjects ("DON'T SMILE!") — there's Tony working on one above. Below, Tony adds facial hair to his portrait of John Hodgman, as per Hodgman's promise to do the same for anyone who brings him a copy of the book:

Larry Reid introduces his masterful smash-hit short film "Everybody Loves Drinky Crow" as some DOOK DOOK DOOKing goes on:

A still from said film... drink, Drinky, drink!:

Surprise! Charles Burns was in town and made a guest appearance! Here he's chatting with Lynn Emmert & Eric Reynolds:

Fantagraphics' own Ian Burns gets in on the action and gets Tony's addition to his Animal sketchbook — you can see the finished product and a few more snaps from the evening on the blog of our own Stephanie Hayes:

A view of the exhibit — get a closer look at the artwork and see more photos from the evening on our Flickr page!

(Thanks to Janice for help with this post, including the headline!)