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As if the promise of half-price books at our giant scratch-and-dent Spring Cleaning Sale all this weekend at our storefront weren't enticement enough on its own, feast your eyes on this spread:
Video? Why not! Selection is still good, so come on down!
The blowout Spring Cleaning Sale at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, with 50% off hundreds of scratch-and-dent books, is going on RIGHT NOW -- hustle on down for the best selection. Then, head on back tomorrow night from 6-9 for Martin Bland's "Randomized Control Trials" sound installation. For a taste of what to expect, download this MP3 of the aptly-titled "The Explainer": Martin Bland - "The Explainer" (1.87 MB MP3) We also have an EXCLUSIVE Martin Bland composition entitled "Warehouse" and featuring, you guessed it, the sounds of the Fantagraphics warehouse: Martin Bland - "Warehouse" (4.42 MB MP3)
FANTAGRAPHICS NEW YORK COMICON SIGNING SCHEDULE: FRIDAY: 3 - 5PM: DASH SHAW (The Bottomless Belly Button, Mome) SATURDAY: 11AM - 1PM: CRAIG YOE (Arf!) 1 - 3PM: PAUL KARASIK (I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!) 1 - 3PM: MICHAEL KUPPERMAN (Tales Designed to Thrizzle) 3 - 5PM: MISS LASKO-GROSS (Escape from "Special") 3 - 5PM: DASH SHAW (The Bottomless Belly Button, Mome) SUNDAY: 11AM - 1PM: LEAH HAYES (Funeral of the Heart) 11AM - 1PM: DASH SHAW (The Bottomless Belly Button, Mome) 1 - 2:30PM: KIM DEITCH (Shadowland, The Stuff of Dreams) 1 - 3PM: GLENN HEAD (Hotwire Comix) 1 - 3PM: CRAIG YOE (Arf!) 3 - 4PM: LEAH HAYES (Funeral of the Heart) 3 - 5PM: MISS LASKO- GROSS (Escape from "Special") 4 - 5PM: KIM DEITCH (Shadowland, The Stuff of Dreams) New York Comic Con, taking place April 18-20 at the Javits Center in New York City, is the East Coast's biggest popular culture convention, and in 2008 Fantagraphics Books - the west coast's biggest alternative comics publisher - will join the ranks of exhibitors for the first time. Publishers Gary Groth and Kim Thompson will be on hand all weekend, hosting round-the-clock signings for several authors and debuting several new titles at the show.
You are invited to two exciting Bay Area events featuring acclaimed Berkeley author Bob Levin, whose new book, Most Outrageous, details the unsettling story of the life of Hustler cartoonist Dwaine Tinsley, creator of "Chester the Molester." When Larry Flynt's Superstar was accused of sexually abusing his teenaged daughter for five years, the prosecution brought in hundreds of Tinsley's cartoons as evidence. Levin details this unprecedented case, and Tinsley's family life, with unquestionable sophistication, exhaustive journalistic research, and humanity. WHO: Bob Levin WHO: Bob Levin For more information and the full press release, please click here.
You are invited to the world premiere of Jules Feiffer's long-awaited collection, Explainers, featuring the complete first decade of his legendary and groundbreaking comic strip, Sick, Sick, Sick (and later redubbed Feiffer), from the Village Voice. Feiffer will read from the book and answer questions before signing copies of the deluxe hardcover collection.
"Samuel Johnson said he hoped God would think he had made good of his God-given talents. Jules Feiffer need have no dread of such an audit... What has made his services so welcome for so many years now is his possession, in addition to high intelligence, of something no hypocrite or egomaniac could claim, which is a human sense of humor." - Kurt Vonnegut
WHO: Jules Feiffer This event is free and open to the public. For more information and the full press release, please click here.
If you're in New York, or will be in New York for the big New York Comicon, you won't want to miss this:
If you've never heard Mark or Paul speak, you'll be hard-pressed to find two guys who can talk comics any better. And if you haven't checked out Desert Island yet, by all accounts you should. Book Signing and "Show and Tell" with Garbage Pail Kids creator Mark Newgarden and cartoonist/archivist Paul Karasik at Williamsburg's newest comic and book store, Desert Island Desert Island is pleased to announce its inaugural event, a book signing and "show and tell" featuring Garbage Pail Kids creator Mark Newgarden and Fletcher Hanks archivist Paul Karaik on Friday, April 18th from 8:00 to 10:00 PM. Desert Island is located at 540 Metropolitan Avenue between Union and Lorimer. Having just opened in late February of this year, Desert Island is Williamsburg's newest comic and book store, and a local resource for fans of independent publishing and artist books. Owned and run by artist Gabriel Fowler, Desert Island will host a series of similar events throughout the year. Mark Newgarden will be signing his popular Bow-Wow series of children's books created with Megan Montague Cash, as well as his 2006 collection We All Die Alone and other works. Paul Karasik will be signing I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks, his compilation of 15 of Hank's "best" stories published last year by Fantagraphics. Karasik spent years tracking down these obscure and hard to find stories buried in the back of long-forgotten comic book titles. Through his research, he also uncovered the dark secret of why Hanks disappeared from the comics scene. In addition to signing books, Paul and Mark will be exhibiting relics including Fletcher Hanks' earliest known work plus censored and rejected Garbage Pail Kids artwork! Comic archaeologist and cartoonist Paul Karasik studied at the School of Visual Arts with cartoonists Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, and Art Spiegelman. He was Associate Editor of Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's avant-garde international comics and graphics review, RAW. In addition he published his own magazine, Bad News, which was among the first to run the work of cartoonists Ben Katchor, Gary Panter, and others. In collaboration with artist David Mazzucchelli, he adapted Paul Auster's novel City of Glass as a graphic novel, which was named one of the best 100 comics of the century by The Comics Journal. Mr. Karasik's cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker and Nickelodeon magazines. He has taught cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Packer Collegiate in Brooklyn, and, for the past three years, at the Scuola de Comics in Florence, Italy. Cartoonist and author Mark Newgarden is the co-creator of the 1980's non-PC icon Garbage Pail Kids. He has long championed cheap junk as the 20th century's great art form & has subsequently unleashed a torrent of warped & weird entertainments in a multitude of forms. In 1999 he completed writing and directing 4 episodes of "B. Happy" the first of the experimental " Web Premiere Toons" for Cartoonnetwork.com. and subsequently established an award-winning studio, Laffpix Inc. His picture history of the practical joke and novelty industry; Cheap Laffs; was published by Harry S. Abrams in 2004 and We All Die Alone; a monograph collection of his comics and stories was released from Fantagraphics Books in 2005. His first children's book Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug (with collaborator Megan Montague Cash) was released in 2007 by Harcourt and has won numerous awards and honors including a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators. This will be the first in a series of "show and tell" events at Desert Island, which will serve to encourage the appreciation of the odd and quirky. LISTING INFO: WHO: Paul Karasik & Mark Newgarden Desert Island Comics
Anyone heading to Portland for Stumptown later this month might wanna get to town a couple of nights early for this one:
On Thursday, April 17, author David Hajdu will be at Town Hall to promote his new book, THE TEN CENT PLAGUE, detailing the Senate crackdown on comic books in the 1950s amidst fears of their contributing to juvenile delinquency. Fantagraphics didn't publish this book, but we like it so much that we're teaming up with Town Hall to promote the event. For you NEW YORKER readers out there, the current issue includes a review of THE TEN CENT PLAGUE (as well as a swell "Talk of the Town" piece by Lillian Ross about Drew Friedman's Friar's Club event to promote MORE OLD JEWISH COMEDIANS). Anyway, we hope you'll join us for what promises to be a fascinating talk about one of the more curious and ignoble moments in American pop culture history, a period which put several comic book publishers out of business and threatened to destroy the industry completely. Here's the full description: Conventional wisdom places rock 'n' roll at the dawn of American youth culture, but it was the comic books of the 1930s and '40s that first created a radical divide between the generations. David Hajdu looks at why Jews — such as Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, and Stan Lee — dominated the comic book industry, and how they employed comics to express their Jewish experience. Music critic for The New Republic, Hajdu is the author of Positively 4th Street. His new book is The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America. Presented by Nextbook: Public Programs on Jewish Literature, Culture and Ideas. Advance tickets are $8/$6 Town Hall members, students, and under 25 only at www.nextbook.org. Call 206/744-2289 for more information. Thursday, April 17, 2008, 7:30 PM. Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street.
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKSTORE & GALLERY HOSTS “MARTIN BLAND’S RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIALS” ON SATURDAY, APRIL 12 Fantagraphics Books’ resident genius will present his recent experimental sound project, “Martin Bland’s Randomized Control Trials,” on Saturday, April 12 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. This event coincides with the colorful “Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack.” The bookstore will also offer a huge “Spring Cleaning Sale” with hundreds of graphic novels marked at 50% off from April 11 though April 13. Fantagraphics Bookstore employee Martin Bland has an impressive musical pedigree. He was the drummer for Australia’s legendary psyche-garage band Lubricated Goat prior to relocating to Seattle 1992. He performed with Bloodloss and Monroe’s Fur and later joined Fantagraphics alums Mark Arm (Mudhoney, Mr. Epp) and Tom Price (U-Men, Gas Huffer) in the grunge supergroup Monkeywrench, which also featured Tim Kerr (Big Boys) and Steve Turner (Mudhoney). Monkeywrench recently released a posthumous collection, “Gabriel’s Horn,” on the Birdman label. Martin Bland’s Randomized Control Trials represents a departure from his previous work. “The premise involved using the ‘shuffle’ program on a group of compact disc players running simultaneously to produce unique arrangements of original music,” Bland explains. “All of the pieces followed a few guidelines: the musicians should be recorded separately from one another with little or no idea what the other musicians had played. They would be given a loose theme to improvise on and a rigid tempo to follow. These recordings were transferred on to a computer and cut into short phrases and fragments. Once all of the music for a piece had been recorded, each instrument was then assigned a CD player. The CD players were then played simultaneously with the ‘shuffle’ program activated, thus producing a unique arrangement of the piece each time. Some of the voices were of a ‘found’ nature but none of the music was sampled from other sources.” The resulting recordings are often stunning and always entertaining. The presentation on April 12 will reflect the random nature of the concept. Featured musicians include Bland, Price, and Arm, as well as violinists Janis Wildy and Tom Swafford, pianist John Wright, and a host of contributors from various musical genres. Examples can be heard by clicking headlines at: http://martinblandsrct.blogspot.com. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery will also be the site of the publisher’s “Spring Cleaning Sale” on April 11 though April 13. Hundreds of slightly marred or damaged graphic novels will be offered at half price. Titles by Fantagraphics superstars including Peter Bagge, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, R. Crumb, Ellen Forney, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Charles M. Schulz, Joe Sacco, Jim Woodring and dozens more will be featured. And Drew Friedman’s exquisite exhibition of original art “The Fun Never Stops!” remains on display through May 6. The space is located at 1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.) in the heart of Georgetown. Open daily 11:30 – 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone: 206.658.0110 As always, patrons of all ages are welcome, and admission is free. Listing Information Martin Bland’s Randomized Control Trials |
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