FLOG! Entries tagged 'meta'

Change in international Air Mail shipping charges

mike

Due to a recent USPS postal rate increase, we have had to raise our shipping charges for international Air Mail delivery by approximately 10 percent. You can see the new rates on our Shipping Charges & Information page. Charges for DHL Global Mail delivery have not changed and remain the most economical option for our overseas customers.

2012 Critics' Picks

mike

As with every year we've been diligently compiling our books' appearances on end-of-year lists and for your browsing and shopping reference we have created a handy page of 2012 Critics' Picks, listing books that are being chosen by critics, fellow artists, readers and other comics professionals as the Best of 2012. (See also the 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 lists — these lists can also be found under "Award Winners" in our "Browse Shop" navigation tab.) This page will continue expanding as the year winds down and into the new year and more lists are announced.

If you're a critic, blogger, pundit and/or enthusiast who's putting together your own Best of 2012 list and need to be reminded which of your favorite Fantagraphics titles were released this year (and there's a lot of them), by all means use our complete and up-to-date 2012 Releases section as your guide. (Note that this list includes multipacks which may contain previous years' releases.)

Here comes Santa Claus - and the new Fantagraphics Ultimate Catalog!

mike

Arriving in mailboxes imminently: the 2013 edition (we've lost count of how many of these things we've put out) of the Fantagraphics Ultimate Catalog of Comics! It's jam-packed with our 2012 releases, a few upcoming 2013 releases, and a bunch of backlist stuff. It also has an update on our FBI•MINI mail-order bonus program and some surprise exclusive money-saving offers! And, of course, there's a handy order form for ordering everything.

If you're not already on our mailing list, contact us to request your free copy, and if you just can't wait and/or want to have it on your computer or mobile device, we've also made it available as an 9 MB PDF download.

The Unexpurgated Swamp Talk Annotations from Pogo Vol. 2

mike

R.C. Harvey, who seemingly knows everything about everything, once again shared the expanse of his knowledge in his annotations for our latest collection of Walt Kelly's Pogo strips and once again we had to bleed the red pen dry and carve Harv's original text down considerably from the original 10,000 (or so) words to print it in the allotted space in Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2 - Bona Fide Balderdash. But again, since the internet knows no such space limitations, we are pleased to present the unadulterated, unedited Harv here on our website. (And if you've just picked up the new box set of Vols. 1 and 2, you can find his unexpurgated Vol. 1 notes here.)

So get comfy, maybe fix yourself a nice mug of cocoa. We'll start with the intro here, and then you can carry on to the notes themselves. If you know Harv, you know that his loquaciousness and erudition is matched only by his delightfully readable prose. Enjoy! – Ed.

Swamp Talk
Annotations and Historical Data
By R.C. Harvey

lthough celebrated for his political allegory and satire, Walt Kelly laced Pogo with allusions to other aspects of contemporary life in America, plus literary references and snatches of poetry. In our less than literate society of 140-character communiques, many of Kelly’s nods at literature are obscure to the point of irrelevance, and the targets of much of his political sniping are no longer visible: sixty years after the fact, the events he so gleefully mocked have long been forgotten. My assignment here at the back of the book is to pull back the veil that the passage of time has drawn over the Pogo proceedings by reminding us of some of those things we’ve lost sight of.

Harmless drudgery though it is, I take heart at the words of comics afficionado and cartooner Clay Geerdes, who once said: “Probably only a handful of people, cartoonists among them, understand the many levels Kelly worked on in a single strip. He was to comics what William Faulkner was to the psychological novel” — an insight that doubtless justifies a few more generations of copiously footnoted articles about Pogo.

And so I plunge once again to a swirl of elucidation (clarifying explanation) the tedium of which will no doubt yield an ennui (listless boredom) greater than the enervating (paralyzing) effect of the bafflement that might otherwise prevail.

The period embraced by this volume (1951-52) provides a happy sample of the sort of crowd-pleasing antics that Kelly was staging in those days just before he turned the spotlight on political commentary; instead, we have unrelenting vaudevillian nonsense, mostly untinged by any topicalities whatsoever. His objective, he said, was to be funny. "I come from a school of old-time cartooning," he went on. "In the old days, we tried to make a buck out of drawing. I go after whatever seems funny to me."

In his pursuit of funny, Kelly eschewed plots. Plots, to Kelly, were not realistic. "The plot is an invention of storytellers," he said. And if none of his characters ever accomplishes anything or achieves whatever goal may have inspired the commencement of an action, that's realistic. "There are no pay-offs in real life," Kelly explained. "Besides, it always rings untrue when you try to wind up with a specific conclusion."

Consequently (in case you haven't noticed already), in Pogo things happen in much the same fashion as a ball of yarn unravels if rolled across the floor by a playful kitten. Pogo and the rest of "nature's screechers" that populate the swamp may begin with one thing in mind, but they are easily distracted (by misapprehended speeches or actions, by puns or other word play, by the arrival of a newcomer in their midst) into following an internal logic of their own that bears little or no resemblance to the meaning the rest of us fabricate for the world around us. And all the time, Kelly was honing his skill at political satire — as we can see in the pages to the fore, illuminated, we trust, by these notes at the aft. We begin with the daily strips; then, the Sundays.

Holiday Shipping Cutoffs for 2012

mike

Hello, loyal mail-order customers! Just a friendly reminder that in order for your shipment to be delivered in time for the Christmas holiday, we must receive your order before 5 PM Pacific time on the following dates (note that these are guidelines and not a guarantee of delivery):

International – Global Mail: Tuesday, November 27
International – Airmail: Monday, December 10
Domestic – Media Rate/UPS Ground: Friday, December 14
Domestic – Priority Mail: Monday, December 17
Domestic – 2nd Day UPS: Thursday, December 20

See our Shipping Charges & Information page for more general information on shipping methods, rates and so on.

(Image from Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking — the perfect stocking stuffer!)

Disabling comments on FLOG

mike

Just a quick note to say that we've removed the comments here on Flog due to the unmanageable volume of spam. We're sorry if your searing insight or witty bon mot has been lost to the ether. If you have questions or remarks to share with us, in lieu of leaving a comment please join us on Facebook and Twitter, or just send them via good old-fashioned email. Thanks for reading!

Always buckle up

mike

I'd like to take a rare personal moment here on Flog for a public service announcement: I walked away from this with a few minor scrapes and bruises yesterday. The other guy's OK too. Wear your seatbelts, folks.

This is also to explain why we've been relatively quiet the last couple of days as I've been taking some time off and to let you know we might miss posting some news and announcements in our usual timely-ish fashion for a little while as I try to catch up.

Weekend Webcomics for 2/17/12: new Angelman, old Kupperman

mike

We've got our new Nicolas Mahler Angelman page for you! And in lieu of a new Up All Night strip Michael Kupperman has provided a rarity from his vaults.

And a note on a change here: I've greatly enjoyed bringing you weekly roundups of comics by our artists from elsewhere around the web, but putting them together here on Flog has proven to be labor-intensive, so from now on I'll be posting those strips on our Tumblr blog when appropriate, because that's easier. Of course I strongly encourage you to go through previous posts, link through to the sources of those strips and add them to your bookmarks and/or RSS reader, if you like 'em.

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Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

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

Presenting: Angelman!

kimt

We are proud and pleased to be publishing our first Nicolas Mahler book (a full-color hardcover, no less) this coming April: ANGELMAN. As a special blog bonus, we will serialize the first quarter of the book with the rest of our weekly digital comics, beginning this Friday... at the end of which, you will be so absorbed in Angelman's travails that you will have no choice but to pick up the book. Enjoy! Here is the title page of the book, to further whet your appetite.

Between this and Jaime Hernandez's GOD AND SCIENCE, Fantagraphics' 2012 goal will be to remind everyone that the super-hero comics genre isn't completely played out.

Unexpurgated Swamp Talk!

kimt

There are many ways to describe R.C. Harvey, but, as anyone who has accidentally dropped his nearly-1,000-page opus Meanwhile... A Biography of Milton Caniff on his or her toes can attest, "man of few words" is not necessarily one of them. (I say this as someone who read each and every word in Meanwhile... with delight and fascination.) So it should have come as no surprise to us when Harv, commissioned to write a set of elucidatory notes for the first Pogo volume and given no word limit (as is our jauntily laissez-faire method here at Fantagraphics), turned in a 13,000-word monster of an essay entitled "Swamp Talk." Given available space, it was a bit too much, and Harv and contributing editor Mark Evanier had to go in with a machete and whack it down to size (less than half—and still not short by any means, as those who are enjoying the book already know).

But the fact is, Harv's original full-length "Swamp Talk" has plenty of delightfully chewy bits in the parts that were cut, so with the kind permission of Harv and Pogo co-editors Evanier and Carolyn Kelly, we're pleased to present the unexpurgated "Swamp Talk" in digital form here — perfect for perusing with the book on your lap.

And if you don't have the book yet, well... Rowrbrazzle! What are you waiting for?

Should Harv feel the need to ascend into the quintuple digits on "Swamp Talks" in future volumes, the "shortened version in print, full version on the internet" template seems like the way to go so far as we're concerned.

Get ready for the new catalog!

mike

Our new Ultimate Catalog, arriving in mailboxes soon! Dig that glorious Floyd Gottfredson artwork. If you’re not already on our mailing list and like getting cool stuff in the mail, contact us to request your free copy. And if you want a tree-free version (although they're already all printed, so you wouldn't really be saving anything) we'll be making it available as a PDF download soon too.

We're on Google+

mike

Are you on Google+? Now we are too! Join our circle, or +1 us, or whatever they call it... we're still figuring it out, but I think we're off to a fairly decent start.

Don't forget we have lots of other ways for you to socially network with us too!

Need a logo?

mike

If you're a member of the press, retailer or other comics industry person who needs a digital file of one of our logos for any reason (such as the above emblem by Daniel Clowes), we've just uploaded a selection of them to a Flickr set for you to grab and use. (If you need vector files, you'll still have to contact us.) And don't forget to check out all of our other digital assets on our Resources for Press and Retailers page!

So we started a Tumblr

mike

Yep, yet another way for you to follow us! In additon to Flog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. we now have a Tumblr blog. We've noticed a bit of a burgeoning community there and it seemed like it might be fun what with the "liking" and "reblogging" and whatnot, so what the heck. We're still getting into the swing of things and learning as we go (and we may yet change our design theme) but I think hopefully we're doing it right so far and we invite you to check it out and maybe follow along.

(I should also note that we're on the brink of having 10,000 followers on Facebook, which is amazing.)

New rush shipping rates in effect

mike

An FYI for our mail-order customers: We recently analyzed our shipping costs and found that what we were charging for 2nd-Day UPS within the United States wasn't quite covering the actual cost, so we've raised our 2nd-Day rates by $5.00 for orders of $5.00 or more. So, if you have a rush order, you'll pay a little more for shipping. All other charges remain unchanged. See our updated shipping-charge matrix here.

Introducing our Vintage Comics section

mike

We've made a perhaps-overdue update to our online shop, creating a new category called "Vintage Comics" for our collections of early comic book stories. This should make them easier to find all together than in the overarching "Classic" category, which includes newspaper strips, illustration books and other stuff.

What it is:

"Fantagraphics is pleased to present collections of the finest comic book art and artists from the pioneering days of comic books in the middle decades of the 20th Century (and scholarly writing thereon). These lovingly-restored, beautifully-designed tomes present the best and most noteworthy work from the era, in genres ranging from superheroes to horror to crime to romance to humor. These books will hone your appreciation of the exciting and groundbreaking stories and artwork from the early days of comic books — not to mention providing a lot of fun reading!"

The link to the section has a permanent home in our "Browse Shop" menu tab, under the "Interests & Topics" heading (formerly "Interests"). You may notice we made a few other tweaks to that menu as well, mainly shuffling some items around into a (hopefully) more logical configuration. Hope you like it!

Shipping notice: inventory time

mike

FYI: Our warehouse is doing inventory today and tomorrow. This shouldn't disrupt our normal shipping operations too much, although rush orders placed during this time will be delayed slightly, so please keep that in mind when placing an order. Thanks!

Browse our new Memoir & Autobiography section

mike

Inspired by our recent graphic memoir triumphs You'll Never Know and Special Exits, and prompted by a reader request or two, we've gathered our memoir and autobiographical titles into their own section on our website. (The link can also be found under "Interests" in our "Browse Shop" menu.) Note that these are comics whose main content is autobiographical in nature; you can still find autobiographical strips and stories in other titles found elsewhere. It's also possible we've missed one or two titles, so if you notice any omissions, please let us know.

Our memoir & autobio books are from a diverse group of voices in a variety of styles. Sometimes the names are changed and details dramatized, but these stories based on true life will enthrall, amuse, shock, inspire and/or move you.

2010 Critics' Picks

mike

It's that time of year, and as with past years for your browsing and shopping reference we have created a handy page of 2010 Critics' Picks, listing books that are being selected by critics, fellow artists, readers and other comics professionals as the Best of 2010. (See also the 2008 and 2009 lists — these lists can also be found under "Award Winners" in our "Browse Shop" navigation tab.) This page will continue expanding as the year winds down and more lists appear. And of course we're noting the critics' selections here in our "Daily OCD" posts on Flog — they're all categorized under the "Best of 2010" tag.

If you're a critic, blogger, pundit and/or enthusiast who's putting together your own Best of 2010 list and need to be reminded which of your favorite Fantagraphics releases were released this year, by all means use our complete and up-to-date 2010 Releases section as your guide. (Note that this list includes multipacks which may contain previous years' releases.)

Things to See: Ray Fenwick book patterns

mike

Here's a cool thing that Ray Fenwick has done: pattern designs for a series of books from Houghton Mifflin in which two of an author's works are bound together as one volume. See them individually on Ray's Flickr.

[A brief meta note: I'm trying a different approach to "Things to See," spotlighting certain things with individual posts, rounding up regularly-featured items in omnibus posts as before, and possibly moving some links to the "Weekend Webcomics" posts. Feedback is welcome.]