160-page full-color 9" x 6.75" hardcover • $22.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-308-8
Joe McCulloch at Comics Comics describes it aptly: "An interesting experiment in Golden Age of Reprints presentational engineering, this new 160-page landscape-format Fantagraphics hardcover collects all of the great Basil Wolverton’s crackpot daily advice strips as seen in the pages of Fawcett’s Whiz Comics, 1945-52, presented in comparison with Wolverton’s original pencil roughs for what looks like every installment." The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon brings the basketball metaphor: "Who doesn't want to read as much Basil Wolverton as they can? He's not in the starting all-time five, but he gets a lot of playing time off the bench." At Comics Alliance Douglas Wolk declaims "Goofiness, history and process!"
128-page color/b&w 7" x 9" softcover • $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-303-3
Joe McCulloch at Comics Comics opines "The centerpiece of this Spring 2010 edition of the Fantagraphics house anthology is, without question, the return of Dave Cooper to comics" and of the other contributors says "That really is a nice lineup"; Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter agrees that it "offers a super-strong line-up of creators." We can't disagree — you can see the full table of contents and samples from each contributor as part of our PDF excerpt.
So head on down to your local comic shop, but not before checking out the bountiful information and sneak peeks at the links above, and it's always a good idea to confirm availability beforehand.
The multiple Harvey and Eisner Award nominee returns for its fifth year. With this issue, the series has now featured over 2000 pages of comics in its four and half years of existence (2109, to be exact), which may be a record for an English-language alternative comics anthology. This issue's cover is by Nate Neal, who delivers "The Neurotic Nexus of Creation," a 15-page explication of the creative process. MOME 18 also includes the first new comic in several years by Dave Cooper, as well as the MOME debuts of Tim Lane, Ivan Brun, Joe Daly, and Jon Adams. Also returning are MOME stalwarts Lilli Carré, Ben Jones, Frank Santoro, Jon Vermilyea, Nicolas Mahler, Ted Stearn, Renée French, Conor O'Keefe, Derek Van Gieson, and T. Edward Bak.
Download an EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF excerpt (5.9 MB) with a page from every artist in the issue.
128-page color/b&w 7" x 9" softcover • $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-303-3
Ships in: March 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
The multiple Harvey and Eisner Award nominee returns for its fifth year. With this issue, the series has now featured over 2000 pages of comics in its four and half years of existence (2109, to be exact), which may be a record for an English-language alternative comics anthology. This issue's cover is by Nate Neal, who delivers "The Neurotic Nexus of Creation," a 15-page explication of the creative process. MOME 18 also includes the first new comic in several years by Dave Cooper, as well as the MOME debuts of Tim Lane, Ivan Brun, Joe Daly, and Jon Adams. Also returning are MOME stalwarts Lilli Carré, Ben Jones, Frank Santoro, Jon Vermilyea, Nicolas Mahler, Ted Stearn, Renée French, Conor O'Keefe, Derek Van Gieson, and T. Edward Bak.
Download an EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF excerpt (5.9 MB) with a page from every artist in the issue.
Scheduled to make their way to comics shops this week:
Mome Vol. 16 - Fall 2009 (note: mistakenly listed as Summer 2009 on Diamond's shipping list) - with the Mome debuts of cover artist Renee French, Nicolas Mahler, Archer Prewitt, & Ted Stearn, plus the usual mess of other great stuff.
You Are There by Jacques Tardi & Jean-Claude Forest - the landmark Eurocomics graphic novel, newly translated and presented for North American audiences for the first time.
More info and previews can, of course, be seen at the links above, so have a look-see, confirm availability with your local shop, and buy buy buy.
This issue features several of our favorite alternative comic artists of the last 15 years, bringing us great joy. Archer Prewitt is the first, with an all-new “Funny Bunny” strip created in between his active musical career. “The Moolah Tree” is the new Fuzz & Pluck graphic novel from Ted Stearn, following Fuzz & Pluck and Fuzz & Pluck: Splitsville, beginning serialization here. We are equally proud to debut new work from Renée French, whose work is also featured on the front and back cover of this issue. And Nicholas Mahler debuts to ask "What Is Art?" (translated by secret weapon Kim Thompson).
Also: the second chapter of T. Edward Bak's "Wild Man - The Strange Journey - and Fantastic Accounts - of the Naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, from Bavaria to Bolshaya Zemlya (and Beyond)"; a new "Cold Heat" story by the team of Ben Jones, Frank Santoro & Jon Vermilyea; Dash Shaw interprets an episode of "Blind Date" into comics form; and new stories from Lilli Carré, Conor O'Keefe, Laura Park, Nate Neal, and Sara Edward-Corbett, with incidental drawings by Kaela Graham.
It brings us great joy to welcome four of our favorite comic artists to the Mome fold in this Fall's Volume 16: Renée French (who graces the cover), Nicholas Mahler, Archer Prewitt and Ted Stearn. Of course, our returning artists are also nothing to sneeze at: T. Edward Bak, Dash Shaw, Lilli Carré, Conor O'Keefe, Laura Park, Nate Neal, Sara Edward-Corbett, and the "Cold Heat" crew of Ben Jones, Frank Santoro and Jon Vermilyea. This issue is now available for pre-order in our online shop. Download our free 12-page PDF excerpt for a sample page from each contributing artist. This book is scheduled be in stock and shipping in mid-September, and in stores approximately 4 weeks later (subject to change).
A comics conversation with award-winning cartoonists Nicolas Mahler and Mark Newgarden. Moderated by Mark David Nevins.
Join us for a lively and visually rich conversation with Nicolas Mahler and Mark Newgarden, in which we will explore how comics work, the marketplaces for graphic humor, where these cartoonists get their ideas, and, yes, the answer to the eternal question, "What is 'Funny'?"
Rivaling even the masterful European cartoonist Jason, Nicolas Mahler makes some of the most patiently deadpan comics around. A lot of cartoonists make use of padded out comic timing but Mahler takes it into a meditative state with a resolute willingness (or perhaps wilfullness) to draw and redraw a scene ad infinitum. He has, for example, hundreds of three-panel comics focused flatly on a man in a recliner wrapped in an electric blanket and his conversations with an alcoholic mother, wherein the only things that ever seem to change are whether the television set is on or the mother is conscious. And where most any other cartoonist would come off as self-indulgent or tedious Mahler pulls off an advent calendar of mundane windows on the world that pay off every time.
Mahler is Austrian and very little of his work has been available in the States. Top Shelf smartly published "Van Helsing's Day Off" (one of my favorite comics), and one other book, "Lone Racer". Otherwise it's been a matter of mail ordering his books, very few of which are even in English, which is the only language I can read. Still, I've collected all those French and German comics just to admire them. While I've heard complaints about his scratchy, abstracted forms, I love the unique, personal quality of the work that demands the viewer pay attention but not over-analyze.
I am also a big fan of "silent" comics that work and Mahler (who calls them "mute comics") is one of the best artists around with silence. "Van Helsing" is a prime example. So is a gorgeous upcoming book that I've seen a little of-- seven stories of the sea, which may be the title (I forget). Hilarious in the way of other minimalist European cartoonists like Jason or Tom Gauld, the thrust of Mahler's work is the absurd and mundane humor in the everyday. I have no idea why those three cartoonists aren't more appreciated by American audiences. (Though Jason has built up a formidable following, I can't help but wonder why he's not on every comic fan's shelf.)
Recently Mahler launched a blog to promote his latest book from Reprodukt, a collection of illustrations of junk emails he's received (such as that up top of this post). Check it out, then go to the Mahler Museum site and poke about to discover all kinds of gems, most of which are even more valuable.
But if, like me, you're an English-language-only fan hoping for more Mahler stateside, the editors of MOME (Eric Reynolds and Gary Groth) have good news: the Fantagraphics anthology will be serializing comics from his Austrian "Madame Goldgruber" books. These stories are the bizarre auto-biographical strips about Mahler's experiences as a cartoonist justifying his work to the IRS-equivalent of Austria (I think), as well as vignettes of time spent at European comic conventions with other cartoonists (such as the also-great Killoffer). Translated by Kim Thompson, these will eventually be collected in book form by Fantagraphics.
Mahler is making comics with all the immediacy, humor, and existential fixation that I most love in the medium. Just the fact that his main character in the Flaschko strips is solely defined by an electric blanket is so succinct, smart, and absurd that I would hope everyone reading this post would buy his books on principle.
Freshly arrived Nicolas Mahler Palesmurt screenprint for the Dec. 13th BEASTS! print show. Only five of these are available on this continent. (Note that this is not the art that appears in the book... It's bonus Mahler!)
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