Cathy Malkasian's second Percy Gloom graphic novel is another fable that the author brings to vivid life through her lush and detailed pencil renderings, surreal humor, absurdist characters, breathtaking landscapes, and luminous storytelling.
Kindhearted, Candide-esque Percy wakes up from a 200 year nap and finds himself in a strange new land. Searching for his mother, lamenting his long-lost love and soul-mate Miss Margaret, Percy meets bizarre, wise, naive, and sometimes dangerous characters, encounters inspired inventions, and forges friendships, discovering a few unexpected verities along the way.
Not to mention the singing goats and furniture parades.
Assembled from work done in the author’s sketchbooks in the year following the death of his partner in 2005, The End is a collection of meditations on loss and a record of his struggle to reconcile her death. The book encompasses a variety of forms, from finely observed depictions of a newly transformed daily life, to mutating abstractions of internal turmoil, and imagined dialogues with the dead. The book carries the reader through a year of grief tinged by turns with humor, anger, absurdity, and grace.
80-page two-color (with 16pp. full color) 7.25" x 10.5" hardcover • $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-635-5
Ships in: May 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Assembled from work done in Anders Nilsen’s sketchbooks over the course of the year following the death of his fiancée in 2005, The End is a collection of short strips about loss, paralysis, waiting, and transformation.
It is a concept album in different styles, a meditation on paying attention, an abstracted autobiography and a travelogue, reflecting the progress of his struggle to reconcile the great upheaval of a death, and finding a new life on the other side.
The book blends Nilsen's disparate styles, from the iconic simplicity and collaged drawings of his Monologues for the Coming Plague to the finely rendered Dogs and Water and Big Questions.
Originally released in magazine form in 2007 (which received an Ignatz Award nomination for Outstanding Story), The End has now been expanded to more than twice its original length, including 16 pages of full color.
Edited by Eric Reynolds & Philip Nel; Introduction by Chris Ware; art direction by Daniel Clowes
320-page black & white (with some color) 11" x 6.75" hardcover • $35.00 ISBN: 978-1-60699-522-8
The beloved comic strip is finally given the Fantagraphics treatment. Barnaby’s deft balance of fantasy, political commentary, sophisticated wit, and elegantly spare images expanded our sense of what comic strips can do.
Due to arrive in about 4-6 weeks. Click the thumbnails for larger versions; get more info, see more previews and pre-order your copy here:
Edited by Eric Reynolds & Philip Nel; Introduction by Chris Ware; art direction by Daniel Clowes
320-page black & white (with some color) 11" x 6.75" hardcover • $35.00 ISBN: 978-1-60699-522-8
Ships in: May 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Before authoring one of the most beloved children’s book series of all time — Harold and the Purple Crayon — cartoonist Crockett Johnson created the comic strip Barnaby for over ten years (1942 to 1952). Its subtle ironies and playful allusions never won a broad following, but the adventures of 5-year-old Barnaby Baxter and his fairy godfather Jackeen J. O’Malley was and is a critical favorite.
Fantagraphics introduces the wonders of Barnaby to a new generation of children and parents alike. Co-edited by Johnson biographer Philip Nel (Dr. Seuss: American Icon) and Fantagraphics Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds, with art direction by graphic novelist Daniel Clowes (Ghost World), this five-volume Barnaby series will collect the entirety of the original newspaper strips from 1942-1952. The first volume collects all the strips from 1942 and 1943.
Barnaby revolved around a precocious five-year-old named Barnaby Baxter and his fairly godfather Jackeen J. O’Malley. Yet O’Malley, a cigar-chomping, bumbling con-artist and fast-talker, was not your typical protector. His grasp of magic was usually specious at best, limited to occasional flashes, often aided and abetted by his fellow members in The Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society.
Barnaby’s deft balance of fantasy, political commentary, sophisticated wit, and elegantly spare images expanded our sense of what comic strips can do. With subtlety and economy, Barnaby proved that comics need not condescend to readers. Its small but influential readership took that message to heart.
"I think, and I’m trying to talk calmly, that Barnaby and his friends and oppressors are the most important additions to American arts and letters in Lord knows how many years." – Dorothy Parker
"One of the best comic strips of the 20th Century and one of the most beloved older strips for a generation of devoted adult comics fans, Barnaby had become in the last decade and a half the great unsigned strip collection." – The Comics Reporter
464-page two-color 6.75" x 9" softcover • $35.00 ISBN: 978-1-60699-557-0
A long, dense, sensitive, and minutely observed autobiographical masterpiece recalling the summer of 1984, when the artist, a rebellious, punked-out 17-year-old, hitchhiked her way across Italy. 2011 Angoulême prize winner.
Due to arrive in about 4-6 weeks. Click the thumbnails for larger versions; get more info, see more previews and pre-order your copy here:
It's the end of the fucking week — and what a fucking week it's been, especially in Chuck Forsman's home state of Massachusetts. We swear it's only coincidence that on our schedule for today is this sneak peek at the final cover art and an excerpt of an upcoming graphic novel about a pair of lawless young people walking a violent path together.
Our collection of Chuck's acclaimed minicomic The End of the Fucking World (a.k.a. the more bookstore-friendly TEOTFW) is due out in July. In its serialized form, TEOTFW was named to multiple Best of 2012 lists and earned praise like this:
"The most beautiful piece of Americana made in years. Every page Forsman draws is a minimalist masterpiece. Huge and heartbreaking. A modern triumph disguised as an episode of Peanuts." – Matt Seneca
"The awkwardness, the urgency, the sense of discovery, the sense of revulsion - it's all true, even if you've never stuck your own hand in a garbage disposal." – Sean T. Collins
"Great stuff." – Frank Santoro
"[TEOTFW] exemplifies what exactly it is I love about comics. It's lo-fi yet stylistic, subtle yet visceral — a version of Bonnie and Clyde bled through the lens of Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park." – Spandexless
"This is a crime comic disguised as a slacker-road-trip comic, and Forsman delivers its methodical hum eight pages at a time with an astounding precision." – Comic Book Resources
"[TEOTFW] pulls you in like no other comic this year. Stunning in its simplicity and brave in its subject matter." – MTV.com
Our 19-page excerpt comprises the first two issues of the series; read it here.
464-page two-color 6.75" x 9" softcover • $35.00 ISBN: 978-1-60699-557-0
Ships in: May 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Back in 1984, a rebellious, 17-year-old, punked-out Ulli Lust set out for a wild hitchhiking trip across Italy, from Naples through Verona and Rome and ending up in Sicily. Twenty-five years later, this talented Austrian cartoonist has looked back at that tumultuous summer and delivered a long, dense, sensitive, and minutely observed autobiographical masterpiece.
Miraculously combining a perfect memory for both emotional and physical detail with the sometimes painful lucidity two and half decades’ distance have brought to her understanding of the events, Lust meticulously shows the who, where, when, and how (specifically, how an often penniless young girl can survive for months on the road) of a sometimes dangerous and sometimes exhilarating journey. Particularly haunting is her portrait of her fellow traveler, the gangly, promiscuous devil-may-care Edi who veers from being her spunky, funny best friend in the world to an out-of-control lunatic with no consideration for anything but her own whims and desires.
Universally considered one of the very finest examples of the new breed of graphic novels coming from Europe, Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life won the 2011 Angoulême “Revelation” prize, and Fantagraphics is proud to bring it to English speaking readers.
At the printer now for release in July, The Daniel Clowes Reader: A Critical Edition of Ghost World and Other Stories, with Essays, Interviews, and Annotations shines a whole new light on one of the greatest, most beloved graphic novels of all time along with several other classic Eightball stories and Clowes rarities. Editor Ken Parille has brought together a stable of great minds, including Clowes himself, for a plethora of fascinating and highly readable essays and other material, with topics like "Enid's Bookshelf," "Enid's Record Player," "The Rise of the Zine," "Against Groovy," and "Urban Romanticism, Mad Magazine, and the Aesthetics of Ugly."
Browse the Table of Contents and read the Introduction, 12 pages of Ghost World and more in our generous 31-page excerpt, and pre-order your copy right here.
96-page black & white 8.25” x 10.25” hardcover • $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-653-9
Here are a few pretty pictures of the book, which should be unleashed (GET IT?) and on shelves in about 4 weeks; click the thumbnails for larger versions. Get more info, see more previews and pre-order your copy here:
