Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today we're featuring the American debut of one of Japan's most distinctive humorous voices, Tori Miki.
Miki has won awards for his essays, screenplays and manga, including the prestigious Bunshun Manga Award. With four best-selling volumes released to date, the comic strip series Anywhere But Here is one of his greatest successes. Running weekly in Japan's TV Bros, a respected magazine of television and media criticism, Anywhere But Here is a wordless comic strip that could perhaps best be described as "Monty Python meets The Far Side meets Zen humor." Miki's unnamed lead character (modelled after himself) works as a bookstore owner but somehow finds himself entangled with aliens, alternate realities, and other mysterious disturbances in the space-time continuum. Like Gary Larson's The Far Side, Anywhere But Here can leave you scratching your head in bemusement almost as often as it makes you laugh, but we've selected the very best of his first two volumes for this special collection, printed in an elegant two-color edition.
96-page two-color 6.5" x 7.25" softcover regularly $12.95 • ON SALE $9.71 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today's spotlight features a great collection of classic comics starring an all-time beloved cartoon character, as drawn by his original creator, Otto Messmer.
Best known as an animated cartoon character, Felix the Cat has also had a tremendously successful run in his own newspaper comic strip. Now, gathered here is a generous sampling of many of his most important and entertaining adventures. Felix was created in 1919 by Otto Messmer for the cartoon Feline Follies (first named Master Tom, he was given a new, lasting name when he headlined his third cartoon, Adventures of Felix) and it wasn't long until Felix became the most popular cartoon character of the silent era. Wildly popular in the U.S. and England for years, well over 150 cartoons have been documented as being produced in the original series (and perhaps many more of which we have no record). Hesitating to make the jump to sound, the cartoons began to experience distribution problems and a decline in popularity. The original series ended its run in 1931. Begun in 1923, the comic strip outlasted Felix's screen career. Although credited to Pat Sullivan (as was everything else regarding the cat), the strip was produced under the constantly inventive direction of Messmer who did most of the pencils and inks on the strip until 1954. The strip began fading in popularity in the late 30's, but comic books revived public interest in the 1940's. Seeing several ups and downs from the 50's on — a TV series, various comic book original and reprint series — Felix's popularity endures to this day.
144-page full-color 9" x 11" hardcover regularly $39.95 • ON SALE $29.96 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today we're featuring another recent award nominee (Best U.S. Edition of International Material, 2007 Eisners) that we want to put back in the spotlight: the mind-bending debut from French artist Matthias Lehmann.
A road movie featuring two detectives, René and Agatha, on the tracks of Robert Illot, a.k.a. "The Heimlich Killer," a serial killer whose modus operandi is to suffocate his victim with various objects (including chickens and lightbulbs) along the highways and byways of France. As they get closer and closer to catching up with him, seeking out and interrogating men and women from his past life at the insane asylum, he always stays one step ahead and the row of corpses grows longer and longer... In this lengthy original graphic novel, dreams and flashbacks converge with the ongoing narrative, done in Lehmann's hypnotically intense and insanely labor-intensive woodcut style to form a dark and disquieting vision of humanity.
240-page black & white 6.5" x 8.75" hardcover regularly $19.95 • ON SALE $14.96 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today's installment features the compelling 1999 debut from Chris Lanier.
Combustion is a striking visual parable on War, drawn in an expressionistic woodcut style. This mature, poetic work by newcomer Chris Lanier holds its own with such best-selling and critically acclaimed graphic novels as Maus and Palestine. Elegant and subversive, at times harrowing, Combustion will intrigue and enlighten with its stark, chiaroscuro visuals and compelling story of a soldier lost in a ravaged country.
56-page black & white 8" x 10" softcover regularly $7.95 • ON SALE $5.96 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today's installment features a rescued-from-obscurity rarity from comics great Gil Kane.
In 1974, Gil Kane created Blackmark as a paperback series for Bantam Books. Kane was a comics artist specializing in superheroes who had drawn every major character from Superman and Spider-Man to Green Lantern and Conan. Blackmark was his attempt to go "independent" and create a series which he would own and whose creative direction he could control. The first volume of this sword-and-sorcery/heroic-fantasy narrative, designed and published in the paperback format, has been out of print for over 25 years, and the completed second volume was never published. Fantagraphics Books is proud to collect both volumes in a single trade book format, larger than the original paperback size to better showcase Kane's elegant art.
160-page black & white softcover regularly $16.95 • ON SALE $12.71 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
The artist we're featuring today, Mark Kalesniko, got widely noticed for his series Alex, which was later collected in a graphic novel of the same name. Today we're putting the spotlight on three of his earlier, lesser-known titles:
Before Alex, Kalesniko made S.O.S., a lyrical allegorical comic with a beautiful Asian-American protagonist. The story details how Chloe slowly finds her identity and achieves independence and empowerment while literally "adrift on the ocean" on a small sailboat beset by a huge, ravenous shark. S.O.S. is a metaphorical one-shot, a dramatic short subject told entirely in pantomime. Kalesniko brilliantly unveils the conflicts within Chloe — between tradition and modernity, between the safety of her chinese family and the unfamiliar dangers of the Western world. The story is told in ink, collage, and wash, introducing to comics the exciting panel-to-panel "camerawork" which Kalesniko has refined into an assured mastery.
24-page black & white 6.75" x 10.25" comic book regularly $2.75 • ON SALE $2.06 Order Now
Monty, a Canadian comic-and-toy-shop owner and a pathetic 39-year-old virgin, expects his Asian mail-order bride Kyung Soo to fulfil his female Asian fantasy stereotypes: obedient, hardworking and loyal. Tall and accentless, Kyung turns out to be much more complex than Monte is willing to accept. This sharp and affecting look at their prickly relationship is told over 264 elegant, touching pages in this original graphic novel by Disney animator Mark Kalesniko. Kalesniko adroitly juxtaposes Monty's non-sexual, juvenile obsessions with his objectification of his bride, drawing a direct line between loneliness, consumerism, and how the need for order in one's life compromises the approach to matters of the heart.
264-page black & white 8" x 11" softcover regularly $19.95 • ON SALE $14.96 Order Now
Before the astonishing Mail Order Bride, Kalesniko created this equally fine work of comic art. He combines stylish graphics and a keen eye for the perspective of a child in his first book-length graphic novel. Here, the unexpected suicide of a young, marginally successful actor sets the tone for this examination of the childhood of Alex Kalienka. Petty humiliations, minor injuries, small betrayals — the overall gradual degradation of growing up different provides a stunning glimpse at the existential nature of life.
96-page black & white 7" x 10" softcover regularly $8.95 • ON SALE $6.71 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today's installment features two books from a cartoonist who's near and dear to our hearts -- not only is he a singular artist, he counts the beans for us: Ted Jouflas.
The apocalyptic Filthy from Ted Jouflas examines everything filthy in the world! From the slime of urban decay to the deforestation of a once pristine Eden; from the garbage barges of old Shanghai to the sewers of Los Angeles; from the bowl of dirty underwear that is the corporate world to the royal media drunk on themselves; this book goes there and wallows in it! Join the fun with a variety of charming characters: the vicious brat Janine De Bleu and her billionaire parents Mumsie and Popsie; her evil cat, Milo Maurice; her little rodent friend, Le Rat; the Slum Boy in the drudlepit and his evil uncle, Skunkle Sneaky! All rendered in Jouflas's striking, hilarious style and written with a perfect rhyme scheme.
80-page black & white 8" x 11" softcover regularly $9.95 • ON SALE $7.46 Order Now
You saw her in Weirdo as "Batgirl" and "The Monster." Now Winkie is back in this all-original graphic novel. Written with a sadistic wit and drawn in a style bold and demented enough to compare to Ralph Steadman, Jouflas's debut work follows Winkie on the most hellacious misadventure of her life, a tale of debauchery, crime, neuroses, greed, lust, psychoses, vengeance, love, rage, mystery, comedy, and sorrow. Co-starring Dave the French Poodle, Mensa the Cat, Dr. Nimrod, Princess Pretender, and Candyass the Hillbilly, Scary is the bastard offspring of "Fractured Fairy Tales" and the black-and-white horror films of the '30s and '40s.
104-page black & white 8" x 11" softcover regularly $6.50 • ON SALE $4.88 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today's installment features another cartoonist who's a best-seller in his native land but relatively unknown here: the Mexican cartoonist known as JIS.
JIS (a pen name for Jose I. Solorzano) made his American debut with this inspired and inspiring slice of psychedelic absurdity. With a childlike mastery of the obvious, an inspired sense of mischief, and hilarious insight into the human divine, Jis' comics at once recall the sensibilities of both Jules Feiffer and Terence McKenna. Deceptively minimalistic, the book collects a handful of comic stories and individual drawings that will nudge the lucky reader gently into a dissonant universe. In the title story, cats replace aliens as bogeymen of the human psyche. "To Our Dear Enemies" is a fulsome thank-you note to censors for infusing boring old sex with such intrigue; "We Woke Up... Married" and "Guilt as an Aphrodisiac" will teach you more about love than Erich Fromm and Barbara Cartland combined; and JIS's epic is "Moons, Loonies, and Angel, which kicks off with the deceptively comforting line, "First, organize your eyes..."
96-page b&w/color 8.5" x 11" softcover regularly $12.95 • ON SALE $9.71 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today's installment features a bona fide rediscovered classic by cartooning great Milt Gross:
First published in 1930, the famously wordless He Done Her Wrong is Milt Gross' graphic masterpiece, the result of his prior collaboration with Charlie Chaplin on the 1928 silent-era film classic The Circus. Sharing the same goofy, over-the-top comic mayhem that was Chaplin's trademark, and preceding the expressive, cartoony art style of MAD Magazine legend Harvey Kurtzman, all of He Done Her Wrong's hilarious slapstick, tragic heartbreak, heroism and villainy, character development, high emotions and raucous thrills somehow manages to take place, astonishingly, without a single word of text, or conversation, or even a footnote. The story follows the convoluted misadventures of a naïve frontiersman with superhuman strength exploited by a larcenous robber baron who eventually double crosses our hero and steals his girl. He Done Her Wrong is a classic comics work, legendary among aficionados, and arguably the 20th century's first graphic novel. Fantagraphics Books is proud to put this back into print in a facsimile edition, unabridged, with newly designed covers.
256-page black & white 7" x 8" softcover regularly $16.95 • ON SALE $12.71 Order Now
Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!
Today's installment features an anthology collection of Duplex Planet Illustrated stories compiled and edited by David Greenberger and illustrated by some of the brightest lights in alternative comics:
The Duplex Planet started in 1979 as a small, self-xeroxed fanzine by David Greenberger. In 20 years, it has become a veritable cottage industry and endless source of inspiration for Greenberger. The Duplex Planet features stories and conversations that Greenberger had with the residents of the Duplex Nursing Home in Boston, where he worked in the late 1970s and '80s. Greenberger presents the beauty and comical wisdom of the often bizarre and occasionally poignant things said by his elderly friends. Greenberger never imposes his own worldview, allowing the residents to quietly flesh themselves into some of the more remarkable characters in contemporary literature. No More Shaves presents these stories in comics form interpreted by many of today's best cartoonists, including Dave Cooper, Jason Lutes, Rick Altergott, Doug Allen, Daniel Clowes, JR Williams, Ron Regé Jr., Dame Darcy, Jeff Johnson, Tim Hensley, Holly Jane Zachary, Paul Nitsche, Pat Moriarity, Eric Theriault, Greg Ruth, Wayno, George Parsons, Gary Leib, and Dean Rohrer.
160-page black & white 8" x 11" softcover regularly $18.95 • ON SALE $14.21 Order Now
