Available with two different covers (book design by Jacob Covey) — make your choice when ordering.
Ships in: July 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Significant Objects began in 2009 as a bold online inquiry into the relationship between narrative and the value of everyday objects. It has been the subject of speculation by everyone from NPR to litbloggers to The New York Times’ Freakonomics crew. Some theorized about the project’s hypothesis, others about its methods and results. Others just wanted to know if there would be a book collection. The answer is yes. A collection of one hundred Significant Objects stories is published in this hardcover volume.
This represents the latest plot twist yet to the story of a very unlikely project that began as an experiment, turned into an experimental literary magazine secretly published on eBay, and currently raises money for youth tutoring nonprofits.
Founded by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker, SignificantObjects.com has published an extraordinary series of 200 stories and counting — by William Gibson, Curtis Sittenfeld, Sheila Heti, Colson Whitehead, Nicholson Baker, Meg Cabot, Gary Panter, Ben Katchor, Lydia Millet, Jonathan Lethem, and other talented writers — about ordinary stuff like novelty items, discarded souvenirs, and tasteless kitchenware picked up cheap at thrift stores and yard sales. The goal: To see if commissioning great stories about these insignificant things would increase their value — as measured in actual eBay auctions.
The experiment, in short, was a smash hit. As will be the Significant Objects book, which features 100 moving, absurd, surprising, and always entertaining stories from the project’s three volumes. It will change the way you look at things, forever.
96-page 7.75" x 7.75" black & white hardcover • $9.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-540-2
Ships in: July 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Order this or any other Love and Rockets book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown at left as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.
A rare foray into all-ages work, “The Adventures of Venus” was Gilbert Hernandez’s contribution to the kids’ anthology Measles which he edited in 1999 and 2000. This super-affordable little hardcover collects all the previously uncollected “Venus” stories from Measles in which Luba’s niece creates and collects comic books, walks through a scary forest, plays soccer, schemes to get the cute boy she likes, laments the snowlessness of a California Christmas, catches measles, and travels to a distant planet (OK, the last one may be a dream). Plus a new story done just for this book!
248-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-535-8
Ships in: Any day now to our North American mail-order customers! Pre-Order Now
Since Fantagraphics’ first release in this series focused on Donald Duck, it is only right that the second focus on Carl Barks’s other great protagonist, and his greatest creation: The miserly, excessively wealthy Scrooge McDuck, whose giant money bin, lucky dime, and constant wrangles with his nemeses the Beagle Boys are well-known to, and beloved by, young and old.
This volume starts off with “Only a Poor Old Man,” the defining Scrooge yarn (in fact his first big starring story) in which Scrooge’s plan to hide his money in a lake goes terribly wrong. Two other long-form classics in this volume include “Tralla La La” (also known as “the bottlecap story,” in which Scrooge’s intrusion has terrible consequences for a money-less eden) and “Back to the Klondike” (Barks disciple Don Rosa’s favorite story, a crucial addition to Scrooge’s early history, and famous for a censored bar brawl that was restored in later editions). Each of these three stories is famous enough to have its own lengthy Wikipedia page.
Also in this volume are the full-length “The Secret of Atlantis,” and over two dozen more shorter stories and one-page gags.
Newly recolored in a version that combines the warm, friendly, slightly muted feeling of the beloved classic original comic books with state-of-the-art crispness and reproduction quality, the stories are joined by another volume’s worth of extensive “Liner Notes,” featuring fascinating behind-the-panels essays about the creation of the stories and analyses of their content from a world’s worth of Disney and Barks experts.
32-page full-color 6.75" x 9.5" comic book • $4.95
Ships in: July 2012 — This item will be available for order concurrently with its release to comic shops in a couple of weeks.
Break out your crayons as Red Warren, "America's Grandpa," brings you his highly educational "Train & Bus Coloring Book." The guests at a sophisticated weekend party sure get nervous when a certain mystery writer shows up on her goat. Learn the story of French national hero Bertrand de Copillon, a.k.a. "The Scythe." And originally serialized in the Washington City Paper and online at Fantagraphics.com, the true story of the first lunar mission, "Moon 69." All this and more in the eighth issue of the series that changed the face of comic book humor, Tales Designed to Thrizzle!
424-page black & white 6" x 6" hardcover • $26.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-528-0
Ships in: June 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Jewish Images in the Comics showcases more than 150 comic strips, comic books and graphic novels from all over the world, stretching over the last five centuries and featuring Jewish characters and Jewish themes.
The book is divided into chapters on Anti-Semitism, the Old Testament, the Holocaust, Israel, the Golem and much more, featuring everything from well-known comics like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the work of Will Eisner to much more obscure (and in some cases far less savory) but no less culturally and historically interesting examples of how Jewish culture has been depicted in comics.
As with Strömberg’s previous two books for Fantagraphics, each strip, comic, or graphic novel is spotlighted via a short but informative 200-word essay and a representative illustration. The book is augmented by a context-setting introduction as well as an extensive source list and bibliography.
Jewish Images in the Comics is the third book in a series in which Strömberg examines different phenomena in our society, as mirrored in comics. Black Images in the Comics examines the way Black people have been portrayed in comics and The Comics Go to Hell looks at how the Devil has been used as a comics character.
“Ya still think it pays to fight dirty?” No bad guys can beat Walt Disney’s classic Mickey; no other “modest mouse” has seen more two-fisted action or outrageous comedy! And now our big-eared hero is back with more edge-of-your-seat adventures: traveling from Umbrellastan to Texas — and duking it out with villains like Dr. Vulter, Pegleg Pete, and malicious miser Eli Squinch!
Floyd Gottfredson, artist and writer of Mickey Mouse, turned the strip into a 100-proof cocktail of thrills, comedy, warmth, and cynicism. In this volume, you’ll saddle up for Gottfredson’s two most famous Wild West epics: a “Race for Riches” amid rockslides and rustlers, then a dead-shot showdown with the brutal “Bat Bandit!” Back home in Mouseton, the mayhem continues when Mickey, Donald, and Goofy run a crime-fighting newspaper — and face trouble with mobsters and speeding black sedans!
Lovingly restored from Disney’s proof sheets, High Noon at Inferno Gulch also includes more than 50 pages of rootin’-tootin’ supplementary features! You’ll enjoy rare behind-the-scenes art, vintage publicity material, and vivid commentary by a pistol-packin’ posse of seasoned Disney scholars, including a Foreword by Thomas Andrae and an appreciation by the late Bill Blackbeard.
Walt Disney often said that his studio’s success “all started with a Mouse.” Now it’s time to rediscover the wild, unforgettable personality behind the icon!
208-page full-color 10.25" x 13.25" hardcover • $49.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-447-4
Ships in: June 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Jack Davis arrived on the illustration scene in the euphoric post-war America of the late 1940s when consumer society was booming and the work force identified with commercial images that reflected this underlying sense of confidence and American bravado. Advertising agencies were looking for new ways to tap a rich and expanding market, and there was a vast array of media that needed illustrations. Davis’ animated and exuberant images possessed a sense of spontaneous energy that proved to have universal appeal in every medium he worked in.
Beginning with his masterful pen and ink cartooning at EC Comics, he quickly forged a reputation as one of the most versatile artists in comics, drawing humor, horror, and war stories. In Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD, especially, Davis made a mark as a master of caricature, composition, and wild, anarchic crowd scenes, practically vibrating with energy.
After stints at MAD, Trump, and Humbug — three humor magazines that defined the satirical zeitgeist of the ’50s — Davis went on to become the most successful commercial illustrator of his generation, illustrating movie posters, magazine articles, magazine fiction, LP jackets, and more.
Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture is a gigantic, unparalleled career-spanning retrospective, between whose hard covers resides the greatest collection — in terms of both quantity and quality — of Jack Davis’ work ever assembled! It includes work from every stage of his long and varied career, such as: excerpts of satirical drawings from his college humor ’zine, The Bull Sheet; examples of his comics work from EC, MAD, Humbug, Trump, and obscure work he did for other companies in the 1950s such as Dell; movie posters including It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Bad News Bears, Woody Allen’s Bananas, The Party, and others; LP jacket art for such musicians and bands as Hans Conreid and the Creature Orchestra’s Monster Rally, Spike Jones and Ben Cooler; cartoons and illustrations from Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Time, TV Guide, Esquire, and many others; unpublished illustrations and drawings Davis did as self-promotional pieces, proposed comic strips that never sold (such as his Civil War epic “Beaureagard”), finished drawings for unrealized magazine projects — and even illustrations unearthed in the Davis archives that the artist himself can’t identify!
Much of the material will be scanned directly from original art, showing the painterly brush strokes and black and white pen work with far greater fidelity than any previous reproduction ever has. Many paintings and illustrations are accompanied by preliminary drawings that demonstrate the evolution of Davis’ drawing process.
In the back of the book you'll find a biography of Davis by Gary Groth, as well as tributes and testimonals written by a spectrum of Davis's cartoonist contemporaries and fans including Sergio Aragonés, Peter Bagge, Coop, Bob Fingerman, Drew Friedman, Bill Griffith, Al Jaffee, Joe Kubert, Peter Kuper, Tony Millionaire, Nate Neal, Spain Rodriguez and Jim Woodring.
Download a PDF excerpt (33.2 MB) with a smattering of 22 pages from the book.
224-page black & white/color 7" x 9.5" hardcover • $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-533-4
Ships in: June 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
SPECIAL OFFER:
Order this volume and get Vol. 1 and/or Vol. 2 for $14.99 each; that's 25% off! Use the option menu when ordering.
As shown in the first two volumes of this acclaimed series, Shuichi and his friend Yoshino have a secret: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.
But one day, abruptly, their secret is exposed, and the two find themselves the target of sixth-grade cruelty. Their friendship is strained, as Yoshino makes a half-hearted effort at being a “normal girl”... and their mentor, Yuki, reveals the harder reality of being transgendered. Meanwhile, Shuichi’s sister, Maho, realizes her dream of becoming a model, and drags Shuichi along for the ride. Shuichi meets another boy who wants to be a girl, and finds himself on an arranged date with a boy who doesn’t know that the girl he has a crush on is actually a boy.
After an unhurried, almost leisurely buildup that gave us an opportunity to get to know and understand our protagonists, artist Shimura picks up the pace in this latest volume, with tears and laughs aplenty. A sophisticated work translated with rare sensitivity by veteran translator and comics scholar Matt Thorn.
photo credit: Fantagraphics editorial intern, Matt Burke
This past weekend, the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery welcomed back the acclaimed Joe Sacco to discuss his forthcoming release, Journalism, out later this month from Metropolitan Books.
The last time we were lucky to have a visit from Joe was in 2007, when he and our Store Manager/Curator Larry Reid discussed Palestine: The Special Edition. You can watch video from that here. And, as you'll see in the video below, it was another riveting discussion, this time with our head honcho Gary Groth at the helm!
(Sadly, I missed the first couple of minutes of their talk, sorry!)
You can also check out some more beautiful shots from our new Editorial Intern Matt Burke (and some not-as-beautiful iPhone shots from me), both below, and on the Fantagraphics Flickr feed!
Gary Groth rocks the mic // photo credit: Matt Burke
The crowd before the Q&A began // photo credit: Matt Burke
Joe chats with local cartoonist Kelly Froh while Fantagraphics' own Russ Battaglia gives a grin
Joe signs a book for Marketing Director Mike Baehr
If you can't wait for the official release date, the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is the only place on the planet where you can get it before June 19th! I bet your Dad would like a copy! We're located at 1201 S. Vale Street in Seattle's Georgetown district. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone: (206) 658-0110.
152-page two-color 10.25" x 8.5" hardcover • $22.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-479-5
Ships in: June 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now
Flannery O’Connor was among the greatest American writers of the 2nd half of the 20th century; she was a writer in the Southern tradition of Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Carson McCullers, who wrote such classic novels and short stories as Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” She is perhaps as well known for her tantalizing brand of Southern Gothic humor as she is for her Catholicism. That these tendencies should be so happily married in her fiction is no longer a surprise. The real surprise is learning that this much beloved icon of American literature did not set out to be a fiction writer, but a cartoonist. This seems to be the last well-kept secret of her creative life.
Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons, the first book devoted to the author’s work in the visual arts, emphasizes O’Connor’s most prolific period as a cartoonist, drawing for her high school and college publications in the early 1940s.
While many of these images lampoon student life and the impact of World War II on the home front, something much more is happening. Her cartoons are a creative threshing floor for experimenting and trying out techniques that are deployed later with such great success in her fiction.
O’Connor learns how to set up and carry a joke visually, how to write a good one-liner and set it off against a background of complex visual narration. She develops and asserts her taste for a stock set of character types, attitudes, situations, exaggerations, and grotesques, and she learns how to present them not to distort the truth, but to expose her vision of it.
She worked in both pen & ink and linoleum cuts, and her rough-hewn technique combined with her acidic observations to form a visual precursor to her prose. Fantagraphics is honored to bring the early cartoons of this American literary treasure to a 21st century readership.
For an audience resistant to your views, O’Connor once wrote, “draw large and startling figures.” In her fiction, as in her cartoons, these shocks to the system never come without a laugh.
