I feel like we’re all just supposed to know how to read Gilbert Hernandez’s “movie books,” even though they’ve never been clear, and their publisher (Fantagraphics) has stopped even mentioning the movie connection. These days, it seems to be just the distinctive end-papers that give us a clue, and then we’re on our own. You see,…
Today kicks off a mini-theme section of Book-A-Day; I read four 2009-2010 books from Fantagraphics over four days early in December, because I had them all digitally. They came in during the era when I was reviewing books seriously but getting many more things than I could fit into my Realms of Fantasy monthly column. The…
This is the end; this is not the end. This volume finishes up Fantagraphics’ decade-plus reprint project covering the entirety of Charles M. Schulz’s fifty-year run on Peanuts, with the last full year of strips and the few in early 2000 that Schulz completed before his health-forced retirement and nearly simultaneous death. (Sunday strips are…
Dichotomies. Every day brings hundreds if not thousands of choices. The red blouse vs. the blue blouse. Filet mignon vs. butt steak. Marvel vs. DC. Sugar and Spike vs. Guido Crepax. Which to pick? Right now IâÂÂm struggling between writing about two totally different types of comics, and here âÂÂtotallyâ is an understatement. Fantagraphics just…
Two decades after it hit theaters and became an SF classic, 12 MONKEYS is being retooled as a new TV series, but does it still have the DNA to survive? Stars Amanda Schull and Aaron Stanford talk about the transition and why it works. Plus it’s the first big industry move of 2015 as IDW…
Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson died at 6:30 this morning, June 19, at the age of 56. “He was my partner and close friend for 36 years,” said Fantagraphics co-publisher Gary Groth. Thompson was born in Denmark in 1956. He grew up in Europe, a lifelong comics fan, reading both European and American comics in Denmark,…
The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. By Dash Shaw Fantagraphics, September 2009, $19.99 Dash Shaw seemed to appear out of nowhere with his massive 2008 graphic novel [[[Bottomless Belly Button]]] – but, of course, for those who were paying attention, Shaw had been an up-and-comer for several years before that, regularly contributing stories…
A Mess of Everything By Miss Lasko-Gross Fantagraphics Books, April 2009, $19.99 According to page 119, the heroine of this story writes comics as “Miss Lasko-Gross,” but her legal name (at least at this point, when she’s in high school) is “Melissa Anne Lasko Gross,” and the two last names are from both her mother…
Ghost World: the Special Edition Graphic novel by Daniel Clowes; Screenplay by Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff Fantagraphics, October 2008, $39.99 Ten years after the first collection of [[[Ghost World]]] and seven after the movie version of the same story (and, not coincidentally, the screenplay book), Dan Clowes’s most famous and best-known story has gotten…
Bottomless Belly Button By Dash Shaw Fantagraphics, June 2008, $29.99 Wrapped up inside [[[Bottomless Belly Button]]] is the realistically-depicted story of a family – aged parents, three grown children, and few others – coming all together for one last time as the parents divorce after forty years of marriage. But Dash Shaw is in no…
As a history of Steve Ditko’s career as a comics artist, Strange and Strange: The World of Steve Ditko is an unquestionable triumph, the latest in a top-notch series of art books from Fantagraphics. Blake Bell’s book ($39.99) features hundreds of beautifully reprinted Ditko pages, from his earliest horror stories to his triumph with Amazing…
I’m usually not a fan of comic book trailers — ooh, a collection of still images shown in quick succession, how dramatic! — but the newly unveiled one by Dash Shaw for his graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button is worth a watch. It’s at Fantagraphics’ Web site, right here. Shaw created the animated trailer through…
