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If you weren't coming to SPX before, you are now: this year's edition will sotlight Fantagraphics' 40 year anniversary with a TRUE all-star line-up including: Joe Sacco, Trina Robbins, Daniel Clowes and The Hernandez Brothers, Carol Tyler, Jim Woodring, Drew Friedman and Ed Piskor.

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"This is a classy toilet book, a 'Paris Review toilet book.'"

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In 2010 Grand Prize winner at the Angoulême Comics Festival in France and the Lucca Comics Festival in Italy 5,000 Km Per Second, Italian cartoonist Maneuele Fioe utilizes his strong watercolor skills to offer not the whole of a relationship, but slices, and leaves it up to the readers to fill in the spaces with the parts he […]

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The first in a projected seven-book science fiction series, Joshua W. Cotter’s Nod Away draws you in with the human drama, but keeps the science fiction elements of the story mostly at bay, creating a mysterious mist that hangs on people’s lives as they cope with the little moments, oblivious to the larger mysteries that are […]

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  That was rhetorical — of COURSE you are. At long last, after over a decade in the works, We Told You So: Comics As Art the oral history of Fantagraphics begun by Tom Spurgeon and finished by Michael Dean will be coming out this summer, just in time to celebrate the (gasp!) 40th anniversary of […]

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Italian comics maestro Guide Crepax is getting what I'm willing to bet is his first ever US art exhibit this weekend at the Scott Eder Gallery in Dumbo.

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Finnish cartoonist Tommi Musturi’s The Book Of Hope is as mysterious and elusive as the human being it examines. Set in a family cottage following retirement, Musturi settles into his narrator position calmly in order to scribe, without judgment or even much push for clarity, the experience of one man as he inhabits the time […]

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Daniel Clowes new graphic novel Patience drops in late winter and it’s sure to be the comic book event of the first half of 2016. Promised as a SF tale about time travel and love, it’s a powerful return for Clowes. And you’ll be able to get your copy signed, and doubtless hear a talk […]

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FU Press (i’e Fantagraphics Underground) is an imprint for more “edgy” material from the publisher. And they’ve just released a few new books from artist Derek Van Gieson, underground legend Guy Colwell and experimental cartoonist Zak Sally. And here they are:   Derek Van Gieson’s Enough Astronaut Blood to Last the Winter is part fine-art book, part travelogue documenting the […]

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This weekend it's Comic Arts Brooklyn in Williamsburg and here's a look at the books that will be debuting. Thanks to all the contributing publishers and cartoonists for supplying the info and lightening our wallets. Because there were so many new and exciting books I'm splitting this into two parts. Look for part two tomorrow!

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Walmart.com has a graphic novel section, with many superhero titles, but also media adaptations and some kids comics. Many publishers have attempted to enter the world of Walmart, and some have been accepted only to be rejected when someone actually reads them and see they are filled with sex and drugs and maybe some violence. But as of now, you can buy Powr Mastrs 4 on the Walmart website for a mere $14.23, with free shipping.

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Cartoonist Glenn Head talks about life on the streets of Chicago and what his next memoirs will be about.

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Cartoonist Glenn Head is a comics lifer, with a sensibility filtered through the undergrounds and decanted into the best of 90s alternatives. And how he's crafted a autobiographical comic called Chicago (Fantagraphics) that should be called "portrait of the artist as a young jerk" -- with Jerk meant in the most loving sense possible. It's quite a statement from a creator who hasn't gotten the attention he should in today's comics-loving wold. But Chicago, on sale today, will change that. And here's why.

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It’s a little late since the book came out earlier this year, but an appearance by Dylan Horrocks in the US is always welcome. In fact, it’s been more than 10 years since he came to the US and 15 since Hicksville was the toast of SPX. Fantagraphics has just announced a tour for Sam […]

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By Melanie Burke

Images courtesy of Ed Luce

In anticipation of the launch of his first project in comics, Wuvable Oaf, The Beat took a minute to talk with Ed Luce about making the switch from fine art, wrestlers as superheroes and the importance of diverse narratives.

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Melanie Burke: Wuvable Oaf is your first comic project, but you’re an established artist already with international shows. What made you decide to get into comics versus continuing to do fine art?

Ed Luce: Well, it was an entirely practical thing on my part, but also influenced by moving to San Francisco. San Francisco [is] a great comics town. The practical side was I moved into a small studio apartment. I couldn’t do the giant paintings I was doing or the larger painting series I used to do a lot of. My bedroom suddenly became a small tiny closet without the studio.Comics are something that don’t need a lot of materials or a lot of room so when I was reduced to a table top I kind of shifted to that. I started to work in an art store and a lot of comic artists would come in. Half a block from my house is Isotope Comics Lounge which was a huge influence on me early on, definitely, which sort of precipitated the shift.My paintings were already really cartoony to begin with, especially the last couple series, so it just felt like a natural move but as the story goes I was asked to contribute some designs for a paper-doll themed show at the Trunk Space, which is a gallery in Phoenix, Arizona, and one of the designs I created just kind out of the blue was this character called Wuvable Oaf.

 

Burke: Part of the blurb about Wuvable Oaf includes this idea that it’s an ex-wrestler meeting Sex and the City.

Luce: Yeah, that may seem awkward at first glance but that was written by Jacq Cohen, the PR person for Fantagraphics. She is a devout fan. She has a real close read of things, she has her own perspective on it. Some people may hedge at the Sex and the City comparison–I’ve never actually watched that show–but for her to see something like that in it, I appreciate the comparison because then you drop the wrestler into that reference and it gets blown apart. We didn’t even talk about the wrestling thing, which is my version of superheroes. I’m a lifelong wrestling fan and I feel like in some ways they are the superheroes of the real world, or, you know, the reality world, maybe not real world. I was interested in imprinting the wrestling influence on the comic because that’s something that I’ve watched since I was a kid.

 

Burke: What was it like having to add in the writing component? Did you have any prior experience?

Luce: I didn’t and that was definitely an intimidating part. I kind of made my own [comics] that will never see the light of day when I was 13 or 14, a type of superhero comic, but again it just never occurred to me to do any kind of writing. I was very much focused on studio practice. When I did finally come to the table to make a comic the drawing part came naturally but actually having to kind of weave together a story line was a bit of a challenge. And I think that you can see [that weaving] in the Fantagraphics book. I kind of weave together several sub plots. I didn’t want to write the same character doing the same thing over and over again. I ended up working in a large cast of secondary characters…One of the things that’s been exciting and a little intimidating for me with this book coming out, these are my first real comics and I didn’t think anybody would see them. I’m interested and I’m very attuned to the feedback and the response I’m getting from the writing so far.

Burke: Are you surprised at all by the popularity of the narratives that you’re putting out?

Luce: At a very basic level, definitely. When I compose the story and wrote the story I really thought it’s a valentine to sort of San Francisco’s Bear, Gay community definitely and I thought “Well, I’ll try and make it open for other people,” having had this experience making fine art exclusively for one audience. But I never dreamed that it would kind of expand at least to the level that Fantagraphics would want to put it out. And I think that is a testament to trying to keep it open ended, not compromising the queer themes but trying to write them and approach them in a way that’s a little bit more universal and not explicit.To have people pick it up and be able to relate to and adopt this character that, I think, is very queer, his perspective is very queer, it’s really, it’s heartening to me. I think, too, the body type. I hate to bring up this term because it’s already been brought up and beaten to death, the whole “dad-bod” thing. I think straight guys embracing this different body type and not feeling the pressure to necessarily conform to Hollywood standards of what masculinity is is a good thing. I think that’s an important thing, I think it’s an empowering thing and I think the response that I’ve been getting outside of the gay community from straight guys is based on that, but also based on some of the music themes. And then women are into all of it which has been really exciting for me to see.

 

Burke: You’re about to, essentially, tour internationally with Wuvable Oaf. What are you most looking forward to?

Luce: I’m interested to see people’s response to it. It’s interesting to have it all together in one volume. People have been waiting off in the wings, maybe kind of familiar with the character, maybe having picked up an issue or two, but this is the really comprehensive and it’s everything. Even the hard to find stuff, the stuff I’ve let go out of print. I’m interested in seeing how that expands the audience because there are stories in there that are specific to the music world, specific to cat lovers,some of the raunchier material is collected in the back of the book as well, so I’m just curious and excited to see who’s gonna come from out of the woodwork.

 

Burke: What one thing do you hope readers take away from the book? Is there one overall message that you had?

Luce: Yeah, it’s not the most issues oriented comic, let me put it that way. I think sometimes when people think of queer comics there’s often an issue in it that is important and is speaking not just to the gay community, the queer community, or the LGBT community, but to our standing within the broader culture. Especially within the last tempestuous years of equal rights and the politics surrounding marriage equality. My book just has this perspective of “Well, hurry up and catch up with me already.” It’s not what I call, necessarily, a flag waving comic, which, I think, are really important. I think they’re especially important for young people. They need the comic that has the big coming out moment and the big “This is who I am” identity based storyline. Mine is sort of like “Okay, well what happens next?” And for me the recurring theme that I think gets brought up and, I touched upon this earlier, is body issues. I think body issues are something that doesn’t get talked about a lot, especially in the gay male community. There is a lot of body fascism out there—this pressure to look a certain way and act a certain way. And this comic is really just about embracing yourself and kind of taking a look in the mirror, loving yourself, loving what you see, owning it and going with it.

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Wuvable Oaf will be published by Fantagraphics on June 7th.

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It’s Monday.  The work week has just begun.  That means it’s time to start making weekend plans.  If you’re in Portland, OR, you can get an early start to the debauchery by joining Ed Luce at Floating World Comics from 6PM-8PM on Thursday, June 4th to celebrate the launch of his Fantagraphics book, Wuvable Oaf.

The volume collects Luce’s story of an ex-wrestler named Oaf, who lives in San Francisco with an incomprehensible number of cats.  Oaf falls for a singer named Eiffel and Luce celebrates San Francisco’s queer community and music scene through the romantic story of these two men.

Oregon journalist Melanie Burke provides a closer look at the event below:

In addition to exclusive bookplates, the launch party will feature an exhibit of Luce’s work, including hand-drawn originals. Floating World owner Jason Leivian says that he hopes to draw in some of the First Thursday crowd, a once-a-month event that encourages residents to explore Portland’s art scene, and that they will see something they weren’t expecting.

“Portland, of all cities, gets what I’m doing on a sort of across the board level,” says Luce. “Especially [Floating World]. There’ll be quite a few original pieces in that show and they’re kind of like the last hold outs of my pen-to-paper years—I work almost exclusively digitally now.”

Luce will be signing during the event and copies of Wuvable Oaf will be available for purchase.

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After the stunning and sold out $500 slipcased edition of Zap Comix was published by Fantagraphics last year, I wondered if they would give a similar treatment to the equally groundbreaking but not quite as historically lauded Wimmen’s Comix. Run as a collective, with various contributors taking turns as editors, Wimmen’s Comics ran from 1972 to 1992 in various iterations and published work by Trina Robbins, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Diane Noomin, Carol Tyler, M.K. Brown, Diane Noomin, Melinda Gebbie Phoebe Gloeckner, Carol Lay, Caryn Leschen, Leslie Sternbergh, Dori Seda, Mary Fleener, and Krystine Kryttre—among many others, making it one of the most important and influential anthologies of all times. However, despite the importance of the cartoonists that it gave a voice to, it’s usually only mentioned in passing in comics histories.

Happily, this September Fantagraphics will be publishing a deluxe slipcased edition of The Complete Wimmen’s Comix in two volumes, retailing for $100. Edited by Robbins, one of the main drivers behind Wimmen’s, set will include the entire first issue of It Ain’t Me Babe, the first all female comic book published.

Wimmen’s Comix was raw and uncensored, and the subject matter was torn from headlines and private moments, from periods to abortion to crappy jobs to romance. The catalog copy calls it a showcase for “some of the most talented women cartoonists in America” but I think seen in the context of its times, it will be clear that this is a collection of “some of the most talented cartoonists”…full stop.

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Fantagraphics has been teasing something new from Daniel Clowes for a few weeks and now and here’s the official word: Patience, a new 180-page graphic novel from Clowes is coming in March 2016. It’s described as “an indescribable psychedelic science-fiction love story.” Certainly the art seems like a technicolor throwback to some of Clowes earlier genre-influenced work, as well as The Death Ray.

The book veers” with uncanny precision from violent destruction to deeply personal tenderness in a way that is both quintessentially “Clowesian,” and utterly unique in the author’s body of work,” the blurb continues. “This 180-page, full-color story affords Clowes the opportunity to draw some of the most exuberant and breathtaking pages of his life, and to tell his most suspenseful, surprising and affecting story yet.” 

“Patience is the best book yet by probably my favorite cartoonist ever,” said Fantagraphics associate publisher Eric Reynolds, “and I can’t wait for people to have the chance to not take my word for it.”
 
The preliminary cover image, above, also recalls come earlier Clowes work, including the cover to David Boring and the splash pages to some of his Eightball work. But you’ll be able to check all that out for yourself when The Complete Eightball comes out in a few weeks. It’s good to have Daniel Clowes back.
 
PATIENCE
By Daniel Clowes
180 Pages * Full Color * 7 7/8″ x 10 1/4″
ISBN: 978-1-60699-905-9
 

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WOW!  Forbidden Planet in New York City, one of the oldest and best comics retailers in the country, has an amazing amount of events planned this week!

First off, on New Comics Wednesday:

Dan Slott and Chris Miskiewicz will be signing from 6 PM until…?

Then, on Thursday, the 30th, things get really interesting!

Words fail me, so here’s some PR:

Forbidden Planet is stoked to announce a Troma signing on Thursday April 30th at 7PM! The Troma Team and Ship to Shore Phone Co. are celebrating the release of the Class of Nuke ‘Em High Original Soundtrack Lp and the Blu-ray releases of Class of Nuke “Em High Part 2 and The Toxic Avenger part 2!

Meet Lloyd Kaufman (Troma President and creator of The Toxic Avenger), Ethan Hurt(Composer of the Class of Nuke ‘Em High Theme), and Lisa Gaye (star of Class of Nuke ‘ Em High 2 & 3, Toxic Avenger 2-4, and many more Troma classiscs!

That’s right!  Blu-Ray!

Friday?  They take a break.  Because Saturday is Free Comic Book Day!!!!

And what an amazing signing!  Ed Piskor!  Dash Shaw! At Noon! (Oooh… what if they collaborated? My mind reels…)

Here’s the fine print, and it’s mighty fine!

Forbidden Planet NYC will be giving away bags of comics starting at 9am, May 2nd.  All ages bags will also be provided as this is a family-friendly event and there’s little else we like more than comics in the hands of a new generation of readers.  We give away COMPLETE bags of books until we start running out of titles, and will do so as supplies last, so remember to ARRIVE EARLY.

Didja see that?  COMPLETE BAGS!

Madness.

But pretty dang cool.

What’s more, ALL comic books, graphic novels and manga in stock will be ON SALE at 15% OFF for the entire day!!!

Buy one of those gigantic colossal Artist Editions. Or grab something for your niece, nephew, cousin in their great kids section!  Lots of toys, games, t-shirts, collectibles as well!

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It’s time for our annual look at some of the comics coming out for this weekend’s MoCCA Festival, being held this year at Center 548, is located at 548 W. 22nd Street, just off the Westside Highway, with programming at the High Line Hotel on West 20th Street and 10th Avenue.

And here’s the books we got information on. This is just a teeny tiny smattering of the new stuff available — but scroll down for signings from Fantagraphics, NBM and more. And scroll around Tumblr for more more more, especially the MoCCA Festival tumblr.

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Jeremy Nguyen:

I’m debuting a 20 page collection of my webcomic “Stranger Than Bushwick”, which is currently being serialized on Bushwick Daily. This collection explores a lot of New York by way of Brooklyn, millennial lifestyles, and hot-button issues like catcalling and gentrification.

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Coming in March 2016. Five years in the making. pic.twitter.com/oChHUyKbQm

— Fantagraphics Books (@fantagraphics) April 6, 2015

It’s been way too long since we’ve heard from Dan Clowes, Shia LaBeouf aside, but the pile of what appears to be artwork in the above tweet suggests he hasn’t been idle.

Clowes’ last work was Wilson, which came out in 2010. (collected versions of Mr. Wonderful, his NY Times comic, and The Death-Ray came out in 2011. In the intervening years he’s been busy with some Hollywood stuff, a major art retrospective and, of course, the Complete Eightball, which is finally coming out in June, squeeee. In 2011, he alluded to a new longer book:

I’m kind of working on a bigger, longer book that I don’t want to talk about or it’ll jinx me. The minute I say, “Oh, I’m doing this,” then the next day I’ll realize I don’t want to do it and I’ll look like an idiot. I’ve done that so many times where somebody will call me up and I’ll mention it one time because I’m excited about it and of course it falls apart and I’m stuck explaining myself for the rest of my life.

In other interviews, Clowes alludes to beginning and abandoning a graphic novel about Hollywood, so this maybe isn’t that but…hey whatever it is, it’s exciting! And only a year to go!

On another note, this marks Clowes’ return to Fantagraphics after some adventures afield with D&Q and Random House. There’s probably a lot more analysis to be made about all that, but we’ll save it for when more than a teaser image is revealed.

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Beloved comics figures Jen Vaughn is leaving her marketing position at Fantagraphics, and Tom Spurgeon has her exit inerview:

VAUGHN: The plan was to stay in comics. Period. I’ve worked with comics and graphics novels at almost every level: handselling Y: the Last Man and Jeffrey Brown at a bookstore (Bookstop in Austin), comic book library, teaching comics to people from age seven to seventy, teaching teachers how to integrate comics in their curriculum, interned a company (Top Shelf), gone to comic book school, drawn — and printed — my own comics, wrote for a comics news site (The Beat), had a webcomic for a year and half, organized a small comic con, hosted indie comics — ye old Nerdlingers — worked at a comics non-profit, worked at a comics publisher. Basically, the only things left for me are to work at a printer in Asia and be a full-time freelancer. And maybe become a font…

Vaughn is a popular industry figure for all the above as well as her very funny and charming comics—which she hasn’t had as much time to work on as she’d like, hence the going freelance. Future projects include:

VAUGHN: Probably working in the aforementioned studio with Gaudiano, Moritat, and Thies. I’m inking two mainstream books and that news will be out soon. They are rad as hell and I’m working with great creative teams, I adore the pencillers especially. Anyone who follows me on Twitter (@thejenya) can hazard a guess. Meanwhile, Ryan K. Lindsay is writing a one-shot comic for me about power struggles, teens and more; can’t wait to sink my teeth in his script. Kevin Church promised me a space epic. My own ideas have been bubbling up for a bit so I may throw a thing or two out in the world.

Oh oh oh… also, I have the pleasure of working on a menstruation comic with the Menstrupedia people, who helped raise awareness and break the taboo about speaking about menstruation in India. Rajat Mittal hired me and I got to pick my creative team so Fanta editor Kristy Valenti is helping with rewrites and Fanta designer Keeli McCarthy is helping with some coloring/lettering and design. I’m all about getting paid and passing on some work to other people. And some my first mini-comics were menstruation-related. It is basically the perfect convergence of projects to start out with. My email is [email protected] if someone is dying to have me do something. My dance card is a bit full now but I have a list of people I want to collaborate with.

Vaughn was a huge addition to Fantagraphics, especially teamed with her publicity partner Jacq Cohen, overseeing Fanta’s successful kickstarter campaign and helping in innumerable other ways to negotiate the very changed world of comics retail and marketing. It’s a big loss for them, but Vaughn has trained her replacement interns in her mystical way of the stick. Although we’re saddened not to be working with her in that business capacity, the sorrow is mitigated by having more Jen Vaughn comics in the world! YAY!

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Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar—a masterpiece of small town life, longing and the search for love—survived a challenge and will remain on the shelves at the school library in Rio Rancho, NM Betsy Gomez reports for the CBLDF.

The book was challenged a few weeks ago as “child porn” by a parent in a highly slanted scare TV report. A review committee has decided that the book can stay:

The Rio Rancho review committee agreed. By a 5-3 vote, the committee voted on March 16 to retain the book.

“We commend the Rio Rancho Public Schools for adhering to its challenge policy, and are pleased with the result that the review committee has retained this important book for the benefit of its student community,” says Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of KRRP sponsor organization Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

As NCAC’s original letter stated, a decision to keep Palomar would “demonstrate respect for your readers and their choices, for the professionalism of the librarians who serve the reading public, and for the First Amendment and its importance to a pluralistic, democratic society.”

5-3 is a little close, but the literary merit of Hernandez’s work is universally acknowledged and it’s a relief to see that the obvious scare quotes of the first TV report were not persuasive.

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Sadly I can’t embed the local news scare quotes story here but the transcript is almost as good. A mother in Rio Rancho, NM found her son had checked out Gilbert Hernandez’ PALOMAR from the school library, and then things got dangerous!

She said her son checked out the book “Palomar” from the Rio Rancho High School library Wednesday.

The 14-year-old thought it might be a Magna, or Japanese-style comic book. There are cartoon-like characters, but Lopez said she found 30 disturbing images in the book.

“I started to find child pornography pictures and child abuse pictures and I was like, ‘No. That’s not going to happen in my house,’” she said.

Online, “Palomar” is described as a graphic novel written by Gilbert Hernandez.

Even more incredibly the book—which reprints Hernandez’s acclaimed stories set in a small Mexican town from the first 10 issues or so of Love and Rockets—had been in the library since 2006! And no one noticed! The school library is investigating to find out HOW THIS HAPPENED?

How did it happen? Palomar is an acclaimed book by an acclaimed author, probably.

That said, the Palomar tales are definitely full of pee-pees, woo-woos and lots and lots of bazingas. It is a haunting, adult story of love, sex, betrayal, memory and loss. No one in comics draws guys with their dinguses hanging out quite the way Beto does. That said, as wonderful as this material is, school libraries are under a lot of pressure over standards, and Palomar is definitely rather adventurous material.

I would link to some images by my ad network won’t allow it. UPDATE: Jen Vaughan has a dingus parade! Thanks Jen!

Anyway, this seems like a tempest in a teapot with some deliberately misleading scary inaccurate quotes. Will it blow over as virtually every similar scandal—PARENT led protests, that is, not government led ones like the removal of Persepolis from Chicago schools—in recent years has? We’ll see.

UPDATED 2: ON a more serious note, the CBLDF is responding to this with help and information:

Needless to say, Palomar is not actually a collection of child porn — Publishers Weekly called it “a superb introduction to the work of an extraordinary, eccentric and very literary cartoonist” and it often draws comparisons to the magic realism of novelists such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The book collects Hernandez’s “Heartbreak Soup” stories which originally appeared in the Love and Rockets series, a collaboration with his brothers Jaime and Mario. Gilbert Hernandez’s stories focus on the interconnected lives of characters from one family in the fictional South American town of Palomar.

Although filtered by KOAT’s biased reporting Rio Rancho Public Schools officials’ characterization of the book as “clearly inappropriate” is worrisome. We certainly hope that the said officials are up to speed on their district’s policy on Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials, which says in part:

Review of questioned (“challenged”) materials will be treated objectively, unemotionally, and as a routine matter. Criticisms of print and non-print materials must be submitted in writing on a Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials form obtained from the librarian at the library/media center where the material is housed and submitted to the Superintendent of schools. The Request must be signed and include specific information as to author, title, publisher, and definite citation of objection.

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Let’s leave off this week with a glorious image. Eightball ran for 18 issues from 1989 to 1997 and was the medium for such classics as “Art School Confidential”, “Live a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron,” “Ghost World” Dan Pussey and more more more. Traversing the gulf from rough humor comics of the 80s to the intimate details of the 90s, it’s an essential for the smallest comics shelf possible. The book drops in June and Vice talks to The Man

“We came out of an era that was just moribund in comics.” Clowes says over the phone from his home in California. “The original guys who’d revitalised Marvel in the 60s had faded, and they were replaced by guys imitating them, who were then replaced by guys imitating them, it was this fourth generation of boring, awful comics. At the same time all the head shops, all the drug paraphernalia shops were being closed down – and they were where underground comics by the likes of Robert Crumb would be sold, so that was disappearing as well. There was nothing, it felt dead. But there was a whole generation of us who’d grown up on Mad magazine and National Lampoon and the comedy of Monty Python and Richard Pryor, and we wanted to do good comics. All of a sudden these people started to appear all over the country, trying to do something different, it was a miracle that we got an audience. We were a very, very small offshoot of the comics industry – it didn’t feel like we were taking over anything…”

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