FANFARE / PONENT MON
THE SUMMIT OF GODS VOLUME 1 GN
(W) Yumemakura Baku (A) Jiro Taniguchi
Why climb Mount Everest? Englishman George Herbert Leigh Mallory said in reply,
"Because it is there" in a March 1923 interview with The New York Times. On his
third expedition to the mountain in June 1924, Mallory and his climbing partner,
Andrew Irvine, disappeared on the North-East ridge during their ascent, having
been sighted only a few hundred yards from the summit. In 1993, Makoto Fukumachi,
photographer for a Japanese expedition, stumbles across an old Kodak camera.
Could it be Mallory's camera? Did it hold the secret of whether Mallory and
Irvine made it to the summit almost three decades ahead of Sir Edmund Hillary
and Sherpa Tenzing? (C: 0-0-2)
SC, 7x9, 328pgs, B&W (1 of 5) SRP: $25.00
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
EVERYBODY IS STUPID EXCEPT FOR ME AND OTHER ASTUTE OBSERVATIONS
by Peter Bagge
7.75 x 10, 112 pages, FC, $16.99
Fans of Peter Bagge’s generation-defining, satirical fiction may not realize
this, but the cartoonist doubles as an opinionated cuss, and has been
contributing provocative (but still hilarious) comic-strip opinion pieces to
Reason magazine for the last several years... finally collected in this volume.
Although a libertarian by inclination (hence the Reason gig), Bagge (who lives
in the fuzzy-headed, liberal capital of the Northwest, Seattle) is hardly
dogmatic, and many of the pieces undermine traditional party lines in favor of a
rather personal, rational and informed take on hot-button issues that will force
partisan Democrats and Republicans alike to rethink them. And of course, Bagge’s
well-researched comic strip “essays” crackle with the same energy and wit that
propelled him into the collective Gen X consciousness with his comic book series
Hate.
Favorite topics include the erosion of our civil liberties (whether the
post-9/11 Bush administrations’ gradual erosion of the Bill of Rights, the
insanity of the war on drugs, or nanny-state meddling), ongoing boondoggles of
the American public (for professional sports stadiums or ineffective public
transportation systems), the Iraq war (Bagge is vociferously against it),
politicians both in general and in particular (including the 2008 presidential
race and a revelatory one-on-one with Republican not-so-hopeful Ron Paul that
soured Bagge on the candidate forever), and the conservative/religious war on
sex. Each piece features Bagge himself front and center as the puzzled,
indignant, or deeply conflicted everyman-on-the-street trying to make sense of
this 21st Century.
And of course, every panel is delineated in Bagge’s glorious, laugh-out-loud
stretchy 4-color cartoon style, making even his disquisitions on some very
serious topics go down as smoothly as Buddy Bradley’s latest escapade.
ABSTRACT COMICS: THE ANTHOLOGY
Edited by Andrei Molotiu
8.5 x 11, 208 pages, FC, $39.99
Abstract comics? Don’t all comics tell stories? How can a comic be abstract?
Well, as it happens, beginning with the experiments of Saul Steinberg, through
some of the more psychedelic creations of R. Crumb and Victor Moscoso, and with
increasing frequency in recent years, cartoonists and other artists have played
with the possibility of comics whose panels contain little to no
representational imagery, and which tell no stories other than those that result
from the transformation and interaction of shapes across the layout of a comic
page. Reduced to the most basic elements of comics —the panel grid,
brushstrokes, and sometimes colors— abstract comics highlight the formal
mechanisms that underlie all comics, such as the graphic dynamism that leads the
eye (and the mind) from panel to panel or the aesthetically rich interplay
between sequentiality and page layout.
Abstract Comics, edited by Andrei Molotiu, an art historian as well as one of
the best-known contemporary abstract-comic creators, is the first collection
devoted to this budding genre. It gathers the best abstract comics so far
created, including early experiments in the form by cartoonists primarily known
for other types of comics, such as Gary Panter, Moebius, Patrick McDonnell, or
Lewis Trondheim, and pieces by little-known pioneers such as Benoit Joly, Bill
Boichel and Jeff Zenick, as well as by recent creators who have devoted a good
part of their output to perfecting the form, such as Ibn al Rabin, Billy Mavreas,
Mark Staff Brandl, and many others. It also features first attempts,
commissioned specifically for this anthology, by well-known cartoonists such as
James Kochalka, Ivan Brunetti, J.R. Williams and Warren Craghead. Comprehensive
in scope, Abstract Comics gathers work not only from North America, but also
from France, Switzerland, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, showing the
rise in popularity of the genre to be a true international phenomenon. In the
process, the anthology highlights the wide variety of approaches taken to the
combination of abstraction and sequential art — approaches resulting in work
that is not only graphically bold, but also often proves to be surprisingly
humorous or emotionally disturbing.
THE ARTIST HIMSELF: A RAND HOLMES RETROSPECTIVE
by Patrick Rosenkranz
8 x 10, 208 pages, FC, $28.99
Rand Holmes was Canada’s most revolutionary artist in his heyday, the star
cartoonist at the Georgia Straight newspaper in British Columbia during the
1970s. His hippie hero, Harold Hedd, became the spokesman of the emerging
counterculture as he avoided work, explored free love, and flouted drug laws.
The Adventures of Harold Hedd spread across the globe in the wave of underground
comix and newspapers of the era and Holmes became famous — or at least
notorious. While his comic character was bold and blatant, the artist was shy
and quiet, well on his way to becoming a complete hermit.
This book is an intimate and expansive account of a very private man who
expressed his deepest feelings in the then disreputable medium of comix. “He
didn’t talk much but he sure wrote a lot,” avowed his widow Martha. This
biography/retrospective includes generous selections from his private journals
and correspondence, family photo albums, sketchbooks, and personal anecdotes
from his friends and colleagues. His artistic history began haltingly on the
lonely windswept plateau of Edmonton, flourished in Vancouver and San Francisco,
and concluded peacefully on Lasqueti Island, a remote backwater in the Straits
of Georgia where he lived out his dreams of pioneering and homesteading.
Holmes’ life story is richly illustrated with drawings, comic strips,
watercolors, and paintings that span his whole career, from the hot rod cartoons
he drew as a teenager, dozens of covers for the Georgia Straight, pornographic
cartoons for the sex tabloid Vancouver Star, to complete comic stories from Slow
Death Funnies, Dope Comix, All Canadian Beaver, Death Rattle, Grateful Dead
Comix, and many more. The full-length Harold Hedd comic novels, Wings Over
Tijuana and Hitler’s Cocaine are reprinted in their entirety together for the
first time. This unique collection of art documents a lifetime of work by one of
the most talented artists of his generation.
Holmes died in March 2002 from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and his ashes are buried next
to the Art Centre he helped build on Lasqueti Island. A retrospective exhibition
of his original work was held five years later at the community hall. A DVD
documentary of that event accompanies this book.
Author Patrick Rosenkranz met Holmes in his salad days and remained in touch
throughout his life. The Holmes family gave him complete access to their art
collection and personal files, and encouraged him to tell the whole truth about
Rand Holmes’ life and work.
LOCAS II: MAGGIE, HOPEY & RAY
by Xaime Hernandez
8.5 x 11, 416 pages, BW, $39.99
This second, doorstop-sized omnibus volume of “Locas” tales by Jaime Hernandez —
collecting over a dozen years’ worth of stories from the award-winning Love &
Rockets comics — picks up shortly after Maggie and Hopey’s long-awaited reunion
at the end of the Locas hardcover.
Even though her love life remains as chaotic as ever, Hopey takes her first few
steps toward responsible adulthood with a real job (as a teacher), while a
depressed, divorced Maggie ends up as the manager of a fleabag apartment
building, where she continues to wrestle with the demons of her past — most
prominently in the stunning centerpiece of the volume, the graphic novel-length
“Ghost of Hoppers,” with its hallucinatory dream finale.
On the “guy” side Ray, still carrying a major torch for Maggie, falls in with
the “Frogmouth,” the volatile bombshell (arguably the sexiest woman Jaime has
ever drawn, which is saying something) whose ties to local thugs cause some
hairy moments indeed.
Of course, Maggie, Hopey, and Ray’s paths continue to intersect in Jaime’s
increasingly complex, always richly imagined world, along with those of
characters both old (Izzy Ortiz, Penny Century) and new (the jockette Angel, the
mysterious superheroine Alarma).
YOU SHALL DIE BY YOUR OWN EVIL CREATION
by Fletcher Hanks; Edited by Paul Karasik
8.5 x 11, 224 pages, FC, $24.99
Fletcher Hanks was the first great comic book auteur. That is, he wrote,
penciled, inked, and lettered all of his own stories. He completed an
astonishing 48 stories in three years from 1939-1941. As a
one-man-cartooning-band, his work packs the wallop of a unique and unified
artistic vision. He was a true comics visionary. In the earliest days of the
comic book, before censorship, it was “anything goes!”—and in the tales of
Fletcher Hanks, anything went!
The superhero Stardust gazes down at evil-doers from space and doles out ice
cold slabs of poetic justice with his wizardry. A villain out to kidnap all the
heads of state gets turned into a giant head, himself…no body, just a head! The
jungle protectress, Fantomah, looks like Jean Harlow in a skin-tight black
negligee. But when she sees an evil scientist drugging gorillas to become
slaves, her head transforms into a flaming skull and she tosses the villain to
the gorillas who proceed to graphically tear the guy limb from ragged limb.
Although the early comic books were meant for the kiddies, today’s mature
readers are stunned by their pop surrealism and outright violent mayhem. The
first volume of Fletcher Hanks stories, I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets!
(now in its fourth printing) was an Eisner Award-winning smash hit and a staple
on “Best of the Year” lists.
Comics fans were thrilled to come upon a cartoonist of this caliber whom they
had never heard of before. Non comics fans who read about the book in The
Believer and other journals were stunned to discover an Outsider Artist in comic
book form. Edited by cartoonist Paul Karasik, this second volume You Shall Die
By Your Own Evil Creation, collects all of the rest of Hanks comic book work.
That’s right... ALL! The 31 tales in this book (more than TWICE as many as in
the first), when combined with the first volume, will comprise The Complete
Fletcher Hanks!
FROM WONDERLAND WITH LOVE: DANISH COMICS IN THE THRID MILLENNIUM
Edited by Steffen Maarup
8.5 x 11, 176 pages, FC, $29.99
In all the excitement over manga from Japan and bandes dessinées from France,
it’s easy to forget that most other countries have a thriving comics culture all
their own. This eye-popping anthology, assembled by Danish
publisher/editor/translator Steffen Maarup, introduces adventurous readers to 18
exciting talents, most of whom are taking their first bow on the
English-speaking stage. One centerpiece of the book is Nikoline Werdelin’s
stunning “Because I Love You So Much,” a Doonesbury-style slice-of-life Danish
daily strip about a suburban Danish couple who discover their daughter is being
molested — is it happening at her daycare center — horrifyingly, closer to home?
Other major revelations include Julie Nord’s elegantly drawn “From Wonderland
With Love” (which gives the collection its title), a modernistic riff on Alice
in Wonderland, and Ib Kjeldsmark’s “Sloth,” a riotously punk-inflected day-glo
duo-toned road trip. The book also spotlights the snarky and surreal
single-panel work and gags by HuskMitNavn, Christoffer Zieler, and Johan F.
Krarup; the visually explosive silent comics of Mårdøn Smet and Peter Kielland;
cover artist T. Thorhauge’s spectacular philosophical piece “M”; and many other
stories in a wide variety of styles from the sinister black and white Lynchian
surrealism of Simon Bukhaven’s wooden robot story “All I Have in My Hand” to the
watercolored animal-fable extravaganza “Tomb of the Rabbit King” by Allan
Haverholm, from Søren Mosdal and Jacob Ørsted’s meticulously delineated and
colored nightmare yarn “Dog God” to Zven Baslev’s slashing, black and white,
Panter-esque “Cadarul Zombie.” And more!
THE COMICS JOURNAL #299
Edited by Gary Groth, Mike Dean & Kristy Valenti
7.5 x 9.5, 200 pages, FC, $11.99
In TCJ #299, The Pirate and the Mouse author Bob Levin tracks down the El Dorado
of comics, a lost collection of unpublished strips by 190 of the world’s most
important cartoonists, including Will Eisner, Vaughn Bodé, Jack Kirby, Harvey
Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, Arnold Roth, Bill Griffith, Ralph Steadman, Don
Martin, Gahan Wilson, Jeff Jones, Guido Crepax — even William Burroughs, Tom
Wolfe and Frank Zappa! The comics were assembled in the 1970s by Michel
Choquette (creator with Neal Adams of National Lampoon’s Son o’ God comics) for
a book called Someday Funnies, which never saw print. Levin and Choquette reveal
for the first time the whole catastrophic story of what might have been the
comics anthology of the century. Plus: Pearls Before Swine creator and 2007
Reuben Cartoonist of the Year Stephan Pastis talks about his popular newspaper
strip, making a living on the funny pages and working for Peanuts.
FANTAGRAPHICS REOFFERS
BUDDY DOES SEATTLE
by Peter Bagge
6 x 9, 340 pages, BW, $16.95
These legendary stories, from the classic first fifteen issues of Bagge's Hate
comic, are a defining icon of Seattle's early 1990s culture (the Seattle Weekly
has written, "20 years from now, when people wonder what it was like to be young
in 1990s Seattle, the only record we'll have is Hate."), as well as Generation X
in general (as seen in such films as Kids and Pecker). This is the first time
these hilarious stories, starring the hapless Buddy Bradley and his cast of
loser cohorts, have ever been available under one cover, and never have they
been available at such a low price (it would have cost at least three times as
much to read all of these classic stories in any previous editions). Bagge's
riotous tales of the early 1990s subculture are more hilarious now than ever,
find out why he has been praised by R. Crumb, Matt Groening, John Kricfalusi,
Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly and many more. Comedy genius.
(OCT078068)
BUDDY DOES JERSEY
by Peter Bagge
6 x 9, 352 pages, BW, $16.95
At the end of Buddy Does Seattle, with his rock-impresario career in tatters,
his friends dispersed, and his career opportunities at zero, Buddy had decided
to return with his tail between his legs (and his neurotic girlfriend Lisa on
his hands) to his native New Jersey. Buddy Does Jersey collects all 15 issues of
Hate describing the arc of Buddy's East Coast experience, including his launch
as a small businessman (co-owning and running a nostalgia store with the dubious
Jay) and his reintegration with his family (his sister now a harassed mom, his
brother still pretty much a psycho, and his parents — well, wait and see). Also
included in this volume is the shocking final fate of the exuberant Stinky — a
story that caused jaws to drop in unison all around the world when it was
originally released — and the riotous tale of Lisa's brief conversion to
lesbianism and subsequent breakup with Buddy. Originally released in color, the
stories in Buddy Does Jersey are here presented de-colorized in the pristine
black and white of earlier Buddy stories, in order to better show off the crisp
beauty of inker Jim Blanchard's linework. (Or as much crisp beauty as you need
to delineate a row of partygoers setting fire to their own flatulence!) Buddy
Does Jersey features a long introduction by Bagge describing (for the first
time) how the stories in this book reflected events in his own life, and a
foreword by the inheritor of Bagge's mantle of hilarious grossness, Angry Youth
Comix' Johnny Ryan. (AUG078200)
LOCAS
by Xaime Hernandez
8.5 x 11, 712 pages, BW, $49.95
One of the most humane, graceful and imaginatively inexhaustible artists in
American popular culture, Jaime Hernandez has created in Locas one of the great
American novels of the last 30 years, graphic or otherwise. Created over 15
years from 1981 to 1996 in the pages of the legendary comic book series Love and
Rockets, Locas tells the story of Maggie Chascarrillo, a bisexual,
Mexican-American woman attempting to define herself in a community rife with
class, race and gender issues.
Maggie's story begins in the early-1980s Southern California rock scene, when it
was shifting from the excesses of the 1970s to the gritty basics of punk and new
wave. Hardcore punk rock came to the fore, and the teenaged Maggie finds herself
drawn to the anarchy, energy and diversity of the scene, which in Jaime's hands
becomes a very real, habitable place populated with authentic human beings
rather than stereotypes. She quickly befriends Hopey Glass, a feisty
anti-authoritarian punkette who quickly becomes Maggie's on-again, off-again
lover and a constant presence in her life throughout the book. (JUN042525)
I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS
by Fletcher Hanks; Edited by Paul Karasik
8.5 x 11, 120 pages, FC, $19.95
Welcome to the bizarre world of Fletcher Hanks, Super Wizard of the inkwell.
Fletcher Hanks worked for only a few years in the earliest days of the comic
book industry (1939-1941). Because he worked in a gutter medium for second-rate
publishers on third-rate characters his work has been largely forgotten. But
among aficionados he is legendary. Hanks drew in a variety of genres depicting
science-fiction saviors, white women of the jungle, and he-man loggers.
Cartoonist Paul Karasik (co-adapter of Paul Auster's City of Glass and co-author
of The Ride Together, a Memoir of Autism in the Family) has spent years tracking
down these obscure and hard to find stories buried in the back of long-forgotten
comic book titles. Karasik has also uncovered a dark secret: why Hanks
disappeared from the comics scene. This book collects 15 of his best stories in
one volume followed by an Afterword which solves the mystery of "Whatever
Happened to Fletcher Hanks," the mysterious cartoonist who created a hailstorm
of tales of brutal retribution... and then mysteriously vanished. (MAR073437)
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