Fantagraphics November 1991
Tattoo Man • Chapter One • Save Me from the Good Life • Victims • Life in Boronia • Story of Greasy Eddy & Dinette McDonald • Lifestyles of the Poor and Insignificant • Belief • New York Stories • Death Threats from the Toast • 9ish to 5ish • My Little Girl • I Had a Ringside Seat • Jack Takes It Easy • Personal Myth • Man Bites Dog • Lighted Cities (more…)
Fantagraphics (1986-2003)
I remember reading the first two issues in the mid-90s and being really impressed by their intensity. In my mind, the books were like a midway point between Scott Russo’s Jizz and Johnny Ryan’s Angry Youth Comix. That is, on the continuum from pure misanthropic rant (Jizz) to pure misanthropic poop humour (Angry Youth), it’s somewhere in the middle (more…)
Fantagraphics (1986-2003)
Deitch’s artwork is not quite like anything else (well, except perhaps his brother’s). It has a distinct 20s-30s animation quality to it, but it’s also very, very stiff. But pleasingly so! Looking at these drawings, I get the feeling that it wouldn’t take much to make it all go quite awry, but the end effect is very endearing. The constant diagonal hatching technique he uses gives it all an obsessive quality that fits these tales where everything is interconnected. The Deitches present most of these stories as being true; they’re doing research into cartooning history. Ted Mishkin is the central character here, and we see a recreation here of a mural he did while in an insane asylum. (more…)
Fantagraphics 1997
When I first ran across Rick Altergott’s DOOFUS OMNIBUS, I wondered exactly what a duo of panty-sniffing creeps had to offer me. The unlikely answer is: quite a bit! Sure, this may look like lowbrow material… well okay, it is, but there’s so much more here. The adventures of the repulsive Doofus (a dumpy unshaven man with bizarre fashion sense) and his even-more-repulsive pal Henry Hotchkiss (a dopey vagrant) occur in Flowertown USA, which looks like a pleasant place until you see the other goons who make up the town’s seedy underbelly. In fact, combined with other losers such as the mulleted Relief Erickson, greasy Stink-Hair Stu, and the buxom trailer-trash Miss Juniper, it appears that the realm occupied by Doofus and Henry is the real Flowertown, with the handsome businessmen, upper-crusts, and joggers being part of a thin veneer. (more…)
Fantagraphics 1992
Despite the name, I thought that perhaps this was an autobio series, just based on the intensity of the start of the first issue. That certainly looks and reads like a confessional religious outsider autobiographical piece, but since it ends with the protagonist building a new Christ from communion wafers and wine, it probably isn’t. The religious themes continue in the second issue, where we are witnessing a retelling of the story of Pope Joan, the only female pope (in the 700s). (more…)
Fantagraphics 1997
Ghost World is a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. It was serialized in issues #11–18 (June 1993 – March 1997) of Clowes’s comic book series Eightball and was published in book form in 1997 by Fantagraphics Books. It was a commercial and critical success and developed into a cult classic.
Ghost World follows the day-to-day lives of best friends Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer, two cynical, pseudo-intellectual, and intermittently witty teenage girls recently graduated from high school at the end of the 1990s. They spend their days wandering aimlessly around their unnamed American town, criticizing popular culture and the people they encounter while wondering what they will do for the rest of their days. (more…)
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Fantagraphics 1997
A History of Violence is a graphic novel written by John Wagner and illustrated by Vince Locke, originally published in 1997 by Paradox Press and later by Vertigo Comics, both imprints of DC Comics. It is also the source for the film of the same name directed by David Cronenberg, the first cinematic adaption of a work by John Wagner since 1995’s Judge Dredd.
Fantagraphics (1986-2003)
The Complete Crumb Comics is a series of collections from Fantagraphics Books which was intended to reproduce the entire body of American cartoonist and comic book artist/writer Robert Crumb’s comics work in chronological order, beginning with his fanzine work from as early as 1958. (more…)
Fantagraphics Books (1998-2005)
These are the abstract expressionist visions of Swedish underground artist Max Andersson. His symbolism, like his artwork, is something less than subtle. (more…)