Clearly influenced by the Frank Book I just read.

Fantagraphics Kids.

Kids at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery 3rd Anniversary Party.

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Mike Baehr.

Mike Baehr (Fantagraphics’ consumer marketing/web editor guy) at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 3rd Anniversary Party.

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Checkers And Stripes.

Checkers…

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and stripes.

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Janice.

Janice at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery 3rd Anniversary Party.

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Gary Groth: President Of Fantagraphics.

Gary Groth at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery 3rd Anniversary Party.

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Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 3rd Anniversary Party: The Artists…

Artist: Femke Hiemstra.

International Superstar Pop Surrealist Femke Hiemstra being gorgeous.

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Artist: Paul Hornschemeir.

The Two Faces of Paul Hornschemeir… critically-acclaimed author/artist shows me his dual nature while signing my copy of All And Sundry.

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Artists: Peter Bagge with Steve Fisk.

The local & legendary cartoonist Peter Bagge posing for a pic just before taking the stage to rock out with local music producer Steve Fisk and their band Can You Imagine?.

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Steve Fisk.

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Artist: Jay Ryan.

Rock n’ roll underground poster designer Jay Ryan signing my copy of Animals and Objects In and Out of Water.

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Artist: Scott Musgrove.

Frankenstein naturalist artist Scott Musgrove.

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Artist: Dame Darcy.

Artist, craft queen, and musician Dame Darcy rocking out some pirate songs.

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Artist: Jim Woodring.

Psychedelic comic book artist Jim Woodring signing one of his books for a fan.

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Artist: Jacob Covey.

I ran into the ultra amazing graphic designer and Fantagraphics art director Jacob Covey as Mary and I were leaving the party for a cup of coffee. He saw my camera and asked if I was Jonas because he’d seen my photos on Flickr and we had spoken by email a couple of times. I stumbled around to say something, failed to introduce him to Mary (to his credit, he introduced himself), and then stumbled into the night wondering how someone as outgoing as myself can also be such a social disaster. At least I got a nice picture.

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I’m hoping to post more pictures from the night up soon, but until then you can see the whole Flickr set (Here).

Sandy.

Sandy (owner/operator of Sin In Linen) at the Seattle Fantagraphics Bookstore 3rd Anniversary Party (see full Flickr set HERE).

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Jacques Boyreau: Portable Grindhouse.

This guy saw me taking pictures on Saturday and pulled me aside to talk to me. He asked if I was the kid from Children Of The Corn. I laughed and said yes. Someone told him I was in the movie. I love that Children Of The Corn sometimes gets me to meet me new and interesting people. I only wish sometimes that being mutilated in a cornfield when I was 13 wasn’t my only claim to fame. We were at the Seattle Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 3rd Anniversary party, which was also celebrating the world premier of their new book, Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of The VHS Box. As it turned out, he was Jacques Boyreau, the writer/editor of the book. Here he is posing in front of the incredible Portable Grindhouse wall mural they had painted for the event.

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Lout Rampage! (1996, Fantagraphics) ***

W/A: Daniel Clowes.

Collection of short subjects (mainly taken from Clowes’ on-going Eightball) betrays authors obsessions and verges upon self indulgence.  The notorious “I Hate You Deeply”, a list of thing that Clowes despises, isn’t half as funny as it thinks it is, and is a good indication of the worst of the book.  That said, there is much to treasure within.  Clowes’ reworking of “Frankie and Johnnie” and his Duplex Planet pieces (with Dan Greenburger) show a real wit at work.

Companion volume: Orgy Bound.

If you ever skipped school to zone out to stacks of rented VHS tapes, or exhausted the wealth of movies at your local video store by 1995, then this is the perfect item for you, or someone like you. Packaged lovingly to resemble an VHS tape from days gone by, the book Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box contains some of the greatest crap-rack video covers of all time. Folks are a little more discerning about what they’ll rent these days (if they rent at all) but when VHS rentals were at their peak, all you needed to rope people into taking a movie home was an over the top box design.

Harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the advent of rental videos astonished the movie-going consumer who could only feed his addiction by going to the theater or watching chopped up movies in between commercials on TV. Like vinyl, here is the revenge of another analog cast-off: the VHS is once again insinuating itself into American culture, and this book celebrates the anarchic design art of those early VHS boxes.

Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box is a feast for exploitation cognoscenti, reprinting some of the most louche, decadent, minimo-pervo artwork to ever grace a VHS box, featuring such movies as From Beyond,Penitentiary II, Beast of the Yellow Night, Cop Killers, Bay of Blood, Escape from Death Row, and Cocaine Wars. Readers will be agog at the plethora of supertrash movie titles, and then move on to rediscover the anarchic box designs. Throughout, editor and cultural historian Jacques Boyreau succinctly narrates the household-piercing story of VHS: “On par with the jukebox, disco, and neon, VHS reformatted the world’s product-intake and boosted a libertarian aesthetic that conquered TV in the same way TV conquered comic books in the 1950s, and allowed us to hold movies in our hands. Posters in the lobby could advertise, even fetishize a movie; credit sequences could identify the participants, but somehow, VHS box-art ‘became’ the iconic equivalent of the movie.”

Portable Grindhouse is published in a VHS “format,” slyly packaged inside a facsimile VHS box, and contains almost a hundred reproductions of VHS art with commentary.

www.fantagraphics.com

#$@&!: The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection (1989, Fantagraphics) ***

W/A: Daniel Clowes.

Collection of stories featuring the jaded beatnik of the title.

Clowes’ hymn to disposable 50’s and 60’s pop culture reads like a dream, but you’ll have trouble remembering any of it five minutes after you put it down. Drawn in a smart, angular style that has no business working as well as it does.

Here’s a video preview of the last issue of The Comics Journal before the relaunch planned for next year. Enjoy.

While superheroes are all the rage in Hollywood, who is looking to the fertile imaginative world of indie/alternative/underground comics? Lucky for us, no one. Since if they were, they’d probably screw it up. And even if there was someone, they’d never touch Al Columbia’s work.

It’s like a bomb went off in the subconscious of Max Fleischer and Columbia was around to collect the pieces years later when they fell to earth. In this time of safe substitution power fantasies, Columbia’s work is truly provocative stuff. Funny, dark, and impeccably executed.

As you can tell from my gushing, I am a fan. I am nowhere close to having all of his work. Not that there is whole lot though. It was from his contributions to late 90s Fantagraphics anthology, Zero Zero that I became enamored with his style. ( My fingers are perma-crossed in hopes for a release of his past works in one handy volume!) And twelve years later, I still hunger for more.

So now I wait anxiously for the arrival of Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days in the post. Looking at the book while in a Boston comics shop sealed the deal for me. It doesn’t look to be an easy read but a pretty rewarding one for a freak like me. If you want to know more about what I’m on about, just clicks some pics and explore. Go have a fugue, you know?

Chris Ware visited the Raptus comics festival in Bergen in 2002, and I got the chance to interview him both by e-mail in advance and meeting him in person at the festival. Here’s the e-mail interview in full.

FOTO: ØYVIND HOLEN

CW: Dear Mr. Holen, my apologies for not sending this sooner – I actually answered all the questions on Monday, though I like to let them “sit” for a few days, just to make sure that I didn’t say anything too incredibly stupid. Anyway, I hope these answers are okay… and my thanks again for your kind interest!

Very warmest wishes, and regards,
Chris Ware.

ØH: Your title, ACME Novelty Library, seemed to come out of nowhere when it first appeared in 1993. What plans and goals did you have for the title at first, and how did/do these change with time?

CW: Essentially, in 1993, it was sort of a “catch all” title intended to encompass everything I’d done up until that time which I deemed marginally publishable; the earliest comics that have appeared in its pages are from 1988, and the most recent from 2000.

I didn’t want the book to have my name plastered all over the series, since everything I do is essentially autobiography already; the “corporate” tone allowed me to satirize and parody those pseudo-esthetic aspects of the rest of the world (i.e. the business world) that amuse me, as well as to play up the jokes inherent in a medium with its feet set both in art and in commerce. Plus I liked the idea of a “library” for “novelties.” I guess. Maybe, however, I’m starting now to forget why I did it.

ØH: The movie versions of From Hell and Ghost World can be seen as the mainstream’s acceptance that comics are more than colorful characters. They were made into movies because of the stories, not the characters (like Batman and Spider-Man). It’s almost the same when Jimmy Corrigan won The Guardian’s First Book Award. But my question is this: How do you feel about superhero comics and will comics ever step out of the long shadows of the superhero? Even Jimmy Corrigan is using superhero images.

CW: I think the superhero is probably one of the most powerful metaphors that modern culture has produced, but I’m not too crazy about modern superhero comics that pretend to be serious writing, or “adult” literature. However, simply the idea of a father figure all dressed up in proto-military garb, hopping around, saving things, being moral – it’s a wonderful idea, one thoroughly treated by Michael Chabon in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – particularly the Jewish aspects of it, starting with the artists and writers themselves, anglicanizing their names — just like their characters, who have to have “secret identities.”

As for me, I grew up reading superhero comics, wanting to be a superhero, so to one degree or another, they’re a part of me… even if I wasn’t a cartoonist, I’m sure superheroes would always still play some part in what I did. A “superman,” to me, is such a perfect stand-in for a lost, or at least a distant, father… as well as sort of a goal towards which to naively aim oneself as a pre-adult, before one realizes that the world is mostly just disappointment.

ØH: In an interview with The Comics Journal you said “if you’re writing a script beforehand, you’re not really writing comics. You’re illustrating a story”. Did you do the whole Jimmy Corrigan story without a script? How are you working?

CW: I write notes on individual pieces of paper before starting to draw, and on the margins of the bristol board while I’m working; currently, I keep three separate notebooks about Rusty Brown. Mostly everything that I write down I either completely forget or don’t use.

Essentially, I work from a very loose outline, trying to let myself into the “world” I’m drawing in the same way I think the reader will enter it, rather than imposing my order on top of it. Plus, I’m deathly sickened by all my ideas, and have to let them develop more “organically”; I have a deeply bipolar confidence, and am sometimes so repulsed and overwhelmed my my own work I have to simply stop working — or force myself to work, depending on how close the weekly deadline is. I realize this is probably irresponsible, though I can’t seem to work any other way, unfortunately.

ØH: Judging by some of your illustrations and written language you seem to be nostalgic of a time period you never experienced in the first place, the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Is that correct? It reminds me in parts of the nostalgia in Seth’s comics, like It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken“. Where does this interest come from?

CW: Mostly I just appreciate the skill, craft, and respect for the viewer that so much of the design from those eras seems to have, not to mention the unstable core of folly and dignity about which it all seems to orbit. Most of today’s world appears more interested in being cool, slick, and sexual, which is fine, but generally I find it distracting and not a comfortable place to be. I don’t need an environment that advises me to be more macho or apathetic.

ØH: After the longJimmy Corrigan had finished you started the even more harrowing Rusty Brown. But what are you working on for the years to come. Do you feel that Jimmy Corrigan is a tough act to follow? And will you continue ACME Novelty Library or publish independent graphic novels?

CW: Actually, Rusty Brown is the next book I’m doing — the “gag” strips which appeared in ACME #15 are separate; the book is about eight different characters, the introduction of the story (the first two “chapters”) being set in the 1970s, during Rusty’s childhood, and while he’s one of the central characters, he’s not necessarily the “main” character. (I was recently asked by another interviewer about the plot of this book, who seemed relieved that it wouldn’t just be a 500 page book about toy collectors.)

As well, I’m working on a shorter story, unrelated, which is more experimental, and may never be collected anywhere; I’m not sure if it’s good enough yet. As well, Oog and Blik in Holland and Drawn and Quarterly in Canada are copublishing a book of my sketchbook drawings, though that’s not really comics, I guess. Much of it is fairly embarrassing, as well.

Bonus: Chris Ware on French television.

Time to get literary. Press release below about indie comics publisher Fantagraphics and their publication in May next year of author Stephen Dixon’s short stories. I can’t say I’ve heard of Dixon, but he seems to be well admired. Details below.

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS ANNOUNCES THE ACQUISITION OF STEPHEN DIXON’S WHAT IS ALL THIS?, A COLLECTION OF MODERN FICTION

Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce the acquisition of What Is All This?, a 900-page collection of previously uncollected short fiction by two-time National Book Award Nominee (1991, 1995) Stephen Dixon. The collection will be published in May, 2010 and mark the third entry in Fantagraphics burgeoning line of literary fiction, following Alexander Theroux’s Laura Warholic (2007) and Monte Schulz’s This Side of Jordan (2009). Along with Theroux, Dixon is the second National Book Award nominated-author to publish new fiction through Fantagraphics.

“Stephen Dixon is one of the great secret masters — too secret. I return again and again to his stories for writerly inspiration, moral support and comic relief at moments of personal misery, and, several times, in a spirit of outright plagiaristic necessity: borrowing a jumpstart from a few lines of Dixon has been a real problem-solver in my own short fiction. Please read him, you.” — Jonathan Lethem

Dixon is one of the most acclaimed authors of short stories in the history of American letters. He has published previously through acclaimed independent literary presses like McSweeney’s and Melville House, as well as corporate houses like Henry Holt. His work, characterized by mordant humor and a frank attention to human sexuality, has earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Fantagraphics Books is proud to present his latest volume of short stories, a massive collection of vintage Dixon, eschewing the modernism and quasi-autobiography of his I-trilogy and instead treating readers to a pared-down, crystalline style more reminiscent of Hemingway.

“Dixon is one of the few writers whose new work I will put everything aside to read, which is to say he is in the company of Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, and Lydia Davis…. Put aside whatever you’re reading, and read him.” — J. Robert Lennon

“This is our third book of prose fiction —after Alex Theroux’s Laura Warholic and Monte Schulz’s This Side of Jordan— and readers may notice that the common denominator among these books is that language itself serves as the animating literary force,” says acquiring editor and Fantagraphics co-publisher Gary Groth. “Dixon’s finely chiseled sentences cut to the quick of people’s lives. None of these stories have been collected in any book; they have appeared in a wide variety of literary journals over almost 40 years and Dixon has entirely rewritten all of them. Dixon admirers will be cheered to learn that these stories comprise a wholly original work.”

Centrally concerning himself with the American condition, Dixon explores in What Is All This? obsessions of body image, the increasingly polarized political landscape, sex —in all its incarnations— and the gloriously pointless minutiae of modern life, from bus rides to tying shoelaces. Using the canvas of his native New York (with one significant exception that affords Dixon the opportunity to create a furiously political fable) he astutely captures the edgy madness that infects the city through the neuroses of his narrators with a style that owes as much to Neo-Reaist cinema as it does to modern literature. What Is All This? will be published in hardcover, designed by Fantagraphics award-winning Art Director Jacob Covey. “Stephen Dixon is one of the few writers who completely challenged, then changed how I think about writing and reading,” says Covey. “He was the first writer I recognized as making Art that was as viscerally relevant as painting or music. Designing a book for someone who was so formative to me is one of the rarest and most intimidating opportunities I can imagine.”

“I have read a lot of Dixon’s writing. If I didn’t like his writing I would not have read so many things of his.” — Tao Lin

Stephen Dixon was born in 1936 in New York City. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1958 and is a former faculty member of Johns Hopkins University. In his early 20s, he worked as a journalist in radio, interviewing such monumental figures as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Nikita Khrushchev. His witty, keenly observed narratives and sharply hewn prose have appeared in every major market magazine from Harper’s to Playboy and have earned him two National Book Award nominations —for his novels Frog and Interstate. He still hammers out his fiction on a vintage typewriter.

The Damaged Books Room.

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Low Moon

A compilation built around Norwegian comic author Jason’s story “Low Moon” that was serialized in the New York Times Magazine’s (now deceased) Funny Pages. Serialized, the work wasn’t very successful. Jason’s stories are brought down to it’s purest form and are about space as much as anything. Breaking it up in weekly installments didn’t do it any favours. It fares much better here. The book also included a couple of other (fairly) recent works by Jason. 

West Coast Blues

My exposure to Jacques Tardi’s work has been sporadic, limited mostly to the odd piece that would show up in Heavy Metal (when it wasn’t focused on large breasted sci-fi barbarian babes). Fantagraphics has embarked on a series of translations of his work. This is a nice start a graphic adaptation of the crime novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette.

Bob Dylan Revisted

Another translation from a French work, although since the comics are all based on Dylan’s (English) lyrics, the translating would probably be an easy gig. Like all anthologies the works are uneven and dependent on the contributors (Dave McKean, Christopher, Alfred and many more). It did bring me back to my discover as a kid of The Illustrated Beatles book and in particular the comic strip version of “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?”.

Masterpiece Comics

A compilation of R. Sikoryak’s adaptations of classic works using comic characters such as Little Lulu and Charlie Brown as the actors. Some of these stories have been kicking around since the days of Art Spieglemen’s Raw comics anthologies.  This isn’t Classics Illustrated, space limitations mean the stories are boiled down to their essence and the use of existing personalities from the comics brings along their baggage, giving the stories more emotional resonance.

“Good Ol’ Gregor Brown” is a particular stand out.

Good Ol' Gregor Brown

Let’s See How You Like It.

A girl with a video camera at the Fantagraphics Al Columbia exhibition and book signing for ‘Pim & Francie‘.

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She turned her camera on me and said, “Let’s see how you like it.”

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Art Appreciation #2.

The second of two photos titled ‘Art Appreciation’ (See Art Appreciation #1: Previous Post).

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Art Appreciation #1.

The first of two photos titled ‘Art Appreciation’ (see Art Appreciation #2: Next Post).

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Al Columbia Exhibition & Book Signing At Fantagraphics.

Mary and I went down to Georgetown on Saturday night to hang out at the Fantagraphics Book Store and Gallery. I got to meet and photograph Al Columbia who was there exhibiting some of his original artwork. He was also signing copies of his new book Pim & Francie. Al was actually very friendly and talkative. In fact his voice was horse and sounded like a frog from talking so much. He shared with me a little bit about the genesis of his ideas and how he went about creating Pim & Francie. It was definitely interesting to get some insight from him because his stuff on the surface seems to be so left field, yet somewhere underneath it all, there really is a sort of narrative. Anyway, it was great to get to meet him and so many other cool people.

Also, this morning the good people at the Fantagraphics Blog Flog were nice enough to put up a post of some my photos from the night as well as provide a link to the Flickr set.

Al Columbia.

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Also, Mathew Southworth…

Also, I got to meet and talk a bit with artist Mathew Southworth who’s comic book Stumptown has just come out.

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Mathew getting Al to sign his copy of Pim & Francie.

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I got Mathew to sign a copy of Stumptown for me.

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Al Columbia signed a copy of Pim & Francie to me as well.

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Jim Woodring.

Artist Jim Woodring also showed up to get a copy of Al’s book signed. While there, Jim signed for a fan one of the Mr. Bumper toy figurines he had designed (Boing Boing article on the Mr. Bumper toy HERE).

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The Usual Suspects.

Many others were there to meet Al, as well as check out his artwork on display and browse the book collection.

Artist, Mike Allred.

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Mike Baehr (Fantagraphics I.T.).

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Group Shot.

Left to right: Jason Leivian from Floating World Comics in Portland, Al Columbia, and comics artists Mike Allred and Mathew Southworth.

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