Howdy! This week’s highlights include: the second volume of the massive, stunningly reproduced, widely praised “Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays!” volume; a sexy and geeky photo collection of the costumed women of Comic-Con; the design-eriffic, girl-tastic new book from Ragnar; a densely- illustrated, blow-by-blow account of Sweden’s legendary death metal underground; a collection of classic works from the unique, unprecedented self-taught artist Henry Darger; a collection of Rome-inspired artwork from illustrator and skate culture icon Jeremy Fish; a graphic call to resistance and action from comics artist Seth Tobocman; the first retrospective of the horrifying, hallucinatory, madly influential underground comix artist Rory Hayes; an angry and angsty art and text collaboration on corporate culture and the right wing; and three new calendars for 2009, featuring buds from High Times, Emily the Strange, and birds and bird songs — the last with an audio player built in.

Where Demented Wented Book Release
Desert Island Comics, Brooklyn, NY 8/8/08

[Gary Panter, Bill Griffith]

[More photos available on our Flickr page.]

[More videos on our YouTube page.]

“This is the largest crowd that Rory’s ever had,” laughed Bill Griffith, only half-jokingly. Desert Island Comics was packed Friday night, in joint celebration of Fantagraphics’ upcoming Rory Hayes anthology, Where Demented Wented and a posthumous celebration of the artist’s 59th birthday. The owners Brooklyn-based shop had diligently swept all of the store’s waste-high shelves into the its remotest corner, but the space was still standing room-only, at best.

Griffith’s bafflement at the matter was palatable. After all, Hayes was never really recognized in his lifetime, whatever minor fame he achieved paling in comparison to habitually lauded peers like Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson. Posthumous fame hasn’t exactly been forthcoming, either. For all intents and purposes, the newly-issued Fantagraphics volume is the first widely available anthology of Hayes’s work.

[Bill Griffith, Geoffrey Hayes]

The attendance could no doubt–at least in part–be chalked up to the panel that had been culled together for the occasion, moderated by Picturebox founder and Demented co-editor, Dan Nadel, and featuring the aforementioned Griffith (he of Zippy fame); Hayes’s brother and fellow cartoonist, Geoffrey Hayes; and the inimitable Kim Deitch (who, was sadly absent from the proceedings, though the Gary Panter, who was present amongst the audience, was more than happy to fill in from the other side of the store’s impromptu table).

Geoffrey reminisced about brothers’ early years, as burgeoning comic artists inspired by the likes of Carl Barks. Griffith happily touched on nearly everything else, from early stories involving well known peers (and Hayes admirers) like Crumb, Deitch, and Spiegelman, to some his short-lived career as a burgeoning horror film director, to the artist’s later years scraping together a living working at a San Francisco-based comic shop while selling the occasional print to a philanthropic admirer—nearly every tale, however, was peppered with the inevitable reference to Hayes’s growing battle with drugs, which ultimately ended his life at age 34.

Most telling, however, amongst Griffith’s accounts, were the near constant references to Henri Rousseau, a fellow insider-outsider artist whose “primitive” art was lauded amongst contemporaries like Picasso, but largely ignored in his lifetime, in favor of his more famous peers.

Asked whether any contemporary artist claimed Hayes as an inspiration, Griffith couldn’t think of a single one. “But they will after this book comes out,” he added, optimistically. Surely there couldn’t have been a more appropriate forum for such a hopeful sentiment, inside a Williamsburg alternative comic shop, walls lined with a wide array of two-dimension figurines crafted by a large cross-section of up-and-coming artists for an event crated by Picturebox’s own Lauren Weinstein. A cursory glance around the shop revealed exactly where demented has gone.

–Brian Heater

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS & DESERT ISLAND present:

WHERE DEMENTED WENTED:
Celebrating the Comics and Art of RORY HAYES

Join us for a book release party and panel discussion featuring:

KIM DEITCH
BILL GRIFFITH
GEOFFREY HAYES
and moderator
DAN NADEL

WHAT: Book Release Party for WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES, with panel discussion and Q&A

WHO: Dan Nadel, Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith & Geoffrey Hayes

WHERE: DESERT ISLAND • 540 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY •718.388.5087

WHEN: Friday, August 8, 7PM (discussion begins at 8PM)

FREE ADMISSION
An exclusive, limited-edition Hayes silkscreen will be available for this event.

The controversial cartoonist Rory Hayes was a self-taught dynamo of the underground comics revolution. Attracting equal parts derision and praise (the latter from the likes of R. Crumb and Bill Griffith), Hayes emerged as comics’ great primitive, drawing horror comics in a genuinely horrifying and hallucinator manner (some have called him the Fletcher Hanks of the underground). He has influenced a generation of cartoonists, from RAW to Fort Thunder and back again.

On Friday, Aug. 8, on what would have been Hayes’ 59th birthday (Hayes died of a drug overdose in 1983), Desert Island and Fantagraphics Books will celebrate the life and art of Rory Hayes with a special evening celebrating the release of WHERE DEMENTED WENTED, the first-ever collection of Hayes’ legendary comics and art.

Editor Dan Nadel (Gary Panter, The Wilco Book) will moderate a discussion of Hayes’ work with three men who knew and worked with Hayes: Kim Deitch (creator of Waldo the Cat), Bill Griffith (creator of Zippy the Pinhead), and Geoffrey Hayes (brother of Rory and author of the recent Benny and Penny from Toon Books).

WHERE DEMENTED WENTED: THE ART AND COMIX OF RORY HAYES is the first retrospective of Hayes’ career ever published, features the best of his underground comics output alongside paintings, covers, and artifacts rarely seen by human eyes—as well as astounding, previously unprinted comics from his teenage years and movie posters for his numerous homemade films. The Art and Comix of Rory Hayes also serves as a biography and critique with a memoir of growing up with Rory by his brother, the illustrator Geoffrey Hayes, and a career-spanning essay by Edward Pouncey (a.k.a. Savage Pencil). Also included is a rare interview with Hayes himself.

This should be a great event and a fantastic book.  Check ‘em both out!