Fantagraphics Blog Blog

{mosimage}The Norwegian cartoonist Jason combines a poker-faced minimalist anthropomorphic style with more than a passing nod to the “clear-line” ethos of Hergé. As he has shown in a series of acclaimed graphic novels, this seemingly limited approach has proven amazingly versatile, allowing Jason to create gag comedy (Meow, Baby!), romantic melodramas (Tell Me Something), dramas (Hey, Wait…), and genuine thrillers (the period detective novel The Iron Wagon) — often without even the benefit of words, and using a stylishly minimalist color palette to boot. Jason won the Norwegian “Sproing” Award for “Best Norwegian Comic Book” twice, in 1995 and 2000….

{mosimage}Bill Griffith grew up in Levittown, New York. He attended Pratt Institute and studied painting and graphic arts concurrently with Kim Deitch — they dropped out about the same time. Inspired by Zap, Griffith began making underground comics in 1969, and joined the cartoonists in San Francisco in 1970. Griffith’s famous character Zippy the Pinhead made his initial appearances in early underground comic books, morphing into a syndicated weekly strip in 1976 and then a nationally-syndicated daily strip a decade later. Griffith is married to cartoonist and editor Diane Noomin. They live in Connecticut. “In two decades, Bill Griffith’s Zippy…

{mosimage}Kim Deitch has a reserved place at the first table of underground cartoonists. The son of UPA and Terrytoons animator Gene Deitch, Kim was born in 1944 and grew up around the animation business. He began doing comic strips for the East Village Other in 1967, introducing two of his more famous characters, Waldo the Cat and Uncle Ed, the India Rubber Man. In 1969 he succeeded Vaughn Bodé as editor of Gothic Blimp Works, the Other’s underground comics tabloid. During this period he married fellow cartoonist Trina Robbins and had a daughter, Casey. “The Mishkin Saga” was named one…

{mosimage}Jordan Crane grew up in Long Beach, CA. Warning signs of his renaissance-man abilities were evident in his sojourn at his college newspaper, the Daily Trojan, at the University of Southern California, where he functioned at various times as a cartoonist, art director and columnist (not to mention his engineering studies). Crane went on to publish both his own and other people’s comics through his press, Red Ink, and edit and design the ambitious anthology NON (which won several AIGA 365 awards), among other projects (which included silk-screening and a record label). His current Fantagraphics work consists of the semi-regular…

Mark Bodé was born in Utica, New York. He is the son of the legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bodé. Bodé attended The Art School in Oakland, California. His first professional job was for Heavy Metal Magazine when he was asked to color his father’s black and white strip “Zooks, the First Lizard in Orbit” when he was fifteen. He was a fine arts major at The School of Visual Arts in New York City and studied animation and etching at San Francisco State University. His publications include Gyro Comics, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cobalt 60, the graphic novel. Mark’s work…

{mosimage}Max Andersson was born 1962 in Karesuando, Sweden. He studied graphic design in Stockholm (1982-84), then film production at New York University. After directing and producing a number of short films, for which he was awarded prizes at the Berlin, Melbourne and Los Angeles Film Festivals, he turned to the comics medium in the late ’80s. His work has been translated to eight languages, and his drawings as well as paintings, objects and installations have been exhibited in Sweden, Germany, the U.S.A., France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Slovenia. Max Andersson currently lives and works in…

LOVE AND ROCKETS MOVES TO ANNUAL, BOOK-SIZE FORMAT IN 2008 Seattle, WA — After 25 years of being published in a traditional saddle-stitched magazine format released three or more times a year — first in the magazine-sized VOLUME I (50 issues, 1982-1996) and then in the comic book sized VOLUME II (20 issues, 2000-2007) — the award-winning LOVE AND ROCKETS comic book series will go on hiatus effective immediately and return next summer in its third incarnation, as a series of all-original, graphic novel-length releases. Each annual volume will comprise at least 100 pages of all-new comics, split evenly between…

{mosimage}Jessica Abel (Chicago, 1969) started making comics in college, at the University of Chicago. Her early efforts appeared in the student anthology Breakdown. After college, in 1992, she won the infamous “Stinky Date” contest in Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, and, since she had arranged to meet the artist at the Chicago Comics Convention, she decided to put together a sampler of her comics to show him and his publisher, Fantagraphics. She printed 50 copies of Artbabe #1, but Fantagraphics editor Gary Groth, who claims not to remember this encounter, didn’t take the bait. Four issues (and four years) later, she…

I’ve been putting together Peter Bagge‘s next Hate Annual (#7) which contains ten pages of his Weekly World News “Bat Boy” strips. The strips are some of my favorite work from Pete and I was curious about how he came to do a comic strip for the notoriously bizarre supermarket tabloid. So for the fans here’s some quick Q&A: {mosimage} JC: With Weekly World News now out of business is there any chance of more Bat Boy stories? It’s fun to see the anthropomorphic side of your work. Your style lends itself so strongly to that world. PB: There’s no…