Fantagraphics Blog

Hey Fanta True Believers, Starting Monday (Dec. 24th) we will be conducting our end of the year inventory. You will still be able to place orders with us through our website or over the phone, but we will be be unable to ship out any orders until the inventory is complete, which should be sometime during the first week of Jan. '08. Please keep this in mind when selecting any of our Rush shipping methods. We apologize for any inconvenience, and look forward to serving you in 2008!

As per annual tradition, our company holiday party was held at the glamorous Sunset Bowl in beautiful downtown Ballard last weekend. Click here for a mess of photos by me and Eric Reynolds; below are a few highlights: Kim Thompson takes on high-score leader Paul Baresh in a sudden-death winner-take-all showdown… …from which Baresh emerges victorious! (That's the trophy.) Mistress of ceremonies Rhea Patton.

The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo Vol. 2Edited by Alex Chun; designed by Jacob Covey For more than 40 years, Dan DeCarlo was best known for his definitive rendition of Archie Comics' Betty and Veronica, two of comics' most beloved icons. But before joining Archie in the late 1950s and unbeknownst to many, DeCarlo was already honing his skills as a good girl artist for the Humorama line of digest magazines. This second volume once again displays DeCarlo's sexiest Humorama pin-up cartoons, and continues Fanatagraphics' dedication to showcasing the best of the classic pin-up cartoonists. 216-page two-color 5.75" x 7.75"…

Laura Warholic or, the Sexual IntellectualBy Alexander Theroux In his first novel in nearly twenty years, Alexander Theroux, National Book Award Nominee, returns with a compendious satire, a bold and inquisitorial circuit-breaking examination of love and hate, of rejection and forgiveness, of trust and romantic disappointment, of the terrors of contemporary life. Eugene Eyestones, an erudite sex columnist for a Boston cultural magazine, becomes enmeshed in the messy life of a would-be artist named Laura Warholic, who, repulsing and fascinating him at the same time, becomes a mirror in which he not only sees himself but through which he is…

Seattlites: Still looking for those last-minute holiday gifts? The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is open and ready to serve you 11:30 – 8:00 daily (11:30 – 5:00 Sundays) with the following exceptions: Monday 12/24/07 (Christmas Eve): 11:30 – 4Tuesday 12/25/07 (Christmas Day): CLOSED Monday 12/31/07 (New Year's Eve): 11:30 – 4Tuesday 1/1/08 (New Year's Day): CLOSED We've got everything from stocking stuffers to books so impressively ginormous they won't fit under the tree. Come on down: 1201 South Vale Street (at Airport Way S.)Seattle, WA 98108(Google map)206-658-0110

Jeannie Schulz on her husband's biography.

On behalf of everyone at Fantagraphics I'd like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to our good pals Jessica Abel and Matt Madden on the birth of their daughter, Aldara Abel Madden. Wahoo!

The Drinky Crow Show pilot is re-running on Jan. 1 at 11:15pm on the Cartoon Network. Not New Year's Eve but the night after. If you missed it the first time around, don't let that happen again, it's a riot. And looks so much better on the boob tube than the clips you've possibly seen on YouTube. Help us boost those ratings and ensure that the CN orders a slew of new episodes for 2008! In the meantime, Drinky Crow Christmas!

Charles E. Petit, known to the Fantagraphics offices as the longtime lawyer of Harlan Ellison, has been disbarred. Petit was found guilty of poor ethics by defrauding the family of author John Steinbeck. His defense honestly seems to have been that he's driven crazy by migraines that lead him to forget events that transpire at the time of the headaches and stuff like that. Specifically, he has been suspended for the following: Count I, the Respondent repeatedly and knowingly made false statements to his client Nancy Steinbeck. Count II, we find that the Respondent engaged in dishonest and deceitful conduct,…

Seattle's Crocodile Cafe unceremoniously closed down this weekend, the latest in a slew of old school Seattle venues going the way of Fallout Records & Comix and the old Rendezvous. The Croc was the best rock club in Seattle in the 1990s – just off the top of my head I can recall seeing a slew of pretty huge bands in its not-so-huge confines: Guided By Voices, Nirvana, Built To Spill, Cheap Trick, Yo La Tengo, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam (opening for Cheap Trick), Sebadoh, Dead Moon, The Shins, The Go-Betweens, Mike Watt, Jonathan Richman, Iron & Wine, Low, etc.

The club was always good to Fantagraphics – we put on several events there over the years, including a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund benefit with Neil Gaiman in 1997 or so that was one of the most successful regional fundraisers the Fund had ever done at the time and even garnered a Seattle city award for "Best Fundraiser (Under $200,000 category)" of the year, which I accepted from the Mayor in a gigantic gala ball. In 2000, the Croc lent us its space to put on a special Built To Spill concert to raise money for a serious debt we were in when our then-distributor went out of business owing us $80,000 – the event raised almost $10,000 and literally may have been the difference in keeping us in business at that moment. We helped organize a series of "ATM art shows" at the Croc in the 1990s (named so because every piece was an ATM-friendly $40, with pieces from Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge — you name it) with then art school student Kirsten Anderson, an experience which she parlayed into opening Roq La Rue, one of the most vital galleries in Seattle for going on a decade now. The club's booker at that time, Peter English, was also my next door neighbor for a few years and became one of my best pals, so there was a personal connection, as well. We took care of each others' cats when the other traveled.