By various artists; Edited by Glenn Head $22.99 Paperback Original COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Anthologies • CQ: 38 136 pages, color and black-and-white, 9” x 12” ISBN 978-1-60699-288-3
JANUARY
HOTWIRE comics #3
• Viral promotion and distribution of multimedia assets (video previews, book page and photo galleries) via online social networks (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) and the Fantagraphics.com website • Digital ARC (PDF) • Featuring an all-star line-up of comics talent • AGE RANGE: 18+
TIRED OF TAME, BORING COMICS? SEE: HOTWIRE! The Harvey and Eisner nominated anthology of action, thrills, chills and trangression is back with a third volume! Anything goes in Hotwire, eschewing literary high-mindedness for a pure, gut-wrenching viscerality that you can tune in and rest your brain on after a long day. Hotwire the third leaps off the page from the get-go with David Sandlin’s “Infernal Combustion,” about boozing it up in a broke-down caddy, and Tim Lane’s bit of freight-hopping grit, “Spike.” Underground comics legend Mary Fleener returns with “The Judge,” a true tale about her own life fending off thugs… with a .38! Meanwhile, Hotwire Captain Glenn Head spins the biography of German surrealist Hans Bellmer as a down and out Vaudevillian in decadent Weimar Berlin. Other creepy delights: Rick Altergott delivers a fable of a child-molesting clown pleasuring himself in the suburbs, while Matti Hagelberg’s “Passion of Atte” is a modern-day Dante’s Inferno of comics. There’s also more knockout work and crazy visuals by Mark Dean Veca, Johnny (Angry Youth Comix) Ryan, Mats?!, Max Andersson, Sam Henderson, Steve Cerio, Stephane Blanquet, Doug Allen, Carol Swain, Craig Yoe, J. Bradley Johnson, Michael (Tales Designed to Thrizzle) Kupperman, Danny Hellman, Mack White, Lorna Miller, David Paleo, Christian Northeast, Karl Wills and Jay Pulga. Looking for laffs? A psychic jolt? A partner for your next trip? Look no further than… Hotwire!
GLENN HEAD is a cartoonist and editor living in New York City. ALSO AVAILABLE (same price and format as above): Vol. 1, ISBN 978-1-56097-728-5 Vol. 2, ISBN 978-1-56097-891-6
“Hotwire runs the gamut from the fantastic to quasi-memoir, magic realism, and gibberish…vulgarity, nudity, violence, depictions of drug use and full pages of eye-popping psychedelic art.” — Kliatt
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“Jason’s work is poetry. Beautiful and frightening. Redemptive and hopeless. He is the Kafka and Keats of the comic world.” — Sherman Alexie
“Jason’s stories are ultimately about the redemptive nature of love. They are usually cut from a similar cloth and yet they constantly delight and surprise me... This guy is so good.” — Heidi MacDonald, Publishers Weekly
“One of the medium’s finest storytellers.” — Publishers Weekly “Although Jason’s art is attractive... it’s his grasp of sociopathy that stays with you. Jason is a master of frisson.” — Boston Sunday Globe “The graphic novel’s cinematic qualities have rarely been so well wielded as they are by the artist known only as Jason.” — Bookslut “One gets the sense that … Jason, like poets writing sestinas, [is] testing [his] powers, letting the fierce constraints of the form reveal new possibilities, and it’s a wonderful thing to observe.” —The Guardian
By Jason $24.99 Hardcover COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary • CQ: 20 300 pages, two-color and black-and-white, 6 1/4” x 8 ½” ISBN 978-1-60699-315-6
JANUARY
ALMOST SILENT
NOT FINAL COVER
• Viral promotion and distribution of multimedia assets (video previews, book page and photo galleries) via online social networks (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) and the Fantagraphics.com website • Digital ARC (PDF) • Heightened Jason awareness following 2009 summer U.S. tour and New York Times magazine serial, Low Moon • AGE RANGE: 12 +
A DELUXE, HARDCOVER COLLECTION OF FOUR JASON CLASSICS Almost Silent packages four original Jason graphic novels — three of them out of print since mid-2008 — into one compact, hardcover omnibus collection. (As the title indicates, this volume favors Jason’s pantomime works.) “You Can’t Get There From Here,” the longest story of the book (and the only one to be printed in color — well, a color), tells the tale of a love triangle involving Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Monster, and The Monster’s Bride: Jason cleverly alternates between totally silent sequences involving the three characters and scenes in which Frankenstein’s hunchbacked assistant discusses the day’s events with a fellow hunchbacked assistant to another mad scientist. (You didn’t know they had a union?) “Tell Me Something” is a brisk (271 panels), near-totally-silent (just a few intertitles) graphic novelette about love lost and found again, told with a tricky mixture of forward- and back-flashing narrative. “Meow, Baby” is a collection of Jason’s short stories and gags, and finally, “The Living and the Dead” is a hilariously deadpan (and gory) take on the traditional Romero-style zombie thriller. All of these yarns star Jason’s patented cast of tight-lipped (or -beaked) bird-, dog-, cat- and wolf-people, and show off his compassion and wry wit. Almost Silent is a perfect starting point for a new reader wanting to know what the fuss is all about, and a handsome, handy, inexpensive collection for the committed Jason fan. JASON hails from Oslo, Norway, but currently resides in the south of France. The Harvey and Eisner Award-winner continues to create new books at a breakneck pace.
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Low Moon, ISBN 978-1-60699-155-8, $24.99 Hardcover, 216 pages, full-color, 5 ½” x 8 ½” Pocket Full of Rain, ISBN 978-1-56097-934-0, $19.99 Paperback, 160 pages, black-and-white/color, 7” x 10” Hey, Wait..., ISBN 978-1-56097-463-5, $12.95 Paperback Original, 68 pages, black-and-white, 7” x 10”
Sshhhh!, ISBN 978-1-56097-497-0, $16.99 Paperback Original, 120 pages, black-and-white, 7” x 10”
The Last Musketeer, ISBN 978-1-56097-889-3, $12.95 Paperback Original, 48 pages, full-color, 7” x 10”
The Living and the Dead, ISBN 978-1-56097-794-0, $ 9.95 Paperback Original, 48 pages, black-and-white, 7” x 10”
The Left Bank Gang, ISBN 978-1-56097-742-1, $12.95 Paperback Original, 48 pages, full-color, 7” x 10”
I Killed Adolf Hitler, ISBN 978-1-56097-828-2, $12.95 Paperback Original, 48 pages, full-color, 7” x 10”
Why Are You Doing This?, ISBN 978-1-56097-655-4, $12.95 Paperback Original, 48 pages, full-color, 7” x 10”
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JANUARY
UNLOVABLE VOLUME 2 By Esther Pearl Watson $22.99 Hardcover COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary • CQ: 24 416 pages, two-color, 5 ¾” x 5 ¾” ISBN 978-1-60699-314-9
• Viral promotion and distribution of multimedia assets (video previews, book page and photo galleries) via online social networks (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) and the Fantagraphics. com website • Digital ARC (PDF) • As seen in every issue of BUST magazine • Vol. 1 is one of 2009’s early breakout titles • AGE RANGE: 15 +
The sequel to 2009’s critical smash Loosely based on a teenager’s diary from the 1980s found in a gasstation bathroom, Unlovable is the remarkable story of Tammy Pierce, as filtered through the pen of Los Angeles artist Esther Pearl Watson. This second and concluding volume picks up where the first volume left off (winter break) and finishes Tammy’s tragicomic sophomore year of high school in 1985. Tammy has built a devoted following over the last several years in the pages of Bust magazine, where Unlovable continues to be serialized on the magazine’s back page, and this beautifully produced, dayglo-orange and sparkly pink hardcover presents over 400 pages of her sometimes ordinary, sometimes humiliating, often poignant and always hilarious exploits. Her hopes, dreams, agonies and defeats are brought to vivid, comedic life by Watson’s lovingly grotesque drawings, filled with all the ’80s essentials — too much mascara, leg warmers with heels and huge hair, etc. — as well as timeless teen concerns like acne, dandruff, and the opposite sex (or same sex, in some cases). Unlovable is about the rawness of trying to figure out who you are in a very public and humiliating way. Unlovable addresses these mysteries of adolescence through Tammy’s naiveté; girls and women in particular will find much that resonates, but men will also relate to Unlovable’s universal humor and wide cast of characters. In the epic saga that is Unlovable, Tammy finds herself dealing with: tampons, teasing, crushes, The Smiths, tube socks, facial hair, lice, celibacy, fantasy dream proms, gym showers, skid marks, a secret admirer, prank calls, backstabbers, winter ball, barfing, narcs, breakdancing, hot wheels, glamour shots, roller coasters, Halloween costumes, boogers, boys, boy crazy feelings, biker babes, and even some butt cracks. Tammy’s life isn’t pretty, but it is endlessly charming and hilarious. Unlovable will be handsomely packaged in an irresistibly girly hardcover that would make Tammy proud. ESTHER PEARL WATSON lives in Sierra Madre, CA, with her husband, the artist Mark Todd, and their daughter, Lilly. Together they authored the influential D.I.Y. tome, Whatcha Mean, What’s A Zine? Learn more at funchicken.com. “From the moment I laid eyes on Unlovable, I knew immediately that I had to run it as a series in BUST. Tammy Pierce is such an endearing underdog, and her teen-loser ways keep me coming back. No matter how cool or smart you may be as a grown up, I think there is a little Tammy in all of us.” — Laurie Henzel, BUST Magazine Creative Director “Unlovable is a fine example of how art and narrative can be combined to make a potentially trivial book compelling and insight-provoking. In particular, Gen Xers ready for an unvarnished backward glance at the concerns and the cruelties of their high-school years will recognize Tammy with stark clarity.” — Booklist “GOOD!!!” — Lynda Barry
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recent title:
Unlovable Vol. 1, ISBN 978-1-56097-955-5, $22.99 Hardcover, 416 pages, two-color, 5 ¾” x 5 ¾”
Edited by Craig Yoe
NOT FINAL COVER
$19.99 Paperback Original ART / Individual Artist • CQ: 24 96 pages, full-color, 9” x 12” ISBN 978-1-60699-317-0
JANUARY
BELLA DONNA: THE PIN-UP GIRLS OF KREMOS
• Viral promotion and distribution of multimedia assets (video previews, book page and photo galleries) via online social networks (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) and the Fantagraphics.com website • Digital ARC (PDF) • A welcome addition to our popular line of pin-up books • AGE RANGE: 15 +
ITALY’S GREATEST PIN-UP ARTIST CONQUERS THE STATES! Long a cult favorite among lustful cognoscenti the world over (and a legend in his native Italy), Niso Ramponi a.k.a. Kremos (a pseudonym adopted when freelance work done while in the army ran afoul of military regulations) is one of the greatest cheesecake pin-up cartoonists who ever laid pen to paper. Now renowned collector and editor Craig Yoe (who introduced many American readers to Kremos in his feature on the man in the 2007 Arf Forum) has delved deep into his own collection to produce this exceptional collection of Kremos’ finest work. Yoe will be providing an historical overview of Kremos’ career (including such titillating tidbits as his collaborations with one Federico Fellini), as well as some little-seen and unique pieces (including photos of “il maestro” and rare sketches), but the bulk of Bella Donna will be composed of page after page of Kremos’ gorgeous, sexy and hilarious full-color cartoons (gloriously reproduced to Fantagraphics’ exacting standards), with newly translated captions. Bella Donna is the latest volume in Fantagraphics’ series of best-selling books devoted to classic pin-up cartooning, including An Orgy of Playboy’s Eldon Dedini, The Glamour Girls of Bill Ward, and the “Humorama” series. Craig Yoe has created everything from MTV station ID spots to Disney theme park attractions. In addition to his many books, he holds six patents for toy inventions, teaches for the Master’s Program at Syracuse University, and has curated exhibits in museums from Japan to New York. Niso Ramponi, who worked under the nom de cheesecake KREMOS, was born in 1924 in Rome. A floundering animation career led to him joining the staff of the left-leaning tabloid Il Travaso in 1948 as a pin-up cartoonist, where his “Kremos Girls” would propel him to fame. He died in 2002.
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