Upcoming Fantagraphics releases

WE ALL DIE ALONE by Mark Newgarden
224-page color and B&W 7 1/2" x 8 1/2" hardcover $28.95

Acclaimed cartoonist Mark Newgarden debuted in the first issue of RAW magazine in 1980 and his work subsequently found its way into a variety of high and low profile media. He co-created the '80s pop culture fad "Garbage Pail Kids," wrote, drew, and syndicated a weekly humor feature in the '90s, and created a "Web Premiere Toon" for The Cartoon Network called "B. Happy." Newgarden's comic are hilarious, alarming, and masterful uses of the medium, alternating between old-time gags and avant-garde storytelling, often on the same page without missing a comedic beat. His syndicated strip in such publications as L.A. Weekly and The New York Press encouraged a fervent following and exerted a fresh influence on the medium. Today they remain as vital and entertaining as when they first appeared. Those syndicated comics will make up the bulk of this book, the balance drawing on Newgarden's long form stories from various anthologies, i ncluding the much-lauded "Love's Savage Fury." In addition to compiling his comics, this book will be a full picture of the artist, his influences, and his many other careers. An avid collector and historian of 20th century ephemera, Newgarden has achieved the rare distinction of both contributing to and furthering the mediums he collects: novelties, comics, and cartoons. Newgarden remains a great link to the past while moving ever further into the future. We All Die Alone will be an uproariously funny and fascinating book that will appeal to comics readers, pop culture buffs, and any appreciator of the graphic arts. Designed by Dan Nadel (The Ganzfeld, The Wilco Book) and Helene Silverman (Jimbo in Purgatory).

EL BORBAH by Charles Burns
96-page black-and-white softcover graphic novel $16.95

AN EARLY CLASSIC FROM THE AUTHOR OF BLACK HOLE, NOW AVAILABLE IN SOFTCOVER!
Meet El Borbah, a 400-pound private eye who wears a Mexican wrestler's tights and eerie mask. Subsisting entirely on junk food and beer, El Borbah conducts his investigations with tough talk and a short temper. He smashes through doors and skulls as he stalks a perfectly realized film-noir city filled with punks, geeks, business-suited creeps and mad scientists. El Borbah features five science-fiction and true-detective episodes: In "Robot Love," rebellious kids in nightclubs replace their "parts" with mechanical substitutes as part of a new fad, only to find that their parents have been automating themselves all along; in "Love in Vein" a mad visionary sperm donor plans a master race and turns "his" kids against their parents; "Bone Voyage" details the exploits of a cult called the Brotherhood of the Bone, a kind of cross between the Masons and the Mansons. The fantastic plots take up the weird fears of a scientific society, but the action is pure pulp. Charles Burns effortlessly spins yarns with gritty punchlines and pictures so perfect they must have existed in some collective memory of junk drama. And through it all crashes El Borbah, trying to make an honest buck from dishonest people. Burns is the author of Black Hole, the acknowledged masterpiece of the form that Fantagraphics serialized through the 1990s. El Borbah is Burns' earliest work, created in the early 1980s, though the work remains eerily contemporary. Steeped in a "sci-fi-noir" aesthetic informed by Burns' steadily childhood diet of B-movies and comic books, but with a sophisticated sense of humor that is often as disturbing as it is funny, El Borbah is comics as its most entertaining.

ROCKY THE BIG PAYBACK by Martin Kellerman
96-page B&W softcover $12.95

Martin Kellerman is the Jane Austen of 21st century twenty-something urban European slackers. Firmly in the tradition of Fritz the Cat, Hate, and Clerks, Rocky is his mostly autobiographical daily strip detailing the rudely hilarious travails of a young cartoonist and his circle of layabout pals and neurotic, indignant girlfriends. In this action-packed volume collecting the first year of the smash-hit strip, Rocky gets tossed out of his apartment, flies across the pond to visit a gay African-American pal (not realizing he lives in deepest Harlem); is ill-advisedly given the mission of euthanizing a friend's beloved pet rabbit ("Tom, give this job to Clemenza." "Yes, Godfather."); makes a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to trade in his girlfriend for her younger, more buxom sister; gets a bowel inflammation and a colonoscopy; goes to a costume party dressed as Tinky Winky; tries to get laid while camping out at a rock festival - and basically drinks and fornicates (or tries to) his way through Stockholm and New York, with hangover following drunken binge and mortification following faux pas as night follows day. What will probably be amazing to American readers is how similar the day-to-day experiences of these Seinfeld-watching, Big Mac-eating, hip-hop-listening Swedes is to theirs. Rocky is a reminder as to how utterly global our culture has become - and a reminder that laughter is truly universal.

THE ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY #16 by Chris Ware
64-page full color hardcover $15.95

After four years of almost exclusively repackaging his sophomoric early work for the book trade, the children's entertainer and award-winning calligrapher F. C. Ware returns to his groundbreaking 1990s cartoon series "The ACME Novelty Library," a nearly decade-long publishing experiment which more or less single-handedly demonstrated the redemptive power a fancy paper stock or a little gold foil might exert over an otherwise dull, dry visual narrative. Ware rejoins the proud, vital esthetic forum of the American comic book with his ongoing serial "Rusty Brown," a love story concerning the ambitions and mistakes of seven consciousnesses at a private school in Omaha, Nebraska, all revolving around a universally reviled child - and absolutely certain to be a favorite with readers of all tastes and biases. As told through the eyes of someone absentmindedly watching a television sitcom circa 1975, this first installment begins one January m orning of that same year and describes everything of importance right up to and including the ring of the first period bell before eventually spiraling off into 1955, 2004, and toward the planet Mars, amongst other interesting and exotic time periods and locales. Though originally released by alternative comics vanguard Fantagraphics Books, this new sixteenth issue is the first to be entirely produced, printed and published by Mr. Ware alone; limited to a single press run, once it is sold out, pulped, and/or burned, neither of these narratives will be available again until "Rusty Brown" and "Building Stories" are eventually edited, collected and remaindered as hardcover books.

DAYDREAMS AND NIGHTMARES by Winsor McCay
176 pages B&W softcover $24.95

A fantasist of the first rank, McCay was a key pioneer in the histories of both comics and animation. He had a fascination with dreams that extended beyond his newspaper strip Little Nemo In Slumberland, and it was a fascination as compelling as that of Freud, Jung and Adler's, as proven in the pages of Daydreams & Nightmares. McCay's dream-inspired strips, illustrations and cartoons feature rarebit-induced nightmares, playful "what-ifs," moralistic panoramas, pictorial allegories and other fantastic visions. The highlights of the book are McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend strips created for the New York Evening Telegram in 1905, as well as early efforts like A Pilgrim's Progress, Poor Jake, Day Dreams, Rabid Reveries, Little Sammy Sneeze ("He never knew when it was coming!") and more. The artwork in this book includes outstanding examples from several categories of McCay's career: illustrations from his first paper, the Cincinnat i Enquirer; anti-war and anti-materialist cartoons; playful strips for Life magazine; early dream sequences; futuristic illustrations for the New York Herald; and allegorical and editorial cartoons for the Hearst newspapers. The book spans the years 1898-1934, the bulk of McCay's career. McCay's world was the world of playfulness and whimsy that most leave behind in youth and encounter again only in dreams; Daydreams & Nightmares is a tour through that world.

MOME FALL 2005 by Various
136-page color and B&W softcover $14.95

Written and Illustrated by Andrice Arp, Gabrielle Bell, Jonathan Bennett, Jeffrey Brown, Sophie Crumb, David Heatley, Paul Hornschemeier, Anders Nilsen, John Pham and Kurt Wolfgang. Designed by Jordan Crane. Edited by Gary Groth & Eric Reynolds. This accessible, reasonably priced, quarterly anthology will run approximately 136 pages per volume and spotlight a regular cast of a dozen of today's most exciting cartoonists. Designed by acclaimed designer and cartoonist Jordan Crane (The Clouds Above), Mome will feature an iconic design and consistent format that should quickly establish the anthology as the most distinctive and accessible anthology of literary comics available. Mome is the first all-comics literary anthology designed to sit alongside publications like Granta, The Baffler, McSweeney's, et. al., and is designed to appeal as much to fans of contemporary literary fiction as longtime comics fans. Mome will feature the same collective of artist s every issue, allowing the artists and audience to grow together and build an ongoing identity that is highly unusual for the world of contemporary comics (where many authors publish sporadically by literary standards, given the labor intensive nature of comics).

NIGHT FISHER by R. Kikuo Johnson (2nd Printing)
144-page black-and-white softcover $12.95

In what we predict will be the most impressive comics debut of 2005, Kikuo Johnson has created an intimate and compelling graphic novel-length drama of young men on the cusp of adulthood.

First-rate prep school, S.U.V., and a dream house in the heights: This was the island paradise handed to Loren Foster when he moved to Hawaii with his father six years ago. Now, with the end of high school just around the corner, his best friend, Shane, has grown distant. The rumors say it's hard drugs, and Loren suspects that Shane has left him behind for a new group of friends.

At home, an unprecedented "B" on Loren's typically straight "A" report card has his father concerned. Dad's interrogation, however, is stemmed by an unexpected telephone invitation that Loren can't resist. Loren accompanies Shane to a weathered house in the harbor shadows. With the friends he meets there, he endures a night of drug deals, petty theft, crystal meth, porn and a stray punch in the face. The pressures of high school seem suddenly inconsequential in the morning. No longer seeking approval from anyone, Loren's strong work ethic becomes self-imposed, further veiling his escalating drug use. Loren is strung along late one night as the boys break into a construction site and drag some valuable equipment into the trunk of his S.U.V. A police chase ends with Loren in handcuffs as his baffled father struggles to understand what the hell is going on. At school, Shane's acceptance to MIT makes the front page of the campus paper. Whe n Loren offers his congratulations, Shane coldly suggests that they should keep their distance from each other until a court date is decided. Loren is once again left behind. What sets Kikuo's drama apart is the naturalistic ease with which he explores the relationships of his characters. It is at once an unsentimental portrait of that most awkward period between adolescence and young adulthood and that rarest of things- a mature depiction of immature lives. Visually, Johnson captures the languid tropical climate and strip mall tackiness of Hawaii in a rich chiaroscuro style reminiscent of Milton Caniff combined with the sensual ink work of Paul Pope or Jessica Abel.

THE GLAMOR GIRLS OF DON FLOWERS by Alex Chun & Jacob Covey
300-page B&W paperback, $19.95

When the life of Don Flowers was cut short in 1968, he left behind a career in newspaper cartooning that spanned more than four decades as well as one of the most fluid lines to grace the comics page. His cartoons evoked the art of Russell Patterson and Hank Ketcham, and nowhere was this more evident than in his quintessential single-panel pin-up cartoon, the aptly named Glamor Girls. Whether blondes or brunettes, showgirls or housewives, Flowers rendered his comely protagonists with equal aplomb. A close look at Flowers' body of work reveals that he was really an illustrator playing cartoonist. He was equally skilled with the brush and the pen, and was also highly regarded by his fellow artists for his expert spotting of blacks. Flowers boasted "about the finest line ever to be bequeathed to a cartoonist," wrote Coulton Waugh in his classic history, The Comics. "It dances; it snaps gracefully back and forth; the touches related." ; While Flowers spent nearly a quarter of a decade on Glamor Girls, it wasn't until the 1960s that he finally broke free of Russell Patterson's influence and established a more modern style that was uniquely his own. This volume collects the best of those cartoons, and showcases Flowers at the height of his skill. Don Flowers' Glamor Girls also features a foreward by cartoon legend Sergio Aragonés and an introductory essay by editor Alex Chun.

MEOW, BABY! by Jason
144-page black-and-white softcover, $16.95

After seven books that have ranged from tragedy (Hey, Wait...) to drama (Sshhhh!) to thriller melodrama (The Iron Wagon, Why Are You Doing This?), Jason unleashes his inner Scandinavian goofball with this big collection of hilarious shorter pieces. God, the Devil, mummies, vampires, zombies, werewolves, reanimated skeletons, space invaders, Death, cavemen, Godzilla and Elvis populate these most often wordless blackout gags, side by side with Jason's usual Little Orphan Annie-eyed, rabbit-and-bird-head protagonists - a "lighter side" of one of the best cartoonists of the new millennium.

NEW COMICS:

SCHIZO #4 by Ivan Brunetti
32-page full color 11" x 15" comic, $9.95

America's most beloved depressed cartoonist is off the couch and back to making us laugh at his misery! This long-awaited full-color oversized comic brings you right into the action! This time around Brunetti taps into his academic side with biographies of Piet Mondrian, Soren Kierkegaard, Erik Satie, James Thurber, Francoise Hardy, Louise Brooks, and J.K. Huysmans. And if that weren't enough, there are tributes to Charles Schulz and the Marx Brothers; a step-by-step guide on how to draw cartoons; and strips on misogyny, 9-11, suicidal ideation, and abortive crushes on waitresses PLUS so much more.

LUBA'S COMICS AND STORIES #6 by Gilbert Hernandez
32-page black and white comic $3.50

LUBA the comic may have concluded, but Gilbert still has tales of her extended family to tell. In this, the first of three concluding all-new issues of the series, Luba's adolescent half-sisters Fritz and Petra get on that bumpy road to adulthood in a story which will explain Scott the Hog's animosity toward Fritz, and...Luba meets aliens!

LOVE & ROCKETS #15 by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez
32-page black and white comic $4.50

Hopey goes on a picnic, to a rock 'n' roll show and the bathroom in "Saturday is Shatter Day," the latest installment of "Day by Day with Hopey." And on the Beto side of the book, "On a Gut Level" features the return on Palomar's original heartbreaker Pipo, trapped in a mysterious castle with Fritz, her ex Mark Hererra, and his wife Mila...plus another Kid Stuff Kids"! VIVA LOS BROS!

DEADPAN #1 by David Heatley
32-page full-color comic $5.95

Never before offered through Fantagraphics or Previews! Back to the start with the first issue of David Heatley's autobiographical work. Exploring his dreams with a childlike adaptation, Heatley takes a peek into his own mind - which is decidedly filled with a less-than-childlike nature. Colored drawings, that resemble pictures drawn with crayons, tackle homosexual and heterosexual fantasies, child rape, bestiality and murder.

THE COMICS JOURNAL #272
Cover by Jeff Danzinger
192-page squarebound magazine, $9.95

This issue, take a journey through the world of editorial cartooning with two masters of the form: American gadfly Jeff Danzinger and Steve Bell of British newspaper The Guardian, both interviewed of whom discuss art, craft and politics with critic and scholar Kent Worcester. Also: Part two of Gary Groth's definitive interview with legendary cartoonist (and Batman co-creator) Jerry Robinson, a section of full-color "Thirteen" strips from Little Lulu cartoonist John Stanley, and all the comics, news, criticism and commentary you expect from America's most respected magazine about the form, The Comics Journal!

NEW "IGNATZ" TITLES:
A brand new collection of internationally-produced comics designed midway between comic book "pamphlets" and graphic novels, at a very reasonable price, the "Ignatz" series will offer a rotating collection of exciting new series, all produced in a deluxe, oversize two-color format of jacketed saddle-stitched comics on thick, deluxe stock The following are the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes in the series.

INTERIORAE #1 (Ignatz Series) by Gabriella Giandelli
32-page 2-color saddlestitched 8 1/2" x 11" comic, $7.95

A high-rise apartment building in an unnamed European city. Its inhabitants come and go, meet each other, talk, dream, regret, hope... in short, live. A ghostly, shape-shifting anthropomorphic white rabbit roams from apartment to apartment, surveying and keeping track of all this humanity... and at the end of every night, he floats down to the basement where he delivers his report to the "great dark one." Lushly delineated in penciled sepia halftones, this debut "Ignatz" by Gabriella Giandelli offers a hauntingly unique vision and a tantalizingly open-ended beginning to an ongoing series.

GANGES #1 (Ignatz Series) by Kevin Huizenga
32-page 2-color saddlestitched 8 1/2" x 11" comic, $7.95

Kevin Huizenga introduces his everyman Glenn Ganges (previously seen in the acclaimed Drawn and Quarterly Showcase and Or Else) to the "Ignatz" family with this suite of all-new stories. Ganges tries to decide what to do when confronted with "The Litterer"; gets into an argument with his wife Wendy about The Beatles' "She's Leaving Home"; indulges in some whimsical "Time Traveling" while on a walk around his neighborhood; and more! Huizenga's elegant neo-clear-line style brings a crispness and humor to these low-key slice-of-life stories, and the gray-blue duotone he has picked gives the art a new depth and complexity.

CHIMERA #1 (Ignatz Series) by Lorenzo Mattotti
32-page black-and-white saddlestitched 8 1/2" x 11" comic, $7.95

Long a superstar in his native Italy, Lorenzo Mattotti has made sporadic incursions into the U.S. via appearances in RAW magazine, the classic Fires graphic novel, and the more recent, 2003 Eisner-winning Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation from NBM. (Not to mention regular gigs in The New Yorker.) All of these previous works have showcased his full-color painter style, but Chimera, with its intricate, hyper-expressive swirls of crisp line work, shows that Mattotti's genius is bound by no single technique. A wordless fantasia of birth, death, gods, monsters, and humans, Chimera is the most astonishing visual narrative you'll see all year.