Fantagraphics recently announced that they’ve struck a deal for seven (7) new books with writer/editor Greg Sadowski, who was responsible for Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 and a couple of B. Krigstein-related works for the publisher.

The books will be published one a season, so seven of ‘em is really planning ahead, and should carry them through to fall of 2012 or so (I don’t even have my next seven blog posts planned yet).

Here’s what they have planned at the moment…

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Low Moon, the latest release of one-named  Norweigian  cartoonist Jason from Fantagraphics, is a hard book to review, as the previous sentence probably tells readers all they need to know about it.

Jason is one of the relatively few working artists that even a jaded, cynical, complain-first critic like me will happily declare a true master cartoonist, without reservation. Jason is—how to put this?—good. Really, really, really good. Good enough that even the very worst of his work that I’ve seen, a handful of the early pieces he’s done, collected in Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories, are fascinating in light of what he would come to do after those works, and how they signal and reflect his future work.

So, Low Moon? It’s Jason. It’s new. It’s obviously really, really good, you know?

(Can I get away with a three-paragraph review? Or does that look too lazy? It does? Alright, alright; more after the jump then).

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Peter Bagge, author of Everyone is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations, will be hitting the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle this Saturday!

From 7-9pm, the Gallery will show off some original artwork by Bagge, as he signs his new book. Following the event, the party will move on to next door neighbor Jules Maes Saloon, featuring Bagge’s “power pop combo” Can You Imagine?

Quick, think “autobiographical graphic novel.”

What comes to mind?  A black and white trade paperback, containing the intentionally rough, scratchy, simplified artwork of a twenty- or thirtysomething revealing intimate details of their love life? Maybe a black and white trade paperback version of a memoir, in which the middle-aged author discusses a particularly interesting aspect of his or her life, like coming to grips with a new child or dealing with a terrible disease?

Well, C. Tyler’s You’ll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man (Fantagraphics Books) isn’t like that, nor is it much like any other autobio comic I’ve encountered.

The form of the book distinguishes it immediately. It’s a big, huge rectangle, a foot across, and 10.75 inches high, although it’s only 100 pages long, and the story is expected to continue into two more books. The form (like the amount of color) sets it apart from many of the works in its genre, but that’s no necessarily why it’s in that form—it also serves the story.

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IFC.com will be airing a web series based on Dash Shaw’s upcoming book from Fantagraphics, The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.

The five-part series revolves around Rebel X-6, a man who poses as a droid in a futuristic art school, looking to subvert the institution’s methods and reinstate humanity as the model for art.

“Dash Shaw is a known entity in the comic book realm with a cult following.  We’re excited to bring him, his art and his fans to IFC.com, a platform that recognizes and broadens the reach of up-and-coming, independent content makers,” said Craig Parks, vice president of digital media at IFC in a statement. “Shaw’s work on IFC.com will offer a fresh and completely unique take on the animation genre; the type of approach that defines our brand.”

The book from the Bottomless Belly Button author should be out in November, with the series to follow.

Fantagraphics is making a leap on May 30, as they will release Monte Schulz’s This Side of Jordan, over at the 2009 Book Expo in New York City!

This Side of Jordan is a story set in the Great Depression, following the travels of 19-year-old farmboy Alvin Pendergast. Alvin has spent a year in a sanitarium for tuberculosis, and encounters many of the con men and criminals of America’s seedy streets.

This is the second prose novel that Fantagraphics has ever released, after Alexander Theroux’s 2007 book, Laura Warholic. Monte Schulz is the son of famed Peanuts creator Charles Schulz.

“When I was in my early twenties, and Dad saw that I was developing an interest in writing, he showed me some of the beautiful passages of Thomas Wolfe and John Steinbeck, and lent me his copies of Complete Poems by Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, and Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Schulz wrote in a press release. “He told me the writer’s gift is to be able to express for people certain ideas and emotions they cannot express for themselves.”

This Friday, April 17, Miss Lasko-Gross will be signing her new graphic novel, A Mess of Everything at the Rocketship store in Brooklyn. Kevin Colden will also be there, signing his Eisner-award nominated graphic novel, Fishtown.

Rocketship is located at 208 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY, and their parties are always excellent. Go forth and check it out.

The thing to keep in mind while reading the various Boody Rogers comics collected in the oddly punctuated collection Boody. (Fantagraphics Books) is when exactly it was they were created and published: Between 1948 and 1950.

That’s during comics’ so-called Golden Age, and well before underground comix movement of the 1960s or more current post-modern comics that might revel in the sort of weirdness that permeates these stories and radiates outward from the pages. To say they’re “ahead of their time” would be an understatement; they seem like they were drawn just last week.

The collection is put together by Craig Yoe, who seems to be everywhere at the moment (His Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster also just dropped, and garnered plenty of mainstream media attention for the obvious reasons). So unsurprisingly, it’s a beautiful-looking book.
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In 2009, it can be hard to understand, let alone appreciate, what superhero comic books were like at their inception.

Sure, DC and Marvel have their various reprint programs allow us to read the original adventures of the most popular and successful superheroes. You know, those that are still alive and selling. But it’s not easy to experience a Superman comic, or even a Captain Marvel or Sub-Mariner comic, without thinking of all that followed them. As tossed off as those stories may have been, they have the weight of a creation myth; to read the first Superman story without thinking of every one that followed, as if you had no idea what Superman was, requires an act of willful disassociation bordering on self-hypnosis.

Which is at least part of the fun of Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 (Fantagraphics Books). Editor Greg Sadowski has collected about 20 stories from the time period, featuring a mess of characters you may have heard of, but certainly don’t know the way you know Wonder Woman or Batman.

These are stories from both the formative years of the superhero, and the gold rush years, when everyone making comics decided to make a Superman of some sort. The genre was still fluid, and hadn’t yet hardened and become solid (let alone calcified).

While the names of the supermen may not be familiar ones, the names of their creators certainly are, and Sadowski has assembled a who’s who of the founding fathers of comics, none of who are working on their signature creations. For example you’ll see Will Eisner, but not on The Spirit, Jack Cole, but not on Plastic Man.

Sadowski includes annotations on the stories, which function as an extremely readable mini-history of the comics industry in those years. I sat down to review this book a couple of times now, but I kept getting pulled in so many directions, wanting to mention every cool thing in it, which is quite difficult, given how many cool things are in it.

So instead, after the jump, I’ll try and say a few words about every single story in Supermen!, a book I honestly can’t recommend enough to any fans of the superhero genre.

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Seattle readers, you’re in for a treat!

Love & Rockets co-creator Jaime Hernandez and Usagi Yojimbo’s Stan Sakai will be hitting the Fantagraphics Store in the Rainy City on April 4th!

The duo will be signing as well as showing off an exhibition of their work. In addition, special guest Paul Hornschemeier will be signing copies of his new hardcover, Mother Come Home.

The event will take place from 6-9pm and is free.

As promised (I hope), this should be my last offering related to the recent WATCHMEN release.

In a GQ issue with a little something for everyone (trying to make it in the publishing biz with Lenny Dykstra sounds more awful than any horror story I’ve caught in recent years about the comics industry), the April 2009 issue of GQ has a feature entitled “The 20 Graphic Novels You Should Read (After “Watchmen”).”

The men in tights are kept to a minimum (Batman doesn’t even get a mention that I’m aware of, save for citing Ed Brubaker — Superman and Madman earn high marks one time each), and it’s a respectable look at how comics aren’t just kids stuff, a noble venture by a magazine geared to get male consumers everywhere to buy $300 Hugo Boss t-shirts.

Of course 20 items isn’t even going to scratch the surface, but what additional suggestions would YOU make to a mainstream publication like GQ?

For all you guys out there in the Rainy City, we’ve got a treat for you!

Dame Darcy, cartoonist and mastermind of the Victorian horror romance Meat Cake, will be hitting the Fantagraphics Boomstore & Gallery from 6-9pm on Saturday, March 14th.

Darcy will perform vocals and banjo with her acoustic trio, and then sign copies of Meat Cake as well as her new graphic novel, Gasoline. In addition, there will be an exhibition of art from Harvey Kurtzman’s Humbug.

Fantagraphics has announced that it will be releasing a series of hardcovers featuring the work of French cartoonist Jacques Tardi.

In August, the publisher will release West Coast Blues, a hard-boiled crime thriller, and the surreal and satiric You Are Here.

“Tardi has always been one of my top favorite European cartoonists,” said series editor Kim Thompson, who will also be translating the books. “I’ve wanted to do this for many years — pretty much as long as we’ve been publishing — and I think the time is ripe. In today’s graphic-novel world, the audience is finally ready for Tardi.”

In Spring 2010, Fantagraphic will release It Was the War of the Trenches, a graphic novel set in World War I.

Tardi, who is best known in the U.S. for his Dark Horse-published heroine Adèle Blanc-Sec, has won every French cartooning award including the Grand Prize of Angoulême, and has created over 30 graphic novels in a wide variety of genres.

A big week for events, people — now residents of the Windy City have something to look forward to!

On Thursday, Lilli Carré, author of Fantagraphics’ The Lagoon, will be signing her work at Quimby’s in Chicago. Prints and handmade books will also be sold, and refreshments will be served.

The Lagoon deals with a family’s reaction to a siren’s song, emanating from a nearby lagoon. With contentment, curiosity, frustration, and danger, this experimental work comes hot on the heels of Carré’s Eisner and Harvey nominated story, The Adventures of Woodsman Pete.

Last year’s I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! reintroduced the work of highly idiosyncratic Golden Age comics creator Fletcher Hanks to the world, collecting 17 of the stories he wrote, drew and lettered during his three-year career into a subversively powerful work.

It was, to put it mildly, rather popular: It was the buzz book at several cons, won an Eisner, landed on plenty of Best Of lists and sold out of three printings and is now in its fourth.

And it was popular enough that editor Paul Karasik and publisher Fantagraphics have put together another, bigger volume. You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! will collect the remaining 31 Hanks stories and is set for June release.

But did Karasik use up all the really crazy stuff in the first volume? Let’s see what Fanta’s spring/summer catalog offers in terms of preview images…

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If you’re still looking for the perfect holiday gift for someone in your life, I should remind you now that Top Shelf’s FREE shipping on order of $40 or more lasts until Dec. 14, so you’ve still nearly three days to take advantage.

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/

Fantagraphics also has a Holiday Gift Guide to help you choose appropriate presents.

http://www.fantagraphics.com/

Sweet stuff there for anybody on your list.

– Alison Bechdel and Harvey Pekar, together at last.

– Steve Duin has some good news about underground cartoonist S. Clay Wilson, who has been in ICU for the past several days.

– Ada Price talks to Dave Gibbons about his new book, Watching the Watchmen.

– Looks like it’s official: Naruto Nation 2009 is totally a go.

– Sam Thielman looks at the significance of Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing in light of the new super-fancy collection coming out soon.

– Over at Stars and Stripes, Gary Trudeau answers some of his critics.

– Van Jensen talks to Mike Allred about the revamped Red Rocket collection.

– Here’s my idea of a fun time: Dan Nadel, Gary Panter and CF sitting around, talking about art and comics.

– Did you know About Comics is 10 years old this year? I didn’t. Chris Murphy has a recollection.

– Sandy Bilus is giving away a copy of Alan’s War over at his blog.

– Oscar Pedro Musibay looks at the Comics Galaxy event that was held at last weekend’s Miami Book Fair.

– Frank Santoro considers the new Popeye collection.

Or rather, he illustrated one. Gallery Ghost, from Birdcage Press, and written by Anna Nilsen, offers a decidedly supernatural take through the halls of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

The idea is that at night in the museum, all the ghosts of dead painters like Paul Gauguin and Lyonel Feininger (hey, he did comics too!) come out and put details from their own work into other people’s paintings, a Rousseau cow inserted in van Ostade’s “The Cottage Dooryard” for example.

The reader’s job is to help intern and art student Sarah out and figure out who added to whose painting and which one added the most (just for clarification’s sake, Sala only illustrated the opening and closing pages, plus the portraits of the painters — he didn’t attempt to replicate Mary Cassatt or anything). To help you in your quest, the book comes with its own magnifying glass. How cool is that?

Sala’s art is much softer and friendlier than longtime fans of his work may be used to, but they’ll still want to track it down, if for no other reason than to his rendition of a ghostly Gustav Klmit, something I’m sure readers of Delphine have long wanted to see.

– Harry N. Abrams plans to publish Barry Deutsch’s acclaimed Webcomic Hereville in book form. Brigid Alverson has details.

– Steve Duin provides an update on S. Clay Wilson’s health. Short answer: “His condition has not improved significantly.”

– “There’s an exotica Americans find in my stories that’s lost on Israeli readers:” Nisha Gopalan interviews Israeli cartoonist Rutu Modan about her new book Jamilti.

– Colleen Doran is looking for a few good cartoonists to help her review data for the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines.

– Kai-Ming Cha has a great interview with editor Sean Michael Wilson about Top Shelf’s upcoming AX anthology. “We’re selecting it from the 10 year archive so we’re talking about some 20,000 pages. That’s a lot of stuff to choose from.”

– Peter Sanderson celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sandman with a look back.

– Sanderson also looks at the new Vertigo Encyclopedia.

– The Daily Cartoonist reports that editorial cartoonists Steve Greenberg and Lee Judge are being laid off from their respective newspapers.

– Things to do: David B and Igort will be at the Beguiling in Toronto this Saturday.

– Other things to do: Kim Deitch will be doing a Q&A event with Bill Kartalopoulos at MoCCA tomorrow night. From the pr: “In a unique and wide-ranging conversation, the two will discuss Deitch’s work and
career to date.  Deitch will preview images from his current works in progress and field questions from the audience.”

– Joe Sacco offers an insightful review of Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles.

Nathan Fisher, the Connecticut teacher pushed out of his job last year after giving a copy of Eightball #22 to a ninth-grader, is still teaching — just not at Guilford High School.

Rick Green of the Hartford Courant updates Fisher’s story, noting that the educator landed at Coginchaug Regional High School in Durham, Conn., where he’s happily teaching English and journalism, and serving as adviser to the online student newspaper.

“It feels like a family,” Fisher told him. “It’s like they say. It’s the hardest job you will ever love.”

Fisher resigned from Guilford High School in September 2007 after complaints that he gave the Daniel Clowes comic to a student as a reading assignment. A police investigation found that no criminal charges were necessary.