The new Fantagraphics catalog is out and chock full of comics goodness. Take note of a very special offer: Your chance to own some very special mini-comics!
The press release follows:
By now you’ve probably received your 2012 Fantagraphics Ultimate Catalog of Comics in the mail. It’s jam-packed with our 2011 releases, a few upcoming 2012 releases, and a bunch of backlist stuff. It also details our exciting FBI•MINI mail-order bonus program, more about which below. And, of course, there’s a handy order form for ordering everything!
If for some reason you’re on our email list but not our snail-mail list, contact us to request your free copy, and if you just can’t wait and/or want to have it on your computer or mobile device, we’ve also made it available as an 11.5 MB PDF download.
And now a special announcement from Kim Thompson:
I always was very fond of the mini-comics format — take two to four 8 1/2 x 11 sheets, fold them once, staple, and voilà! You have an adorable little 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 comic book for mere pennies. But I could never really figure out what to do with this old-school, low-tech format.
Until now!
For this catalog season, we have created 21 “FBI•MINI” booklets (most in this format, although there are a few oddities), as premiums for customers who order books directly from us. They are available free with the purchase of their “matching” book or books — or for those customers who’ve already bought those books but are desperate to get the FBI•MINI, free with the purchase of $50 worth of any other Fantagraphics mail-order merchandise.
We’ve put together some pretty amazing stuff. For instances, there are four foreign FBI•MINIs featuring material that is being released in English for the very first time: an eight-page David B. story from the 1990s, an eight-page full-color Sibyl-Anne story by Raymond Macherot, a twelve-page collection of Joost Swarte‘s very earliest, most underground-y work — the stuff that didn’t make it into Is That All There Is? — and most amazing of all, 21 pages of an abandoned Manchette/Tardi story that has only been printed once in an obscure French collection, and never in English. That’s 49 page of prime European comics available here for the first time.
There are four sketchbook collections (an amazing gathering of Jim Woodring work preparing for Congress of the Animals, an intricate set of sketches and more by Stephen DeStefano for Lucky in Love, a collection of Kim Deitch‘s legendary pencilled conceptualization drawings… and a hilarious blurt of Prison Pit character doodles from Johnny Ryan).
There’s a non-Segar Popeye strip from the Segar era that didn’t make it into our Popeye series (since it wasn’t by Segar)… a collection of terrific “coming attractions” pages from Golden Age comics to go with Greg Sadowski’s upcoming Golden Age covers collection… a dozen great “Humorama” drawings that didn’t quite get into the Humorama book… a striking facsimile of a Maurice Tillieux original Gil Jordan page, complete with watercolored color indications on the back… and a never-before published Joe Sacco strip.
Plus 16 pages of Alex Toth art from the Setting the Standard era, but here reproduced in crisp black and white from the original photostats… Tony Millionaire‘s hilarious illustrated essay on failing to secure a TV gig for Billy Hazelnuts, complete with a preview of his upcoming Billy Hazelnuts Volume 3… a collection of the legendary Ivan Brunetti Nancy strip try-out… and 12 gorgeous full-color pages of scary Richard Sala faces.
And we’ve also got some obscurities, such as 12 pages of Bill Griffith comics that got axed from his epochal Lost and Found, a never-before-reprinted Critters-era “Nilson Groundthumper” story by Stan Sakai, and some truly Jurassic-era comics from Peter Bagge and Los Bros. Hernandez.
If any of these catch your interest (and if you’re reading this surely at least one of them will) you can click right on any of them to a more detailed listing on our website — or just click right here and all 21 will pop up for you to peruse.
Click here to see all the newest releases from Fantagraphics Books.
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NOTE: Sales and special offers for Fantagraphics mailorder do not apply at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery unless otherwise noted, and vice versa.