Graphic novel news

There's a slew of new books available from Fantagraphics - see the information below direct from the press release. Also, if you're interested in information about the publisher, there's a feature on the Seattle Weekly website.

THE BUSH JUNTA

By various; edited by Gary Groth & Mack White

200-page black-and-white graphic album * $18.95

ISBN 1-56097-612-8

An international assemblage of world-class cartoonists take on the Bush administration in this historical account of high crimes and misdemeanors. This fact-based, impeccably researched work of comics journalism chronicles the Bush administration in the context of the Bush family dynasty that spawned it. Contributors to this historic comics documentary include: Carol Swain's look at Election 2000; Mack White's documentation of the events of September 11, 2001; Marcel Ruyters on the Bush-Nazi Connection; Carol Lay explores Karl Rove's role; Mark Landman looks at Dick Cheney; Ethan Persoff reads PATRIOT Acts I and II; and unveiling numerous other truths about the leader of the free world are a host of other cartoonists including: Kim Deitch, Jeremy Eaton, Hack Smith, Bill Griffith, Aleksandar Zograf, Larry Rodman, Spain Rodriguez and others.Introduction by documentary filmmaker and national radio broadcaster Alex Jones. Cover by acclaimed political cartoonist Steve Brodner.



FRED THE CLOWN

By Roger Langridge

192-page black-and-white graphic novel * $16.95

ISBN 1-56097-610-1

The signature creation of New Zealand cartoonist Roger Langridge, Fred the Clown is the thinking man's idiot. Fred has an eye for the ladies, as well as several other organs, but the only part of themselves they're willing to share is a carefully placed kneecap. Fred the Clown's misadventures are a curious balance of bleakness and joyful absurdism; the universe may dump on Fred from a great height, but he never gives up. Underlying it all is Langridge's own meticulous brush style. According to another New Zealand cartoonist, Hicksville creator Dylan Horrocks, "If Samuel Beckett had teamed up with the Goons and learned to draw like Tex Avery, the result would have been something very like the comics of Roger Langridge."



BLAB! Vol. 15

By various; edited by Monte Beauchamp

120-page graphic album in color and black-and-white * $19.95

ISBN 1-56097-613-6

Pop Art virtuoso Lou Brooks delivers the front and back covers to our latest annual serving of Blab!, while Juxtapoz magazine favorite Christian Northeast does the insides covers. Also: Sue Coe takes a look at the so-called Bird-Flu, Matti Hagelberg's tells us of an undead President of Finland; Jeffrey Steele writes about the Black Dahlia; Peter Kuper delivers a four-page, full-color, Little Nemo-inspired fantasy; plus, more from Blab! regular Gary "Teacher's Pet" Baseman, as well as Beauchamp's long-awaited piece on Kilroy (of "was here" fame), originally slated for Vol. 14.



THE COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY VOL. 4: DRAWING THE LINE

120-page graphic album in B&W and color * $18.95

ISBN 1-56097-597-0

The fourth volume in TCJ Library's ongoing series of lavish coffee-table-book collections of interviews drawn from the Utne Award-winning magazine's archives, this volume gathers together the epic, exhaustive interviews with four of the sharpest social commentators of our times: Ralph Steadman, Jules Feiffer, Edward Sorel, and David Levine. Each definitive conversation will boast the generous amounts of illustration that TCJ Library readers have come to expect from each volume, as well as a full-color gallery of rarely seen work.



LOCAS: A LOVE & ROCKETS BOOK by Jaime Hernandez

704-page B&W hardcover graphic novel * $49.95

ISBN 1-56097-611-X

BACK IN STOCK! One of the most humane, graceful and imaginatively inexhaustible artists in American popular culture, Jaime Hernandez has created in Locas one of the great American novels of the last 25 years, graphic or otherwise. Spanning a quarter-century, Locas tells the story of Maggie Chascarrillo, a bisexual, Mexican-American woman attempting to define herself in a community rife with class, race and gender issues. Maggie's story begins in the early-1980s Southern California rock scene, when it was shifting from the excesses of glitter rock to the gritty basics of punk and new wave. She quickly befriends Hopey Glass, a feisty anti-authoritarian punkette who quickly becomes Maggie's on-again, off-again lover and a constant presence in her life throughout the book. Maggie evolves from an angry young punk into a mature woman, encountering cruelties large and small and resigning herself to dashed hopes, shattered illusions, and even death with ironic acceptance over her 20 year story arc.