Fantagraphics to publish four Ungerer books starting this fall

“The Underground Sketchbook” gets a new printing this October.

Fantagraphics has announced plans to release four out-of-print Tomi Ungerer books — The Underground Sketchbook, The Party, Babylon and Adam and Eve.

While probably best known for his work on children’s books like The Three Robbers and Flat Stanley, the illustrator and author’s career also included advertising, protest art, erotica and “books for adults” before he passed away a week ago at the age of 87. The four books Fantagraphics will reprint fall into that latter category.

“While preparing for my career-spanning interview with Tomi Ungerer that appears in the new print edition of The Comics Journal, I was astonished to discover that many of his best satirical works were only available as used books at exorbitant prices,” said Fantagraphics Publisher Gary Groth in a press release. “In an attempt to right this wrong, I chose four of his books to reprint, all trenchant commentaries on the folly of our relationships and the absurdity of our social order.”

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‘Love and Capes’ returns this summer

Thom Zahler’s rom-com comic returns for a fifth volume.

Thom Zahler produced four volumes of his charming Love and Capes series before seemingly sending Mark and Abby off for their happy ending. But now the creator has said on Twitter that he’s planning a fifth volume of the popular series, set to be released this summer.

Although there aren’t a lot of details just yet, he did share two pages of art and some promo art that revealed the subtitle of the new volume — Love and Capes: The Family Way.

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‘Avengers Dismember’: Wolverine, Conan join the ‘Savage Avengers’

Gerry Duggan and Mike Deodato Jr. bring together Marvel’s ‘badasses’ this May.

A new “unsanctioned” group of Avengers will slice and dice their way into comics in May, as Marvel has announced Savage Avengers by the creative team of Gerry Duggan and Mike Deodato Jr.

The Savage Avengers’ members will include Conan, Wolverine, Venom, Elektra, Brother Voodoo and Punisher.

“It has to be something that visually makes sense to you, and I think it does,” Duggan, who is also writing Savage Sword of Conan for Marvel, told Entertainment Weekly. “Mike Deodato Jr. is illustrating this book in both worlds. We envisioned a threat, a magical green zone where the evil wizards of Conan’s world are trading spells with the Hand in Japan. Conan is on a very Conan-like mission; he’s heard a tale of an amulet so he’s chasing it, and the evil magic sorcerers are doing something that would be a Marvel Avengers problem. It feels like we have found some very fertile ground that is a Venn diagram between those two worlds.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Julie Sondra Decker

The writer of ‘The Invisible Orientation’ discusses her two webcomics, her process, world building and more.

Julie Sondra Decker is a writer and artist who is best known for her nonfiction book The Invisible Orientation, but she’s also a webcartoonist. Negative One has been coming out weekly since 2005 and So You Write has been updated occasionally since 2012, though usually monthly. The two comics are very different from how they look, the stories they tell and how Decker makes them.

So You Write is painfully familiar for any writer or creative person, full of insane questions from other people and the excuses we tell ourselves. Negative One is a comic that Decker described as “text heavy,” but it’s also an immersive and strange tale with a large cast that doesn’t look and feel like most comics. It’s an impressive piece of world building, and I reached out to Decker to ask about her two projects and how she thinks about the differences between prose and comics.

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DC announces ‘Year of the Villain’ 25-cent comic

The almost-free comic arrives a few days before this year’s Free Comic Book Day.

Just prior to Free Comic Book Day, DC Comics will release a 25-cent DC Year of the Villain comic that spotlights several villains and sets the stage for future stories.

The book will include stories by Scott Snyder, Brian Michael Bendis, James Tynion IV, Jim Cheung, Francis Manapul and Alex Maleev, with a cover by Greg Capullo. Variant cover artists include Maleev and Cheung, as well as Stanley “Artgerm” Lau.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Jerry Craft’s ‘New Kid’

The creator of ‘Mama’s Boyz’ talks about his new graphic novel, which just arrived in stores this month.

Jerry Craft has been working as a cartoonist for decades and is best known for his long running comic strip Mama’s Boyz, which he ended late last year. He co-wrote and illustrated the middle grade novel The Offenders, and illustrated numerous books including The Zero Degree Zombie Zone and Khalil’s Way. Craft is also a co-founder of the Black Comic Book Festival at the Schomburg Center, which held its fifth annual show last month. His new book is New Kid, which was just released by Harper Collins.

The semi-autobiographical book tells the story of Jordan, who is the new kid attending an elite private school. The book has a lot of dramatic moments, and as I spoke with Craft I mentioned how many moments resonated with me, but the book is also an incredibly funny and visually inventive story. The way that Craft is able to make the story dramatic and comedic and visually inventive is not surprising to anyone who had read Mama’s Boyz, but the way that the story of Jordan and his friends and family come together make this arguably his best work to date.

We spoke recently while he was in an airport to talk about the book.

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Ferrier, Malhotra smuggle ‘Narcos’ into comics

IDW Publishing will publish a four-issue miniseries set in the Netflix show’s first season.

Netflix’s Narcos will make the jump from the streaming giant to comics this April, as IDW Publishing as announced plans to make a comic book based on the popular TV show.

Ryan Ferrier and Vic Malhotra have been enlisted to create a four-issue miniseries that “introduces new dangers for DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña to face, while at the same time, El Patrón must contend with a dangerous threat to his drug empire.”

“I’m thrilled to take fans new and old into a deeper, unseen story from the volatile, teeth-gritting world of Narcos,” Ferrier said in a press release. “I’m even more excited to bring this to life alongside Vic Malhotra, whose immense talent and style will show us a new side of Narcos — one with dangerously high stakes and a new, chaotic presence that will affect the DEA, the Cartels, Don Pablo himself, and all of Colombia.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Carta Monir

The creator of ‘RIPMOM’ and ‘Secure Connect’ discusses her process, the micropress Diskette Press, her upcoming graphic novel and more.

Carta Monir has been making a series of comics for years. Many people likely know her work in Polygon and Zeal, where she’s made comics about Hitman and Lara Croft. But it’s her more personal stories that have really solidified her place as a major talent.

In work like RIPMOM and Secure Connect, she explores questions of identity and the technology in thoughtful and nuanced ways that are rarely acknowledged in public conversations about the internet.

I first noticed her work when RIPMOM was published in Critical Chips 2 in 2017. The short comic is presented as taking place through a computer interface, in a way that seemed interesting in the way it broke apart our behaviors and feelings in complicated and emotional moments, but becomes this deeply person and emotional journey by the end.

Monir is also one of the people behind Diskette Press, and I reached out to ask her a few questions about her work and what’s she working on right now. You can find her on Twitter and on Patreon.

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‘Beasts of Burden’ returns in May

A two-part series by Evan Dorkin, Jill Thompson and Benjamin Dewey will complete the second Burden Hill collection.

Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson will return to Burden Hill for another round of Beasts of Burden, their award-winning series about guardian dogs and cats facing supernatural menaces.

Beasts of Burden: The Presence of Others Part One will arrive in May, featuring artwork by Thompson, who co-created the series with Dorkin. Part Two will feature artwork by Benjamin Dewey, who drew the most recent Beasts of Burden series, Beasts of Burden: Wise Dogs and Eldritch Men. It will “complete the second Burden Hill collection begun with the Hellboy crossover published in 2010,” Dorkin revealed.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Keith Lansdale and Jok

The creators of ‘Red Range:Pirates of Fireworld’ discuss the sequel to a 1999 graphic novel by Joe R. Lansdale and Sam Glanzman.

The miniseries Red Range: Pirates of Fireworld, currently being kickstarted for a summer release, is a sequel to the graphic novel Red Range. Originally published in 1999, the book by Joe R. Lansdale and Sam Glanzman was reprinted with new colors recently. The first volume was a dark western tale, which ended with the hero and the boy he rescued falling into the hollow earth, a place filled with dinosaurs and other creatures.

The final page of the book teased a sequel, but nothing ever came of it – until now. Written by Keith Lansdale and drawn by Jok, who colored the reprinted edition, they’re picking up where the original left off in this miniseries. Lansdale has written comics including Crawling Sky, Vampirella: Feary Tales, The X-Files: Case Files and Creepy. Jok has drawn many comics over the years including Strangeways, The Hill, Freud’s Covenant, Mixtape and many others.

I reached out to ask the two a few questions about the book.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Warren Craghead on ‘TrumpTrump’

The creator of ‘La Grande Guerre’ discusses the latest collection of his drawings of Donald Trump.

Warren Craghead has been drawing Donald Trump and his cronies every day for more than two years, and he’s promised to continue “until this nightmare ends.”

When Craghead began this project, he expected it to last a few months, but he’s an artist who has worked on a number of long-term projects. Comics readers might know him for Speedy, which received the Xeric Grant, as well as How To Be Everywhere and Ley Lines. Online he’s spent years on projects like La Grande Guerre, a daily project detailing World War I, and Medz Yeghern, which documents the Armenian Genocide.

Retrofit Press has just released TrumpTrump: Modern Day Presidential, the second collection of Craghead’s daily drawings. We spoke recently about daily practice and the importance of paying attention.

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‘All Time Comics’ moves to Floating World Comics

The shared universe by Josh Bayer and friends returns in June from a new publisher.

Josh Bayer’s All Time Comics will return for a new five-part series from a new publisher this year. Floating World Comics, the Portland, Oregon comic shop-turned-publisher, will pick up where Fantagraphics left off with Zerosis Deathscape, an “epic event” co-written by Bayer and Josh Simmons, with art by Trevor Von Eeden.

“It’s about space and time meeting anti-time and alternate-space,” Bayer said about the new series. “It’s a chance to combine Bronze Age adventure genre comics with traces of every type of comics we love, from E.C. Segar to indie DIY comics.”

The All Time Comics shared universe launched in 2017 at Fantagraphics with four one-shots that featured the work of contemporary indie creators like Ben Marra and Noah Van Sciver with classic superhero artists like Al Milgrom and Herb Trimpe. Joining Von Eeden on art this time around will be Gabrielle Bell, Julia Gfrörer, Benjamin Marra and Tom Toye, and colorist Daniel Lee.

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