Fantagraphics Celebrates 50 Years And Announces New Titles

The definitive home of American underground comix, Fantagraphics, will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The publisher will be launching new titles and a new publishing imprint focusing on East Asian comics called Takumigraphics. For manga readers who want an alternative to popular Shonen titles, books from the imprint could be a welcome breath of fresh air.

Tucker Stone had this to say:

“The story of Fantagraphics as a publisher plays out in this season in a fashion that I think probably requires very little introduction — But if you want my take, my take is this: it’s new and incredibly powerful work by Joe Sacco, who legitimized the concept of graphic journalism. It’s the definitive collection of the Marvel artist who defined the 1970s for that publisher and shaped the notion of coolness for a generation of super-hero artists to follow. It’s the return of one of our most important publications of all time — the Complete Zap Comix. It’s the massive, mindbending conclusion to one of the most fantastic comics of the last decade — Jesse Moynihan‘s Forming. It’s comics from China that remind English language readers once again that we have only begun to see what the rest of the world is saying with their comics work. It’s every single time Harvey Kurtzman got Mad. It’s Carl Barks as, up until now, only Carl Barks ever got to see him. It’s all that and it’s even more.”

Some titles that stood out to me include: The Ultra Power Mongol Invasion by Shintaro Kago, Forming by Jesse Moynihan, The Complete Corto Maltese: Volume 1 The Ballad of the Salt Sea by Hugo Pratt, and Nirvana is Here by Mikael Ross, and The Complete Zap Comix by R. Crumb, Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Paul Mavrides, Spain Rodriguez, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, and S. Clay Wilson.

If Fantagraphics does their job right they might be able to introduce a whole new readership to the transgressive, fun, and avant-garde storytelling that takes place in underground comix.