Alphabetical Index of Fantagraphics Books

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes

Review by KC Carlson Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes is the first in a new series of books collecting the comic book stories of Carl Barks, “The Good Duck Artist”. Barks is thought by many to be not only one of the greatest writer/artists to work on the Disney Ducks, but also one of the greatest comic book storytellers of all time. The book series itself, called The Carl Barks Library (although this designation does not prominently […]

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Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse by Floyd Gottfredson: Race to Death Valley

Review by KC Carlson “MY GOSH!! What cheese! If only I had a bottle of beer!!” –Mickey Mouse (1930) A few days later, in the midst of the “Mickey Mouse in Death Valley” continuity in the then-freshly minted Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, Mickey’s girl Minnie — held captive by her shyster lawyer and Black Pete — is treated to the sight of a silhouette of a hanged (and obviously dead) Mickey. She screams. Jeez, this sure isn’t the same Mickey […]

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Freeway

Mark Kalesniko spends the 400 pages of Freeway telling us that getting your dream job, if your dream is to work in animation for a huge franchise-building corporation, may be soul-crushing. This is not news to anyone out of their 20s. We’ve all heard about the monkey’s paw, “be careful what you wish for”, and we all know that companies that exist solely to merchandise toys aren’t in it for the art. Alex is a dog-faced artist stuck in a […]

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Castle Waiting Volume 2

I had high expectations for Castle Waiting, given that the first volume was outstanding, and I wasn’t disappointed. I found Volume 2 so strong, in fact, that it was my best graphic novel of 2010. Here, we learn more about all the characters as they go about their daily life, making their castle homey. The Lady Jain is seeking more suitable quarters for herself and her son Pindar, so nice-but-slow Simon and Rackham tour her around the huge building, sharing […]

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The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec: Pterror Over Paris and The Eiffel Tower Demon

I don’t read enough European comics. I like many of their visual styles, but I’ve found often that the package seems expensive for the amount of story you get, or worse, they’re written from and for a very male perspective. (The science fiction books, for example, tend to have lots of undressed busty robots.) When I saw The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec: Pterror Over Paris and The Eiffel Tower Demon at the Fantagraphics table at SPX this year, then, […]

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Sam’s Strip: The Comic About Comics

Review by KC Carlson After a slight delay, Sam’s Strip by Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas is now shipping from Fantagraphics Books, and it is everything that I hoped it would be. (I previewed this book last fall, in one of my columns for Westfield Comics, with some sample strips.) It features the complete 20-month run (October 16, 1961, to June 1, 1963, almost 510 daily strips), with excellent reproduction. There are two separate sets of annotation in the back […]

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Castle Waiting

This handsome hardcover collects (if I’ve gotten this right), The Curse of Brambly Hedge, issues #1-14 of the mostly self-published series (as well as those put out by Cartoon Books), and short stories from Scatterbrain #1 and the second Trilogy Tour special. Regardless, now that all this Castle Waiting is under one cover, the original appearances are irrelevant. This is the format that suits the material. The book’s old-fashioned look acknowledges the tradition behind the story’s setting — all those […]

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That Kind of Girl

A writer takes an erotic road trip in this graphic novel by Molly Kiely for adults only. Diva is heading out to her trailer in the desert for some time alone writing. During the day, it’s just her and her typewriter and open space as far as the eye can see. There’s a brief hetero encounter, after Diva fixes a guy’s stalled car (go talented woman!), but the core relationship of the book begins when she picks up the larger-than-life […]

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