Too damn many people showed up for the first anniversary celebration
of the Fantagraphics Store in Georgetown. This is obviously a good
thing (dozens of people stuffed into a boutique comic book
store?), but it was troublesome if you wanted to, you know,
actually enjoy the party. The store, not a huge place to begin
with, was packed tight with people swaddled in winter clothes, and the
music was way too loud.
But cans of PBR were free, so one couldn’t complain too much,
especially since everything was 20 percent off and business seemed
brisk. Fantagraphics is the best publisher in Seattle and has
been for decades, and it’s good that they’re finally financially
solvent, after years of barely paying the rent by publishing porn
comics on the side. There’s a whole room in the back full of remnants
of those lean days: shelves stocked with titles like Captain
Hard-On and Housewives at Play: “Lez” Be Friends and
Boffy the Vampire Layer.
The centerpiece of the store is a table piled high with new and
recent releases, and it’s an interesting snapshot of where
Fantagraphics stands. There were copies of Stranger contributor
Ellen Forney’s ecstatic I Love Led Zeppelin, and also Ivan
Brunetti’s staggering Misery Loves Comedy, a masterful book full
of hyperphilosophical self-loathing and a deep and abiding
hatred of humanity as a species. For those who don’t find suicides,
murders, and murder/suicides hilarious, there were also reissues of
Love and Rockets and a skinny little comedy called I Killed
Adolf Hitler, the newest work by Jason, who’s fast becoming the
Charlie Chaplin of comics.
It’s striking how much Fantagraphics’ catalogue last year was
devoted to archival reprints. They’re collecting Krazy Kat,
Peanuts, and Popeye comic strips in beautiful, essential
volumes. And the recent I Shall Destroy All the Civilized
Planets! by the comically inept Fletcher Hanks is both fascinating
and heartbreaking. But does the world really need the complete Dennis the Menace? Or an 800-page biography of Milton
Caniff, the creator of Terry and the Pirates?
Fantagraphics has a brilliant record for transforming promising
novices into truly great cartoonists (Dan Clowes! Chris Ware!) and
while they publish a quarterly anthology called Mome that’s the
closest thing to a McSweeney’s that graphic
novels have, it’s a shame to constrain new talent to a few pages of
work every three months. Off the top of my head, the only newish talent
that Fantagraphics has “discovered,” developed, and supported with
major releases over the past year or so are Jordan Crane and Paul
Hornschemeier. While reprinting the past has been profitable, here’s
hoping that Fantagraphics makes a fresh commitment to nurturing new
talent in 2008. 