FANTA-STIC VOYAGE.

the best publisher this side of the universe seems to have the busiest schedule around.
and still a real "all stars" line up, too.

- "The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952" is the first installment into Fantagraphics's Best-sellers collection ; well, i hope so.
it's a pretty cool thing to see this book debuted at #19 on "the NY Times nonfiction hardovers bestsellers list" last month, and also #1 on amazon.com's "Comics & Graphic Novels Bestsellers" list, which means nothing but great news for this publisher who goes through real bad times a few months ago. "Peanuts 50-52" will quickly reach his 100.000 sold book... i think i know at last 10 peoples who already got one. thanks Fanta !

- Daniel Clowes is a new daddy (welcome Charlie), which doesn't stop the guy working on something which looks like a second movie (more news soon, maybe here on Fanta's Dan page)... don't miss the 23rd issue of Eightball, a 7 bucks oversized book.

- many interviews from Fanta artists : Johnny Ryan (who got a new Angry Youth Comix (the #7) released this july), Sophie Crumb, Mark Bode (Vaughn Bode' son Mark has re-enlisted his father's entire cast of characters for The Lizard of Oz, a full-color graphic novel that pays playful homage to and parodies the classic L. Frank Baum fairy tale and its beloved film adaptation, and blessed with huge artwork from Vaughn, introduction by Bode expert and Paper magazine contributor Carlo McCormick, and a sketchbook of Mark's preparatory work), Gary Groth, Tony Millionaire, and Seth.

- his wife, a costume from an old serial called "alias the cat", the tragic story of a czech, some romance, some fun, some excitement and a New Jersey town called Midgetville : these are the ingredients of Kim Deitch new issue of "the Stuff of Dreams" (Eisner-winning "Best Single Issue 2002"). wow, sounds pretty good...

- news from Jim Blanchard ("truckers fags in denial"), Steven Weisman ("the kid firechief") and second issue of Blood Orange are the july highlights at Fantagraphics.
it's a cruel, cruel summer... i really need money.

SECU-RRRRITTTTTTY !!!

yeeeeeeesss !
on june the 24, we went in Dijon, for this Tribu music festival i blogged about (hiya Fred, if you read this) before, for seing Antibalas live.

gosh, it was won-der-ful, i really liked it ; Antibalas are a classic afrobeat band, and if afrobeat deserves special listening conditions, it must be live, on stage. and Antibalas rocked the place, as it was written !

a 10 pieces band, composed of 10 pretty good musicians (i doubt the average age of its players excedeed 30 years old ?), and of 10 exstatics peoples, this is what New York city sent us for this gig : they were playing the best stratospheric afrobeat around, and it was a strong communion of energy, of happiness, and of pure groovistic joy. of course they played in Fela's field, but they also put a personnal twist to it ; just great, this is what i think of this bunch of assholes. 8)

need supra dose of good musical energy ? check their records.
need extra dose of positivism ? check Antibalas live.

WHISKASS.

Ronald from the Antimatiere zone (remember Annihilus in the Fantastic Four ? Ronald is his father) (or was it the negative zone ? damn) always send (though emails) tons of stuff. sure, the guy seems a little bit, hum, ON-DA-RUUUUN kind of guy (seing his "Free & Ahead Movement" mail signatures...), but it's pretty great to have some news from the one who try to keep some fire in the french underground ; the more, the best.
you can find some Ronald art nearly everywhere where thoses crazy guys from ChezJeromeComix shake their ass, but also some published stuff in Silver, some really biiiiig size comics including art from Escarbille, Audrey Lhom and Guillaume Long, and available in all the good fast foods.
hmmm !

still on the rampaging indy french visual creators side, Melvil Massacre relaunched his website, complete with news never-seen-before shit, videos, and some Pluton microsite, and... updated soon (hum). check his work around here, and tell him that your grandma send you.

JUNE DIARY.

after a few weeks without any updates, my calendar (first link in the leftsidebar) is updated.
i don't have anything else to tell, really.

have a nice weekend, you all.

FIFTEEN YEARS.
(HOMAGE TO LEWIS TRONDHEIM).

as it's pretty beautiful outside, and as i'm slowly recovering extra free time from my new job, i'm arranging and cleaning home each days, after finishing work ; so it's the usual round of classifying stuff, including old press, forgotten records, and... comic boxes.

between dirty X-Men comics and destroyed old french classics, i re-found out some old fanzines that i totally forgot, at the time where i was mainly reading Marvel comics, Fluide Glacial (french humoristic monthly magazine) and (A Suivre) (another magazine devoted to more classic french creators - i remember having read one of my all time favorite french comics, Boucq' "Bouche du Diable", inside its pages), i discovered some pretty old fanzine, called "la Poubelle de l'Incongru-Kamizol", a special issue of "l'Incongru", a local fanzine done by, along others, Fred Neidhardt and others disturbed people.
well, not so old, as it's marked 1989, december on its cover.
"so what ?", will ask my friends from Lyon ? 8)

so, it was the first time i saw some art from this Lewis Trondheim guy ; at the time, frankly, it disturbed me to see what looked like easy shit, published in this zine. for me, comics were slowly showing themselves as something else than just entertainment. heck, i was 16... and clearly, it looked like this guy had two left hands, and a real little, little sense of dialog and narration.

in this undersized book published by some crazy folks from Besancon (already ! yesss...), Trondheim use the same strip composition basis that he used later on "le Dormeur" : each time the same drawing, repeated 3 times in a row, and with only wordballoons differents the ones from another. it's pretty stupid humor we talk about here, all the bunch were deeply into scatologic/private jokes, and even the legendary Carali was involved (1 strip)... well.

year after year, i became one of the tons of people sick of all the clones and sub-clones of every success i read by the past ; i saw publishers forgetting their job (exposing all kind of stuff, helping discovering new talents, etc), i saw the comic medium going faster in a wall that i supposed pretty heavy and fatal. then came to my eyes some concrete examples that not only i wasn't alone, but also that some creators decided to do the thing to do : self publishing.

we all know the stories ; in usa, japan or europe, others creators were always doing things in their corners, lauching new publishing homes for their different work. and in France, Trondheim went into the wagon with other people who got the ultimate book of this time (Labo), people who became l'Association. since, he did many other books, too much to name it all, and became one of the top name in this field. sometimes, he did some just correct shit, but too often he did top books, alone or with friends.

i wonder if Trondheim got memories of this old stuff. if i'm correct, his oldest stuff published through a bigger publisher is from 91 or 92 ("Monolinguistes" and "Psychanalyse", Le Lezard) ? meanwhile, he did "Imbroglio" through l'Association and "le Dormeur" through Cornelius...

... and in september this year, the publisher Breal, through its collection for younger audience (and with Lewis's friend Joann Sfar at its head), release his so-called last drawn book, "A.l.i.e.e.n", a children book which looks pretty, pretty beautiful, from the little i saw ; it's supposed to be one of his last books, at least drawn by himself, but it will be a nice one.
it's already knowed that some major event (and i mean, major, uh...)will happen to our favorite rabbit in Trondheim last "Lapinot" book (released next month), so i hope Lewis will give us cool and funny story with A.l.i.e.en... we'll see.

even if it's a good thing to stop doing things when you doubt having pleasure to do it, i just wanted to tell that Lewis Trondheim is one of the rare guys who fed my interest for "other" comic books ; by doing something different, for pushing his limits and the medium limits with him ; by doing tons of things, going everywhere at once, but allways for the pleasure of the curious readers who, year after year, became legion behind him, making him one of the best comic creators around.

thanks for all this, mister Trondheim (and don't forget my check).

READINGS (part. 6794321534).

so there's another little selection of must have there.

- the Autobiography of Me Too, from Bouzard (Requins Marteaux) : another shot from Plageman creator : heavy humor at its best, this is what Fluide Glacial's legendary sense of humor should look like in 2004.

- Comix Club (le Groinge) : pretty smart and full of good suprises (all the Groinge bunch are featured, and many other artists too), this is a critic book of others comics or comics creators (between others). another point of view, another way of "speaking of"... quickly, the second volume, please !

- La Fantome (la Boite a Bulles) : another brilliant book from La Boite a Bulles... nice art (ful of influences that i won't tell you), nice story... we'll wait for some more from its authors.

- Smart Monkey, from Winshluss (Cornelius) : without any doubts, one of the book of the year, so far. Winshluss, as usual, shows some others of his skills with a story full of intelligence, and with loads of narrative ideas. it's beautiful, it's real, it's a huge book.

- Grand Vampire #5, from Joann Sfar (Delcourt) : what can i say ? i was pretty sure that i had found this book done too quickly, in the way of the last Chat du Rabin, with not so good art... and i was wrong. Sfar, the guy who publish at least 1 book per month, signs a real good tale of our favorite vampires. the book #6 will be published in september.

- Meka, from Morvan and Bengal (Delcourt) : without any story, this book (part one of two)offers some Bengal art (big manga otaku, we see that) that is quite correct. but there's no story.

- Gothal Central #1 (Semic) : the first issues of this Batguy related police officers, quite good.

- Lapin n°34 (l'Association) : this is one of the best Lapin ever, if you ask me. all the creators hanging around l'Association are featured, and frankly, there isn't a bad page in this book (except maybe the legendary overestimed Marjane Satrapi, once again) : Ayrolles does his Ayrolles with a beautiful absurd tale, Parrondo does his Parrondo too, Vincent Vanoli confirms, as seen in his last books, that he's really leaving his dark, melankolic world for some lighter stories, Julie Doucet does some cool cut'n'paste art, Riad Sattouf confirms his skills when it comes to stupid but funny shit, Max and his homonym Max (Andersson) exploses in color and in few-page stories, Gunnar Lundkvist's kat goes through usual moments, Lewis Trondheim try some new methods of creating, Guy Delisle does a funny and vibrant homage to onf of his idols, Munoz, Matti Hagelberg still have sexual relation with wood (yeah, wood), Jochen Gerner becomes MAD, as he doing a... a... i don't know how to call this crazy "artwork"..., Laurent Andre is (also) stills on pretty heavy drugs that slowly eating his brain (does Laurent reads Kid Acne's Zebra Face comic book, or is it me ?), Lucas Methe and Lionel Tran do a nice story about relations ship and magic, Imius explores some really dark pages (and it's a blast), and there's also some Mattioli pages from the 70's...
oh yeah,the great moments ? there's some huuuuuge Jim Woodring art, a 24 pages magnificent piece of shit (as usual), Tobias Schalken do a great tale full of incredible art, Killofer shows that he's one of the best artists around, doing a story a la "676 apparitions", and Lars Sjunnersson signs a magnifical piece of shit with a story about taxis and cats...
a must have, of course.

- L'orme du Caucase, from Taniguchi and Utsumi (Casterman) : not the ultimate Taniguchi book (when does Le Seuil will publish the third "Botchan" book ?), but a good read indeed.

- Mauvais Chemin, from Jason (Atrabile) : five books at Atrabile, five must-reads. Jason is one of my favorite storytellers, and this last effort is in the exact continuity of the others : poetry, emotion, funny ideas.

more tomorrow. maybe.

ITALY INVADES ?

well, not yet, not really.
but finally, maybe readers will have opportunities to discover new readings, as publisher Casterman translate "Pasolini, une rencontre", an homage done to the great italian movie maker by Davide Toffolo ; which is just great cause i've heard about Toffolo for a while by now, and he looks like an author to watch closer. i don't speak a single word of italian (even if there's real easy ways of doing it as i'm french), and i waited for this kind of news for long.
Toffolo's work will be published in the "different shit" Casterman collection (called "ecritures"), the very one which already got tons of Taniguchi stuff, Andi Watson' "breakfast after noon", Seth' stuff, Mattoti's stuff, and Craig Thompson multigold book, "blankets".

as if it wasn't enough (i stopped to wish anything from Casterman a long time ago, they probably felt bad about it, that's why they published so many good things these days) (yeah, thank me), Casterman said they will finally publish Art Spiegelman last effort (yeah, the towers...), scheduled for september. and some news manga collection, too, Sakka, with many great books to come. i think i'll get more news soon as Casterman invites us in Paris, this monday, to speak about the future of their collections, alongside Benoit Peeters, Tardi, Fred Boilet, Art Spiegelmann... more after this monday, uh. 8)

but don't worry : this publisher still manage to offer us many, many real pieces of shit, too. 8)

APPROXIMATELY 23 MINUTES OF LOVE...

"approximately 23 minutes of love, hip hop and electronica from the dephts of mother earth" are the words on 2.nd records best record untill now.
Stacs of Stamina and Pilot Balloon released a real nice 10' collaboration full of good ideas and of nice achieved music ; both music and lyrics are brilliant, and it's probably one of the few pieces of indy-21st century-post-break and loops that deserves a try.
oh yeah, "isn't it enough/hug dusty/throe stasis/vampire tonic" got one of the sweetest covers i've seen for a long time, too.

today's soundmakers are also availables somewhere somewhere in these web pages :

the giantissim Noah 23 got his "quicksand" album available also on 2-nd too, as for Nitrada (abstract pop with nice melodies) and EPY (intelligent dancefloor fillers from a 5 pieces austrian band).

check 2-nd website.

Marcus, from Stacs of Stamina, teamed up with Tom from Cavemen Speaks for "the world after 4/02 : vikings and waffles" 57 minutes long record done on Shadow Archives.

check also ShadowAnimals website, and SideShow Recordings website.

Pilot Balloon got the album "ghastly good cheer" released on Komadose records.
Komadose, Pilot Balloon, Mystic Gift Creations and Distorted Megabytes.

what else ?
The Opus "breathing lessons", a double LP which takes boudaries of hip hop a little bit further, once again ; an aaaawwwesome album, this is it, and, once again, a Mush product.
go outside, visit your record shop, and buy them all.
I DIDN'T SAY SOULSEEK THEM, GODDAM PUNKS ! BUY THEM ALL !!!

The Opus is online, and of course check Dirty Loop.

enough music for today. go to sleep.
zzzzzzz.

JIM WOODRING'S FOUR SEASONS.

the uncanny artist and creator of Frank (among others delicious comicbooks full of original universe and incredible art) just released some pretty cool port folio that you, lover of sweet graphotism, must check, thanks to Pressure Printing.
The Four Seasons are 4 little Jim Woodring drawings printed with highly attention, and it's a real piece of first class shit we got there.

"You’ve seen etchings, lithographs, woodcuts and silkscreen prints, but these engravings are strikingly different. The ink does not lie on the surface of the paper; it is pressed deeply into it, creating an embossed texture you can feel and giving the images an almost hallucinatory crispness.
Brad Keech, the printer, is known for his fanatical dedication to quality and detail. The prints are made on 100% rag handmade paper with deckled edges, produced especially for this project.
They are wrapped in a vellum, letterpressed colophon, accompanied by a poetic exegesis (also letterpress on vellum) and packaged in an
amazing die-cut wrapper of thick, stiff, shiny black bristol with a
monstrously ornate Woodring-designed “4” embossed on the front".

there's only 80 sets of this magic packagewere made for sale and they are going fast. don't miss it !?

WATCH OUT FOR THIS "LIFE:STYLES" RECORD SLEEVE !!!

yep, it sounds like some fashion or other shit related thing, but it's not. it's just some free advertising, thanks to the soooo kind world of bloggers. 8)

"life:styles" is a 2003 released record courtesy of some of the best labels in the field, called Harmless. if you're curious and bored enough to check the credits of my playlists (either radios shows or live "mixs"), you probably saw Harmless quite a few.
and if you're listening good music, too. 8)

but look at this ! they talk, too :
"LifeStyles gives musical innovators a chance to hark back to days and lay down a selection of records that shaped their collective mindset, moved their feet and stirred their soul. We kick the series off with 4 hero whose early forays into drum & bass arena then developed into a mastery of the broken beat scene culminatng in the release of two ground breaking albums, Two pages and the multilayered Creating Patterns" said the record sleeve.
so what is all about, uh ?

well, tracks from 1963 to 1994, from Nancy Wilson to Sly Stone, from Weldon Irvine to Syreeta Wright, the english duo did another impressive and massive musical knock out in my poor, poor ears. and not only for beatdiggers, believe me !
fuck, these guys even put one of my favorite tracks ever (and i mean EVER), Gary Bartz' "music is my sanctuary". do you know loads of tracks perfect in bed, on the dancefloor, in the studio, in car or while your funerals ? well, Gary Bartz wrote a few greeeaaaat pieces, but this one is the one, i tell ya.
anyway, everybody knows it already, so...

if not : it's Harmless number 050CD if you're for a mixed cd, and Harmless number 050LP if you're up for an unmixed pack of vinyl slices.

and the sleeve, you ask me ? how's that, i wrote it in the title ?
well, here's the point. i finally got some computer at home.
some computer which works, that's it.
complete with scanner, printer, graphic tablet, etc.
and of course, of course of course, of course, the scan doesn't work. 8)
so i was quite glad to think about all the neat-o shit i was ready to play with and blog non-stop, but heck, no, not this time, as usual.
we'll see.

visit 4 hero
and harmless recordings.