Fantagraphics Books, better known for underground classics like the Hernandez Bros. LOVE AND ROCKETS and Peter Bagge’s HATE, are in financial trouble because of the bankrupty of their former distributor, and they need help. Help them by buying some of their excellent offerings, which you can do directly from their website. For those in Japan, you can order from Amazon Japan, which offers free shipping as usual for orders over 1500 yen. I’ve just ordered Daniel Clowes‘ LIKE A VELVET GLOVE CAST IN IRON, Peter Bagge’s BUDDY BITES THE BULLET (collects the last five issues of the now retired HATE series), and QUIMBY THE MOUSE by Chris Ware (author who caused quite a stir in the graphic novel world with the release of his JIMMY CORRIGAN book).
ALERT: It seems that the only way to really help out Fantagraphics is by ordering directly from their website. Ordering from places like Amazon will just get you books that are already in their warehouses, and they got them from the distributor that went bankrupt.
Category: General
Jean,
While your heart is in the right place, ordering from Amazon.jp (or amazon.com or any other online source) won’t make a difference.
Fantagraphics needs the money now. You need to send cash to them directly.
The books you ordered from amazon are currently sitting in the amazon warehouse. They were purchased from Fantagraphics’ book dealer (The one that owes thousands of $$$) and are part of the problem.
I am not big on posting but this is the one time where one should order SOLELY from FANTAGRAPHICS.COM
Well, that really sucks. I can’t really order stuff direct from America as the shipping charges always end up being insane (close to the price of whatever I buy). Thanks for the info though, and I’ll add it to my entry for others who are thinking of getting books.
I also came across this news several years ago, and was really saddened as I’ve been reading Fantagraphics authors for more than 13 years. I used to have a collection of hundreds of comics and anthologies (lots of ‘Weirdo’ and ‘Blab’) which I gave away when I moved to Japan. I was always a big fan of Charles Burns (he’s utterly fantastic and has actually crossed over into the world of ‘fine art’ now), Robert Crumb (obvious - loved the film by Terry Zwigoff), Kaz, the Hernandez Brothers (Love and Rockets), Richard Sala (sinister, but great). I also read a lot of female authors like Julie Doucet (’Dirty Plotte’), Mary Fleener (’Slutburger’), Phoebe Gloeckner, Aileen Kominsky-Crumb (Robert Crumb’s wife) and Carol Lay (who does the comic in Metropolis). This is a sad day indeed–I hope Fantagraphics don’t go under!!
D’oh…I meant, I came across this news several DAYS ago!!! Sorry about that.
A similar thing happened to Top Shelf Comix a year or two ago, and they were saved by a similar campaing (people bought a shit-load of books).
I really hope that the comic community can get together again on this one and save this great publisher.