Fantagraphics have had a steady presence in our reviews section here at Broken Frontier this year with coverage of some standout books like Now, The Sea and Dementia 21. You can find many of those review links in one place here at BF. Today, though, we’re looking ahead to later in 2019 as Fantagraphics have announced two new additions to their Studio Editions series featuring Daniel Clowes and Ed Piskor. Full details in the press release below.
FEBRUARY 20, 2019—SEATTLE, WA—Coming October 2019, Fantagraphics Books is excited to announce the release of two stunning additions to our Studio Edition series: Daniel Clowes: The Fantagraphics Studio Edition and Ed Piskor: The Fantagraphics Studio Edition.
The Fantagraphics Studio Edition series illuminates the compelling, painstaking process by which great comics are created. Each deluxe, oversized volume collects over 100 pages of high resolution, un-retouched original art scans, capturing subtle nuances of the artist’s skillful brush strokes and pen lines. These full-size reproductions retain original pencil marks, corrections, and marginalia—fascinating imperfections that provide insights into the creative process of these master cartoonists. This is truly the closest most of us will ever get to sitting in the artist’s studio.
Daniel Clowes: The Fantagraphics Studio Edition turns the spotlight on one of the medium’s most dynamic creators. This edition draws from Clowes’s nearly 35 years of comics art, ranging from some of his earliest published work, 1986’s Lloyd Llewelyn, to his seminal one-man anthology, Eightball (in which Ghost World was originally serialized), and includes samples from his most recent graphic novel, 2016’s best-selling time travel thriller, Patience.
Ed Piskor: The Fantagraphics Studio Edition highlights the work of this star cartoonist, focusing on his two best-known series: Hip Hop Family Tree and X-Men: Grand Design. In addition to excerpts from these two major comics projects, this edition features dozens of other gems from Piskor’s archives, including commercial art, designs for a line of Public Enemy action figures, and much more.
Ed Piskor explains, “Studio Editions that are constructed directly from an artist’s original artwork have been the greatest new idea in comics the past ten years, and I had to jump at the chance to have my very own. As a newer cartoonist in comparison to living legends like Jaime Hernandez and Charles Burns, there’s still lots of evidence of discovery on my pages—lots of figuring things out, brush strokes, white-out, and general process, which is my favorite part of these kinds of editions. And I felt like it would add value to include some annotated chatter about each page as well. Readers are going to dig looking at this stuff in a different context.”
“I’m as excited to own these books as anyone,” says Fantagraphics Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds. “As a huge fan myself, having entire books of original art by artists I admire as much as Daniel Clowes and Ed Piskor feels like such an embarrassment of riches that I almost have to laugh at our collective good fortune.”
Both Daniel Clowes and Ed Piskor will be doing limited signing events around the US to promote the book. Details TBD.
