Continuing our look at thrills to come in 2013, Fantagraphics announced new books by two exciting indie creators, Julia Gfrörer and Ben Catmull, with some advance looks. The cover art isn’t final, as attractive as it may be. Both will be out in September.
Black Is the Color
by Julia Gfrörer
September 2013
$9.99 Paperback • 72 pages
Black-and-white • 6″ x 9″
ISBN: 978-1-60699-717-8
The push and pull, ebb and flow of the water calls out to all men. In this harrowing new graphic novella, Black Is the Color, Julia Gfrörer delicately hatches away this sailor-at-sea story until the reader drowns in imminent destruction. Gfrörer states, “Black Is the Color is my most ambitious single story comic to date, and I’m thrilled that Fantagraphics will be publishing it in a format that matches my vision for the work.” Originally serialized at the Study Group web collective, Gfrörer’s work is as seductive as the mermaids she draws beneath the waves.
Ghosts and Ruins
by Ben Catmull
September 2013
$19.99 Hardcover • 88 pages
Black-and-white • 10.25″ x 8.50″
ISBN: 978-1-60699-678-2
Continuing his expanding Fantagraphics catalog, Ben Catmull’s chilling compendium of long-forgotten and still-occupied haunted houses joins his 2006 critically-acclaimed Monster Parade. “For Ghosts and Ruins I wanted to take my obsessions with ghost stories, abandoned architecture, and forgotten history and illustrated them with images full of shadows, atmosphere, and texture. I’m looking forward to see how people react to a book that approaches the horror genre not with adrenaline fueled sadism or tongue in cheek goofiness but with haunting meloncholy and a little deadpan humor,” Catmull summarizes. This coffee-table sized collection is the perfect gift for the future ghost in your life, and fans of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton are sure to enjoy these sweeping landscapes that echo of loss, dilapidation and dread.