Lilli Carré
What Are You Reading? with special guest Janice Headley
Big Questions
Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly column where we successfully answer the question in the title. Our special guest this week is Janice Headley, events coordinator, publicist and “ambassador of awesome” for Fantagraphics.
To see what Janice and the Robot 6 crew have been reading this week, click the link below.
- September 11, 2011 @ 02:55 PM by JK Parkin
Get great comics at cheap prices from the Top Shelf Massive $3 Sale
It’s an annual tradition to look forward to: The alternative comics publisher Top Shelf has unveiled its “Massive $3 Sale,” in which they’re pricing down their catalog to near-ridiculous levels — in many cases $3, and in many more cases just one lousy American dollar. For very little money, you can rack up a big chunk of one of the best comics publishers’ best comics.
What would I get? At the $3 level, Kolbeinn Karlsson’s The Troll King — a surreal collection of intertwined short stories that for once lives up to the overused, rarely true label “fairy tales for grown-ups” — is basically a must-buy. I’d also be sure to pick up Andy Hartzell’s Fox Bunny Funny, an unpredictable and impeccably cartooned funny-animal allegory about conformity and self-discovery. Lilli Carré’s remarkably assured debut collection of satirical short stories, Tales of Woodsman Pete, is another no-brainer. If you’re interested in rounding out your Alan Moore collection with some of his more off-the-beaten-path efforts, you can get all eight issues of his underground-culture zine Dodgem Logic, his prose novel Voice of the Fire, and his poetry/photography collaboration with José Villarubia The Mirror of Love for three bucks a pop. And you can pick up all three issues of Jeffrey Brown’s one-man action anthology series Sulk — Bighead & Friends, a return to his genuinely funny superhero parody characters; Deadly Awesome, an 84-page mixed martial arts fight comic; and The Kind of Strength That Comes from Madness, a grab bag of sci-fi/fantasy/action/adventure spoofs — for a buck apiece, which is a steal.
Beyond the deepest discounts, you’ll rarely find the publisher’s heavy (literally–these books are big) hitters priced as low as they are now: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, Campbell’s Alec: The Year’s Have Pants omnibus, and Jeff Lemire’s complete Essex County are all $20, while Craig Thompson’s Blankets is just $22.50.
And hey, if you’re totally new to all of these books, so much the better. Maybe DC’s New 52 initiative has you in an “I’ll try anything for $3 a book” mood? If so, put a few bucks aside and get some full-fledged graphic novels for that price or lower. You’ll be glad you did.
- September 8, 2011 @ 10:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Skate, read or die? Penguin Classics turns altcomix book covers into skateboards
Penguin Skateboards
Over the last few years, Penguin Books has gotten various cartoonists to draw covers for classic books, like Tony Millionaire, who drew the cover to Moby Dick, or Richard Salas, who drew the cover to Great Expectations, and so on.
Now via Flog comes word that some of those covers have made their way onto skateboards. Yes, classic literature covers, drawn by some of alt.comix’s best, featured on skateboards.
As you’ll see above, Penguin created some limited edition skateboards using the covers by Jason for Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, Lilli Carré for Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Thomas Ott for Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. These were given away in a photo contest on Facebook, which unfortunately is over, but they’ll be showing them off on various college campuses this month and next. Hopefully they’ll be available to purchase at some point … not that I’m coordinated enough to skate.
- August 16, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Straight for the art | Carre’s ‘Sleep Heap’
Carre's 'Sleep Heap'
Looking for something purty to hang on your wall? Here’s a lovely new print from Lilli Carre that she did for Tiny Showcase. If you need further incentive, Carre says a portion of the proceeds will go toward Doctors Without Borders.
- February 4, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art: Lilli Carre’s blog
Carre's Huck Finn
Lagoon and Tales of Woodsman Pete author Lilli Carre has a blog up now, where she’s posting, among other things, her cover for the new Penguin edition of Huckleberry Finn, and a page from an upcoming story she’s doing for Mome.
- May 7, 2009 @ 11:45 AM by Chris Mautner
Talking Comics with Tim: Lilli Carré
The Lagoon
Lilli Carré‘s The Lagoon made my list for the best books of 2008. I’m a sucker for any book that has a haunting creature nonchalantly taking a drag on a cigarette. Quirky clicks with me, what can I say. So I was pleased when she agreed to a brief email interview. Be sure to visit the Fantagraphics site for a link to a series of Flickr photos and a video showing some of the book’s pages. The opening line to Fantagraphics overview of the book says it all: “A family is seduced by a mysterious creature’s siren song that can be heard emanating from the lagoon after dark in talented young cartoonist Lilli Carré’s first long-form work, and how each member reacts to the song in The Lagoon is the crux of the story.” Thanks to Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds for arranging this interview and to Carré for her time.
Tim O’Shea: I’m always curious what goes into a name–a few years back when Chris Arrant interviewed you, the project was called Songs from a Lagoon. But the book was ultimately called The Lagoon. Did the original name hit you as too close to Creature from the Black Lagoon (one of the book’s inspirations) or what caused the name change?
Lilli Carré: Songs From a Lagoon was just sort of a working title, but I liked the simplicity of simply calling it “The Lagoon”, so that’s what I went with– Songs From a Lagoon just seemed like a weird mouthful.
- February 2, 2009 @ 10:31 AM by Tim O'Shea