Fatalistic Funnies Included in Mega-Mini Comics Anthology

While I was an art student in Bloomington, I spent some of my time making mini-comix under the label, Fatalistic Funnies. Mini-comics were 8-page comic books (sometimes called 'newave' mini-comics) made from a single, double-sided 8.5x11 sheet, usually traded for other mini-comics in the mail (they fit perfectly in a regular envelope). The main place for finding out about them was in Factsheet 5, a zine which reviewed basically everything anyone sent it, and which was therefore full of information on all sorts of wild-ass ephemera. Some of you might remember seeing copies of my mini-comix in shops around Bloomington and at Repeat Performance in Muncie around 1985.

I am honored to say that one of my mini-comix ('underground' mini-comics), The Comix That Asks Y? [#1], was included in the just-released mini-comics mega-anthology (close to 900 pages!) from Fantagraphics, Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s, edited by Michael Dowers, a mini-comics artist himself (bringing an observation from the comments up here: he found me again through Musical Family Tree!). The book just got BoingBoing-ed a day or two ago, which made me happy because I'm also a BoingBoing.net fan. The book's nice and fat and filled with lots and lots of mini-comics art (the strategy was to reproduce entire mini-comics, not just selections). In particular, I was happy to see the work of Jim Ryan, who has a great, chunky, graphic style.

You can get the mini-comics anthology from Amazon.com, Fantagraphics (includes video preview, table of contents, PDF preview, and editor's intro), or your local book store. (Fair warning: it includes plenty of sexual and scatological material! Who'd have thought that?)

LINKS. the Fantagraphics Flickr set for the book
REVIEWS. mania.com (20 jan 2010) | The Comics Reporter (4 feb 2010) | comicsgirl (9 feb 2010) |
Win Wiacek, Now Read This! blog (1 mar 2010) |
Michael Steenton Avoid the Future blog (1 mar 2010) first in a series, reviewing every item in the collection
HONORABLE MENTION. Midnight Fiction (feb 2010) | Quimby's Books (13 feb 2010)
INTERVIEWS. "Michael Dowers on Mini Comix: We Don't Know How to Stop" Publicola.net (29 jan 2010)
"Talking Comics with Tim: Michael Dowers" interview by Tim O'Shea for CBR (15 feb2010)
CONTRIBUTORS' POSTS. Marc Arsenault | T. Motley | Wayno 1, 2 | Kurt Wilcken |