Fantagraphics Books has launched a new imprint, FU Press (Fantagraphics Underground Press), to publish short run "artisanal" books and print projects, the company announced. The imprint’s output will be limited editions of between 100 and 500 copies, sold on the company’s website, at shows, and "a select few comic shops across North America." The imprint is planned for "a space between self-publishing and mass market publishing."The types of material to be published will include work by relatively unknown cartoonists, work by established cartoonists that’s not suitable for traditional publishing, or archival work by established cartoonists that otherwise might not be published. Fantagraphics sees the new imprint as a return to its original inspiration in the underground comics movement, with uncensored, creator-owned work that can only be published outside normal channels.
There will be no standard format; instead the imprint’s publications will include traditional digital-offset paperbacks, hand sewn jacketed softcovers, epic accordion books, or other formats, including silkscreen and letterpress, as needed. Printing and production will be overseen by New Jersey printer Jon Barli.
Two projects will be released this weekend at SPX:
The Emperor’s New Clothes: The Tower of Babel in the "Art" World is an 80-page oversized landscape-format softcover collecting political cartoons by Jonah Kinigstein, in which he criticizes abstract and modern art trends.
Other projects are planned, include art portfolios by Richard Sala and Guy Colwell, and a new printing of George Metzger’s Beyond time and Again.
