Emily is heading down to the L.A. Zine Fest this weekend with a ton of our books! Please stop by (and say hi to Tom Neely at the I Will Destroy You table, too). We’re really excited to be part of this new fest! Admission is free, too!

The wonderfully eloquent Rob Clough has posted his Top Fifteen Comics list. Included on the list is Sparkplug’s own Passage! Please give it a read!

Big news! We are changing the Sparkplug website – making it a little more streamlined and easier to use. The address will remain the same, but expect a slightly different look and ordering system. The redesign is being done by Aaron Amstutz. The change should take place sometime within the next week; I’ll post again when everything is finalized and the new site is up.

Thanks for supporting Sparkplug and happy holidays!

-Virginia

Our fantastic anthology of queer artists and comic folks, Gay Genius, made it onto a gift guide on Autostraddle! Check out the full list here!

Austin English’s The Disgusting Room has made it on Poopsheet Foundations’ Best Mini-Comics and Small Press Titles of 2011 list! Also on the list: Sparkplug artist Julia Gfrorer’s Too Dark to See and Sparkplug co-owner Tom Neely’s The Wolf. A bunch of the honorable mentions are Sparkplug titles as well! You can read the full list here.

If you are planning on doing any of your holiday shopping at Sparkplug, now would be a great time to order! Please check out our store; a lot of our books would make great gifts. If you need some suggestions, please feel free to contact me – virginia (at) sparkplugcomicbooks (dot) com.

Have a great week!

Justin Giampaoli has written a wonderful review of Tessa Brunton’s Passage on his blog Thirteen Minutes:

… Her note perfect details in the pencils lend a sense of authenticity to her quirky upbringing. When you start cataloguing the shading technique, the rampant crosshatching, and the variable line weights, you realize her self-taught style is highly accomplished, culminating with a glorious two page spread that’s a cutaway diagram of her parents’ house. It comes with a penchant for creating rich panels that hum with a lived-in feeling evident in the clothing, the hair, the backgrounds, and the general sense of diversity in all of the figure work. …

Good stuff!

Emily and Tom will be in charge of the Sparkplug table this weekend at Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest. Our special guest star will be Katie Skelly, author of the Nurse Nurse series! Please join us for this super awesome fest!

Here’s the scoop, from the BCGF website:

BROOKLYN COMICS AND GRAPHICS FESTIVAL 2011

WHAT: Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival
WHEN: December 3, 2011 12- 9 pm
Free and open to the public

WHERE: Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church
275 North 8th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
and
Union Pool
484 Union Avenue # A
New York, NY 11211-3440

We are pleased to announce the third Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, a festival of comics and graphic art featuring artists and publishers displaying and selling publications; lectures and conversations on comics; and associated exhibits and satellite events. Over 75 of the very best artists and publishers will gather on December 3rd to display and sell their work and engage in discussions and exhibitions.

In order to accommodate overwhelming demand, this year’s Festival expands its exhibition space to both floors of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church’s facilities, with a full weekend of programs and events taking place at an array of independent Brooklyn-area arts and culture institutions.

Our 2011 featured guests are: Jack Davis, Phoebe Gloeckner, CF, Lisa Hanawalt, David Mazzucchelli, Chip Kidd, John Porcellino and Brian Ralph. These guests are joined by an international array of publishers including Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, Adhouse, Nobrow, Pantheon Books, Last Gasp, Akashic, Top Shelf, PictureBox, and Koyama Press, who in turn will host artists including Adrian Tomine, Jordan Crane, Michael Deforge, Gabrielle Bell, Dash Shaw, Gary Panter, Frank Santoro, and Leslie Stein.

For our third edition we have partnered with like-minded organizations in the borough. Union Pool will host a cartoonist-studded rock show on Friday night, as well as our full slate of Festival panels all day Saturday. Scott Eder Gallery is the site of the exhibition Drawing Pop Culture: The Art of Jack Davis, while four days of comics-related films will screen at The Spectacle Theater, and a graphics and theater performance event will be presented on Sunday at the Brick Theater.

Full programming and Festival information will continue to be posted to our website: comicsandgraphicsfest.com

The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is an ongoing project by Desert Island, PictureBox and Bill Kartalopoulos.

Attention Deficit Disorderly has done a great review of Flesh and Bone by Julia Gfrorer:

“Gfrörer’s intelligence shines through in virtually every particular, from pacing (the excruciatingly interminable sequence in which the bereaved man writhes first in agony then in resigned masturbatory ecstasy on his beloved’s grave) to dialogue (a devastating exchange between witch and demon in which love is dismissed as “mutual masturbation,” a form of slavery that prevents humankind from pulling itself out of the muck) to strategic absences of dialogue (a harrowing silent sequence in which an owl is sent to blind a young witness to a horrible crime) to character design (the man’s Byronic good looks, the demon’s disembodied lion head) to facial expression and body language (the witch’s arched back and closed lids as she copulates with a screeching mandrake creature) to a cover that nails the appeal of her wiry, frail characters and line.“

You can read the review in its entirety here.