Fantagraphic Press in trouble!

[MCWagner]

(Cut and pasted from www.awa-con.com)
This is sorta outta the blue for an anime site, but I know there's at least a couple of y'all who'd be concerned about this.

I regularly read Niel Gamian's livejournal, and today he posted a plea for help from Gary Groth that he'd recieved by fax. Here's the text:

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Okay. So, the Urgent Plea for Help...

I just got a fax from Gary Groth at Fantagraphics Books. It's a long one, and I'm sure by tomorrow they'll have it up on their website (I just wrote to Gary and asked him to stick it up so I could link to it.) Basically, they were badly hurt when their book distributor went bankrupt on them last year, owing them $70,000, and they were also badly hurt by printing too many copies of some recent books -- their cash is tied up in books in the warehouse. And they are up against the wall, with loans coming due.

There are a lot of people who have no love for Gary Groth, or the Comics Journal, or for Fantagraphics books, and would be very pleased to see them gone.

But for almost 30 years Fantagraphics has been publishing many of the world's finest cartoonists. They brought us Los Bros Hernandez's Love and Rockets and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan and Dan Clowes's Ghost World and, er, Scott Russo's Jizz and cartoonists like Joe Sacco and Roberta Gregory and hundreds of others. Not to mention The Comics Journal, and classic and wonderful stuff like Krazy Kat and Little Nemo in Slumberland. They care passionately about the comics medium, and without Fantagraphics the comics landscape of the last two decades would have been much less interesting. They've offended a lot of people over the years --even so, if Fantagraphics went down the world of comics would be enormously less diverse, have less cool art in it, and, needless to say, it would be bad for comics as an artistic medium and as an industry.

They need help. Basically they need to turn the things in their warehouse into cash.

As Gary says at the end of his fax, "If this was a standard pitch, we'd offer you some extra incentive -- a discount or free books or knicknacks or whatnot. But, it's not... We need the full retail value of our books. But we can offer something that won't cost us any money: anyone (individually or collectively) who buys $500 worth of books from us will get a personal phone call from Gary Groth thanking you for saving Fantagraphics' !@#$. Think how much fun this could be at a party."

The phone number is (USA) 206 524 6165 or 800 657 1100. But you're much better off hitting their shopping website at http://www.fantagraphics.com/cart/

They have a lot of wonderful stuff up on the website -- comics, books, limited edition prints, a Chris Ware lunchbox, tee shirts, erotica (from their Eros Press imprint and elsewhere), CDs, DVDs, and oodles of other wonderful stuff, much of which would look a lot more enticing if they'd put a few more pictures up. I mean, would it kill them to show us what the Jules Feiffer print looks like? Or the two Barry Windsor Smith Prints? And what exactly is the Comics Journal Interview CD? Er, sorry. Anyway, they have lots of wonderful stuff there, buy anything and you'll make a difference, buy $500 worth and Gary will phone you up and say thank you really really politely.

I was trying to think of something I could add to that, to help, and I couldn't. Except if you don't want a phone call from Gary and you'd rather have one from me on their behalf, tell them when you spend your $500 and I'll see what I can do.
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I know that I, personally, enjoyed (if that's the right term) the Jimmy Corrigan books at the least and will be stopping by their website (mentioned above) to pick up a few more items. I know next to nothing about the company other than their publication list, but they seem nice enough that I don't want them to go under. I doubt I can afford a $500 purchase, but I'm betting every little bit helps.

Just trying to spread the word around.

[paizuri]

We should pool together $500 as a group and have one big happy conference call.