Featured Book of the Day: Fraktur mon Amour

Fraktur Mon Amour (Princeton Archetectural Press) showcases 333 Blackletter fonts collected by Judith Schalansky, accompanied by a CD of 150 fonts compatible with both PC or Mac. Four of the fonts were created just for this book! It’s beautiful black and hot pink, has won awards and looks like a prayerbook. Rock horns, everybody!

People tend to think of Blackletter font (also known as Fraktur or Gothic type) as something associated with hip hop or heavy metal album covers, gangs, street culture, tattoos, goth culture and even advertising. You know you’ve seen it! It’s the font usually used just for titles, ’cause a whole document with it can be harder to read. But this font pops up in lots o’ places, like these, for example:

But it wasn’t always like this. Blackletter font was popular in Europe during the Middle Ages though the Renaissance replaced most of it with Latin Antiqua. It was incorrectly associated with the Nazis, who actually banned its use in 1941 because it was falsely believed to be a Jewish invention. These days this font is embraced in many parts of both subculture and popular culture.

Each Blackletter font in Fraktur Mon Amour is presented on a full page along with its complete alphabet, date of origin, the name of its designer, and its original foundry. Like this:

Isn’t this hot? How could you not want this? It even has a black and pink ribbon bookmarker to keep your place in case you are deciding whether to use Duerers Minuskeln or Fette Deutsche Schrift to decorate your goth greeting card for your goth holiday party invitation. Come into the store today and take a look at this beauty.

Off-Site Event! Graphic Adaptation Novels: After 9/11 & the Constitution At the Freedom Museum

Oct ’08
30
6:00 am

Two remarkable graphic novelists, Sid Jacobson and Jonathan Hennessy will be at Chicago’s Freedom Museum to discuss their newest books After 911 and The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation (due out 10/21/08). Listen as these two renowned artists discuss their motivations, creative processes and various obstacles met in developing their newest books. Quimby’s will be there to sell the books!

What: Graphic Adaptation Novels: After 9/11 & the Constitution

Where: McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 754, Chicago, Illinois 60611. PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOT AT QUIMBY’S.

When: Thursday, October 30th, 6–7:30 pm

Is this free? Yes! (Well what would you expect? It’s at the FREEdom Museum, ha ha ha)

Quimby’s Top Ten Best Sellers For the Week of October 5th – October 11th, 2008

1. Trubble Club Vol 1 $3.00
2. Chunklet #20 $9.99
3. Cometbus #51 by Aaron Cometbus $3.00
4. Butt #24 Fantastic Magazine for Homosexuals $9.90
5. Do Not Disturb My Waking Dream #2 by Laura Park $3.00
6. Adbusters #80 $8.95
7. Sad Animals by Adam Meuse $4.00
8. Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Vol 3 edited by Danzig Baldaev (Fuel) $32.95
9. Proximity #2 Cities Issue $10.00
10. Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead) $25.95

New Stuff October 11th 2008

We have a sweet event tonight the weather is nice and the store has been busy all day due to the mega punk? Show this weekend, the secret nerdy comic conference, and maybe some smelly circuit benders stopping in while on tour. Banner weekend here.

Continue reading ‘New Stuff October 11th 2008’

Featured Book of the Day: Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume III

The final volume of this trilogy is the only one in print. The other volumes go for tons! If you’re not familiar with any of the books in the series, the deal is that they’re tattoos done with crude resources by Russian prisoners on each other, and they’re collected by this lifetime security guard Danzig Baldaev (his name is Danzig, heh heh hehheh). The KGB supported his collection! It was important to them to be able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images (both pictoral and text) on their bodies. You don’t need to have either of the other books in the trilogy to get into this one. Devils, penises (peni?), swords, SS cats, barbed wire, anti-party tatts — whether you’re an ink freak, photography nut, sociologist, political maverick (are any politicians really mavericks, I mean really?) or lowbrow art collector, this is the book for you. I particularly like the captions for many of the drawings that translate the meanings. Just as an example, dig the caption explaining the drawing of a rat with Russian text that translates to ‘Tightwad filcher’ for a convict sentenced for hooliganism: “He stole three packs of cigarettes and some sweets from the lockers of his fellow inmates. He was discovered and beaten up. It was decided by a group of ‘authoritative’ thieves that this tattoo should be forcibly applied as punishment.” Thazwutchoo get for stealin’ candy and smokes! These books have even influenced a movement in these parts where the youngins have actually started replicating these drawings on themselves by professional tattoo artists  — would they get their asses kicked in a Russian jail?