Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days | |
---|---|
Creator | Al Columbia |
Date | September 2009 |
Main characters | Pim & Francie |
Page count | 240 pages |
Publisher | Fantagraphics |
Original publication | |
Language | English |
ISBN |
978-1-60699-304-0 978-2492042027 (French) |
Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days is a 2009 book by cartoonist Al Columbia. Subtitled "Artifacts and Bone Fragments", it is a sketchbook-like assemblage of illustrations, paintings, sketches, and unfinished comics featuring his impish, Hansel and Gretel-like characters Pim and Francie, drawn over a period of more than ten years. [1] According to Columbia, the book's fragmentary vignettes "were all attempts [to] make a full-fledged comic and do things right - to put out comics regularly. But it just never really happened that way for me." [2] It was published by Fantagraphics.
Pim & Francie was named one of the best graphic novels of the year by The Village Voice [3] and the Austin American-Statesman [4] and garnered positive reviews in other venues including Publishers Weekly, [5] Booklist, [1] [6] and The A.V. Club. [7] It was also received enthusiastically in the comics press [8] [9] [10] and earned Columbia two Ignatz Award nominations, for Outstanding Artist and Outstanding Graphic Novel. [11] Thrillist included it on their 2016 list of the 33 greatest graphic novels of all time. [12]
In 2017 Fantagraphics released a second printing of Pim & Francie and made the title available digitally on Amazon's ComiXology and Kindle platforms. [13] In 2021 the Paris-based company Huber Éditions published two French language versions of the book: a regular edition and a collector's edition with a variant cover limited to 100 copies. [14] [15] Both of the French editions were in a larger, 25 cm (9.84 in) square format compared to the 8.25 in square dimensions of the original Fantagraphics version.