#The Book
Blessed and cursed with a memorably comical name, Bob Fingerman was fated to be a cartoonist. And that’s what he’s done with his life since the moment he could first grasp a crayon! 2024 is a milestone for Fingerman: his 40th anniversary of working professionally as a writer and artist. Starting his career, in 1984, working for the legendary Harvey Kurtzman on the short-lived humor anthology, NUTS!, then cutting his teeth as a regular for Cracked magazine, continuing on through the sewers of adult publications, and along the way working for pretty much every comic publisher (Marvel, DC, Vertigo, Archie, Eclipse, Fantagraphics, Dark Horse, Heavy Metal, IDW, etc.), Fingerman has cut a curious swath through Comicdom with his idiosyncratic style and scripts.
That’s Some Business You’re In is a career-spanning art book, brimming with content that even though old will be new to most readers. Plus, tons of recent art. It also is a damned good read, with a foreword by Bill Sienkiewicz, then starting with a detailed career memoir, and followed by individual sections highlighting and elaborating on specific topics and phases, from student years, to his time as “one of the usual gang of idiots” in MAD magazine, to his signature works like Minimum Wage, Recess Pieces and the more recent Dotty’s Inferno.
Boasting a huge amount of art, much of which is presented for the first time scanned from the originals, warts and all, “Artist’s Edition” style, as well as archival materials and tear sheets, That’s Some Business You’re In is essential for any fan of Fingerman’s work, and also for those unacquainted, as a deep dive to whet their appetites for more!
#Preview
Here’s the full art that will be featured on the wraparound cover of the book:
#Bio
Internationally published and critically acclaimed cartoonist, illustrator and author, Bob Fingerman, is best known for his cult comic series Minimum Wage, the series that racked up critical accolades and a devoted following, numbering among its fans Patton Oswalt, Marc Maron, Dana Gould, Scott Aukerman, Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo and David Cross. Why? Because each page boasted sticky, uncomfortable truths drenched in bleakly familiar humor. It was "cringe comedy" before the phrase had been coined. In 2018 he realized his childhood dream to become one of MAD’s “usual gang of idiots.” Alas, MAD was soon thereafter essentially euthanatized. Bob accepts only partial blame for that. His latest books are the comical graphic novel Dotty’s Inferno (Heavy Metal/Virus) and the radically revised “author’s edition” of his novel Pariah, now Pariah Redux. He can be followed on Instagram (bobfingerman), where he shares art nearly daily, and Twitter (@BobFingerman).
Clients include Dark Horse Comics, Fantagraphics Books, DC Comics, Marvel, IDW, Image Comics, Tor, Les Humanoïdes Associés, Fluide Glacial, Tapages Nocturnes, Sony/Columbia Pictures, RiffTrax, Heavy Metal and Z2 Comics.
#Stretch Goals
$7,500 - Book upgrade: printed endsheets added (UNLOCKED)
$10,000 - ‘Cringe Gallery’ (outtakes) (UNLOCKED)
$12,500 - Video of 'shop talk' interview w/Bob (UNLOCKED)
$15,000 - 7 minute trailer of live adaptation of Minimum Wage (UNLOCKED)
$18,000 - More pages of backmatter to be added to the book, making it 216+ pages (UNLOCKED)
#Timeline
The book is being compiled and we expect to be ready to go to print sometime in March ‘24. Printing and shipping from that point should take around 3-4 months, so delivery of rewards is expected to be done late summer '24.
Zoop will communicate with supporters should any delays occur, if there’s confusion about delivery, or if any other concerns pop up.