COMICS &
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Tim Lane is a two time Ignatz Award nominated graphic novelist whose books include Toybox Americana (Fantagraphics Books, 2020), The Lonesome Go (Fantagraphics Books, 2014), and Abandoned Cars (Fantagraphics Books, 2008). Lane has also produced two serialized comic books, Mythologies & Apocrypha ( Fantagraphics Books, 2024 -) and Happy Hour in America (Vol 1, self-published, 2004-2016; Vol 2, Fantagraphics Books, 2017-2021). Lane’s comics are widely published in both literary and comics anthologies, including The Best of American Comics series, Fantagraphic’s Hotwire and MOME, The Kean Review, River Styx, Smoke Signal, and DC Comic’s Bizarro World. Lane is currently working on an interpretive biographical graphic novel about the actor, Steve McQueen, called Just Like Steve McQueen.
MYTHOLOGIES & APOCRYPHA
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
Acclaimed cartoonist Tim Lane debuts a new, ongoing series exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly of 20th century masculinity through a head spinning blend of fact and fiction featuring Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Walter Cronkite, and others — culminating in a quick-draw shootout on Mars between Steve McQueen, Johnny Cash, and Sammy Davis Jr. This all-new series showcases Lane's meticulous and jaw-dropping artistry — a level of detail echoing illustrative legends like Frank Frazetta, Alex Raymond, and Dave Stevens.
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS, SCHEDULED 2026
JUST LIKE STEVE McQUEEN
Tim Lane is currently working on an interpretive biographical graphic novel about the actor, Steve McQueen. We say “interpretive,” for many reasons, but mainly because he’s using the life of Steve McQueen as a conduit to construct a picture of American culture that both shaped stereotypes of American masculinity and Steve McQueen, and was partly shaped by his influence. This book is artistically inclined - heavily influenced by works such as Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Coming Through Slaughter, and David Clewell’s Jack Ruby’s America. In other words, it is not a traditional biography. Rather, it is an experiment in what the potentialities are in writing about the life of a real person, and a more subjective consideration of how that person’s life touched or influenced the life of the “biographer.”
ABANDONED CARS
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS, 2008
"The real comic book event of the summer... breathtaking... The book signals the arrival of a major new voice on the American literary landscape, with or without the illustrations." — Print
"The stories take place along a vaguely defined stretch of scenery haunted by the ghosts of Kerouac, Marlon Brando, and Elvis, where visitors can probably hear the distant strains of a Tom Waits song or The Magnetic Fields' Charm of the Highway Strip playing in the background... Here's one to watch." — The Onion A.V. Club
"[An] apt literary comparison might be to Raymond Carver... Abandoned Cars establishes Lane in the first rank of today's emerging comics artists." — Step Inside Design
"Lane's beautifully crafted pen-and-ink drawing combines a master artist's eye for detail with a predilection for the grotesque to produce a superb blending of unforgettable images and poignant meditation on life's tragic undercurrents." — Booklist
"When you put all the pieces together, you don't simply get a story or a group of stories, you get a book that pulls back the curtain on the collective unconscious of a nation. ... Like the myths that it is inspired by, Abandoned Cars lingers long after reading and grows in stature as you re-live and re-tell it." — Chad Derdowski - Mania
Abandoned Cars is Tim Lane's first collection of graphic short stories, noirish narratives that are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama by way of the desperate and haunted characters that populate its pages. Lane's characters exist on the margins of society—alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair, confused but introspective.
The writing is straightforward, the stories mainstream but told in a pulpy idiom with an existential edge, often in the first person, reminiscent of David Goodis's or Jim Thompson's prose, or of films like Pick-Up on South Street or Out of the Past. Visually, Lane's drawing is in a realistic mode, reminiscent of Charles Burns, that heightens the tension in stories that veer between naturalism on the one hand and the comical, nightmarish, and hallucinatory on the other. Here, American culture is a thrift store and the characters are thrift store junkies living among the clutter. It's an America depicted as a subdued and haunted Coney Island, made up of lost characters—boozing, brawling, haplessly shooting themselves in the face, and hopping freight trains in search of Elvis. Abandoned Cars is an impressive debut of a major young American cartoonist.
THE LONESOME GO
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS, 2014
This is a collection of “existential Americana” (in the vein of Edward Hopper) short comics.
Tim Lane continues his exploration of the Great American Mythological Drama that began with his first book, the critically acclaimed Abandoned Cars. This collection of stories is broadly linked together by the experience of wandering – both literally and figuratively. With compelling verisimilitude, the lives of his characters are depicted by way of rich mixtures of obscure myths and documented facts, dreams and reality, belief and disbelief, throughout a haunted landscape populated by the ghosts of a complex and rich fictional tapestry. You’ll witness a young man’s dubious quest to discover the myth of the protagonist from an obscure vintage comic strip; encounter sociopathic hobos in boxcars and misled young men whose facial pores sprout worms and who throw up babies into gas station toilets; visit modern “Hoovervilles”; and experience the life and death of an undocumented immigrant bookstore doorman, former boxer, and expert hustler.
“Lane manipulates the form masterfully at every turn, and consuming the rhythmic, open-ended copy and scarcity of conclusion in The Lonesome Go often left me feeling dizzy. But it’s probably nothing that a long road trip wouldn’t fix.” — Dominic Umile - Hyperallergic
“Lane’s writing — as the collection’s two extended prose stories attest — is capable of soaring on its own, but the dark, intense beauty of his drawing elevates his work to a higher plane. … Although containing Whitman-esque multitudes, Lane proves an American original.” — Cliff Froehlich - Saint Louis Post-Dispatch
“Disfigured hobos lurch from panel to panel into fresh horrors. The vintage hairstyles of the ‘40s, nude bodies, a prescription-pill driven freak-out climaxing in much vomit: whatever he draws, Lane’s heavily shadowed style is always a marvel. The nighttime scenes -- which are most of them -- rise from seas of black ink. Like a Tom Waits or a Nick Cave song in graphic form, the book is mournful fun.” — Bryon Kerman - St. Louis Magazine
“The Lonesome Go takes its title from an old folksong about traveling by freight train. That theme of wandering and restlessness plays out over the stories in many different ways whether Lane is telling stories about contemporary homeless encampments, or haunting, surreal stories that take place in strange corners across America.” — Alex Dueben - Comic Book Resources
“At times harsh, but always humane, The Lonesome Go hits you like a smack in the face. It’s a graphic novel in the truest sense, meant to be read as much as viewed. It’s a rich, substantial work by an artist and writer who is using the medium of comics to its fullest potential.” — Harris Smith - comiXology
HAPPY HOUR IN AMERICA
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
Happy Hour in America is cartoonist Tim Lane's one-man, self-published anthology consisting of new short stories, selected material from three new books in progress, and other experimental work. Drawing from the Golden Age era of comics history, Lane explores varying angles of "The Great American Mythological Drama," including the story of legendary actor Steve McQueen.
TOYBOX AMERICANA
FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS, 2020
A collection of flash fiction and illustrations celebrating the hardscrabble underbelly of Americana.
From the rail yards of San Francisco to the dive bars of St. Louis, cartoonist Tim Lane has taken pen in hand to chronicle scenes of American life. Scores of motley characters — roughed-up boxers, bleary gamblers, rowdy winos, philosophical rail riders, acrobatic fire-swallowers, femmes fatale — weave together into the rich tapestry of Lane's America. Through these sharply observed slice-of-life stories, illustrations, and comics Lane captures the spirit of the hardscrabble American character. A uniquely designed collection of images and prose, Toybox Americana, like the culture it explores, is at once meditative and brimming with life.
