However, as you may know, Andy's graphic novel Escape from Dullsville, which collects Life of a Fetus, has been put on hold because of low pre-orders. It was due out in December, but we need better order numbers before we can print. So we're asking you to place a pre-order at Amazon -- it's 33% off right now and you won't be charged until the book ships.

Thanks for any support you can give! It's always a tough decision to cancel or postpone a book, and we'd much rather have Andy's book see the light of day! It's 288 whoppin' pages long, and like nothing you've ever seen before.

Here's the Cartoon Art Museum press release:

For Immediate Release: November 24, 2009 Contact Andrew Farago, 415-227-8666, ext. 313 Small Press Spotlight on Andy Ristaino Cartoon Art Museum Exhibition: December 19, 2009 – March 14, 2010

Beginning on December 19th, 2009, the Cartoon Art Museum's ongoing Small Press Spotlight will feature the art of Andy Ristaino. Andy Ristaino is a cartoonist and animator currently residing in the San Francisco. Originally from Franklin, Massachusetts, he has been drawing comics ever since he could. His first published work, a comic strip based on Greek myths entitled Myth Conceptions, appeared in The Pompeiiana Newsletter when he was in high school between 1992 and 1994. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design majoring in illustration/animation, during which time he self published two issues of his martial arts comedy zine Nightblade the Nearsighted Ninja, and drew a back up story featuring the character Dangerman, in Oz Squad from Patchwork Press.

Ristaino’s first solo book Life of a Fetus, a story about a bored baby who decides to jump out of the womb early and go on a road trip, was published by SLG comics in 1999 and ran for seven issues. This was soon followed by the spin off series The Babysitter, A send-up of Japanese pop culture. All three issue of The Babysitter have recently been collected by SLG comics.

Ristaino’s work tends to focus on themes of the strangeness of life and the fragility of the human psyche, claustrophobia, and the odd space between understanding and incoherence. He looks at storytelling as something liquid.

His work has appeared in numerous comic anthologies such as Meathaus S.O.S., Spectrum 16, Tales of Hot Rod Horror, Spark Generators 2, Pet Noir, Go for the Gold, and the soon to be published Popgun vol. 4 from Image Comics. His children’s comic the Uncredibly Confabulated Tales of Lucinda Ziggles was a regular fixture in the now defunct Nickelodeon Magazine. Ristaino anticipates the publishing of his next SLG graphic novel Escape from Dullsville, a 288 page collection of Life of a Fetus with over 80 pages of unpublished material, sometime in 2010.

For more information about Andy Ristaino’s works and upcoming events, please visit http://www.skronked.blogspot.com and http://www.skronked.com.

About the Small Press Spotlight: San Francisco has been a hotbed of innovative, groundbreaking comic art since the late 1800s with the advent of the modern comic strip. In the 1960s, the Bay Area gained further notoriety when the underground comix movement launched from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. Today, some of the biggest names in alternative and small-press comics hail from the Bay Area, and the Cartoon Art Museum's Small Press Spotlight focuses on the works of these talented individuals.

The Small Press Spotlight is funded in part by The Zellerbach Family Foundation and The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.

Cartoon Art Museum € 655 Mission Street € San Francisco, CA 94105 € 415-CAR-TOON € www.cartoonart.org Hours: Tues. - Sun. 11:00 - 5:00, Closed Monday General Admission: $6.00 € Student/Senior: $4.00 € Children 6-12: $2.00 € Members & Children under 6: Free The Cartoon Art Museum is a tax-exempt, non-profit, educational organization dedicated to the collection, preservation, study and exhibition of original cartoon art in all forms.