Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Jaime Hernandez is nominated for Best Cartoonist in the 2012 Stumptown Comic Art Awards for his work in last year's issue of Love and Rockets — go, vote in all categories here! How you gonna beat "The Love Bunglers" and "Return for Me," huh? His competition in the category includes our good pal Stan Sakai, who is also deserving of every award he gets (including Best Letterer, which he's also nominated for). You just can't praise those guys enough. Award winners will be announced at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, OR on April 28. We also direct your attention…

It's an official announcement: Dave Cooper has entered into a development deal with TELETOON and Radical Sheep Productions for The Bagel and Becky Show, an animated TV program based on Bagel's Lucky Hat, Dave's children's book under his nom de plume Hector Mumbly. Dave says "just keep in mind this is 'development' not 'going into production' yet. Please cross all your fingers and toes for me over the next several months!!" Congrats and good luck Dave! In more Dave news, check out this badass silkscreen poster he did for a 2010 Mastodon gig, which you can now buy from him…

Just beginning to catch up on Online Commentary & Diversions: • Profile: With his big new art book out and his museum retrospective on the way, Daniel Clowes gets the New York Times profile treatment from Carol Kino: "Mr. Clowes can create a striking face with a few deftly placed lines or brush strokes, often seizing on some specific characteristic that summons up an indelible personality. Think of Enid Coleslaw, the snarky teenage anti-heroine of Ghost World, and her big, black nerdy-hip glasses; they cover most of her face, but they can’t conceal the tiny shifts in expression that loudly…

It's a Charles Burns fan's dream (and who among us isn't a fan?): over 90 minutes of Charles speaking about his life and work in a talk given as part of the Caroline Werner Gannett "Visionaries in Motion V" Series of lectures at the Rochester Institute of Technology. (Hat tip: Mike Lynch.)

I'd like to take a rare personal moment here on Flog for a public service announcement: I walked away from this with a few minor scrapes and bruises yesterday. The other guy's OK too. Wear your seatbelts, folks. This is also to explain why we've been relatively quiet the last couple of days as I've been taking some time off and to let you know we might miss posting some news and announcements in our usual timely-ish fashion for a little while as I try to catch up.

Now in stock in our warehouse and ready to ship to our mail-order customers: The Big Town by Monte Schulz 440-page hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-503-7 See Previews / Order Now A novel of the Jazz Age, The Big Town is the story of a failed businessman whose dreams of prosperity hinge on the secret proposition of a millionaire industrialist and a dangerous relationship he finds with a poor orphan girl chasing love in the great American metropolis. Harry Hennesey’s hopes of success, both in his household and the world, have driven him to sell his home in an Illinois small…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics by various artists; edited by John Benson 192-page full-color 7.25" x 10.25" softcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-511-2 "Before there were knockoffs of MAD-the-magazine like Cracked and Crazy… there were a whole lot of knockoffs of MAD-the-comic-book, like Whack, Nuts, Eh,…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: Pitchfork gives the Listen, Whitey! companion album an 8.0, with Stephen M. Deusner writing "Perhaps the most powerful aspect of Listen, Whitey! The Sound of Black Power 1967-1974 — the album and the book, both representing many years' research by historian Pat Thomas — is how they portray a music in flux: Artists such as the Watts Prophets, the Original Last Poets, Shahid Quintet, and Marlena Shaw were only just realizing the potential for cross-genre synthesis and for radical political statement through music…. Thomas is interested in depicting Black Power music at street level…

  The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s MAD-Inspired Satirical Comics by various artists; edited by John Benson 192-page full-color 7.25″ x 10.25″ softcover • $24.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-511-2   “What, me imitated?” When MAD became a surprise hit as a comic book in 1953 (after the early issues lost money!) other comics publishers were quick to jump onto the bandwagon, eventually bringing out a dozen imitations with titles like FLIP, WHACK, NUTS, CRAZY, WILD, RIOT, EH, UNSANE, BUGHOUSE, and GET LOST. The Sincerest Form of Parody collects the best and the funniest material from these comics, including parodies of…