Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Steve Ditko is such a great image-maker, it must be hard for our designers to choose artwork for the covers of our Steve Ditko Archives collections of his early, pre-Marvel work. With Volume 1, Strange Suspense, we got a chance to make a double dip from the deep Ditko inkwell for our new softcover reprint, coming this summer with this newly-designed cover. Behind you, lady!! Stay tuned for more sneak peeks. (Of course, if you don't want to wait to read this book, it's available digitally right now on comiXology.)

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Trail of the Unicorn (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 8)by Carl Barks 224-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-741-3 Ships in: April 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now It’s off to Shangri-Lala for Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, on a perilous expedition to bring back a rare unicorn for Uncle Scrooge! But it’s not as easy as it sounds, with a mysterious stowaway, intrigue, and double-crosses in this land of many secrets. But once you do catch a unicorn, what, exactly, do you do with him? Then, in a trio of…

"Crane expertly mixes high action… with just the right amount of romance, creating a storytelling engine… gorgeous art, with cleanly drawn figures, extensive shading…" — Paste "…Buz Sawyer features the same seamless blend of derring-do and humor, both in its story lines and in Crane’s economical, slightly cartoonish artwork, which had made Wash Tubbs one of the most popular strips of the era and which would keep Buz flying for more than four decades." — Booklist "If I had to pick a favorite [classic comic-strip reprint] right now, I’d say the Fantagraphics reprints of Buz Sawyer by Roy Crane. I just love the energy, humor, adventure and…

If there's anyone out there who's been holding out for a softcover edition of The Complete Peanuts, your patience is soon to pay off! Or if you're late to the Peanuts party and want to start from the beginning, now is the time. Our paperback of The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, the first volume in our definitive, unexpurgated collection of Charles M. Schulz's decades-spanning masterpiece, is due in a couple of months, and we have a bunch of pages to share with you! We've pulled our downloadable excerpt from the middle of the book at the beginning of 1952, when Schulz…

Launched today, a new webcomic serial by the one and only Richard Sala! Super-Enigmatix introduces the titular masked and caped criminal mastermind. What kind of conspiracy is he weaving, and can former Inspector Jory and former Detective Charms unravel it? Tune in every Thursday for new installments! This pulpy story is your first taste of what's to come in our forthcoming collection of all-new Sala short stories, In a Glass Grotesquely, due this Fall!

Buddy Buys a Dump: The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from "Hate" Comics Vol. 3by Peter Bagge 144-page full-color 6" x 9" softcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-745-1 Ships in: April 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now He's back! Now in his 30s and married with child, onetime slacker hero Buddy Bradley gets a "real" job, shaves his head, dons an eyepatch, quits his "real" job and buys the local dump — because what better place to raise a toddler? Peter Bagge's iconic character is to alternative comics what Homer Simpson has been to television animation over the past quarter-century: a generation-defining…

Buz Sawyer Vol. 3: Typhoons and Honeymoonsby Roy Crane 232-page black & white/color 9.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-703-1 Ships in: March 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Buz Sawyer — adventurer, bon vivant, and former bachelor — can't let a little thing like romance and marriage slow him down. Buz knows that Christy is the only woman for him — brave, beautiful, and able to handle herself when the going gets tough, and just the kind of woman Buz needs when the chips are down — a lover and a fighter. And indeed, Christy has her mettle…

Our recent book Vip: The Mad World of Virgil Partch, massive as it is, still only skims the surface of Partch's work. With Cork High and Bottle Deep, coming this summer, we plunge a swizzle stick into the depths of one aspect of his prolific career: boozy cartoons! Nothing amplifies the human comedy more than liquorous libations, and nobody captured mankind's firewater-fueled foibles like Vip. We've bottled the bacchanal up in this classy, minimalist cover worthy of your top shelf. Put it on your tab now and we'll serve it up to you as soon as it's available.

A beautiful little book about god-awful occurrences, Conor Stechschulte's debut The Amateurs has arrived at the office in a bundle of advance copies. Two butchers in rural, pre-industrial America are afflicted with mysterious selective amnesia and an inexplicable dedication to their job; the results are absurd and disastrous, and the story is framed with hints of the supernatural. It would be a comedy of errors if it weren't all so horrifying. This unsettling, kinetic, and breathtaking graphic novella arrives in stores in May; read an 8-page excerpt and pre-order your copy right here.

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Young Romance 2: The Early Simon & Kirby Romance Comicsby Joe Simon & Jack Kirby 200-page full-color 7.75" x 10" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-732-1 See Previews / Order Now BARGAIN COMBO: Young Romance + Young Romance 2 Gift Set Price: $59.98 $47.98 From tears to soda fountains, from mobsters to pretty ingénues in freshly pressed dresses, the stories of love and betrayal in Young Romance 2 will prompt you to grab a tissue box or swoon in delight. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's sensational romance comics continue in this sequel to…