Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Find your fancy and save 50% at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery with our current Google Offer, where $20 gets you $40 of graphic novels, alternative comics, classic comic strips and more. With an inventory that includes every Fantagraphics Book in print, cherished classics, out-of-print publications and new releases, you’ll be sure to find material to tickle your funny bone and your cranium at this iconic shop. Makes a great last-minute gift, too! There's less than a day left to purchase the Offer, so get on it! (See offer page for limitations, terms and conditions. Offer NOT applicable to online purchases.)

Jason Conquers America by Jason et al. 32-page black & white/color 6.75" x 10.25" comic book • $4.99 Available for sale and shipping to comic shops on December 21, 2011 Celebrating 10 years of Jason being published in the US, this comic-book-format one-shot is a Jason fan’s dream, with lots of previously unpublished Jason strips and artwork, an interview with Jason’s colorist Hubert, a checklist of all Jason’s books, a Q&A with the man himself, and a visual tributes gallery by several American cartoonists to the towering, taciturn Norwegian genius including Michael Allred, Kim Deitch, and Rich Tommaso. Video &…

Jason reveals a bit more about his current graphic novel in progress, including this panel. [Follow our Tumblr blog for lots more Things to See every day.]

Tim Kreider, who plies his trade as an essayist a bit more than as a cartoonist these days, has four recent unpublished pieces available to read and disseminate on his website: three on the Occupy movement and one on the end of the Iraq War. Access all three and read Tim's brief introduction here. Here's a good money quote: "It’s past time that the Right and the Left both noticed that our traditional nemeses — Big Government and Big Business, respectively — are literally the same people."

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: FEARnet's Joseph McCabe names Richard Sala's The Hidden to their Best of 2011: Books and Comics: "Sala's unique brand of creepy quirk combines Edward Gorey, Chester Gould, and Charles Adams with his own unclassifiable magic. The Hidden, from Fantagraphics Books, is his most ambitious work — an intimate apocalypse." • List: The SF Site's Rick Klaw ranks 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente at #4 on his top graphic novels of 2011: "In this emotionally moving biography, the Puerto Rican Wilfred Santiago magnificently chronicles the often tragic life of this icon…. Santiago expertly…

We were sorry to hear yesterday of the death of Christopher Hitchens, who wrote an excellent introduction to Joe Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde. Tom Spurgeon pointed out at The Comics Reporter this morning that the introduction (which also appeared as an essay in the Los Angeles Times) is posted online in its entirety at the Gorazde Info website. (I don't think we granted permission, but we'll let it slide.) I'm hoping to get Gary to write a little something on his encounter with Hitchens.

Our weekly strips from Kupperman, Mahler & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web: — Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size): Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size): And elsewhere: Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane: Forming by Jesse Moynihan: Humblug by Arnold Roth (4 updates this week, continuing serialization of his unpublished 1979 strip Downtown, including a Sunday strip): Maakies by Tony Millionaire: Les Petits Riens by Lewis Trondheim: Truth Serum by Jon Adams (see also last week's late update): What's in…

We love this Prison Pit tribute by “shotgunsean” on Instagram.

Action! Mystery! Thrills! Comic Book Covers of the Golden Age 1933-45 by various artists; edited by Greg Sadowski 208-page full-color 8" x 10.5" softcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-494-8 Ships in: December 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now When we contemplate a memorable old comic book, the first thing that comes to mind is its cover, and that was no accident. Publishers realized fairly quickly that if they spent a little extra to hire a good cover artist, they could fill the insides with mediocrity and still make a sizable profit — that all it took was a striking cover to…