Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Peter Bagge & his bandmates in Can You Imagine? took to the airwaves on Seattle's KEXP on last night's edition of their punk show Sonic Reducer — if you missed it, you can catch a re-broadcast at 11 PM tonight… that's less than an hour from now! Tune in to 90.3 FM in Seattle or kexp.org worldwide, or if you see this too late, find it in the KEXP streaming audio archive. And here's another way to get in on the Can You Imagine? fun: Pete & co. are raising funds via Kickstarter to complete their new album! Pledge now…

Read "That Sticky Machine," a charming new 7-page comic by Leslie Stein, at VICE. Flash back to the 1990s with Eye of the Majestic Creature's Larrybear! [Follow our Tumblr blog for lots more Things to See every day.]

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan gives Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman an honorable mention on his Best of 2011 list • Review: "Uncut, uncensored and politically incorrect – these tales are from an alternate Disney universe, where Mickey is a red-blooded, two-fisted adventurer; they are fun to read and a delight to view. Gottfredson’s comics are as classy, funny and as slick as the Disney shorts from the same period. And as usual, co-editor David Gerstein provides a plethora of 'bonus materials'… A fine package, a full meal, and a perfect…

Publishers Weekly presents a 4-page preview of Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly, with 2 pages of dailies and 2 full-color Sunday strips. Elsewhere at PW, Mark Schultz introduces the preview by way of an ode to the newspaper strip and the recent boom in reprint series: "Naturally, I’m having an increasingly difficult time trying not spend all my money on these fresh new volumes, especially the handsome new collections of classics like Popeye, Peanuts, Krazy Kat, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. This week, Fantagraphics tests my will anew…

As promised, Nicolas Mahler's Angelman joins our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web: — Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size): Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size): And elsewhere: The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum at ACT-I-VATE: Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane: Forming by Jesse Moynihan: Humblug by Arnold Roth (4 new strips this week, including serialization of his unpublished 1979 strip Downtown): Lucky by Gabrielle Bell : What's in the Backpack by…

500 Portraits by Tony Millionaire 192-page black & white 5.75" x 7.5" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-473-3 Ships in: December 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now 500 Portraits collects for the first time over two decades of portrait work by the beloved and award-winning creator of Drinky Crow’s Maakies, Sock Monkey and Billy Hazelnuts. Tony Millionaire’s gorgeous fountain pen illustrations, which mingle naturalistic detail with strong doses of the fanciful and grotesque, include the famous (Bob Dylan), the infamous (Abu Ghraib soldier/model Lynndie England), the fictional (Yoda), the animal kingdom (a cockroach), and everything in between. Literary figures (Hemingway), literary…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:   • List: Rick Klaw and Mark London Williams of The SF Site start counting down their top 10 favorite comics of 2011 in their "Nexus Graphica" column, with Rick placing Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954 at #10 ("mandatory reading for any fan of the medium") and Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Jacques Tardi at #6 ("one of the finest examples of the genre") • Review: "In an historical moment when a cross-section of the population is waking up to the reality of brutal inequalities and the limited set…

Library Journal has named two of our releases to their top-10 Best Books of 2011: Graphic Novels list! 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago: "The Puerto Rican slugger overcame family poverty, racial prejudice, and the language barrier to become the 1966 National League’s Most Valuable Player. Santiago superbly captures the kinetic excitement of baseball as well as Clemente’s skill and warm humanity on and off the diamond." The Arctic Marauder by Jacques Tardi: "An eccentric steampunk parody of turn-of-the-century pulp, beautifully rendered with amazing scratchboard art that mimics the look of engravings. Tardi favors the puckish over…