Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web. Hans Rickheit has apparently decided that your mind is not sufficiently blown because he has launched a second ongoing webcomic, starring his recurring characters Cochlea and Eustachia! — Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size): And elsewhere: Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane: New addition! Cochlea & Eustachia by Hans Rickheit: Ectiopiary by Hans Rickheit: Humblug by Arnold Roth (3 new udpates!): Maakies by Tony Millionaire: Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

Seattle: Fantagraphics Comics If you've always wanted to get a behind-the-scenes look inside our glamorous offices and see what things are like around here on a day-to-day basis, this segment that The A.V. Club came by to film for their "Pop Pilgrims" series should give you a pretty good idea. Host Dan Telfer and his crew got the grand tour from Gary Groth, and we had Peter Bagge stop by to give his perspective and insights. My favorite parts are the bits that show my co-workers just going about their day and getting shit done. (I missed all the hubbub…

We're trying something new! Every couple of weeks we'll be spotlighting a loosely thematic selection of a few of our recent and older titles just to, you know, remind you that they exist, and to entice you to buy them we're offering them at a whopping 40% off for four days only, Friday through Monday! Selections and themes have been suggested by our warehouse manager, who is chock full of good ideas. This outing: "A Hairy Bestiary"! Beasts! Book 1 [Softcover Edition]: A classic mythological menagerie, comprised of creatures that were thought at one time to actually exist, depicted by…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Castle Waiting Vols. 1 & 2 take two spots on Nancy Pearl's "10 Terrific Summer Reads" list at NPR.org: "The black-and-white drawings are precisely crafted, with small, endearing touches that render each character entirely unique. The dialogue is clever and filled with subtle grace notes of drollness and humor. The set will be especially appealing to readers of all ages who enjoy seeing and reading traditional fairy tale tropes teased and played with, all with a sense of good-humored fun." • Review: "…Congress of the Animals finds twisted fabulist Woodring at the top…

If you would like to be the proud owner of the original art for Paul Pope's tribute to Roy Crane which accompanies Pope's terrific introduction to Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune Vol. 2, it is among the original Pope artwork available for sale via The Beguiling.

Today's lone Online Commentary & Diversion: • Review: "As you can see on every page of Fantagraphics' gorgeous new collection Mickey Mouse: Race to Death Valley, the young Mickey was a brash, spirited, resourceful, and endlessly charming character, a pluckish everymouse adventuring through life one scrape — and one daily comic strip — at a time. Poring over this book is like swimming in the very headwaters of popular American culture…. Mickey Mouse: Race to Death Valley stands beside Fantagraphics' collections of E.C. Segar's Popeye and Charles Schulz's Peanuts as a treasure of modern American culture — a reminder that,…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new title. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about it (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the link, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips Vol. 2 (1936-1937) by Roy Crane 144-page full-color 10.5" x 14.75" hardcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-391-0 Sneak peek at Diamond's PREVIEWSworld website "The 1936-1937 Sunday installments of Roy Crane's proto-lots-of-things adventure comic strip continue." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance "…I’d also…

Today's singular Online Commentary & Diversion: • Review: "I held off buying the new hardback series collecting Hal Foster's Prince Valiant because I already have complete reprint collections of that groundbreaking comic strip. But I finally broke down and bought Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-38, and I'm glad I did. The reproduction is crisp, and the strips are presented in the size they originally ran, that of a newspaper broadsheet. This is how Foster's gorgeous artwork was meant to be seen, and I have to be careful not to drool on the pages." – Andrew A. Smith, Scripps Howard News…

There's another exclusive preview of The Comics Journal #301 to be seen at TCJ.com today: an excerpt from Tim Kreider's must-read critical essay "Irredeemable: Dave Sim's Cerebus."