Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

For your shopping pleasure, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery will be open Memorial Day weekend, Saturday 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sunday and Monday 11:30 to 5:00 PM. Check out Charles Peterson's Taking Punk to the Masses show and pick up some lit to enrich your long weekend. Mark your calendars now for Saturday, June 11!   Jim Woodring signing Congress of the Animals at the festive Georgetown Carnival. Come see Larry and Bella defend their title in Hazard Factory's popular Power Tool Races. This year it's a Peter Bagge-inspired Monster Truck powered by a Black & Decker "Dragster" model belt sander. (I'm swear that's what it's called.) Art, music,…

The Comics Journal #301 Edited by Mike Dean & Kristy Valenti; Gary Groth, Editor in Chief 640-page black & white/color 6.75" x 8.5" softcover • $30.00ISBN: 978-1-60699-291-3 Ships in: July 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The Comics Journal has been, for almost 35 years, the standard bearer of critical inquiry, discrimination, debate, and serious discussion of comics as art, and the object of love and devotion among the comics cognescenti — and hate and scorn among the philistines, natch. We published our 300th issue in late 2009 and spent the ensuing year-plus re- conceptualizing the institution as an…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Isle of 100,000 Graves by Jason and Fabien Vehlmann 56-page full-color 7.25" x 10.25" softcover • $14.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-442-9 See Previews / Order Now Five years ago, little Gwenny’s father found, inside a bottle, a map with instructions on how to reach the mysterious Isle of 100,000 Graves and its legendary treasures — and then he vanished. Now Gwenny, having stumbled across another bottle-shipped map, enlists the dubious help of a shipful of pirates, sets out to find the island, and her long-lost dad. Little does she realize that the Isle comes…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Like Saturday morning cartoons, Yeah! was about a kind of science fiction that embraced weirdo aliens rather than science fact. From alt-comix came characters that were outcasts, lived on the margins of society, or had outsider personalities. Instead of being offensive and edgy, this unusual comic book series was imaginative and inventive. …[I]t was an all-ages gem, and I’m glad that it's back…" – Leroy Douresseaux, I Reads You • Review: "How does Peter Bagge stay so good after all these years? Hate Annual #9 was as good as any of the previous…

Wilfred Santiago (left) & GWAR's Oderus Urungus (right) at New York Comicon, 1992. Photo posted by Wilfred on Flickr.

We've featured these here before, but now there's context! Johnny Ryan did this poster for his friend's Calvin Lee Reeder's film The Oregonian and interviewed Reeder for Vice. Johnny has the trailer on his blog. Johnny did this one for the band Tribes and you can buy one in Johnny's online shop.

(cover design subject to change) At his blog, The Steve Ditko Archives editor Blake Bell spills the beans on the upcoming third volume, Mysterious Traveler, due in January 2012! "What makes this volume so special," says Blake, "is that meteoric improvement in Ditko’s work as he toils in obscurity for a company that treated their comic books like toilet paper for their more profitable magazine and song books. Such is the irony of one of the great living artists of the 20th century – working with stories churned out for an audience of children, Ditko produced the highest quality material…

Oh snap, Johnny Ryan dropped a bomb on Facebook last night — this brand new cover art for Prison Pit: Book 3, coming this September! (You may remember the previous version of the cover with the horned demon-looking dude.) Word is he's finished the book and it's even more insane than the first two volumes so gird yourselves!

Wandering Son Vol. 1 by Shimura Takako 208-page black & white/color 7" x 9.5" hardcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-416-0 Ships in: June 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators 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. Approximate Continuum Comics by Lewis Trondheim 160-page black & white 6.75" x 10.25" softcover • $18.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-410-8 "An earlier stab than Little Nothings at comics-as-diary from the prolific cartoonist (and constantly hilarious comics-diarist) Lewis Trondheim, who draws himself as a slightly ruffled bird." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance "Lewis Trondheim’s Approximate Continuum Comics were…