Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

This July we bring you the first volume of Martí's eye-popping masterpiece The Cabbie, and here is your first look at the wonderfully lurid cover! (Click the image for a larger version.) License plate logo design by Jim Blanchard:

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "So I certainly hope you celebrated Free Comic Book Day this first Saturday in May by tripping down to your local comic book shop and picking up some free magazines. If so, you may have seen the names of a couple Mormon creators…, but the best entry in that field is undoubtedly the offering from Fantagraphics of a Mickey Mouse story by Floyd Gottfredson…. Fantagraphics, in case you don’t know, is the company that has set the remarkably high standard for reprinting classic comics." – Theric Jepson, A Motley Vision • Review: The…

WHAT. I never heard about these Peanuts t-shirts from Jay-z's clothing line Rocawear until The Daily Cross Hatch posted that they're on sale. They're all pretty adorable but this Pig-Pen one is the best.

James Kochalka spotted a possible homage to Jim Woodring in a recent episode of the (awesome) Cartoon Network show Adventure Time, as what look like denizen's of Woodring's Unifactor appear in Adventure Time's Land of Ooo. Dang, I just saw Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward at TCAF, I could've asked him about it! (Via The Beat.)

London-based journalist Paul Slade writes in: "I've just posted an exclusive Hans Rickheit six-page comics story on my website. The story's scripted by me from a David Attenborough radio programme about bizarre and violent insect breeding strategies, and I commissioned Hans to draw it for me earlier this year. This is the first time it's appeared anywhere." That's an excellent marriage of artist and subject matter.

Catching up on our Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…Fantagraphics Books’ new Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: “Race to Death Valley” contains all you need to know to revel in the very different, deeply pleasurable work of [Floyd] Gottfredson. Working with one of the most famous — and most anodyne — cartoon characters in the world, Gottfredson turned the grinning, goody-goody Mouse into a plucky, even reckless adventurer, his smile transformed from a people-pleasing smirk into a challenge to the world…. Gottfredson drew Mickey with a nosy snout and the bright eyes of an adrenalin junkie. The mouse’s diminutive size…

Anime News Network reports that Moto Hagio (shown above at Comic-Con International last year) has received the 2011 Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award from the Japan Cartoonists Association of manga creators as part of their 40th annual Japan Cartoonist Awards. The honor is in recognition of her entire body of work, praised in the announcement as "revolutionary" and "of high quality." Congratulations!

Hey collectors! We just got a few returns of the previously sold-out Tales Designed to Thrizzle #1 by Michael Kupperman. If you need this issue, hop on it — there's not many of them and they won't last long.

Hey, we just found out that the "sometimes Y" Hernandez brother, Mario, is a special guest at the first annual Latino Comics Expo this weekend at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco! The first day is already over but Mario will be there for the full day tomorrow too, 11AM – 5PM, so it's not too late to meet an L&R OG! The museum also drops word of the Love and Rockets 30th Anniversary exhibit coming next year — stay tuned for further announcements about that!

Our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman; I'm afraid our usual links to other strips from around the web will be postponed, as your humble editor is reporting from the road in full-on TCAF mode: — Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):