Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "It may seem hard to believe today, but Gottfredson’s strip was a fluid, rubber-limbed, sassy, slangy, breathless, seamless mix of absurdity and adventure. The proof is here. Fantagraphics intends to reprint the whole shooting match, and here in [Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse] Volume One are the first two years…. The various inkers and pencillers who worked on the strip are profiled, and intelligent remarks are made on the strip’s economic and cultural issues. We could only wish the reproduction on these dailies were larger; otherwise it’s pretty much an ideal volume. Rating: 9/10"…

Illustration by Jim Blanchard, The Stranger's go-to guy for dead famous people. UPDATE: The original's for sale.

Jason shares this uncolored page from his forthcoming book Athos in America. See the original handwritten script (in English) and thumbnail sketch at Jason's blog. It's the first page from the story "The Brain That Wouldn't Virginia Woolf." Great title, or greatest title?

Stan Sakai and Gahan Wilson were table neighbors at last weekend's Boston Comic Con. I'm maintaining my composed exterior but inside I can't stop jumping up and down. (Image lifted from Stan's Facebook page, with some color correction by me.)

Congress of the Animals by Jim Woodring 104-page black & white 7.25" x 9.75" hardcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-437-5 Ships in: May 2011 (Subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Readers of the “Frank” stories know that the Unifactor is in control of everything that happens to the characters that abide there, and that however extreme the experiences they undergo may be, in the end nothing really changes. That goes treble for Frank himself, who is kept in a state of total ineducability by the unseen forces of that haunted realm. And so the question arises: what would happen if Frank were…

Here's another slightly belated photo/video slideshow preview of a current release… Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge 32-page full-color comic book • $4.95 — Order Now!

Boy, ever since we got on that Tumblr thing we've been seeing vintage Hernandez Bros. goodies left and right. Case in point: the above sketch by Gilbert from 1988 depicting an imagined meeting in which a certain familiar figure is about to get a hammer to his noggin. On a hunch I just looked in my copy of the Love & Rockets Sketchbook Vol. 1 and found it on page 170 with the caption "Rejected from Blab! #3 (due to space restrictions)."

Paul Hornschemeier from thisartist on Vimeo. Paul Hornschemeier shares his workspace, artwork, thoughts on publication, and winning smile (seriously, dude's a smilin' fool) in this video profile for thisartist.tv. For more video action from Paul, check out this video trailer for Life with Mr. Dangerous which he commissioned from director Bruce Parsons. It's beautifully produced and depicts a bit of "offscreen" backstory in live action. Nice. And Paul shows off someone else showing off his forthcoming postcard set from Chronicle, So-So Heroes, here. Busy guy, that Paul.

Michael Kupperman has taken to his blog to announce his next book Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 and post a few illustrations from it, including the previously unseen one above. Are those donuts or bagels? I'm on tenterhooks.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review (Audio): On the inaugural episode of Boing Boing's Gweek podcast, co-host Mark Frauenfelder talks about Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley by Floyd Gottfredson: "Gottfredson really turned Mickey into this adventuring character who has really fun experiences… It's got that great '30s look to the art… It is very dense, but well-done, with a good sense of composition, so it flows along. The characters really have great emotion. There's nothing stiff about it — it's really lively… it's just beautiful. …Carl Barks is always the first artist most comic…