Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Drew Weing announced yesterday that his debut graphic novel Set to Sea was named runner-up for the inaugural Lynd Ward Prize, a new award sponsored by the Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, presented to the "best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, published in the previous calendar year by a living U.S. citizen or resident." We'd been waiting for the official PR to make our announcement, but since Heidi MacDonald has broken the news over at The Beat, anchors aweigh (as…

The Utne Reader presents a gallery of illustrations by Joe Sacco that draw parallels between economically depressed urban America and the war-torn regions Sacco has visited.

How is it that I'd never before heard this adorable song about Ted Stearn's Fuzz & Pluck by Swedish band The Pohjolas before? HOW??? It appears on their 2005 album I Cracked My Head on a Rock. Delightful!

We recently found a whole box of Unseen Peanuts, our 2007 Free Comic Book Day offering, on a forgotten shelf here in our office, so we sent 'em down to our shipping facility and while supplies last we'll be including one FREE copy with almost every order we receive (except, ironically, for single Complete Peanuts orders, since we have custom shipping boxes for those that the comic won't fit in). Sellers on eBay are currently offering copies for anywhere from $5.99 to $24.20, so nuts to them! If you missed it the first time around, it's a quality 32-page package…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Interview (Audio): Inkstuds host Robin McConnell chats with contributing Mome cartoonist Aidan Koch • Analysis: At The Comics Grid, an essay titled "Ghost World[s] and Non-Places" by Tony Venezia: "By mapping Augé’s notion of non-places onto the grids of Ghost World we can get an idea of how such supermodern environments are represented via a medium particularly well suited to figuring spatial representations." (Via Spurge.) • Analysis: Lisa Pollifroni offers a (spoiler-filled) feminist reading of Gilbert Hernandez's Human Diastrophism: "I believe what Hernandez is trying to get at with Luba is the ways in which a…

If you're a member of the press, retailer or other comics industry person who needs a digital file of one of our logos for any reason (such as the above emblem by Daniel Clowes), we've just uploaded a selection of them to a Flickr set for you to grab and use. (If you need vector files, you'll still have to contact us.) And don't forget to check out all of our other digital assets on our Resources for Press and Retailers page!

Our Free Comic Book Day offering for this year is a 32-page doozy featuring strips from Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley by Floyd Gottfredson! There's also some bonus material included like an intro by series co-editor David Gerstein, an essay by certified Disney Legend Floyd Norman, and the cutest photo of Gottfredson with Carl Barks you ever did see. Check out a 5-page preview at the FCBD website! FCBD is on Saturday, May 7 this year.

Readers of last Sunday's edition of the Boston Globe were treated to Jane Roy Brown's travel guide to Massachusetts roadside attractions that have been featured by Bill Griffith in Zippy the Pinhead strips! You can read the article online but it lacks the illustrations, so we've posted images of the pages (provided by Bill) above. Thanks Bill!

Due to our hectic release schedule and the geographic vagaries of distribution, our comic shop arrivals are a bit of a jumble lately. Our first two titles here may have been available at some shops last week — see last week's post for additional blurbs — and are on the official shipping list for this week; the titles listed thereafter are not on the list yet but may ship to some shops this week. We apologize for any confusion and as always entreat you to contact your local shop to confirm availability. (Ordering in advance is always a good idea,…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Created during two overseas wars, rising inequity, a city lost under flood waters, skyrocketing public debt and the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression, this collection [Twilight of the Assholes] is the pained scream of a frustrated liberal trapped in a nation whose zeitgeist, he feels, spent much of the decade steadfastly marching in lockstep to the Right. The excesses of a neo-Gilded Age provokes Kreider with often hilarious results… Sometimes vulgar and crude but often insightful, always passionate, Kreider's essays and illustrations offer a voice for a nation seemingly without hope."…