Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

The extremely funny Michael Kupperman is performing with the extremely funny Todd Barry (and a couple of other funny people with funny pseudonyms — here's one clue) at Hudson Valley Auctioneers in Beacon, NY on Saturday March 12! Tickets are only 5 bucks — cheap at 3x the price! Here's the event listing at the Beacon Citizen. Man oh man I want to see this so bad I can't even stand it. It's the chocolate and peanut butter of comedy!

Arthur have been posting comics that ran in the pages of their magazine in the mid-aughts (during the Jordan Crane/Sammy Harkham and Tom Devlin reigns over their comics section), including "Split Rock, Montana" by Megan Kelso (who's signing with us on Sunday at Emerald City ComiCon, ahem) and a ton of other great, unmissable stuff. Seriously.

Same Hat! posts this commissioned Johnny Ryan drawing based on Junji Ito's Gyo from a few years ago (via Sean T. Collins); below, Johnny's cover to a Herpes Kids minicomic courtesy Sam Henderson's The Magic Whistle blog, where you can see the rest of the comic as well (via The Comics Reporter).

Drew Weing has a couple of anthology contributions on the way: he posted this teaser panel from a story he has in the upcoming Fluke anthology, and he drew a story written by M.K. Reed in the new issue of the always-unmissable Papercutter from Tugboat Press (shown below with cover art by Jonas Madden-Connor; photo from the Tugboat Press Flickr page). Can't wait!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions (running late due to Emerald City ComiCon prep!): • List: Library Journal's Martha Cornog recommends Unlovable: The Complete Collection by Esther Pearl Watson as one of her "Graphic Novels for Women's History Month": "A cringe-worthy classic of high school malaise, reportedly based on a real girl's diary found in a Las Vegas bathroom in 1995. Like a Wimpy Kid older sister but more poignant and painful, this features jagged, unpretty art capturing the diarist's inner chaos. For Lynda Barry fans craving a new read and professionals seeking an unvarnished glimpse of female adolescence." • List:…

Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up Here's a 4 1/2-minute "sneak peek" clip from last night's episode of The Seattle Channel's CityStream, which (as we previously noted) features a whole lot of us and (as we failed to note) some Jim Woodring. Looks like the full episode will go online next week after it runs through its broadcast schedule — we'll be sure to let you know.

Daily OCD Extra: We've got some Tim Kreider multimedia to share with you as Tim continues making the rounds promoting his new book Twilight of the Assholes: The Strand Bookstore has uploaded video of Tim's slideshow talk which took place on Feb. 17, 2011, embedded above or watchable on the Strand's YouTube page here. And this Tuesday Tim was a call-in guest on his fellow Rolling Stone "Supreme Court of Assholedom" justice David Sirota's program on Denver's AM 760 ("Colorado's Progressive Talk") — download an MP3 of the segment here (Tim's portion starts 15-20 minutes in) and see the full…

An FYI for our mail-order customers: We recently analyzed our shipping costs and found that what we were charging for 2nd-Day UPS within the United States wasn't quite covering the actual cost, so we've raised our 2nd-Day rates by $5.00 for orders of $5.00 or more. So, if you have a rush order, you'll pay a little more for shipping. All other charges remain unchanged. See our updated shipping-charge matrix here.

Wanna see a whole bunch of vintage spot illos scanned from old issues of The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (above) and other artists (Mitch O'Connell, Kevin Nowlan, Bruce Timm) before they were stars? Ed Piskor has you covered at his Wizzywig Comics blog.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Plug: "It really is amazing that there are generations growing up, only knowing the Disney characters from the theme parks. Thankfully, Fantagraphics is doing something about it, restoring and publishing a complete archive of the Mickey Mouse comic strip by cartooning legend Floyd Gottfredson." – Stefan Blitz, Forces of Geek • Plug: "Fantagraphics' collection of Floyd Gottfredson's complete run on the Mickey Mouse comic strip of the 30s and 40s is one of the most exciting things on upcoming comics collection list (although I'm most excited about the same publisher's announced reprinting of Carl…