Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Speaking of Chicago, one of the city's — nay, the world's — greatest shops for comics and zines, Quimby's Bookstore, is celebrating their 20th anniversary with this limited-edition 5-color silkscreen print of Chris Ware's blueprint for the store's sign, printed by the estimable Jay Ryan's Bird Machine press. Unsigned copies are available now and Quimby's promises that signed copies will be available at some point in the future.

As Earwax Cafe, a hub of comics activity in Chicago for many years, slips into memory and legend, Lilli Carré shares the above scan and reports on her blog: "I went there one more time this past weekend as they were closing, and they let me have the last extra copy of their xeroxed menu, the cover of which is adorned with doodles by Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Archer Prewitt, and others." What an artifact! UPDATE: Paul Hornschemeier also shares some thoughts on the closing of Earwax on his blog.

Convention season is getting into full swing and after Emerald City ComiCon this weekend our next stop is the 2011 MoCCA Fest in New York City, April 9-10. The festival announced the lineup of guests and we've got Peter Bagge, Michael Kupperman, Ted Stearn, Leslie Stein and (pending confirmation) Gahan Wilson hanging out with us at our table, with several other old friends of ours in attendance as well (including but not limited to Peter Kuper, who designed the official festival poster above). We're also pleased that Al Jaffee will be presented the 2011 Klein Award. Stay tuned for more…

Ta-da! It's your first look at art director Jacob Covey's beautiful final cover design for Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley by Floyd Gottfredson! (Click the image for a bigger version.) The book went to the printers last week and is scheduled to be available in early June. And that's not the only exciting Mickey update we have for you! On Monday we sent out digital copies of our promotional BLAD ("Book Layout And Design") brochure for the book to members of the press; today, we are pleased to offer it to everyone as a 3MB…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. It's a great week if you like classic comic strips with adventure on the high seas! Read on to see what comics-blog commentators are saying about our releases this week, check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. Buz Sawyer Vol. 1: The War in the Pacific by Roy Crane 240-page black & white/color 9.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $35.00ISBN: 978-1-60699-362-0 "Beginning another vintage reprint project for Fantagraphics, this time focused on Roy Crane’s post-Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy series, an initially…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Plug: "The Comics Journal: long known as a magazine where you can look at never before released sketches from R. Crumb next to essays about Wonder Woman’s bondage past next to in-depth interviews with superhero comics auteurs next to oral histories of underground dudes you didn’t even know you were interested in until you read about their entire lives. We could go on that tangent forever, but instead we’ll just direct you here to pre-order." – Sam Hockley-Smith, The Fader • Plug: "In Mezzo and Pirus’ King of the Flies, characters who die in…

Peter Bagge is the subject of a major feature at Spain's largest newspaper, El Mundo. It's all in Spanish and it sure is snazzy.

Minneapolis comics maven Sarah Morean recently visited Zak Sally's studio with Tom Kaczynski and documented the occasion with a bunch of photos and the brief video above. O, the sights! View the full set of photos here.

Hey, remember that cover art for Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko) Vol. 1 by Shimura Takako that we were so excited to debut last week? Well it turns out we were a little TOO excited as the version we showed you was incorrectly cropped. Here's the corrected version above; we've also fixed it in the original post, which contains more information about the book. Sorry about that folks!

• Michael Kupperman is stepping up the art posts on Twitter, with the "doodle" above and an older strip with the promise of new ones to come (!) • A couple of recent landscapey drawings by Gabrielle Bell (and they're for sale) • An older watercolor sketch (above) and an unused character by Leslie Stein • Album covers and undead Popeye by Tony Millionaire And more Things to See from the past week: • New illustrations from Matthias Lehmann at his Bloc-Notes blog • Odds, ends, outtakes and film reviews by Jason at his Cats Without Dogs blog • Steven…