Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

We've made a perhaps-overdue update to our online shop, creating a new category called "Vintage Comics" for our collections of early comic book stories. This should make them easier to find all together than in the overarching "Classic" category, which includes newspaper strips, illustration books and other stuff. What it is: "Fantagraphics is pleased to present collections of the finest comic book art and artists from the pioneering days of comic books in the middle decades of the 20th Century (and scholarly writing thereon). These lovingly-restored, beautifully-designed tomes present the best and most noteworthy work from the era, in genres…

Here's a couple of divergent but equally great 2011 Angoulême Festival scene reports from the unofficial Fantagraphics contingent: From smilin' Paul Karasik at his Rules to Vivere By blog… …and from Dash Shaw (behind the camera) at Comics Comics.

Here's Nili, deeply engrossed in Steve Brodner's Freedom Fries. Via Steve's blog.

• Some magazine illustrations from Richard Sala's archives • Ronald Wilson Reagan by our own Jason T. Miles • A previously unseen Jim Flora piece at the Jim Flora Art blog • Jim Blanchard did this custom-painted Chicken Little figurine a few years ago • An older Chrome Fetus strip by Hans Rickheit that has been excised from his upcoming Folly collection And more Things to See from the past week: • New illustrations from Matthias Lehmann at his Bloc-Notes blog • Various strips and illustrations by Jason at his Cats Without Dogs blog • Steven Weissman's latest "I, Anonymous"…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: PLAYBACK:stl's Steve Higgins puts What I Did by Jason on his Top Graphic Novels of 2010: "In my recent review of What I Did, I stated, 'Each story on its own is unquestionably superb, and readers will delight in the moods Jason evokes and the artistic techniques he employs. Together the stories in What I Did are sterling examples of Jason’s fantastic skill as both an illustrator and a storyteller that are well worth the purchase in spite of their vast differences in tone, style, and content.' And it’s still true." • List:…

From the official announcement: Mascots presents an edited version of the collected paintings from Ray Fenwick's recently published book. The works, not unlike a group of short stories, are a collection of vignettes and staccato bursts of narrative that combine to form a surreal-and vaguely familiar-parallel world. Like Fenwick's previous work, the paintings are driven by language and typography, occupying a space where visual art, comics, prose and poetry bleed into one another. Ray Fenwick is an artist living and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He has shown in Canada and the U.S. and is the author of two books. His…

Looking forward to our collections of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse by Floyd Gottfredson? Never seen the strip and want to see what the hubbub is about? Get a daily dose! D23: The Official Disney Fan Club is running classic Disney newspaper strips including Gottfredson's Mickey, Donald Duck by Al Taliaferro & Bob Karp, and Scamp by John Ushler. New strips every day!

Straight from Jim Woodring, it's the front jacket art for his highly-anticipated new Frank graphic novel Congress of the Animals, coming in May! Click it to see it 57% bigger.

Happy Valentine's Day! Johnny Ryan illustrates a report on global sex trends and unleashes the "Whorenado" for Vice.

Thanks to Twitter user "squidita" for posting these snaps of Jaime Hernandez's artwork in the "Novelas, Love and Other Adventures" exhibit at Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA) in San Jose. Death of Speedy originals! The exhibit continues through March 26 so there's still plenty of time to check it out.