Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Shimura Takako's manga Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko), which we are publishing in English starting next year, is being adapted for Japanese television, with the first episode debuting on January 13 on Fuji TV's late-night noitaminA programming slot. At the show's official website you can watch a series of three trailers (one, two, three) — I found a fansubbed version of the second one on YouTube which I've embedded here. It looks like a beautifully produced show. Here's the initial announcement as reported by Anime News Network, and here is their update on the most recent trailer. 

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition by Stan Sakai 1160-page black & white/color 2-volume hardcover 7.5" x 11" x 3" slipcased set • $100.00ISBN: 978-1-60699-154-1 Ordering Info & Previews Created in 1984 as a supporting character for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo has vaulted to the very forefront of iconic modern comics characters and is a perennial favorite amongst young boys and adult fans. Usagi Yojimbo chronicles the action-packed wanderings of a masterless samurai (a “ronin”) in feudal Japan — as told with funny-animals. (If PIXAR and the…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "[Megan Kelso's] first full-length graphic novel, Artichoke Tales, raises the stakes seen in her short stories and makes the relationships between three generations of characters one of simultaneous longing and resentment. […] This story is entirely about relationships, both familial and romantic. At the same time, it’s also about one’s relationship to one’s country, one’s religion, and one’s ethnicity, and the ways in which resorting to war to solve conflicts changes all of these relationships irrevocably." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal • Review: "Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain…

Peter Bagge has a hilarious new strip in the new issue of the Belgian comics anthology El Rios — dig it here. (Via The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log.)

Here are some photos (and a video) I took at our 4th Anniversary party last Saturday night. See a whole bunch more (including photos of the entire "Medieval Thinkers" art exhibit) over on our Flickr page. It was packed shoulder-to-shoulder! Jim Woodring & Zak Sally greet their public. Larry Reid chats with Grammy-winning musician and Jim Woodring collaborator Bill Frisell Jim signs copies of Weathercraft Mark Pickerel (ex-Screaming Trees) performs a solo set Zak performs songs from his album Fear of Song accompanied by his 4-track cassette recorder Watch Zak play his final song of the evening, "My Secret World"…

It's not exactly a huge surprise, but welcome news nonetheless: Blake Bell has announced on his blog that following his biography of Bill Everett Fire & Water (seen above), we'll be publishing a series of Bill Everett Archives books that he'll be editing, in an exact repeat of his Steve Ditko bio Strange & Stranger and subsequent volumes of The Steve Ditko Archives. The first Everett Archives volume will be out in the second half of 2011 and Blake needs your help coming up with a title for it! Just as the first two volumes of The Steve Ditko Archives…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: "King of the Flies: 1. Hallorave manages to combine dystopia and partying in one particularly morose suburban nabe. Artist Pascal 'Mezzo' Mesenburg’s crisp scenes of druggy costume soirées and bowling-alley liaisons deftly complement writer Michel Pirus’s slyly interlocking tales of depraved jollies in suburbia." – R.C. Baker, Village Voice "2010's Best Comics and Graphic Novels" • List: Kelly Thompson of Comic Book Resources names Linda Medley one of her Favorite Female Comic Creators of 2010, saying "…Castle Waiting Volume 2 is easily one of the best fiction books I've read this year and…

Uptight #4 by Jordan Crane 36-page black & white comic book • $3.95 Ships in: January 2011 (subject to change) — this item will be available for order simultaneous with its release to comic shops. Stay tuned for updates. Jordan Crane continues to display his mastery of adult drama and rollicking all-ages adventure equally in this issue of his acclaimed comic book series. This issue features the second chapters of Jordan's currently-ongoing, as-yet-untitled (as far as we know) stories introduced in the last issue. "Chapter 2: Trash Night" returns to the troubled relationship of Dee and Leo. Tensions continue to…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new title. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators are saying about our release this week, check out our previews at the link, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 2 by Steve Ditko; edited by Blake Bell 240-page full-color 7.25" x 10" hardcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-380-4 "The second volume of Fantagraphics' Blake Bell-edited reprints of Ditko's early material collects the pieces he banged out for Charlton Comics in 1957, and I do mean banged out: that year alone, he drew…

Our pals at Presspop just announced that they will be reprinting Tank Tankuro, a classic pre-war manga by Gajo Sakamoto which prefigures Astro Boy, translated into English, and they got Chris Ware to design the cover. Nice!