Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

If you're on our mailing list, the Fantagraphics Winter 2011 Catalog should be arriving in your mailbox right around now! If you're not on our list you can get your free copy by calling 1-800-657-1100 (206-524-1967 outside the U.S.) or by emailing us — or download it as a PDF (8.3 MB). It's 100 pages jam-packed with hundreds of new, upcoming, and backlist titles, including exciting exclusive items — A Century of Comic Strips, Comic Books, Graphic Novels and More!

Online Commentary & Diversions, back from the U.S. holiday: • Gift Guides: Rob McMonigal of Panel Patter goes through our new mail-order catalog (about which more soon!) to pick out his holiday gift-giving recommendations; The Beat and The Comics Reporter both post guides to holiday gift books with several of our books mentioned • Review: "Freakazoid producer Mitch Schauer's debut graphic novel Rip M.D. is a warm and spooky tale for monster kids of all ages. […] Drawn and inked in pitch-perfect EC Comics monster style, Rip M.D. pushes every one of my monster-loving buttons. The writing is witty, the…

Norman Pettingill is the subject of a newly-opened art exhibit in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. From the announcement, as reported by NewsoftheNorth.Net: "Forty Pettingill drawings, now part of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center collection in Sheboygan, are on display or the first time in 15 years and will remain so until Jan. 16. More than 100 drawings from this renowned collection are featured in Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist, a new hardcover book published by Fantagraphics." (Note that the JMKAC website seems to be down at press time.)

Chapter 10 of Kurt Wolfgang's serialized story "Nothing Eve" will run in Mome Vol. 22 (the Spring 2011 issue); Kurt presents the first two pages (1, 2) at the New Bodega blog.

The Comics Journal's Tom Crippen presents some samples of Gahan Wilson's National Lampoon strip "Nuts" (to be released in a complete collected edition by your pals here at Fantagraphics in the not-too-distant future).

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Drew Weing's slender, hand-sized debut graphic novel Set to Sea is a crosshatched masterpiece. […] Weing draws in an elaborate, crosshatched style that's half Popeye, half Maakies, and it meshes brilliantly with the subject matter and the storytelling. Set to Sea is so lovely in places that I found myself exclaiming aloud — it's got a naive-but-self-conscious grace that is impossible to describe and that few have ever mastered. This one is highly recommended." – Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing • Review: "In the first and the second volume [of Mome] there are a…

It's time for a new episode of Yikes! animated adventures! Look at all those familiar names in the credits: Steven Weissman (creator), Martin Cendreda (animation), Johnny Ryan & Walt Holcombe (voices)… it's an explosion of talent and hilariousness!

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. Special Exits by Joyce Farmer 208-page black & white 8" x 10" hardcover • $26.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-381-1 Ordering Info & Previews "A decade-plus in the making project by underground veteran Joyce Farmer; observations of the declining health of her father and stepmother, and Farmer’s own changing role in their lives. I know nothing more, but I’ll be eager to…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "The second volume of Linda Medley's quirky Eisner-winning modern classic has finally arrived. […] Castle Waiting is a warm yet bittersweet ramble through the margins of the fairy tale world. […] Medley's distinctive black and white art is full of life, while her writing is as engaging if leisurely as ever." – Publishers Weekly • Review: "…[O]ne of the best and most under-covered of many under-covered comics of 2010 [is] Fantagraphics’ English-language edition of Jacques Tardi’s It Was the War of the Trenches. […] Fascinatingly structured as a 20-page overture leading into an…

Gipi recounts the story behind this illustration, learning that he's not the first artist in Italy to have this idea recently.