Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Tony Millionaire's National Ransom Photoshop contest has concluded and Tony has announced the winners. The above entry by William Creswell is not the actual "A#1 winner" — we didn't want to give that away, so you'll have to head to Tony's site to see it and all the other hilarious and impressive entries.

Mascots by Ray Fenwick 136-page full-color 5.25" x 7.75" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-400-9 Ships in: December 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The second book from Ray Fenwick, author of 2008’s acclaimed Hall of Best Knowledge. In Mascots, a collection of impressionistic stories combine to create a wildly absurd — yet vaguely familiar — parallel world. Like Fenwick’s previous work, the acclaimed Hall of Best Knowledge (one of Booklist’s “Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2008”), Mascots is driven by lettering and language, part art and part comics, this time taking the form of bright, full color paintings on found…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators are saying about our releases this week, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. [UPDATED with more blurbs.] Castle Waiting Vol. 2 384-page black & white 5.75" x 8.25" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-405-4 "…[A] second thick (384-page) hardcover compilation of Linda Medley’s well-regarded folkloric/fairy story exploration, now as pertinent a bridge between ’90s comic book self-publishing and current YA comics interest as its former publishing cousin Bone. I presume this includes all of the Fantagraphics-published Vol. II material thus…

We've mentioned Simon Pegg's Eightball #23 t-shirt in the upcoming film Paul before; now it's shown up on the UK one-sheet for the film (thanks to Graham Sigurdson for the tip-off): Enhance! Before you ask: no, it's not commercially available. To answer your other question: Dan Clowes recently mentioned in public a desire to reprint the issue, but no actual plans have been made as of yet.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Tardi's art [in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec Vol. 1] well deserves the praise that he's a grandmaster of comics. It's detailed, expressive, authentic, and distinctive. His world-building is thorough, the setting established through both background art and scene selection. Frequent recaps keep the reader up to speed, while emphasizing how amusingly convoluted everything quickly becomes. Tardi knows the conventions of this kind of rollicking, complicated adventure, and the story points out how ridiculous they are at the same time it's engaging in them." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) • Review: "Jason…

See a nice juicy 10-page excerpt from Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition by Stan Sakai at Comics Alliance, whose David Brothers writes "Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition… is a release worth paying attention to. It often flies under the radar, but Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo has been one of the most consistently well-written and well-drawn comics over the past twenty-five years. Sakai has created a long-running series that doesn't need jumping on points or events to tell good stories. He simply creates classic tales, month-in, month-out."

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: What I Did by Jason 272-page black & white/duotone 6.5" x 8.75" hardcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-414-6 Ordering Info & Previews A matching volume to 2009’s Almost Silent, What I Did collects three of Jason’s acclaimed 1990s graphic novels into a handsome, definitive omnibus format. "Hey, Wait…," which was the first of Jason's books to be translated to English, tells the story of two childhood friends. A dreadful event midway through the story changes their lives forever, and the story becomes the summary of lives lived, wasted, and lost. Jason's sparse dialogue,…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: The Littlest Pirate King by David B. 48-page full-color 8.5" x 11.25" hardcover • $16.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-403-0 Ordering Info & Previews For decades they have roamed the seas, this shipload of undead pirates. They are desperate to die, but every time they try to dash their ship to splinters and end their miserable existence, a malevolent God scoops them out of danger. And so they have no choice but to continue to sail the seas, looting and killing. Until one day, having exterminated yet another ship of the living, they come across…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Little Maakies on the Prairie by Tony Millionaire 120-page black & white 12" x 5" hardcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-392-7 Ordering Info & Previews Collecting 2 years of strips 2007-2009. More booze-soaked buffoonery, lyrical passages, violence, sentimentality, and poop jokes with Drinky Crow & Uncle Gabby. Lowbrow yuks and elegant cartooning from comics' true drunken master. "Tony Millionaire’s Maakies does not appear on the comics pages of daily newspapers, but lurks darkly instead in our nation’s alternative weeklies… "Uncle Gabby, a monkey, and Drinky Crow, an alcoholic crow, are characters of pure,…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Destroy All Movies!!!: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film Zack Carlson & Bryan Connolly, editors; Foreword by Richard Hell 556-page 8.5" x 10.75" flexi-bound softcover; two-color, with 48 pages of full color • $35.00ISBN: 978-1-60699-363-7 Ordering Info & Previews The most dazzlingly insane film reference book of all time, Destroy All Movies!!! is an informative, hilarious, and impossibly complete guide to every goddamn appearance of a punk (or new waver!) to hit the screen in the 20th Century. This wildly comprehensive eyeball-slammer features A-to-Z coverage of over 1100 feature films…