Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Hip Hop Family Tree (Vol. 1) by Ed Piskor 112-page full-color 9" x 13" Flexibound softcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-690-4 See Previews / Order Now Yes yes, y'all! Acclaimed young cartoonist Ed Piskor (Wizzywig) schools you on the old school in this essential, explosively entertaining, encyclopedic cultural chronicle of an American art form that changed the world. Hip Hop Family Tree (originally serialized online at Boing Boing) takes you from the parks and rec rooms of the South Bronx to the night clubs, recording studios and radio stations where the scene started to…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department:  The Comics Journal Library Vol. 8: The EC Artists edited by Michael Dean 240-page black & white/color 10" x 12" softcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-608-9 See Previews / Order Now The Comics Journal Library series is the most comprehensive series of lavishly illustrated interviews conducted with cartoonists ever published. To celebrate our republication of the legendary EC line, we proudly present the first of a two-volume set of interviews with the artists and writers (and publisher!) who made EC great. Included in the first volume: career-spanning conversations with EC legends Will Elder,…

Since we're asking you to support our Spring-Summer 2014 season on Kickstarter (and you're coming through in spades so far!), we thought we'd spotlight the books in question, a couple at a time. We've also put our season catalog online for you to browse. (Please note that all artwork, contents, prices, specs, and release dates are preliminary and subject to change.) Batter Up, Charlie Brown! by Charles M. Schulz 64-page two-color 5.5" x 5.5" hardcover • $9.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-725-3  Charlie Brown may not be the best pitcher, batter, or team manager, but his love for the game is boundless, no matter how many home…

"Trina Robbins is one of the icons of the underground comix generation, a cartoonist and creative person always pushing forward in ways that have influenced and inspired her peers and admirers. She has become in the decades since an equally valuable advocate for the recognition of great female cartoonists." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter "A critical work, painstaking, impressive, funny, and moving in the way it shines a tender light on the most anonymous practitioners of the most anonymous art form of the twentieth century — but above all, a pleasure to get lost in. The universe is grateful…

Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013 by Trina Robbins 180-page color/black & white 9" x 12" softcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-669-0 Ships in: November 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now With the 1896 publication of Rose O’Neill’s comic strip The Old Subscriber Calls, in Truth Magazine, American women entered the field of comics, and they never left it. But, you might not know that reading most of the comics histories out there. Trina Robbins has spent the last thirty years recording the accomplishments of a century of women cartoonists, and Pretty in Ink is her ultimate book, a revised, updated…

These glimpses of an advance copy of Prison Pit Book 5 by Johnny Ryan show a couple of the foes our antihero Cannibal Fuckface has to deal with: on the cover, one of the Holocaust Brothers and their death machines, unleashed by the Prison Boss to deal with C.F., and in the pages, the deadly Slitt, out for revenge. (This time, it's personal.) Can C.F. withstand the onslaught? Can the onslaught withstand C.F.? All this plus Abortion Bucket and the mystery of the Caligulon ("insert me into your urethra") in 124 gut-churning pages. Look for the book to drop like a hacked-off…

It seems like the last volume just came out, and already we have advance copies of Shimura Takako's Wandering Son Vol. 6 to show off to you. The series is starting to take up a nice chunk of shelf space! The emotional complexity continues to deepen for our gender-questioning junior high heroes and their quirky cast of friends, rivals, crushes, mentors, teachers, and families. Meanwhile, Vol. 5 inspired Terry Hong to write on the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Bookdragon blog: "Sweet and gentle, with just enough angst and worry over changing bodies and emotional alliances. Creator Shimura Takako continues to share an enlightening journey…

"Charles Schulz was an American treasure — an artist, philosopher, and keen observer of human life." — Bill Clinton "Charles Schulz was an innovative genius of American comics and also the marathon man, drawing strip after four-panel strip, batch after batch, writing the storyboards for the TV specials, year after year, creating a fantasy world that connected to kids as well as adults and all based on powerful iconic characters who express deep feelings of loneliness and resentment and despair. The feeling that everything is against us. The craving for love. An enormous earnestness about doing the right thing. There…

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1952-1955 (Vol. 1) by Charles M. Schulz 224-page full-color 13.25" x 9.5" hardcover • $49.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-692-8 Ships in: November 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Since their original publication, Peanuts Sundays have almost always been collected and reprinted in black and white, and generations of Peanuts fans have grown up enjoying this iteration of these strips. But many who read Peanuts in their original Sunday papers remain fond of the striking coloring, which makes for a surprisingly different reading experience. It is for these fans (and for Peanuts fans in general who want to experience this alternate/original version)…

The various plot points and mysteries that Johnny Ryan has been sprinkling between disembowelings, pummelings, severed limbs, freakouts, transmogrifications, defecation, and messed-up genitals over the first four installments of his hit series Prison Pit begin to come together in Book 5. In our downloadable excerpt, meet the asshole Prison Boss and his dumbshit minions, who witness what they think is the destruction of Cannibal Fuckface. But their premature celebration is interrupted with some bad news. This book should arrive in time to grab the scythe away from the withered fingers of 2013 and hack baby 2014 into flying gobbets of meat. Pre-order (and get…