Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

We had a handful of our trademark video & photo previews from Summer 2009 that we regrettably never had a chance to upload at the time; we’ve been adding them one by one over the last couple of months and the final one is now up, for Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock 'n' Roll Life by Bruce Paley and Carol Swain. (The hot pink design elements and rock 'n' roll subject matter pair well with this morning's Destroy All Movies!!! preview, no?) It's embedded above and at slightly higher resolution on the book's product page; for best viewing, view…

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 Ships in: November 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now 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 from around the…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…[From Shadow to Light: The Life and Art of Mort Meskin] is extremely informative and truly wonderful… Evocatively written by creative/art director, designer, educator and biographical author Steven Brower, with dozens of first hand accounts from family, friends and contemporaries; the sad, unjust life of this major figure of popular art is fully explored and gloriously justified by every miraculous page of his work reproduced herein. […] Brilliant, captivating, utterly unforgettable and unknown, Meskin’s enforced anonymity is finally coming to an end and this magical chronicle is hopefully only the first step in…

Special guest Larry Storch regaled the lucky SRO crowd at Drew Friedman's Too Soon? signing at Desert Island in Brooklyn on Friday night with a short set of jokes and anecdotes, captured on video. Wonderful! Gabe of Desert Island promises to post audio of the entire presentation shortly, so we'll be sure to bring you that as soon as it's up.

  Join us at the Alternative Press Expo at the Concourse exhibit hall in San Francisco this weekend! You can find us at tables 113-116 (a different location than the past couple of years, for you APE vets out there). Myself and our Ambassador of Awesomeness Janice Headley will be staffing the table. Our signing and panel schedule is as follows: Saturday: 12:00 – 1:00PM Spotlight on Megan Kelso, moderated by Marc Weidenbaum 1:00 – 3:00PM Megan Kelso booth signing  3:00 – 5:00PM Tony Millionaire booth signing 5:00 – 6:00PM Spotlight on Tony Millionaire, moderated by Renée French Sunday:    1:00 –…

Little Maakies on the Prairie by Tony Millionaire 120-page black & white 12" x 5" hardcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-392-7 Ships in: November 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now 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, ginned-up id, engaging…

The G4 cable network sent comedian Jonah Ray to talk to us and other indie publishers at Comic-Con in San Diego last summer for a segment on Fresh Ink Online, posted over the weekend.

Dave Cooper and Johnny Ryan graced us with their presence at our Bookstore & Gallery last night to celebrate the release of their respective new books Bent and Prison Pit Book 2 and a fine time was had by all. Thanks to everybody who came out and made it a bustling crowd on a rainy Saturday night! For those who couldn't make it (or would like to relive the experience), browse our photoset, which includes shots of all of Dave's drawings on exhibit. We'll post pics of Johnny's visit to Floating World in Portland and from Dave's other book tour…

Our weekly strips from the Steves: — Monday's Strip by Stephen DeStefano (view larger) Originally run as an experiment on Stephen's blog starting in 2008, Monday's Strip is re-presented here. — Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

Today's (and yesterday's — sorry for the interruption) Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Yes, [Special Exits] is a heartbreaking — even harrowing — tale, one made all the more moving and immediate by the creator’s nuanced gift for capturing the essence of her parents on the page. But it’s also a tale told with consummate skill, filled with mordant humor and real compassion, an almost embarrassing amount of candor, and a deep abiding love and respect for its subjects. […] Ultimately, it’s these simple and true moments of mundane magic which marks Special Exits as more than just one…