Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Daily clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources: • A heck of a Seattle Weekly illustration by Jeremy Eaton • Here's a color test for that series of School Spirits Stinckers that Steven Weissman's been working on (and here's another one — I like the green one better) • Dame Darcy has info on framed original art, a bunch of new handmade dolls (we saw them at Stumptown; they're gorge), new purses and more on her blog • Some great-looking digital prints of illustrations by Newave! artist Wayno are now available from Rockpop Gallery • It's…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • Reviews: At Comics Alliance, Jason Michelitch examines Our Gang Vol. 4 by Walt Kelly and Blazing Combat in the context of the "golden age of reprints," saying "Both are excellent books that reward both casual readers out for cheap thrills and stodgier folks who want some textual and contextual analysis to roll around in like a pig in a pen." He describes Blazing Combat as "an anti-war comic made up not of didactic preaching but of rough, unsentimentalized views of war with graphic violence and moral ambiguity front and center, produced at a time when…

There's a two-page spread of wallpaper designs in the forthcoming 6th issue of Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle and what kind of fun would we be if we didn't offer up a couple for your computer desktop? No kind, that's what. And they're one size fits all! If you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." Set your background to tile or repeat and voila, the pattern on your screen! "Here's Looking at You, Kid": "Disco Veggies": We also thought it might be…

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 by Michael Kupperman 32-page full-color 6.75" x 9.5" comic book • $4.95ISBN: 978-1-60699-422-1 Ships in: June 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Now in FULL COLOR! This issue includes Jungle Princess battling rhino traders, a story of Broadway theatrics in “All About Drainage,” more of America’s favorite physicist/writer duo, Twain & Einstein, plus slightly cursed merchandise, Cockney grave robbers, and Cowboy Oscar Wilde. Download an EXCLUSIVE 4-page PDF excerpt (4.7 MB) starring Jungle Princess! Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window): Bonus Savings: Order the Thoroughly Thrizzled Pack containing Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol….

Daily clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources: • At What Things Do, the concluding half of Jaime Hernandez's amazing "The Ghoul Man" • Newave! editor Michael Dowers has been working on a Tarot deck — here's the 6 of Wands, as posted on Facebook • Matthias Lehmann emerges to reveal some recent illustration and comics work • Looks like Frank Santoro's working out some Cold Heat layouts • Paul Hornschemeier Kroffts it up at Covered (and comments on his blog) • Anders Nilsen gets biblical on us • "The Rite of Spring" by Jim Flora…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "There’s a certain exuberance in this book, a zaniness that Schulz follows with fewer excursions into pure melancholia. … Each new volume [of The Complete Peanuts] adds a new layer of complexity to the work as a whole, and certainly puts the lie to the notion that Schulz had run out of ideas by this point. Indeed, Schulz had nothing left to prove and allowed himself to follow every flight of fancy that struck him, while never completely abandoning the core emotions of his characters." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

Jim Woodring will be a special guest at the Oslo Comics Expo, May 28-29, 2010 (info in English). Jim requests the pleasure of your company on his blog and reveals OH MY GOD IS THAT A T-SHIRT DESIGN I WANT IT. Ahem. Jim's Weathercraft and Jason's Low Moon are nominated for 2010 Sproing Awards (Best Translated Comic and Best Norwegian Comic, respectively), which are awarded at the festival. Congratulations to both!

Temperance by Cathy Malkasian 240-page two-color 8" x 10" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-323-1 Ships in: June 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Do ideas of war and enemies hold a people together? Is a culture of conflict too seductive not to be irresistible? These are the questions Cathy Malkasian explores in her second graphic novel, Temperance. Malkasian creates, as she did in the critically acclaimed Percy Gloom, a fully realized, multi-layered world, inhabited by vividly realized characters. After a brutal injury in battle, Lester has no memory of his prior life. For the next thirty years his wife does…

Signe Parkins, Peter Kielland, Thomas Thorhauge, Johan F. Krarup, Ib Kjeldsmark, Christoffer Zieler (who were all featured in From Wonderland with Love) and twelve other Danish cartoonists battle it out tournament-style in cartoonland until only one is left standing. Our good friends and colleagues at our From Wonderland co-publisher Aben Maler are posting a new duel from the first round each Friday on this page and collecting them all next month in a book titled Tegn eller dø. Five battles have already been waged — keep checking back for subsequent bouts.

We've got three softcover collections hitting comic shops this week. Read on for more info and for comics-bloggers' comments on the week's releases: Abandoned Cars (Softcover Edition) by Tim Lane 168-page black & white 7.5" x 9" softcover • $18.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-341-5 Pick your favorite of the two alternate covers in person! At Comics Comics, Joe McCulloch calls it a "fascinating 2008 story study of the great American mythological drama." The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon praises this new edition of "the debut book from the muscular cartoonist Tim Lane." Blazing Combat (Softcover Edition) by Archie Goodwin & various artists 208-page black…