Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Daily clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources: • Ellen Forney's on the cover (as both artist and subject, with her BF) of this week's issue of The Stranger • On Facebook, Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable Fan Page posts the most recent Unlovable strip from Bust • Johnny Ryan says on his LJ "One of my comics will be in a group print show this weekend in France." • Another really nice bird sketch (this time a Cooper's hawk) by Debbie Drechsler • Meathaus posts scans of the latest issue of Charles Burns's Free Shit minicomic…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Ultimately, …despite the refreshing sexual frankness that Hernandez proceeds with, there is much sadness and heartbreak throughout [High Soft Lisp]. …[O]ne wonders if the lingering bittersweetness at the end makes more sense in middle age, than it would in youth… Good stuff, of course." – Mark London Williams, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica • Review: In this video review at Indochine's Top Shelf, "video vixen" Mal Malloy offers a unique perspective on Daniel Clowes's David Boring • Profile: NBC New York's Courtney Humiston reports from Dash Shaw & Frank Santoro's discussion at NYC's McNally…

This weekend join Carol Tyler (Saturday only) & Paul Hornschemeier at the Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo (along with old-school Fanta alum William Messner-Loebs and many other guests) in Columbus OH. Of course, we ourselves will be out at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, OR this weekend — stay tuned for more info about that.

During Jaime Hernandez's recent visit to NYC for the MoCCA festival, The Village Voice's R.C. Baker took him to MOMA (making the unfailingly-punctual artist late for his signing at our table) and then wrote this cover story about it for this week's issue. The Maggie-and-Hopey-in-the-Big-Apple cover illo is the icing on the cake. (Also of note in the issue: "The Band Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb" by Ward Sutton.)

More Wally Wednesday fun! We've posted this Tim Hensley-created animation of Wally Gropius before, but did you know there are more sizes to be had? Show your Wally love by downloading one of these banners and putting it on your website/blog/profile page/etc., linked back to: http://www.fantagraphics.com/wallygropius

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Wally Wednesday continues! Give your computer the lucrative look with the official Wally Gropius desktop wallpaper pattern, based on the endpapers of the book. 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 endpaper pattern on your screen!

The Amazon and the nebbish, a match made in Hollywood heaven. This illustration by Drew Friedman is now available as a limited-edition fine art print. Even if you're not buying the print, it's always worth clicking over to read the descriptions and background info for the prints on the Drew Friedman Fine Art site.

Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley 64-page full-color 10" x 12.5" hardcover • $18.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-355-2 Ships in: May 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Superficially resembling 1960s teenage humor comics, Tim Hensley’s graphic novel Wally Gropius is actually an acute satire of power, celebrityhood, and modern culture that tells the story of the titular character, who bears a closer resemblance to a teenaged Richie Rich or a classmate of Archie Andrews at Riverdale High than he does the famous Bauhaus architect whose name he shares. Wally is the human Dow Jones, the heir to a vast petrochemical conglomerate. When the…

Shipping to comic shops nationwide (as noted by the comics cognoscenti quoted below): The Culture Corner by Basil Wolverton 160-page full-color 9" x 6.75" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-308-8 Joe McCulloch at Comics Comics describes it aptly: "An interesting experiment in Golden Age of Reprints presentational engineering, this new 160-page landscape-format Fantagraphics hardcover collects all of the great Basil Wolverton’s crackpot daily advice strips as seen in the pages of Fawcett’s Whiz Comics, 1945-52, presented in comparison with Wolverton’s original pencil roughs for what looks like every installment." The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon brings the basketball metaphor: "Who doesn't want to…