Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

An all black-and-white installment. • A new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond from Kevin Huizenga • How about a nice bunch of recent con sketches by Stan Sakai? (They're mostly Usagi, but this one's for you, Jacob. Via The Comics Reporter) • Miner's lettuce is a great name for a plant — sketch by Debbie Drechsler • This piece by Kevin Nowlan appeared in this 1982 issue of The Comics Journal • This looks like one heck of a loopy story by Derek Van Gieson

A light batch of Online Commentary & Diversions: • Plug: "New in this week from Fantagraphics is Almost Silent, a collection of four earlier original graphic novels by the brilliant Jason. Regulars will know we love Jason’s work and if you’ve been meaning to read some and somehow never quite got round to grabbing the earlier works then this lovely little hardback is the perfect introduction (and it even looks pretty on your shelf)." – The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log • Interview: At Super I.T.C.H., Beth Davies-Stofka, who says "Fantagraphics’ The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons…

↓ ↓ (not final cover) I think I stumbled across the missing link between the new softcover edition of Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars (coming next month) and Blake Bell's Fire & Water: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics (coming this Summer).

Mark your calendars for the big Blab! art show at the Society of Illustrators in NYC — it goes up March 24 and the opening reception is on March 26. More info here. (And for all the latest Blabby updates, join the BLABworld Facebook page.)

Pics & links ahoy: • Paul Hornschemeier is once again drawing things for money. Get yourself something nice! • "This Already Happened" part 7 by Steven Weissman at What Things Do • It's Laura Park's first Geek Love illustration for the Picture Book Report project • Say, I didn't know ¡Journalista!'s Dirk Deppey could draw. He's looking for some artistic advice, if you have it

Neverending Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Only the Cinema's Ed Howard concludes counting down The Best Comics of the Decade: the top 20 includes "The Lute String" (available in Mome Vols. 9 & 10) by Jim Woodring at #16 ("It's moving, funny, and as with all of Woodring's work it demands a close reading"), Alias the Cat (originally The Stuff of Dreams) by Kim Deitch at #14 ("It's funny, goofy, exciting and far-ranging in its imaginative nonsense accumulations, and throughout it all Deitch's fond sense of nostalgia for a world that never quite was lends emotional heft to the…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Almost Silent by Jason 304-page black & white/duotone 6.5" x 8.75" hardcover • $24.99 ISBN: 978-1-60699-315-6 Add to Cart • More Info & Previews Almost Silent packages four original Jason graphic novels — three of them out of print since mid-2008 — into one compact, hardcover omnibus collection. (As the title indicates, this volume favors Jason’s pantomime works.) “You Can’t Get There from Here,” the longest story of the book (and the only one to be printed in color — well, a color), tells the tale of a love triangle involving…

Uncovered Property by Carol Tyler from Doodybrains on Vimeo. Here's a story of Carol's from Late Bloomer turned into a "motion comic" by  director Allen Colombo. Cool.

Click to see more better: • A recent commission by Richard Sala • Marco Corona draws a platypus for the launch of a new magazine by that name • More sketches (above) and the resulting finished watercolor (not shown here) by Mark Kalesniko • Steve Brodner's New Yorker ode to the Village Vanguard (with lots of preparatory sketches)

Bring on the Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Only the Cinema's Ed Howard begins counting down The Best Comics of the Decade: part 2 includes Black Hole by Charles Burns at #36 ("Few books do a better job of capturing the fear, and the excitement, of nascent desire and adolescent longing, as these diseased teens are driven mad by hormones and embarrassment"), Epileptic and Babel by David B. at #30 ("With his elegant style, dominated by striking blacks and contrasts, he invents numerous metaphors and visualizations for his brother's disease, treating the fight against the disease as a physical,…