Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Congratulations to Joe Daly, whose Dungeon Quest: Book 1 (already published by our friends at L'Association in France and coming this Spring from Fantagraphics) received the Prix special du Jury at the Festival International de la Bande Desinée d'Angoulême over the weekend. See The Comics Reporter (or any number of other sites) for the complete list of prize winners.

Peter Bagge held forth to an appreciative crowd at Seattle's Central Library on Saturday to close out this month's Comixtravaganza programming at SPL, presenting a slideshow and discussing his work and career, followed by a lively Q&A session. Check out photos of the whole slideshow on our Flickr page, including a couple of shots of David Lasky (Hotwire) and Greg Stump (The Comics Journal) leading an all-ages comics workshop. SPL should be posting the audio from Peter's talk on their website soon — we'll let you know when that's up (and if we're feeling ambitious, maybe we'll make a video…

Friday nite webcomics party… new weekly strips for you… The last of three sequential bar gags in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson… …your situation may be desperate, little guy, but that's probably not a good idea in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan…. …and unless I'm mistaken this is Michelle's first appearance in Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman.

Not many Online Commentary & Diversions links today but they're high-powered: • List: Matthew J. Brady posts his top-20 Best Comics of 2009, with You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler at #10 ("It's an artful mix, matching a biographer's insight for detail with beautifully-flowing art and real emotions.  If the next two volumes are this good, Tyler's work will be a modern classic, one for others to study for years.") and Low Moon by Jason at #8 ("It's funny, poignant, and, as always, full of insight about humanity, even though everyone is a…

The new issue of Johnny's self-published series is now available from his online shop!

Drew Friedman pays tribute to the late J.D. Salinger by presenting his classic strip (co-written with K. Bidus) "Guilty Pleasures of Literary Greats" (which we've previously featured for its documentation of the Vladimir Nabokov/Hank Ketcham connection). Even if you've seen this strip before, it's worth a re-visit, and Drew outlines some of Salinger's other pop-culture obsessions to boot.

Robert Goodin gives us a lovely two-page glimpse of "The Spiritual Crisis of Carl Jung," a 24-page story to appear in Mome Vol. 19 or 20, later this year.

A variety of Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: The Comics Journal's R.C. Harvey names Sam's Strip ("because its spoof of comic strip cartooning is a joy to behold and because it has been so long awaited") and Humbug ("because, like Sam’s Strip, we’ve waited so long for a reappearance and because of the exquisite care Fantagraphics took in making the copies of the magazine’s pages as exact as possible") as two of the Best Reprints of 2009 • Review: "…[T]he handful of short stories [in The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.] represent great leaps in, or at…

During our recent inventory count at our storied and labyrinthine warehouse, we discovered additional copies of several items thought to be sold out and unavailable for weeks, months — or years! Grab these gems while you can before they run out again — quantities are limited! The Bill Sienkiewicz Sketchbook Introduction by Alan Moore! The Comics Journal Special Edition – Summer 2002 The premiere second issue of the "supersized" Comics Journals, with a great Woodring interview and cover. The Complete E.C. Segar Popeye Vol. 9: 1934-1935 (Hardcover) Our original Popeye reprint series from the 1980s. Handsome clothbound volume. Dead End…