Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

The approach of Fall always means one thing around here (at least for another couple of years), and that's the imminent arrival of the latest volume of The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. The ol' blockhead graces the cover of the 20th installment of the long-running series, covering the years 1989-1990. Schulz continues to stretch his wings and experiment with the new variable format of his daily strips, and the jokes are just as warm and funny as ever, and increasingly reflective. Enigmatic author Lemony Snicket provides the introduction. Our 17-page excerpt (for reading and downloading) includes strips for the entire month of January…

After dropping the first photos of Vip: The Mad World of Virgil Partch on you yesterday, we hustled to put together this 26-page excerpt for you to read and download. Peruse the Table of Contents, read the first 2 chapters, marvel at the wealth of photos, and ogle Vip's undulating line in copious examples of original artwork. This fabulous and impressive book comes out in November and is sure to have a Very Important Place on your shelf or coffee table!

We're about a month from the arrival of the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2010's hit Newave!: Treasury of Mini Comics Vol. 1 gives you over 800 pages dedicated to collecting and showcasing nearly 6 decades of the best DIY comics in a compact, brick-like hardcover. A jam-packed book calls for a jam-packed preview and that's what we're giving you: 52 pages (including the Table of Contents) with samples from nearly every contributor! Give it a skim, download it, and pre-order the book here. (And if you don't have the essential Newave! yet, get both books in a set for 20% off!)

"Not your standard spookshow, but rather a surreal, grotesque Victorian creep-out, Hans Rickheit's 2009 Squirrel Machine introduces us to the world of William and Edward Topor, brothers with a penchant for exploring the otherworldly bowels of their disturbing, maze-like mansion, when not making musical instruments and other devices out of animal parts. Rickheit's detailed black and white illustrations provide the unforgettable backdrop to his ultimately tragic and gruesome tale." – Rue Morgue "This carefully constructed tale… strikes me as being one of the few original works of art that I’ve seen published in North America over the last two decades,…

Vip, Vip, hooray! One of the weirdest and funniest cartoonists of the 20th century finally gets his due in VIP: The Mad World of Virgil Partch by Jonathan Barli. This weighty coffee-table tome celebrates the man and his art across over 200 oversized, lavishly illustrated pages. Partch revolutionized the single-panel gag cartoon as we know it by injecting a healthy dose of absurdity and adult subject matter — namely sex and booze — and became hugely successful along the way. And yet his life and work has never been comprehensively examined, until now! Archivist, editor, writer and designer Jonathan Barli has…

The Squirrel Machine (Softcover Edition) by Hans Rickheit 192-page black & white 7" x 10" softcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-646-1 See More Previews / Order Now An anachronistic parable for the convulsive elite — now in paperback. What is The Squirrel Machine? • An immutably strange and haunting narrative that transcends known logics and presumptive dream-barriers; • A distillation of subconscious beauty and inspired madness; • A dangerous object for the incautious; • A revelation for the undernourished crypto-seeker; • The virgin caress of unconsummated apocalypse; • The unspeakable thing that you always knew. It’s also the legendary obscurantist cartoonist Hans Rickheit’s most…

Janet Hamlin's first on-screen interview about her new book Sketching Guantanamo: Court Sketches of the Military Tribunals, 2006-2013 (coming in October) was aired on the Arabic news channel Al Arabiya this week. Filmed on location at Guantanamo after a full day of hearings, the video shows Janet in the compound, journalists photographing her drawings, and some nice views of the book including the striking shot below. It's a perfect introduction to Janet, her work, and the book.

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: The Squirrel Machine (Softcover Edition) by Hans Rickheit 192-page black & white 7" x 10" softcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-646-1 See Previews / Order Now Set in a fictional 19th century New England town, The Squirrel Machine initially chronicles the relationship and maturation of Edmund and William Torpor. But the two brothers quickly elicit the scorn and recrimination of an unamused public when they reveal their musical creations built from strange technologies and scavenged animal carcasses. Driven to seek a concealment for their aberrant vocation, they make a startling discovery. Perhaps they will divine…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department:  The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora edited by Irwin Chusid & Barbara Economon 180-page full-color 11" x 10" softcover • $34.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-655-3 See Previews / Order Now “Music releases my inhibitions. Gradually, I’m listening to music and my spirit gets free and I work without thinking. Which is how you really create—without thinking. Music — jazz in particular — helps me flow. I can swing a little bit — try this, try that.” – Jim Flora, interview, 1990 Since the publication of The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora in 2004,…

"Johnny Craig is probably my all-time favorite cartoonist. I love everything about his work, from the scripts to the storytelling, to the flawless ink lines. The true under-rated genius of EC Comics." – Ed Brubaker (Criminal, Fatale, Incognito, Gotham Central, Scene of the Crime) "All of these books are essential purchases for comics fans… These are the books that best show off how EC took genre stories seriously, striving to create comics that didn’t treat readers as naive or ignorant." – Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times "It's fitting that Fantagraphics — long-time champion of the rights and importance of comics…