Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

What? Jim Woodring just completed Weathercraft (due Spring '10) and he's already started work on a new Frank story? Truly our cups runneth over.

Scheduled to arrive in comics shops across the country this week: Like a Dog by Zak Sally. This hardcover one-man anthology (not entirely accurate: there are two collaborative pieces in there) collects the first two issues of Sally's Eisner-nominated self-published series Recidivist along with short stories from Mome and elsewhere. Our usual battery of previews & reviews can be found here; check with your local shop to confirm availability because your time is valuable and gas is still pretty expensive.

Carl (with cigar) at Skylight Books in LA in 2008 with Drew Friedman. Photo by Pam Noles. Mark Evanier has a remembrance.

Congratulations to Sergio Ponchione, whose Fantagraphics/Coconino "Ignatz" series Grotesque won the Gran Guinigi prize for Best Series at the 2009 Lucca Comics & Games festival! See photos of the ceremony and read Sergio's reaction to the award at his blog (translated). And further congratulations to Daniel Clowes, winner of Best Long Story for the Italian edition of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, and Robert Crumb, acknowledged as Maestro del Fumetto!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Reproducing unfinished roughs, penciled-in and scribbled-out dialogue, half-inked panels, torn-up and taped-together pages, even cropping what look like finished comics so that you can't see the whole thing, Columbia and his partners in the production of this book, Paul Baresh and Adam Grano, have produced a fractured masterpiece, a glimpse of the forbidden, an objet d'art noir. … The horror of Columbia's sickly-cute Pim & Francie vignettes–a zombie story, a serial-killer story, a witch-in-the-woods story, a haunted-forest story, a trio of chase sequences–is extraordinarily effective. … [T]hese scary stories and disturbing images are…

Jim Flora Art now has the super-popular, iconic Flora Mambo for Cats LP cover image in a new smaller (7" x 7"), affordable ($25) open edition giclee print. (The 20" x 20" limited edition silkscreen version is almost sold out.) Don't you just love their little mustaches? Makes a great combo gift along with any of our 3 Jim Flora art books.

Publishers Weekly names You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler to its list of Best Books of 2009 — Comics… …and the editors of Amazon.com name Locas II: Maggie, Hopey & Ray by Jaime Hernandez to their Best Books of 2009: Comics & Graphic Novels Top 10, in the #6 position. (Ed. note: As more end-of-year lists come in, we will collect the listed titles in a 2009 Critics' Picks category in our online shop, as we did for the 2008 Critics' Picks, in addition to noting them here on Flog.)

The blogosphere never rests — it's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Boyreau laments how digital phased out analog when it comes to our movie viewing; has the Internet done the same with his book [Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box] commemorating the losing side of that battle? I say no. It's not just because of the tremendous job Boyreau and Covey did with the cover reproductions, or the lovely, solid paper stock, or the cutesy slipcase. It's because Boyreau is right: the aura of the object is irreplaceable. A book collection of VHS box art contains…

You might call it the Crossover Event of the year. You might call it "Maakwood." You might call it an unholy alliance. Ladies and gentlemen, the Achewood guest strip by Tony Millionaire.

From Michael Steven Gregory, on YouTube: "Author Monte Schulz discusses the sale of his critically acclaimed first novel, and his decision to write a better book, This Side of Jordan, at the Southern California Writers' Conference."