Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Here's a slightly belated look at the two ultimate entries (until we go back and reprint the early Eclipse volumes) in our Krazy & Ignatz series of Krazy Kat reprint volumes: 1943-1944 (top) and The Complete Sunday Strips 1935-1944, the giant hardcover compiling the last 5 volumes (bottom). Watch these video/photo slideshow teasers for exciting fold-out action, glinting gold foil stamping, and more. Click here and here if the slideshows don't appear above.

Here's what the Internet says about our books this (relatively quiet) week: • Kevin Church sandwiches a thumbs-up for Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars amongst some other reviews; Alan David Doane calls the book "thrilling"; • Blog Flumer Ken Parille says it best: "In anticipation of the forthcoming release of Daniel Clowes's Ghost World: Special Edition, I take a close look at the comic's closing line of dialogue" • Mano de Papel notes our publications in general (in Spanish) • Jog notes our New Comics Day releases and, while complimentary toward the books, doesn't care for our slideshow previews • Whatever…

Time for a new installment of Steven Weissman's in-progress pages from "Blue Jay," an epic 32-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures. In this week's episode: Dead Boy, no! (Remember, you must be registered and logged in to read.)

Krazy and Ignatz: The Complete Sunday Strips 1935-1944 By George Herriman Our second limited-edition deluxe Krazy hardcover (it's Volume 3, but the second to be published; Volume 1 is still forthcoming) collects the second batch of five Krazy & Ignatz softcover books we have published, comprehensively compiling the years 1935 through 1944, under hard covers. It's not a slipcase, it's a single hardcover book. The covers to the original five softcover books are NOT included, but literally everything else is. And yes, we are similarly collecting the years 1916-1924 as those softcover volumes are completed. (Since we get asked this…

What makes this extra-great is that it's totally hand-lettered rather than typeset as usual. I've always dug Ellen's lettering.

1916-2008.

A site visitor tipped us off to FriendFeed, a social networking aggregator site, and we decided to give it a try. If you're hip to their thing, you can subscribe to us and follow our Flog, Flickr, GoodReads, Twitter and YouTube activity all in one place. (You can also follow the feed via RSS.) You might also notice the FriendFeed widget in the right column on Flog, which is currently there on an experimental trial basis. We'll see how it goes!

Cynthia Rose, co-curator of La Semaine de la Bande Desinée, presents this excellent summary website with information about the project and hundreds of photos from the events (Kim Thompson's presentation and David B.'s talks and appearances) by photographer Steve Sampson. (This image of Jim Woodring at the David B. signing is particularly unmissable.)

Hey, remember that mammoth quantity of new books we dropped here on the website a couple of weeks ago? A bunch of them should be landing on your local comic shop tomorrow (not today, due to the holiday): • Deitch's Pictorama by Kim, Seth and Simon Deitch• Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers• The Portable Frank by Jim Woodring• Baobab #3 by Igort Plus new printings of: • The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 11 by Robert Crumb• Krazy & Ignatz 1925-1926 by George Herriman Impress the clerks with your savvy by checking out our descriptions and previews at…

With 5 new issues from ongoing series in our deluxe Ignatz format having just come out this summer, we're giving you a chance to catch up on back issues and check out some of the other series in the format for just $5.95 each — that's over 25% off the $7.95 cover price — throughout September 2008. (Sale ends at 11:59 PM Pacific time, September 30, 2008.) Created by an international roster of cartoonists (from Anders Nilsen to Zak Sally; from Gipi to Igort to Martí), comics in the Ignatz series are magazine-sized, printed in duotone on heavy premium paper,…