Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Apologies for the late update — technical difficulties and all that. This week's reviews:  • Joe McCulloch, AKA Jog, takes a good look at Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars • Joe/Jog also looks at Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes  • Sequart examines Explainers by Jules Feiffer • Retailer Mike Sterling says Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 by Michael Kupperman is "all you need to know about the new comics coming in this week," and then promptly sells out of them! Sequart looks at the issue too • This week's coverage of Strange and Stranger: The World of…

I may have witnessed one of the incidents of sexual harrassment at this year's Comic-Con described by our good friend and colleague John DiBello in his commentary posted on Kevin Church's blog [CORRECTION] on his hooved friend Bully's blog (oops, my RSS reader picked up the cross-post before the original post) — either that, or I witnessed an incident in addition to the ones he describes. John's comments are right on — I strongly encourage you to go check them out.

Is it still a "sneak peek" if the book is already available? If you haven't seen it yet, sure! Today we're bringing you a belated video and photo teaser of Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes, the first-ever collection of work from the controversial underground/outsider cartoonist. Watch as I try to flip past the most blatantly NSFW material! View the video above (or click here if it doesn't show up), and take a closer look in our photo gallery.

"La Semaine de la Bande Dessinée – A Week Celebrating the French Graphic Novel" got off to a great start last night at the Alliance Française of Seattle, as a standing-room-only crowd gathered to see our own Kim Thompson present his slide lecture "Vingt sur 20: French Comics from Goscinny to Satrapi," an informative and entertaining overview of 20 artists who transformed la bande desinée from a children's medium into "the ninth art." We are working on presenting this slideshow in interactive format, with audio, here on the Fantagrahpics website in the near future, so stay tuned! And don't forget that this…

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery proudly presents the return of Daniel Clowes on August 29. His appearance marks the premiere of Ghost World: The Special Edition. The reception will feature an exhibition of Clowes’ meticulously rendered original graphics related to the book, as well as a brief discussion of the artist's cinematic approach to cartooning moderated by Fantagraphics Books co-publisher Gary Groth. Admission is free, as always. Please join us on August 29, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM to welcome this extraordinary artist. Click here for more details and the full media release! (NOTE: The exclusive limited-edition silkscreen print shown above will…

A quick note to those of you who are on The YouTube: we've just uploaded over a dozen of our recent video previews that have heretofore been hosted only on Flickr. We like the video quality on Flickr better, but we know there's lots of you on YouTube, too, so please, watch and enjoy. By the way, we'd like to encourage those of you with your own blogs and websites to use our Flickr preview images and embed our videos, if you so desire. It's all kosher, so don't be shy.

Ellen Forney announces on her blog that her four-year gig illustrating the Lustlab Ad of the Week for The Stranger, as collected in her Fantagraphics book Lust, is coming to an end. As a swan song, an exhibit of Ellen's Lustlab originals will be on display at Babeland starting September 9, with Ellen performing her Lust multimedia presentation at their 15th anniversary party on September 18. Click here for more details.

The ongoing Yoda theme sketchbook rolled over into a second volume at Comic-Con. I continue to be flabbergasted by the amazing generosity and talent of all the contributing artists. Below, from the Fantagraphics family: Mary Woodring, Jordan Crane (2nd contribution), Jon Vermilyea, Mario Hernandez, Tim Hensley, John Pham, Jim Woodring and Zak Sally. Click the thumbnails for better views with commentary and more info on Flickr:          Also, I'm pleased to welcome our Top Shelf compatriot Leigh Walton to the theme sketchbook brotherhood with his brand-new Tintin characters book. I look forward to following its progress.

Jim Woodring originals now for sale at Comic Art Collective. Surely not to last long.

In an effort to bring Love and Rockets fans together (and, of course, to turn up the burner on the simmering saucepan o'hype for Love and Rockets: New Stories #1), we've created two new social networking destinations: • The Love and Rockets – The Hernandez Brothers Flickr Group – where Flickr members can share their L&R-related photos and scans and participate in message board discussions, and non-members can browse and enjoy all the images • The Love and Rockets – The Hernandez Brothers Facebook Page – where Facebook users can declare themselves Fans, upload fan photos and videos, leave messages,…