Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Have a great holiday weekend, America. Remember: light fuse, get away. • The blogger known as Polinees on Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories by Jason • Winnipeg's Uptown Magazine says Jason's The Last Musketeer is "great fun" • The North Adams Transcript on Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco • Kevin Church posts his favorite page from The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez • Writer Reading looks at R. Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz's Kafka • Cool Aggregator recommends Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button, and Panels and Pixels includes it in a graphic-novel roundup post •…

From me, to Irwin Chusid, back to me, to you… I had the luck to find this great, seldom-seen Jim Flora illustration in a copy of the June, 1964 issue of Venture: The Travelers World that I stumbled upon at a thrift store last weekend. Our Paul Baresh scanned it up real pretty and I sent it to Irwin, who posted it on the Jim Flora art blog, where you can see a larger version.

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Today's installment features a great collection of classic '50s romance comics compiled and edited by John Benson: Romance Without Tears A first-time collection of the best romance comics of the 1950s. These bright, naturalistic tales (originally published by Archer St. John and written by unrecognized comics master Dana Dutch) are about high school girls who may be inexperienced but definitely have minds…

The Comics Journal #291 Edited by Michael Dean & Kristy Valenti; Gary Groth, executive editor This issue’s cover interview is with comics artist Tim Sale, the house artist for the television series Heroes. Sale’s artwork has also graced prestigious mainstream projects such as Batman: the Long Halloween, Spider-Man Blue and Superman Confidential. The Eisner winner chats about his stylized takes on characters such as Spider-Man, Batman, Daredevil, Catwoman and Superman, as well as his earlier work on comics such as Grendel, and elaborates on the dynamics of collaborating with writers such as Jeph Loeb and Darwyn Cooke. The Journal queries…

Usagi Yojimbo Book 5: Lone Goat and Kid (New Softcover Edition) By Stan Sakai Now in a new softcover printing with a newly-designed cover! This fifth volume collects the epic-length "Blood Wings," in which Usagi battles a fearsome clan of ninja bats, while "Lone Goat and Kid" offers a cunning and affectionate parody of the famous "Lone Wolf and Cub" manga while doubling as one of Usagi's most dramatic and heartfelt adventures. "Frost and Fire" and "The Way of the Samurai" provide the psychological drama of this volume, which is rounded out by one of the most unique Usagi tales…

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Today's installment features Swedish artist Max Andersson, whose work Charles Burns describes as "my kind of fun": Pixy Alka Seltzer and Angina Pectoris have all the luck — bad, that is. They've been ejected into the street because their apartment was put to sleep, Angina had to abort their child (the result of a malfunctioning Safe-Sex bodysuit) — how could it get…

Hey Canada, happy Canada Day! Canadians (specifically, Ottawans) can spend America's big national holiday on Friday, July 4, at the opening of an exhibit of Dave Cooper's preliminary pencil sketches for his paintings of pillowy women (see Overbite and Underbelly) at Galerie La Petite Mort from 7-10 PM.

For one reason or another, every once in a while one of our books will slip under the radar and go under-appreciated, or maybe it made an initial splash but has since faded from the general consciousness. For the month of July, 2008, we're highlighting some of these "hidden gems" from our back catalog and encouraging you to discover some great but obscure books by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Click here for the full selection. (Sale ends at 11:59 PM Pacific time, July 31, 2008.) We'll also be spotlighting these books with a daily feature…

The venerable Inkstuds internet radio program kicks off a month-long focus on Canadian cartoonists by interviewing Hall of Best Knowledge and Mome cartoonist Ray Fenwick.