Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Just had to grab some Simpsons screencaps featuring Fantagraphics product placement:

Via The Beat: Spanish artist Max has been awarded the first-ever Premio Nacional del Cómic 2007 (National Comics Award) by the Spanish Ministry of Culture for his book Bardín the Superrealist. This is the second major European comics award received by Bardín, and this one comes with a nice fat €15,000 prize. According to the Spanish Reuters article (as translated by Babelfish), "'the jury considers' Bardín the Superrealist 'a graphically overwhelming work, with an original script and filled with literary, philosophical and cinematographic references,' the ministry in an official notice said." Congratulations, Max!

Meat Cake #16by Dame Darcy Meat Cake profiles the romantic Rudolph Valentino, the secret language of flowers, love spells, and spells for mermaid hair. Plus: don't miss the true tale of the magical ball and a kitten left by the faeries in a box of nails, depictions of 16th century folk ballads about the uselessness of everything, as only Dame Darcy can depict. And… sex magic! 32-page black & white comic $3.95Order Now!

This report of Joe's recent visit with the Walker Art Center Teen Program is really great.

We were extremely pleased to learn that Ellen Forney and Sherman Alexie won a National Book Award for young people's literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Alexie and illustrated by Forney. Hearty congratulations! You can congratulate Ellen in person tonight at Richard Hugo House, or, if you're patient and/or cheap, at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on February 9th at the opening of her exhibit "Lust," celebrating the release of her new book Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads from Seattle's The Stranger. More details TBA.

Holy wow: 10 Things Zine has posted this historic photo of Beat Happening playing at our old warehouse back in 1992 or '93:

Eric's been having trouble with Blogger, so he asked me to post these pictures he took at Wordstock. Captions by Eric.

Our stunning display of awesomeness:

Our final remaining 2007 releases have just been added to the website and made available for pre-order on our Upcoming Releases page. Pictured above: The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo Vol. 2; the 9th volume in our Krazy & Ignatz series, "A Ragout of Raspberries"; and The Comics Journal #287, featuring a cover interview with Jeffrey Brown. Call 1-800-657-1100 (or 206-524-1967 outside the U.S.) or click the covers above and below to order online right now. Apart from the Journal, most of our books go out to our pre-order customers before they arrive in bookstores and comic shops, which means…

Mr. Reynolds represents at the Wordstock book festival in Portland, OR last weekend: Last night, a newly-shorn Mr. Reynolds interviews Adrian Tomine at the University Book Store in Seattle:

Publishers Weekly has named Jason's I Killed Adolf Hitler to their Best Books of 2007 list. They say: "Hard-boiled hit men, a time machine and a quest to save the world add up to a story about the permanence of love in this darkly humorous tale." Also on the list: Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, illustrated by our pal Ellen Forney, who is called out for her "witty cartoons." Congratulations to all!