Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Castle Waiting Vol. 2: Definitive Edition by Linda Medley 472-page black & white 5.75" x 8.25" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-633-1 Ships in: April 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now BARGAIN COMBO: Castle Waiting Vols. 1-2 Definitive Gift Set Price: $59.94 $47.95 With its long-awaited second volume, Linda Medley's witty and sublimely drawn fantasy eases into a relaxed comedy of manners as Lady Jain settles into her new life in Castle Waiting. Unexpected visitors result in the discovery and exploration of a secret passageway, not to mention an epic bowling tournament. A quest for ladies' underpants, the identity of Pindar's father, the…

Wandering Son fans, we know you've been jumping up and down in anticipation of the new volume of Shimura Takako's bittersweet, beautifully told saga of two gender-questioning teens and their friends & family. Well, this is either wonderful news or agonizing torture for you: we got our advance copies of Volume 4, which means it should be on shelves in June (and available from us a bit sooner)! As the kids get older and deeper into the throes of adolescence, the more complex their lives get and the deeper the drama gets! We've posted the entire first chapter for you to read for…

Cathy Malkasian's debut graphic novel Percy Gloom netted her the Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award at the 2008 Eisner Awards. Now we're pleased to present the sequel, Wake Up, Percy Gloom! In it, our diminutive, bulb-headed hero seemingly pulls a Rip Van Winkle. Awakening in an unfamiliar land, he embarks on a quest to find his mother; fantastical happenings ensue. Whether you were beguiled by the first book or you're meeting Percy for the first time, you'll be sure to find his gorgeously-illustrated new adventure full of delight, wonder, humor and pathos. The book's at the printer for release later…

In keeping with a long-standing hip hop tradition, Ed Piskor has asked a bunch of his pals & peers to "guest" on his new book Hip Hop Family Tree (coming this Fall) by contributing pin-up pages. Traditional Comics maestro (and Gangsta Rap Posse creator) Benjamin Marra just posted up his tribute to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Donald, the nephews, and Unca Scrooge are back for more laughs and adventures featuring cattle rustlers, jewel smugglers, deep sea diving, stampeding elephants, a rocket race, golf, and a g-g-g-ghost! Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Old Castle's Secret is the 4th book (and Vol. 6 chronologically) of our Complete Carl Barks Disney Library series, and it's coming your way in June! Here's a peek at an advance copy. If you've picked up other volumes in the series so far, you know why fans and critics have been raving about these books. Why, both The A.V. Club and Paste named the first book the best…

We're galloping up on Free Comic Book Day and we just got advance copies of our special FCBD comic featuring Hal Foster's Prince Valiant! This swell 32-pager contains 2 sequences of Foster's strip from 1950, reformatted and edited for the comic book format. (You'll be able to find the original strips in all their glory in Prince Valiant Vol. 7, coming this Summer!) Check out a PDF preview of the first 7 pages, courtesy the fine FCBD folks. You'll be able to pick up your FREE copy of this special comic exclusively at participating comic shops on Saturday, May 4, 2013. Lots of shops have sales…

Are you ready to get Groove-y? Our new, redesigned, remastered paperback edition of the great Gene Deitch's The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove is just a couple months away and we have advance copies in house to show off. Collecting Deitch's jazz illustrations and cartoons from The Record Changer magazine 1945-1951 in an oversized coffee table book, it's a jazz fiend's, vinyl collector's, midcentury illustration lover's, retro-phile's dream! Right now you can groove on an 18-page excerpt and pre-order a copy (at 30% off through March 18 as part of our Art & Illustration sale!) right here.

We've just uploaded a 16-page excerpt (comprising the entire first chapter) of Goddamn This War! by Jacques Tardi & Jean-Pierre Verney for your perusal. This section of Tardi's second WWI masterwork covers 1914, the first year of the war, told from the somewhat jaundiced (though not completely despairing yet) point of view of a French infantry soldier, illustrated in Tardi's loose-yet-precise pen and striking watercolors. View the preview in the embedded reader here or get the PDF directly. We've just approved the printer's proofs which means the book should be hitting shelves in June or so — you can get it a little sooner if…

We're having a sale on books in our Art & Illustration category! Save at least 30% on art books, illustration collections, exhibit catalogs, sketchbooks, pin-ups and more. Featuring artists such as Nell Brinkley, Jack Cole, Al Columbia, Dave Cooper, R. Crumb, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Jim Flora, Drew Friedman, Paul Hornschemeier, Lorenzo Mattotti, Malcolm McNeill, Tony Millionaire, Robert Williams, Gahan Wilson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Basil Wolverton, Jim Woodring and many more; anthologies like Arf, Beasts!, Blab! and more; and much much more spanning vintage classics and cutting-edge contemporary work — save on dozens of our best and most beautiful books! It runs 4…

In a couple of months we have a new reprint of The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 5: Happy Hippy Comix coming your way, and we got an advance sample copy to show off to you. As you might surmise from the title, this volume has some of Crumb's most transgressive and drug-influenced stuff, with Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Angelfood McSpade all taking star turns, among other kooky characters, in material from Zap, Snatch and elsewhere. Plus Janis Joplin! It's wild, man! The original edition brought in a 1991 Harvey Award for Best Domestic Reprint Project and Booklist had this to…