Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

As the final embers of the Yule log die down, that wad of Christmas cash is starting to feel mighty warm in your pocket, isn't it? We're here to help you avoid unsightly burn holes in your pants and get what you really wanted for Christmas by offering 20% OFF everything on our website (including our already-discounted clearance items and gift sets) Wednesday, December 26 through Saturday, December 29, 2012! Just use the coupon code FANTACLAUS when you check out and you'll receive 20% off everything in your order. (If you prefer to shop by phone, just mention this offer…

As with every year we've been diligently compiling our books' appearances on end-of-year lists and for your browsing and shopping reference we have created a handy page of 2012 Critics' Picks, listing books that are being chosen by critics, fellow artists, readers and other comics professionals as the Best of 2012. (See also the 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 lists — these lists can also be found under "Award Winners" in our "Browse Shop" navigation tab.) This page will continue expanding as the year winds down and into the new year and more lists are announced. If you're a critic,…

The Comics Journal #302 edited by Mike Dean & Kristy Valenti; Gary Groth, Executive Editor 672-page black & white/color 7" x 8.5" softcoverISBN: 978-1-60699-603-4 Ships in: February 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The newly formatted, 600+ page Comics Journal proved a resounding success with 2011’s edition. 2012’s Volume 302 is sure to prove just as essential and exciting to comics readers worldwide. This edition’s cover feature is a long, intimate interview-portrait with and of Maurice Sendak, the greatest and most successful children’s book author of the 20th — and 21st — century, the author of Where the Wild Things…

If you are a fan of Significant Objects the book, you will want this lovely and delightful print now being offered through 20×200: "Significant Objects" by artist Kate Bingaman-Burt, created in association with the Significant Objects project with proceeds benefitting Girls Write Now. Available framed for easy gift-giving to the significant persons in your life.

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. "Oh man, so much great stuff to splurge on this week. Let's start withSpacehawk, Basil Wolverton's fabulous, fantabulous astronaut superhero from the alleged Golden Age. Lots of bizarre aliens and shifty-eyed villains in this one. Then there's the second volume of Ernie Bushmiller'sNancy (which I praised… the other week), and the second volume…

We sometimes lose track of things in our mail-order warehouse, and then someone notices them and says "hey, what's the deal with these?" When the item in question is a bunch of bookplates signed by Robert Crumb, it's kind of a big deal. These bookplates were originally made for our exclusive signed hardcover editions of The Complete Crumb Comics and the R. Crumb Sketchbook series. The hardcovers are mostly long sold out and out of print, but we don't want these leftovers to go to waste, so we are now offering them with the softcovers as well, for an additional $30 a pop. We have…

Classic adventures await you on the first Saturday in May, a.k.a. one of the funnest days of the year! We are pleased to present Hal Foster's Prince Valiant for Free Comic Book Day on May 4, 2013. This full-color comic collects two Prince Valiant stories from Hal Foster's 1950 peak: "Home Again," in which Val, Aleta, and newborn baby Prince Arn enjoy an eventful ocean journey back to Thule; and “The Challenge,” in which another knight's unwelcome advances on Aleta result in a classic duel with Valiant!

We're in the midst of assembling our Fall 2013-Winter 2014 season, and while there's still lots of stuff we're keeping under our collective hat for now (we've barely just revealed our Spring-Summer 2013 season, for pete's sake), some other stuff has been leaking out here and there… like this forthcoming book from Paul Hornschemeier, Artists Authors Thinkers Directors, collecting his sketchbook portraits from his Daily Forlorn blog. Pictures of smart people for smart people! Did excitement for this book cause yesterday's catastrophic Tumblr outage? We may never know.

The Grammar of Rock: Art and Artlessness in 20th Century Pop Lyrics by Alexander Theroux 352-page 6.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-616-4 Ships in: January 2013 (subject to change) – Pre-Order Now National Book Award nominee, critic and one of America’s least compromising satirists, Alexander Theroux takes a comprehensive look at the colorful language of pop lyrics and the realm of rock music in general in The Grammar of Rock: silly song titles; maddening instrumentals; shrieking divas; clunker lines; the worst (and best) songs ever written; geniuses of the art; movie stars who should never have raised their voice in song…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department:  Weird Horrors & Daring Adventures: The Joe Kubert Archives Vol. 1 by Joe Kubert; edited by Bill Schelly 240-page full-color 7.5" x 10.75" hardcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-581-5 See Previews / Order Now Joe Kubert sealed his reputation as one of the greatest American comicbook cartoonists of all time with the four-color adventures of Sgt. Rock of Easy Company, Enemy Ace, and Tarzan, all done for DC Comics during the 1960s and 1970s (themselves already the subject of archival editions)… but he had been working in comics since the 1940s. In fact,…