Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

It's nearly time to raise a glass and tie one on with our classy-looking, fun-sized hardcover gift book Cork High and Bottle Deep by Virgil Partch. Vip's booze cartoons are hilarious even if you're not three sheets to the wind. Our research department has not yet read the book while in their cups — we need to beef up our safety equipment first — but we now have our advance copies ready for the lab. OK, before I pull a muscle on this metaphor, check out our excerpt and pre-order your copy of the book (for delivery in a bit…

There's so much incredible stuff to show you in our two-volume complete hardcover collection of witzend, our downloadable preview runs to a ridiculous 87 pages (and 45 MB), with a smattering of pages and the cover art from each issue, the Tables of Contents, and a bit more. In rough order of appearance: Wallace Wood, Al Williamson, Jack Gaughan, Gray Morrow, Harvey Kurtzman, Warren Sattler, Reed Crandall, Don Martin, Steve Ditko, Art Spiegelman, Richard Bassford, Roger Brand, Frank Frazetta, Grass Green, Vaughn Bodé, James Frankfort, Steranko, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, John Benson, Sorrel Garika, Ed Paschke, Bernie Wrightson, Alphonse Mucha, Bill…

Remember, use your inky powers for good, like Mickey Mouse cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson, not for evil, like the Phantom Blot, the marquee villain in Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 5. (Then again, Gottfredson's ink brought the Blot to life, so perhaps there was some wickedness in his well…) After a detour into color Sunday strips, we're back to the black & white dailies in our Eisner Award-winning series. Disney's big-eared silver-screen star graces the silvery cover and tumbles through adventure after adventure in the crisply-reproduced pages. Advance copies in house means the book's about 2 months away from release; more…

You may have seen this image floating around the internet for a little while, but let's make it official: it's the cover art for the second volume of Ed Piskor's New York Times best selling series Hip Hop Family Tree! Afrika Bambaataa… in… spaaaaaaace! Remember how fast the first printing of Vol. 1 sold out? And then how fast the second printing sold out? Yeah, we're bumping up the print run for this volume, but you'll still want to reserve your copy today to ensure you're not left empty-handed when they hit shelves come July.

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: The EC Comics Slipcase Vol. 1by Harvey Kurtzman, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, Al Williamson, Al Feldstein et al. 832-page four-volume hardcover 7.5" x 10.5" x 4" slipcased box set • $94.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-728-4 See Previews / Order Now   The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library Volumes 1-4: • EC Comics — the most acclaimed and most vilified publisher of all time.• Superb art by the greatest talents in comics history.• A special collector's set at a special collector's price. 4 Multiple Award-Winning Artists — All 1st Printings — Over 800 Pages — Special Features — Special Price Harvey Kurtzman: The agony of war!Wallace Wood: Shock and…

Mankind's long history of armed conflict has inspired some of the greatest creative work in every art form. Case in point: the inspired and justly revered war stories published by EC Comics. Some of the finest of that material came from the typewriter of Harvey Kurtzman, the pencil of John Severin, and (often) the pen and brush of Will Elder — comics legends all, and a dream team of creators if there ever was one. Bomb Run and Other Stories collects all of this work, gathered in a single volume for the first time, under the cover you see above,…

The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952 (Vol. 1) – Paperback Ed.by Charles M. Schulz 298-page black & white 8.25" x 6.5" softcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-763-5 Ships in: May 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The bestselling, award-winning, critically acclaimed series that sparked a renaissance for fans of classic comic strips upon its debut in 2004 is now in softcover! This first volume, covering the first two and a quarter years of the strip, features hundreds of strips rarely reprinted before this series. Three major cast members — Schroeder, Lucy, and Linus — initially show up as infants and only “grow” into…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department:  Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Trail of the Unicorn (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 8)by Carl Barks 224-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-741-3 See Previews / Order Now There's a unicorn out there and Uncle Scrooge wants it! So Donald and the boys embark on a perilous quest to an exotic land of mystery and danger. (But if you catch a unicorn, what, exactly, do you do with it?) Next, how could a simple letter to Santa set off not only a riotous moneybag fight between Donald…

In comic shops today and shipping now from our mail-order department:  Cosplayers by Dash Shaw 32-page full-color comic book • $5.00 See Previews / Order Now   Annie and Verti are two teen cosplayers with too much time on their hands. Annie wants to act, and Verti wants to be a photographer/filmmaker. Together, they embark on making a film starring themselves and featuring an unsuspecting cast of extras they record via hidden camera. What could possibly go wrong? A one-shot dose of humor and melancholy from the creator of New School, BodyWorld, and Bottomless Belly Button.

The next volume of our New York Times best-selling series collecting Hal Foster's magnificent comic strip, Prince Valiant Vol. 9: 1953-1954 is due in late June/early July and brings more stories of mystery, adventure, treachery, romance, and humor in the Arthurian age, with Foster's breathtaking artwork immaculately reproduced from original engraver's proofs as always. In our downloadable preview, Val becomes a literal iconoclast to bring Christianity to a pagan village! But then he falls in the mud, indirectly causes a deadly forest fire, and sulks until his wife beats some sense into him. Their young son Prince Arn embarks on…