Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2: "Bona Fide Balderdash" by Walt Kelly 356-page black & white/color 11.25" x 9.25" hardcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-584-6 See Previews / Order Now While supplies last, customers who order this volume can also receive the box set slipcase for Vols. 1 and 2 at no extra charge! Even though Pogo had been in syndication for less than two years as this volume begins, Walt Kelly's long professional experience (including seven years creating Pogo stories for comic books) had him at the peak of…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department:  Nancy Likes Christmas: Complete Dailies 1946-1948 by Ernie Bushmiller 336-page black & white 8.5" x 8.5" flexibound softcover • $26.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-599-0 See Previews / Order Now BARGAIN COMBO: Nancy Is Happy + Nancy Likes Christmas Gift Set Price: $51.98 $41.59 Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown here as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last. It's three more full years of Ernie Bushmiller's beloved comic strip, featuring nearly one thousand meticulously restored daily strips from its post-World-War II graphic high point…

We're pleased to bring you the rundown on our Spring-Summer 2013 season of upcoming releases by presenting the catalog prepared for our book-market distributor, W.W. Norton. Scroll through it in an embedded reader on this page, and download a better-quality 26.8MB PDF version here. As you read, please keep in mind that most of these books are still in development and all artwork, contents, prices, specs, and release dates (especially release dates) are preliminary and subject to change. With about 3 dozen new books and a fat handful of reprints and new editions of previous books, there's a lot to look forward…

Work on Heroic Tales: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 2 is nearing completion but we have two missing pieces of the puzzle and editor Blake Bell is putting out the call to all Golden Age collectors! We're looking for the following two stories:  Silver Streak Comics #20 (Apr '42) – Rex Reed 8-page storyTarget Comics v1 #8 (Sep '40) – Chameleon 6-page story If you have copies of either of these comics, click here to find out how to contact Blake and what the next steps will be after that. Contributors will get a free copy of the book and credit in the acknowledgments!

Problematic: Sketchbook Drawings 2004-2012 by Jim Woodring 364-page black & white 5.25" x 8" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-594-5 Ships in: December 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown here as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last. If you are one of the fortunate thousands who enjoy untangling the enigmatic images that fill Jim Woodring's comics and drawings, Problematic is just the book for you to put under your pillow and dream on. Woodring is a devotee of the pocket-sized Moleskine sketchbook and has filled at…

January will bring another of our occasional non-comics books, a unique work of cultural and music criticism from the prolific mind of Alexander Theroux: The Grammar of Rock: Art and Artlessness in 20th Century Pop Lyrics is a scathing and hilarious examination of stupid rhymes, dud lines, silly titles, and multifarious other aspects of popular recordings of the past century (with examples of quality included for contrast), from ABBA to Zappa. On the jacket, more fine work by designer Emory Liu (featuring a vintage Robert Crumb drawing) — and wait until you see the endpapers. Get a taste with a…

Delphine by Richard Sala 128-page two-color (with some full color) 7.25" x 10" hardcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-590-7 Ships in: December 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now A mysterious traveler gets off the train in a small village surrounded by a thick sinister forest. He is searching for Delphine, who vanished with only a scrawled-out address on a scrap of paper as a trace. Richard Sala takes the tale of Snow White and stands it on its head, retelling it from Prince Charming's perspective (the unnamed traveler) in a contemporary setting. This twisted tale includes all the elements of terror…

We're putting the final touches on Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez in preparation for sending it to the printer, so we can now reveal the lovely final designs for the front and back covers. Book designer Emory Liu is really making his mark, don't you think? This astonishing graphic novel, finally collected from the pages of Love and Rockets Vol. II, encompasses a century-spanning life in 100 pages. Don't just take our word for it; have a squint at those lovely blurbs from Brian Evenson and Junot Díaz, below. If all goes well we should be looking at a March…

7 Miles a Second by David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook 68-page full-color 9" x 12" hardcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-614-0 Ships in: January 2013 (subject to change) – Pre-Order Now 7 Miles a Second is the story of legendary artist David Wojnarowicz, written during the last years before his AIDS-related death in 1992. Artists James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook unsentimentally depict Wojnarowicz's childhood of hustling on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood living with AIDS, and his anger at the indifference of government and health agencies. A primal scream of a graphic novel, 7 Miles a…

There's been some great Prison Pit fan art since the series started but if I were Johnny Ryan I'd be putting my feet up and basking in this one for a while: Guy Davis renders the unnamed hulking oafspawn from Book 4. Dig it bigger here.