Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

What timing! What better day than Halloween to be able to give you your first glimpse of Richard Sala's Delphine? This fairy tale-inspired creepfest turns the story of Snow White on its head, following "Prince Charming" on his search for the titular character, which rapidly descends into a nightmarish journey of creeping dread and outright terror! This awfully pretty hardcover collects all 4 issues of the acclaimed Ignatz comic with full-color chapter break artwork, and should be slithering its way into the world in January. Savor an 11-page excerpt and pre-order your copy right here.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks 240-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-574-7 Ships in: November 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now The third volume of Fantagraphics’ reprinting of Carl Barks’s classic Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge work, like the previous volume Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man, focuses on the early 1950s, universally considered one of Barks’s very peak periods. Originally published in 1951, "A Christmas for Shacktown" is one of Barks's masterpieces: A rare 32-pager that stays within the confines of Duckburg, featuring a storyline in which the Duck…

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. "This is a super-strong week for the Seattle-based alt-comics mainstay publishing house. In fact, that would be a strong season for a lot of publishers." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter Came the Dawn and Other Stories (The EC Comics Library)Illustrated by Wallace Wood; written by Al Feldstein et al.;…

Just arrived and shipping now from our mail-order department: Blacklung by Chris Wright 128-page black & white 9.25" x 12.25" hardcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-587-7 See Previews / Order Now Chris Wright’s Blacklung is unquestionably one of the most impressive graphic novel debuts in recent years, a sweeping, magisterially conceived, visually startling tale of violence, amorality, fortitude, and redemption, one part Melville, one part Peckinpah. Blacklung is a story that lives up to the term graphic novel, that could only exist in sequential pictures — densely textured, highly stylized, delicately and boldly rendered drawings that is, taken together, wholly original. In…

Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton 272-page full-color 9.25" x 13" flexibound softcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-550-1 Ships in: November 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Basil Wolverton is one of the greatest, most idiosyncratic talents in comic book history. Though he is best known for his humorous grotesqueries in MAD magazine, it is his science-fiction character Spacehawk that Wolverton fans have most often demanded be collected. The wait is over, as Spacehawk features every story from Spacehawk’s intergalactic debut in 1940 to his final, Nazi-crushing adventure in 1942. Spacehawk is the closest thing to a colorfully-costumed, conventional action hero Wolverton ever…

If you weren't one of the lucky few who got the opportunity to paw over a preview copy of Tom Kaczynski's Beta Testing the Apocalypse at last Saturday's Fantagraphics Bookstore event, here's your first glimpse of the finished book, which will be arriving in stores in January (and our mail-order warehouse a bit sooner). Printed in various duotone shades throughout and bound in the snazzy Flexibound softcover format we've been so fond of lately, this super-smart package of super-smart comics will be one of the first must-haves of 2013 for discerning and intelligent comics readers. Further previews are forthcoming; you…

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 Ships in: November 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-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 his powers, and this…

(final cover art may vary) The great Al Feldstein celebrates his 87th birthday today, so what better day to reveal the first all-Feldstein volume in our EC Comics Library series? It gives us great pleasure to be presenting Child of Tomorrow! and Other Stories, coming in Summer 2013, collecting sci-fi stories written and drawn by Feldstein from the pages of Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. Of course, you can experience Feldstein's prolific EC writing in the Wallace Wood-illustrated Came the Dawn and Other Stories and many forthcoming volumes in the EC Comics Library series! Oh, and in Spring of next…

Jason is ruling the internet with a new series of drawings mashing up Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy & Sluggo with various other pop culture touchstones such as "Scream Nancy" above and the Louie tribute "Sluggo CK" below. There's also "Nancy Lynch," "The 7 Nancy Balls" and hopefully more to come on his blog!

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. The Lost Art of Ah Pook Is Here: Images from the Graphic Novel by Malcolm McNeill 168-page full-color 10.25" x 13.25" hardcover • $39.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-445-0 Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and Me by Malcolm McNeill 192-page full-color 6.75" x 10.25" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-561-7 "Might as well start…