Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

I came in to work to find Twelve Gems on my desk this morning. No, not actual precious jewels, but something almost as valuable: an advance copy of Lane Milburn's glorious, hilarious sci-fi comedy epic! Three mercenaries hired by an enigmatic scientist traverse the galaxy in search of a dozen legendary stones with mysterious powers. Fast spaceships, exotic worlds, grody aliens, cosmic mysteries, and blazing action blend with sly satire and all-out laughs, zapping your eyeballs with Milburn's dense, detailed, rough-hewn artwork, printed in midnight blue on white. We're ahead of schedule with this book and it's not scheduled to…

An unsung cartooning master, Floyd Gottfredson produced the newspaper-strip adventures of Disney's flagship character in near-anonymity for decades, and our series finally gives him the spotlight he deserves. The newest volume, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 5: Outwits the Phantom Blot, finds our intrepid rodent hero getting into and out of dangerous scrapes on the open seas, in the urban underworld, on a remote tropical island (or is it?), and in his own back yard. Our downloadable excerpt includes 8 weeks of the "Mighty Whale Hunter" continuity, wherein Mickey's thirst for adventure leads him and Goofy into hot water and…

Cosplayers by Dash Shaw 32-page full-color comic book • $5.00 Ships on: April 16, 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-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 Complete Peanuts 1991-1992 (Vol. 21)by Charles M. Schulz 344-page black & white 8.5" x 7" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-726-0 Ships in: May 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Peanuts enters its final decade, and The Complete Peanuts enters its homestretch, with material that is perhaps the most overlooked of Schulz’s career and soon to be reconsidered by scholars with this volume. Schulz’s cartooning has never looked more confident, and his sense of humor never more unrestrained. This is the 21st volume (of 25) of the perennial, bestselling series that collects every single one of the 18,000-plus Peanuts strips…

At last we can reveal the slipcase artwork for our two-volume complete collection of witzend, coming this Summer. Occupying the fertile but seldom-trod ground between the undergrounds and the "overground" mainstream (sometimes called "groundlevel comics"), witzend was created in 1966 by Wallace Wood and ran for 13 issues over nearly two decades, providing a forum for unfettered expression by creators used to toiling under commercial restrictions — in other words, a place for Wood and his friends to let their freak flags fly. And oh, what a list of friends he had. We'll get into that later… in the meantime, see…

"I love Hate, particularly the increasingly oddball Buddy Bradley stories…. Every comics fan should have the vast majority of whatever Peter Bagge has in print…" – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter "…Bagge’s vivid caricatures animate the most routine of actions, effectively suggesting how cozily, in this life, the mundane cohabits with the outrageous." – Rich Kreiner, The Comics Journal "…Bagge truly pulls out all the stops in depicting extreme familial weirdness. His dialogue is as sharp as ever, his line is quite lively and his uncanny ability to depict the creeping weirdness of suburbia is even more disturbing than in…

We got the green light from our esteemed colleagues over at Disney to start the presses running on the next volume of Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse strips! Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 5: Outwits the Phantom Blot is at the printer getting ready for its debut in June. As usual, it'll be stuffed full with two years of crisply-reproduced daily strips starring Mickey and his menagerie of pals and foes in their thrilling, funny, and masterfully-told adventures, along with loads of bonus essays and related artwork. Reserve your copy now!

The Love Bunglersby Jaime Hernandez 112-page black & white 9" x 11.25" hardcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-729-1 Ships in: April 2014 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now "There are certain things about my family Mom always preferred to keep hush hush." The suppression of family history is the initial thread that ties together The Love Bunglers, featuring Hernandez's longtime Love and Rockets heroine Maggie. Because these secrets can't be dealt with openly, their lingering effect is even more powerful. But Maggie's ability to navigate and find meaning in her life — despite losing her culture, her brother, her profession, and her…

We got our advance shipment of Hip Hop Family Tree Two-in-One and it is looking gooood. This Ed Piskor joint drops on Free Comic Book Day, May 3, 2014, exclusively at participating comic shops worldwide. This sampler of material from the first two volumes includes some exclusive guest pinups by Alexis Ziritt, Toby Cypress, Natalie Andrewson, Jasen Lex, and Johnny Negron, plus some other special touches and surprises courtesy of Jim Rugg. All at the cost to you the consumer of zip, zero, zilch, nada. Ed himself will be on hand to launch the comic at a certain "beguiling" comic…

Well folks, we jumped the gun just a bit last week so this is a do-over with corrected art:  At last, the long-awaited next Gilbert Hernandez volume in the comprehensive Love and Rockets Library paperback series is nearly here! Luba and Her Family is at the printer now for release in July. This is the first book in this format to collect Gilbert's work past the original 50-issue L&R series. (We'll reveal the full Table of Contents and provide more previews in the not-too-distant future.) This book is also the debut of the new addition to our Art Department, Keeli…