Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli 144-page full-color 7.75" x 10.25" softcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-559-4 Ships in: May 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now A high-rise apartment building in an unnamed European city. Its inhabitants come and go, meet each other, talk, dream, regret, hope… in short, live. A ghostly, shape-shifting anthropomorphic white rabbit roams from apartment to apartment, surveying and keeping track of all this humanity… and at the end of every night, he floats down to the basement where he delivers his report to the "great dark one." Lushly delineated in penciled halftones, this moody graphic novel was orig-…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Profile: Esteemed underground comix historian Patrick Rosenkranz at The Comics Journal: "Spain Rodriguez acknowledges that age hasn’t necessarily brought wisdom, but it does help him appreciate his youthful adventures more, especially the unique experience of growing up in Buffalo, New York in the 1950s, which he portrays in his latest book, Cruisin' with the Hound…. This new volume from Fantagraphics Books tells more about his childhood, the guys and girls in his neighborhood, early encounters with sex, religion, and science fiction, and the birth of rock and roll." Sample quote from Spain: "Each moment…

A quiet couple of days for Online Commentary & Diversions: • Plug: "I very much like Tom Spurgeon’s 'Before Before Watchmen There Was Spain Rodriguez' campaign. Rodriguez is one the of great, lively cartoonists of the last 40 years who should be enjoying comfortable golden years based on his body of work. And he’s still working, turning out good work. He has a new book out called, improbably, Cruisin’ With the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote. Go buy a copy." – Heidi MacDonald, The Beat • Interview (Audio): Listen to Monday night's episode of Too Much Information…

Squa Tront #13 edited by John Benson 48-page black & white/color 8.5" x 11" softcover • $9.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-571-6 Ships in: May 2012 (subject to change) – This item will be available to order simultaneous with its release to comic shops. Five years in the making and meticulously edited by John Benson, Squa Tront returns with a profusion of rare and interesting features from the EC era: the story behind Basil Wolverton’s first EC art; Howard Nostrand’s last interview; art from the unpublished third issue of Flip; Jack Davis’s WWII cartoons; plus EC era art by Wallace Wood, John and Marie…

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. Cruisin' with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Tooté by Spain Rodriguez 136-page black & white 7.5" x 10.25" softcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-461-0 "…[T]here are a lot of good books out this week, mostly from Fantagraphics. My first pick would be Cruisin’ with the Hound, a collection of…

To celebrate the re-release of Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental, Josh Alan Friedman presents a behind-the-scenes look at one of the strips from the book, discussing his creative process with his brother Drew, with rare art not included in the book, seldom-seen photos and his full typewritten script for the strip. You can read the article two ways: in an embedded magazine-style layout or in a standard blog format. Either way it's a must-read slice of comics history!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Since its 1996 Olio Press inception with The Curse of Brambly Hedge, writer/artist Linda Medley’s sweetly Grimm magnum opus has sometimes appeared fitfully, and this week, Castle Waiting Vol. II #16 continues that trend. More specifically, as her publishers note in a one-page introduction, three years have passed since last the black-and-white Fantagraphics Books neofable graced comics shops. Still, those same publishers — Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, not exactly gentlemen known for lavishing praise profligately — also characterize the series as 'one of the greatest and most beautifully drawn fantasy comic books…

Now in stock in our warehouse and ready to ship to our mail-order customers: Popeye Vol. 6: "Me Li'l Swee'Pea" by E.C. Segar 188-page black & white/color 10.5" x 14.75" hardcover • $29.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-483-2 See Previews / Order Now Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown at left as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last. Alas, E.C. Segar, arguably the funniest cartoonist to ever lay ink on paper, died at the age of 44, leaving less that a decade’s worth of strips featuring his immortal creation Popeye — so this…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Record collecting was an engagement with mystery. [Pat] Thomas understands this and his book, Listen, Whitey, which documents the pieces — both lauded and obscure — of the recording element within the Black Power movement of the 1960s and ‘70s…. These small discs were part of the overall effort that allowed African Americans to get real information about the Black Power Movement, to let them know they weren't alone, to show them ways to be involved, to stoke ideas and energy, and to provide catharsis. Thomas mines this territory to construct a richly…

Now in stock in our warehouse and ready to ship to our mail-order customers: Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion by Hans Rickheit 144-page black & white/color 7" x 10" softcover • $18.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-509-9 See Previews / Order Now Lovers of art comics know Hans Rickheit from his smashing graphic novel The Squirrel Machine (2008), but Rickheit has, for over a decade, been producing his own self-published comics — reaching into the deepest cupboards of the back-mind and culling these strange artifacts. He has been a basement-dweller, gallery troll, and a purveyor of forbidden notions. Originally distributed into the world as…