Fantagraphics Blog FantaBlog

This Stan Sakai Usagi Yojimbo/Wolverine mashup sketch cover is on auction to benefit the Inkwell Awards, and — how perfect is this — the Japanese American National Museum is having an exhibit and benefit sale of customized Labbit toys this summer for the Year of the Rabbit and Stan (recently honored by the museum) has contributed the adorable customized Usagi Labbit below.

Two weeks to catch up on! • Percy Gloom changed his Facebook profile picture to this portrait I hadn't seen before • Andrei Molotiu posted a big batch of sketchbook drawings to his blog • A new image from Ben Catmull's current project • Matthias Lehmann shares a few pieces from his current art show and some photos of the installation • Dig Paul Hornschemeier's new logo for the Comedy Bang! Bang! (formerly Comedy Death Ray) podcast/comedy show • A newly-drawn splash page (along with the original version from 15 years ago) by Tim Lane for the upcoming 3rd issue…

The Online Commentary & Diversions hamster wheel started spinning a little too fast, but I think I've got it back under control now: • Feature: For Largehearted Boy's "Book Notes" feature, Wilfred Santiago creates a musical playlist for 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: "Golden age animation has been a big influence on my work and the graphic novel itself is very musical. It would be interesting to see the shape that it would take as a feature film. So here is what the 21 soundtrack would sound like." (The following links are via the Largehearted Boy link above:) •…

Shannon Wheeler recently tweeted this photo of his drawing table with pages in progress of our upcoming book Oil & Water. Learn more about the book at the link.

At Comics Alliance, David Brothers throws the spotlight on our ongoing series of Jacques Tardi translations, presenting 7 pages from The Arctic Marauder and writing "Jacques Tardi is a living legend in France, but is somewhat obscure over here. Thanks to Fantagraphics and their aggressive reprint schedule, Jacques Tardi is finally getting a proper American catalog…. The Arctic Marauder isn't what you think it is. I came into it with only the barest idea of what it would feature (high-sea antics, mystery, old-school diving suits), and while it fulfilled all those expectations, it went on to twist what I was…

Tim Kreider doesn't mince words — or images — in his opinion on the British royal family in the latest ruling of Matt Taibbi's Supreme Court of Assholedom at Rolling Stone. (Taibbi also notes: "I would be remiss if I didn’t remind readers who like Tim Kreider’s drawings to check out his new book, the appropriately-named Twilight of the Assholes , a kind of epic review of the later Bush years. My own mother picked up this book when visiting me not long ago and at first I thought I should probably take it away from her before she started…

Brooklyn! Head over to Littefield on Thursday, May 19th for The Spectactular Superfriends Show, featuring a performance from our superfriend, Michael Kupperman! He will be doing a live performance along with some "amazing friends," and thank goodness for that, 'cause you don't wanna do a live performance with lame friends. Only amazing ones. The rest of the line-up seems pretty awesome, too, and I'm talking particularly about the headliner Adam WarRock, who is apparently an attorney-turned-MC, and is considered "the Internet's foremost comic book nerdcore rapper." I hope he raps about Snake 'N' Bacon. I mean, that's a dope rhyme…

Listen to internet radio with Mr Media Interviews on Blog Talk Radio Daily OCD Extra: Wilfred Santiago was the guest on Bob Andelman's Mr. Media interview program on BlogTalkRadio yesterday, talking about his new graphic novel 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente. Listen via the embedded player above or download the MP3 here.

Johnny Ryan has a horrorlarious new comic up at Vice — read it!

The new issue of Booklist contains a review of Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer Vol. 1: The War in the Pacific, excerpted below: "Although the wartime setting of the strip makes it inherently more serious than Wash Tubbs — the Japanese troops, even as racially caricatured as they are here, are a deadlier foe than the often-buffoonish antagonists of the earlier strip — Buz Sawyer features the same seamless blend of derring-do and humor, both in its story lines and in Crane’s economical, slightly cartoonish artwork, which had made Wash Tubbs one of the most popular strips of the era and…