Fantagraphics Blog FantaBlog

Would you gladly pay us Tuesday for an action-packed advance look at Popeye Vol. 3: "Let's You and Him Fight!" today? Well here you go… on the house (cheese extra). Click here if the slideshow doesn't appear above.

Congratulations to all of the Ignatz Award winners, and especially to new Fanta draft picks Laura Park (Outstanding Artist), whose work can be seen in the next issue of Mome, and Lilli Carré (Outstanding Story for her self-published The Thing About Madeleine), whose debut Fantagraphics graphic novel The Lagoon is coming this Fall. Further congratulations to Laura for winning "The Warmest Drawings in Comics" and Miss Lasko-Gross for winning the "Third Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence" at the unofficial "Nerdlinger Awards" at the Atomic Books anniversary party on Friday night (via The Beat).

Mike Baehr pointed out Tim Hensley using ComicLife in the links roundup a couple of weeks ago but he failed to mention how Fantagraphics' Righthand Man, Eric Reynolds, has even stopped drawing and now makes all his comics in the Macintosh program. Such a convert, he even got his mom into it. Seriously. I've seen her comics but I won't post those. It wouldn't be right– and you probably don't even know who Mr. Blackwell is anyway. Well, in spite of his flaws, I recommend all fans of comicdom check out Eric's massive Flickr archive of His Life in the…

Concerning my earlier post about Scanner Quality: Here is a photograph scanned with a $100 home scanner I bought because it sat up vertically on the desktop, taking up less space. It is worthless. Above is a 1.5 inch section of photograph I scanned at 300 dpi and saved uncompressed, showing all the same jagginess and lack of nuance that I talked about below. Somebody at Fantagraphics doubted that cheap scanners had anything to do with this binary phenomenon but, yes, they do. They are the devil's work. As I said.

In case you're wondering "Hey, last month's sale is over and there isn't a new one yet — what gives?" and/or "Where's the informative Fantagraphics email newsletter that usually arrives in my inbox at the beginning of every month?" please rest assured that both are in the works and will be coming your way soon. In fact, this month's sale items are already marked down and you can enjoy the savings right now. Stay tuned for the real announcement, and thanks for your patience.

Time for a new installment of Steven Weissman's in-progress pages from "Blue Jay," an epic 32-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures. In this week's episode: Steven challenges you to find the continuity error that will be fixed for the book! (Remember, you must be registered and logged in to read.)

People on the Internet share their thoughts about our books: • A Girl Who Wears Glasses covets Ghost World: Special Edition, plans to go as Enid for Halloween; Emily Martin also says nice things about the book • This Irish blogger named Conor recommends I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason • Dans ta bulle, a French-Canadian internet radio show about comics, discusses Jules Feiffer's Tantrum and Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars • Comic Book Resources and ComicMix both examine Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers • Finnish blog Bundologi takes note of The Portable Frank by Jim Woodring…

Can't wait until November to cast a ballot for a worthy candidate? Vote for us in the "Best Comics" category in KING 5 Evening Magazine Best of Western Washington poll. (Registration is required, just like in a real election.)

I should make time for posts like this more often but here's a little rundown on why people shouldn't use cheap scanners to archive material. Take a look at this scan of an original old pin-up page that was sent to me this week, compressed as a jpg. At a glance it looks great with the watercolor paper really showing its tooth. (Technically the page has also not been laid down flat enough and we're getting an uneven light but let's overlook that.) Above shows the full art which was scanned large–about 11" tall at 300dpi. Looking closer you can…