Fantagraphics Blog

Hooray! Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley by Floyd Gottfredson is finally available for pre-order! Click here to reserve your copy today! (And stay tuned for more previews of the book.)

Johnny Ryan is up for two 2011 Stumptown Comic Art Awards for his Prison Pit work: Best Cartoonist and Best Letterer! The online ballot/complete list of nominees is here — you know what to do! Congrats Johnny! Winners will be announced at the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland OR next month. (We'll see you there!)

In a close race, A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio has won Best New One-Shot Manga in the 2011 About.com Manga Readers' Choice Awards! Thanks to all our readers who cast their vote. About.com Manga editor Deb Aoki writes: "For their first new manga release in years, Fantagraphics pulled out the stops with their deluxe hardcover edition of this collection of short stories by shojo manga pioneer Moto Hagio. Elegant, thought-provoking and sensitive, the stories in A Drunken Dream offer a tantalizing retrospective of the forty-plus years of Hagio's career."

The CHS Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reports: Banners featuring artwork by Ellen Forney will soon festoon utility poles along Broadway, the main drag in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood (as immortalized in the Sir Mix-a-Lot song "My Posse's on Broadway"), as a warm-up for her murals eventually appearing in the Capitol Hill Light Rail station. (Via Slog.)

• Jason goes on a murderous rampage, plus more old strips and illustrations and new film reviews at his Cats Without Dogs blog • A doozy of an "I, Anonymous" spot by Steven Weissman at his Chewing Gum in Church blog • A new comic page by John Hankiewicz • Pages from "Professor Fleischmann," an in-progress collaboration between Lamelos and Olivier Schrauwen (via Kuš!) • This is just a small portion of the catstravaganza that is Drew Weing's back cover for Papercutter #15 from Tugboat Press (he's also in the issue) — see the whole thing at Drew's Here There…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "[The Complete Peanuts 1979-1980] is… a genius volume… Some of the pieces here – especially the longer storylines – are absolute classics. […] Plus, there’s just the sheer kookiness of some of Schulz’s pop-cultural references and inventions, which continues to astound here… Schulz is at the height of his powers as a cartoonist here, as well. […] Such graphic flair! Such economy of line! A Peanuts nut couldn’t ask for more, really." – Naomi Fry, The Comics Journal • Review: "Littered with violence, inappropriate sexual innuendos, misguided bravado and infused with hilarity, Dungeon…

From Shadow to Light: The Life and Art of Mort Meskin by Steven Brower is a finalist for ForeWord Reviews magazine's 2010 "Book of the Year Awards" in the Art category. Actually, Steven is a two-time nominee as his book Breathless Homicidal Slime Mutants is also a finalist in the same category. Congratulations Steven!

Things You Might Find on Gary Groth's Desk, Part 1 of a series: A hand, by Sal Buscema!

Hey Robert Crumb fans: even if you can't make it to the retrospective exhibit R. Crumb: Lines Drawn On Paper, which opens next week at the Society of Illustrators in NYC, you can still buy the exhibit poster from the Society's online shop.

Johnny Ryan takes an elimination on America's Next Top Model to its logical conclusion in his latest Vice strip.