Fantagraphics Blog

If you want your order shipped within the U.S. to arrive before Christmas via USPS Priority Mail, tomorrow (Tuesday, December 15) is the deadline to get your order in! Orders placed with the Standard shipping option right now will most likely arrive after the holiday. After tomorrow, you'll have until next Monday, Dec. 21, for orders shipped by 2nd Day UPS. We'll post a reminder for that deadline as well. Don't forget to check out our handy Holiday Gift Guide for lots of gift ideas for every interest and budget!

Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan's joint book tour has one last previously unannounced stop back in their mutual hometown of Chicago tonight: "We'll be heading directly from the airport to Home Room's 101 Lecture Show at the Hungry Brain in Chicago to give a final slide show presentation, answer people's questions, sign books, and try to get the feeling back in our toes after re-embracing Chicago's chill." The 101 Lecture ShowThe Hungry Brain, 9PM2319 W BelmontChicago, IL

It's your Friday installments of our three weekly webcomics! Some street toughs plot their strategy in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson… …the punchline is either not as gross as you think, or grosser, in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan…. …and the prez faces the national waffle shortage in this week's Barack Hussein Obama strip from Steven Weissman!

Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Politics and Prose, perhaps the most graphic novel-friendly bookstore in Washington DC, lists their Favorite Graphic Literature of the Year: "Every few years a graphic novel comes around that is so good you have to stop reading for a while, because if you read anything else you'd only be disappointed. … The Squirrel Machine… is a masterpiece of comic fantasy. When I finished this book, I immediately returned to the introduction and read the whole book again, and again. Read this book to see what heights serial art can achieve in narrative and in…

Oooh, Tony Millionaire's cover for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Moby Dick is now available as a poster. (Read Jacob Covey's commentary on the PCDE series here.)

Lots of excitement in the office today: Gary Groth has earned the Glengarry leads, closing the deal with Alec Baldwin to write the Introduction to The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978 (Vol. 14), coming Fall 2010. The title of this post comes from Gary's interoffice email, and Ted Jouflas replied with the above image. (I'm more of a 30 Rock man myself.) UPDATE: Baldwin-mania continues as Kim Thompson confirms, in an email titled "Everybody loves my Schweddy balls," that Peppermint Patty is the cover star of that volume.

More info + music video.

TONIGHT sees the opening of a joint solo show from Femke Hiemstra and Junko Mizuno. See the Roq site for more info. If I understand the Roq blog correctly it appears that Femke's work is already sold out. Show runs through January 30th.

When we were putting together our current holiday catalog, somehow Sam's Strip: The Comic About Comics ended up being accidentally left out. This innovative strip is a clever and funny slice of comics history which deserves its place in our roster and on your bookshelf — read more about it here, and for the next week (through next Friday) you can order it at 20% off! Plus read more about the strip and the rest of co-creator Mort Walker's storied career in The Comics Journal #297 from earlier this year, also on sale at 20% off through next week!

Have we got a great offer for you! Be one of the next 15 people to order the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Petey & Pussy by John Kerschbaum and you will receive an amazing bonus pack put together by John that includes: All 3 issues of John's great self-published comic The Wiggly Reader… … this amazing poster John drew for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC (more about which here — and by the way, it's available from the Met gift shop as a jigsaw puzzle now!)… …and a unique signed bookplate, each one with a different quote hand-lettered by…