Well, baseball and softball season in the city leagues of Seattle started recently and we couldn't help but draw a little inspiration from the man who helped elevate baseball to its on-high status, Willard Mullin. The Golden Age of Baseball Drawings 1934-1972 collects for the first time Mullin's best drawings devoted to baseball — depictions of players like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra and the story of Mullin creating the Brooklyn Bum, the bedraggled mascot of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Whether you're in the dugout...

Out ready to turn a play in the infield...

Or catching fly balls in the outfield... (see me, I'm that little green and pink-banged blob on the right)

…this hardcover book is full of great baseball gags and political comics from a time when the nation needed something to keep up their moral. Our team, Scared Hitless, even decided to get uniforms to match the beautiful book jacket (or did Jacob Covey design it to match us?). 

See you at the next game with some more previews of the Willard Mullin's Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings 1934-1972. For Seattle people, we play at the Cal Anderson park on Monday nights, 8pm. Come on by and check out this advance! 

First baseman Matt enjoyed this Babe Ruth comic. Thanks to Hugo Garcia for photo help!

Oh, goody! Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics in the pulpy flesh. A lost masterpiece from a cartoon giant. Wilson's mid-1970s Sunday strip — really a collection of one-panel gags, a freewheeling mélange of board meetings, monsters, cavemen and so on — are collected in this fine, long edition. While Wilson is better known for his work in Playboy and National Lampoon, it's fun to see him harness all the colors of the rainbow to convey the blackest of black comedy. Prismatic AND perverse.

Can you hear the oom-pah-pah accompanying some of the finest cartooning of lumpy, melty, and always hilarious people? Perhaps you need to read a few pages over here (full-screen viewing recommended), or get the PDF directly, and pre-order the book here.

Supernatural mysteries run amok in Gilbert Hernandez's The Children of Palomar and unraveling them could mean trouble for all but this isn't quite Twin Peaks, its Palomar. Originally released as a three-issue magazine series titled New Tales of Old Palomar in the acclaimed international "Ignatz" format, these comics now live in a handsomely designed hardcover package!

We had advances of this beautiful graphic novel at TCAF but the book will debut at Comic-Con International in San Diego where Gilbert himself will sign copies and sketch Pipo, Chelo, Carmen or even a young Tonantzín inside! The rest of you will just have to preorder and wait for July! Beware the Blooter Baby... 

Cartoonist of Percy Gloom and Wake Up, Percy Gloom, Cathy Malkasian is one busy woman. After working on such animations like Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys film (for which she received a British Academy Award nomination), and most recently, creating 20 episodes of Curious George for PBS since 2008, she still has time to make a new graphic novel AND create her own small series. Hiding in Happytown is available to watch on YouTube and is the "adult animatic series featuring the travails of a tortoise in a city full of rabbits." Excitable, nervous and depressed, Scampers the tortoise is one of us, the person who isn't swept up in a musical moment every damn minute of the day and knows that darkness creeps around every corner.

With titles like "Froth and Debt" or "Sex Education," the series will be sure to impress you. Watch the rest of Malkasian's Hiding in Happytown on YouTube and preorder Wake Up, Percy Gloom today!

Ulli Lust's primal yet thoughtful graphic novel Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life about a 17 year old's trek through Europe, no money, no extra clothes is ready to read digitally on comiXology!

Back in 1984, a punked-out Ulli Lust set out for a wild hitchhiking trip across Italy, from Naples through Verona and Rome and ending up in Sicily. Twenty-five years later, this talented Austrian cartoonist has looked back at that tumultuous summer and delivered a long, dense, sensitive, and minutely observed autobiographical masterpiece.

Universally considered one of the very finest examples of the new breed of graphic novels coming from Europe, Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life won the 2011 Angoulême “Revelation” prize, and Fantagraphics is proud to bring it to English speaking readers. Get your copy today comiXology for $26.99.

 "the book ripples with exuberance:… Lust’s pen-and-ink work (augmented by the pale green tint of European paperbacks) depicts the stretched and crimped features of the people from whom she bummed change, the architecture of St. Peter’s Basilica and the chaos of a Clash concert with equally manic panache, and her line is as seemingly unkempt but as deliberately molded as her younger self’s punk-rock shock of hair." –Douglas Wolk, The NY Times

We are very excited to reveal the cover for a book that will shake you silly while laughing in your face: In Case We Die by Danny Bland. This debut novel by the veteran Seattle musician follows a pair of outsiders who find themselves locked in the palpable, dizzy grunge-rock scene of early-'90s Seattle. Read this book on your daily commute, coffee shop, in line to a rock show, just not the library because you will choke on your own loud laughter and squeeze out a tear if your ducts are in working order.

"Ours is a story written on hotel room walls with fifty cent words" states the dedication to this story of falling in and out of love and life. Right now Danny is is most likely in a Ford Econoline van on a long stretch of highway, driving a rock band to its next engagement, but we can't wait for him to tour the states reading to you from In Case We Die. More sneak peeks are ready for you to inject soon, more information at the In Case We Die website and you can pre-order the book from us today. 

It's Tuesday, you're reeling from a weekend of bombed-out emoting and drinking and maybe some excellent decision making! We have a few friends with some sweet artwork based on our cartoonists' work. Steve Desiena has a Jungle Princess by Michael Kupperman. Check out her hilarious adventures in Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 2.

Meanwhile, Geoff Henao has a Jason tattoo. Get ready for the newest Jason book, Lost Cat, coming out in July.

Charles Forsman, cartoonist of the upcoming The End of the Fucking World and Celebrated Summer, has a sweet summer gift just for you. The first 50 people who preorder The End of the Fucking World from the Fantagraphics website will receive a risograph print of the poster above (drawn and printed by Forsman himself!). There's even a penciled signature. I got mine on the wall already but that's because I preordered and pulled a string or two. So pull your own string by buying this soon-to-be-hit book!

Praise for the mini-comic series:

"This is a crime comic disguised as a slacker-road-trip comic, and Forsman delivers its methodical hum eight pages at a time with an astounding precision." – Comic Book Resources

"[TEOTFW] pulls you in like no other comic this year. Stunning in its simplicity and brave in its subject matter." – MTV.com

Last night the 25th Lambda Literary Awards were presented and Justin Hall received one for No Straight Lines in the LGBT Anthology category. Congratulations to Justin and all the contributors to this amazing anthology that showcases four decades of queer comics, a historical tome of first person documentation and literary comics! No Straight Lines is ALSO up for an Eisner Award in Best Anthology. The hardcover version of the anthology sold out very quick last year but fear not, we have a softcover coming out in a few months. Browse a 34-page PDF excerpt and pre-order your copy right here. Can't wait? Buy a digital version of the book today at the comiXology website!

Pull up a stool to our entry in Hazradfactory's famous Power Tool Races at the Georgetown Carnival this Saturday. The Fantagraphics Bar Car blends Pina Coladas while leisurely tooling down the track. (The resulting cocktails will be served to race officials following each run.) Inspired by the mid-century motifs of Shag, Fantagraphics Bookstore's annual entry is going for cool, not speed. Come watch us win.

The Power Tool Races commence at noon and continue all afternoon, concluding with a delirious demolition derby. Enjoy an afternoon of free entertainment including acrobats, aerialists, brass bands, tall bikes, belly dancers, stiltwalkers, fortune tellers, burlesque acts, beer gardens, drag shows, interactive art, carnival games, and 17 bands on 4 stages (featuring Bonneville Power and Tom Price Desert Classic with Fantagraphics own Martin Bland.) Noon to 8:00 PM in Seattle's festive Georgetown arts community.