FLOG! Entries for Mike Baehr - June 2009

Love and Conchords

mike

Gilbert Hernandez with Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords. Whatever you do, don't miss the original caption.

If you're not a fan of Love and Rockets on Facebook, this is the kind of thing you're missing. My L&R page co-admin, Carol Hernandez, has been posting lots of goodies, including rare photos and sketches from the early days. Hot patootie!

Back in stock: Pictopia #3 (update: Sold Out!)

mike

We just discovered 11 copies of this 1992 issue of Pictopia squirreled away in our warehouse. Edited by Gary Groth and Robert Boyd and thought to be out of print for years, this anthology brings you some gorgeous Chris Ware color work (including a spectacular wraparound cover), a taste of Jacques Tardi, and work by such notables as James Sturm, David Collier and Doug Allen! 72 pages of the best of the early 1990s, at an early 1990s price! Hurry and get yours before they're all gone again.

Pictopia #3
By various artists

This issue sports a magnificent wraparound cover by Chris Ware, to go along with his full-color "Quimby the Mouse" story inside. The color section is rounded out by Dave Collier's "Apples" and Doug Allen's "Cranky the Drunk." Continuing this issue is the three-part private-eye serial by Jacques (West Coast Blues, You Are There) Tardi and Patrick Manchette, "Griffu," the hard-as-nails story of a none-too-bright detective who stumbles onto a case a little larger than he can handle. This is one P.I. who really takes his lumps! And as always, Pictopia is proud to present the work of talented newcomers and regulars alike, including: "Amarillo" by Scott Gilbert; "Chums" by George Parsons; "Cocaine" by Howard Rigberg; "Neither Science Nor Fiction" by Garrett Izumi; "Gunned Down in Motown" by Rick Metcalf & Kent Myers; "I Was a New York Bitch" by Eben Dodd; and "21st Century Schizoid Man" by Nemoto. An unbeatable package!

72-page black & white/color 8.5" x 10.75" softcover • $7.95
Update: SOLD OUT

Daily OCD: 6/30/09

mike

The final Online Commentary & Diversions update for June '09:

• List: CBC Radio's Canada Reads: The Book Club posts the result of their month-long poll to determine "The Top 10 Graphic Novels": Black Hole and Love and Rockets come in at #5 and #6, respectively, with Ghost World and Jimmy Corrigan close runners-up

• Review: "Issue #3 of Jordan Crane's Uptight serves as a wonderful example of just how good pamphlet format comics can be... Uptight #3 delivers 24 pages of beautifully focused storytelling... If you like Crane's work or simply want to try something a little different, do go out and buy this. Uptight represents everything single issue comics should be but so very rarely are. Fact is, we need more comics like this, so vote with your wallets and support the fine folks at Fantagraphics..." - Matthew Dick, Exquisite Things

• Review/Profile: "...[Boody Rogers's] command of dream-state narrative logic and language-mangling dialogue remains unnerving and uproarious in about equal measure... Now comes the Fantagraphics edition of Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers — a 144-page whopper, rich in humor and dreamlike oddities..." - Michael H. Price of the Fort Worth Business Press recounts meeting Rogers in the 1980s and also reviews Rogers's memoir, Homeless Bound

• Review: "For his latest... book [Low Moon], Jason has decided to try something a bit different... In attempting to stretch himself, though, he offers some of his weakest work to date, but some of his strongest and emotionally wrenching as well... Longtime readers... will definitely want to pick it up..." - Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "The temptation is to shut up and let Hal Foster's panels speak for themselves... Designed by Adam Grano, Prince Valiant [Vol. 1:] 1937-1938 is a beautiful book." - Steve Duin, The Oregonian

• Plug: "Literally jam-packed with strips that constantly vary in sizes, [Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1] shines with [Michael] Kupperman's earth-shattering wit, his excellent vintage-comics-inspired draftsmanship and his genius comedic timing. Thanks Fantagraphics!" - Librarie D+Q

• Plug: "You'll Never Know [Book 1: A Good and Decent Man] by C. Tyler arrived this week... it is funny, moving, sad -- highly recommended." - Librarie D+Q

• Plug: "Dash Shaw = emotional psychedelic genius." - i want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now.

• Plug: "The Comics Journal #298: Man, only two issues until the big Siege of Asgard prelude." - Jog - The Blog

• Plug: "The Comics Journal #298: Lotsa good interviews in this issue... For me though, the meat of the issue is the wealth of daily Skippy strips by Percy Crosby reproduced in the gallery section." - Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Interview: Publishers Weekly has a Q&A with Peter Bagge about his new collection Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me. Money quote: "I could have taken the Doonesbury route and pandered to my fellow libertarians by pretending I (and they) had all the answers, but that would have been both too easy and dishonest."

• Interview: Newsarama's Zack Smith talks to Sam's Strip creators Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas about the creation of the strip and the new Fantagraphics collection. Sample quote from Walker: "You always put something personal in every strip, so it’s wonderful to see all these old strips again."

• Charity: ComicList reports that Jaime Hernandez will participate in Comic Book Legal Defense Fund fundraising at Comic Con with an autograph card and original art auction

• Oddity: What does Popeye have in common with Michael Jackson? Well, now they're both subjects of Jeff Koons artwork, according to this Reuters story

• Oddity: Did you hear about the former Drawn & Quarterly intern who attempted to navigate a handmade houseboat named the Velvet Glove Cast in Iron down the Mississippi River?

New Comics Day 7/1/09

mike

Scheduled to arrive in better comics shops across the land this week: The Comics Journal #298, featuring The Umbrella Academy's Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon, Perry Bible Fellowship's Nicholas Gurewitch, and much more:

Also popping up on some unofficial lists: Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 by Michael Kupperman. It's not on the official distribution list, though, so no promises.

As always, feast your eyes on our many previews and excerpts at the above links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability before busting open your piggy bank.

2009 Harvey Award nominees

mike

We're honored to have picked up 5 nominations for this year's Harvey Awards:

Best Anthology: Mome Vol. 10 - Winter/Spring 2008

Best Graphic Album - Original: Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw

Best Single Issue or Story: Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers

Best Domestic Reprint Project: The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz (Vols. 9 & 10)

Best American Edition of Foreign Material: Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories by Jason

To celebrate, our nominated titles, except Peanuts (for contractual reasons), are now 15% off for a limited time! First buy, then (if you're a comics professional) vote!

Congratulations to all of our nominated colleagues, with special shouts-out to Al Jaffee for his Abrams book Tall Tales (multiple nominations), Chris Ware for Acme Novelty Library #19 (Best Single Issue or Story), and Jay Lynch & the Mineshaft folks for Mineshaft #23 (Best Cover Artist).

Daily OCD: 6/29/09

mike

Let's see what Online Commentary & Diversions popped up over the weekend:

• Review: "Abstract Comics: The Anthology is an impressive collection of old and new work with unique pages covering exactly what the title says... bold... intriguing... This is a book for readers who like fine art or those who would like to expand their sequential art experiences. A hearty slap on the back for Fantagraphics for choosing to create this marvelous example of a widely unknown artistic expression." - Kris Bather, Comic Book Jesus

• Review: "I had always equated [Prince] Valiant with everything that is dull and lifeless and boring and supposedly good for you, but it turns out I was completely and utterly wrong. On the contrary, it's a rip-snorting good time, full of high adventure and thrilling escapades. And Valiant, far from being the schoolmarmish goody two-shoes I imagined him being, is full of piss and vinegar and quite a bloodthirsty young chap, which makes him a good deal more interesting than some of his contemporaries on the comics page." - Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "Tales Designed to Thrizzle #5, like all the previous issues by Michael Kupperman, did not fail at thrilling or dazzling me." - Brian Cronin, Robot 6 (same link as above)

• Review: "...C. Tyler's You'll Never Know Book One: A Good and Decent Man isn't... much like any other autobio comic I've encountered... It’s a really rather fascinating work, and the longer one thinks about it, the more important and universal it seems to be. On the surface level, of course, it’s an extremely interesting, rather unique story of a couple different life’s stories, and how they overlap, but there plenty of other levels waiting to be discovered and ruminated over. I won’t be at all surprised to see this book taking slots on a lot of best of the year lists in another six months or so." - J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

• Review: "Don’t think of [The Wolverton Bible] as an exception or a bizarre footnote in religious art but one and maybe the 20th century continuation... By the end of the book, pages after pages of doom and destruction, you realize that Wolverton is maybe the only person to illustrate the The Old Testament and the Book of Revelation -- the most 'savage' books of the bible." - Are You a Serious Comic Book Reader?

• Plug: "Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1: It's the collection of the first four issues of Michael Kupperman's hilarious series, now in color! This stuff is comedy gold, so get it if you haven't read it already, and hell, spend the extra money to see the non-monochromatic version if you want." - Matthew J. Brady

• Plug (?): Robot 6's Chris Mautner proposes Ti-Girls and Snake 'n' Bacon action figures. I'd buy 'em!

• Preview: Comics And... Other Imaginary Tales gives thumbs up to two of our upcoming releases: Captain Easy Vol. 1: Solidier of Fortune by Roy Crane and Like a Dog by Zak Sally (both previewed here)

• Interview: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon talks to Trina Robbins about about the genesis and assembling of The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons 1913-1940: "It's really great to have The Brinkley Girls, and I was pleased when Robbins agreed to answer some questions about it."

• Events: Jared Gardner reports from a panel he moderated with Arnold Roth, Mort Walker and Brian Walker as part of the celebration of the merger of the International Museum of Cartoon Art with Ohio State University's Cartoon Library and Museum, adding that Jean Schulz has set up a matching grant to raise needed funds for the combined museum to move into a new permanent home

• Oddity: At Guttergeek, Chris Reilly interviews himself: "I actually am a big fan of Michael Kupperman and Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphics just sent me a copy of the hardcover Tales Designated to Thrizzle Vol. 1 and I would like to conduct this interview by commenting on the quotes of this book – would that be cool?" Um, 'kay...

• Things to see: Two more classic Michael Jackson illustrations from Drew Friedman

Huizenga's Treehouse teaser

mike

Here's a glimpse of Kevin Huizenga & Matthew Thurber's contribution to The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror #15, from Kevin's blog.

Jon Vermilyea monster madness

mike

Jon Vermilyea murders the universe with these poster & t-shirt designs he did for Fantastic Fest:

If you have some special kind of glasses this poster is 3D -- !!!

What do they mean they're not on sale yet?!?!

Michael Kupperman at Desert Island July 10: signing, screenprint

mike

Desert Island says, "These amazing handmade screenprints are 12" X 16" and will be signed and available on July 10th when Mr. Kupperman appears at Desert Island to celebrate the release of Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1." We should have a formal announcement of this event in the near future; in the meantime, here's the Facebook invitation with some more details, and you can pre-order a signed print here.

Michael Jackson by Drew Friedman

mike

Drew Friedman notes that he's had occasion to draw Michael Jackson several times over the years; find out why he chose this image (from the NY Observer) to commemorate Jackson (and see it a bit bigger) on his art blog.

More Humbug @ Strand photos

mike

Thanks to fan Jose M. Mendez for sharing his terrific photos of April's Humbug event at the Strand Bookstore with us on Flickr! That's Arnold Roth & Al Jaffee above; check out the whole set of photos right here.

Now in stock (with FREE shipping offer!): Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me by Peter Bagge

mike

Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations
By Peter Bagge

STOP! Instead of clicking "Add to Cart" below, call in your order to our toll-free customer service line at 1-800-657-1100 and you will get FREE standard shipping within the U.S. on your order of this plus any other books and comics by Peter Bagge! Offer only valid for phone orders, NOT for web orders, within the U.S., through July 31, 2009. What are you waiting for?? Call now, and don't forget to mention this offer to our friendly operators!

Fans of Peter Bagge’s generation-defining, satirical fiction may not realize this, but the cartoonist doubles as an opinionated cuss, and has been contributing provocative (but still hilarious) comic-strip opinion pieces to Reason magazine for the last several years... finally collected in this volume.

Although a libertarian by inclination (hence the Reason gig), Bagge (who lives in the fuzzy-headed, liberal capital of the Northwest, Seattle) is hardly dogmatic, and many of the pieces undermine traditional party lines in favor of a rather personal, rational and informed take on hot-button issues that will force partisan Democrats and Republicans alike to rethink them. And of course, Bagge’s well-researched comic strip “essays” crackle with the same energy and wit that propelled him into the collective Gen X consciousness with his comic book series Hate.

Favorite topics include the erosion of our civil liberties (whether the post-9/11 Bush administration's gradual erosion of the Bill of Rights, the insanity of the war on drugs, or nanny-state meddling), ongoing boondoggles of the American public (for professional sports stadiums or ineffective public transportation systems), the Iraq war (Bagge is vociferously against it), so-called art and so-called entertainment, the homeless, the mall-ification of America, politicians both in general and in particular (including the 2008 presidential race and a revelatory one-on-one with Republican not-so-hopeful Ron Paul that soured Bagge on the candidate forever), the conservative/religious war on sex and drugs, and whether citizens should be allowed to own bazookas. Each piece features the voluble Bagge himself front and center as the puzzled, indignant, or deeply conflicted everyman-on-the-street trying to make sense of this 21st Century.

And of course, every panel is delineated in Bagge’s glorious, laugh-out-loud stretchy 4-color cartoon style, making even his disquisitions on some very serious topics go down as smoothly as Buddy Bradley’s latest escapade.

120-page full-color 7.75" x 10" softcover • $16.99
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

Now in stock: Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938 by Hal Foster

mike

Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938
By Hal Foster

HAROLD FOSTER’S LEGENDARY MEDIEVAL EPIC, FINALLY IN ITS DEFINITIVE EDITION

Universally acclaimed as the most stunningly gorgeous adventure comic strip of all time, Prince Valiant ran for 35 years under the virtuoso pen of its creator, Hal Foster. (Such was its popularity that today, decades after Foster’s death, it continues to run under different hands.)

The giant Sunday-funnies pages (Valiant ran only on Sundays) gave Foster a huge canvas upon which he was able to limn epic swordfights, stunning scenes of pomp and pageantry, and some of the most beautiful human beings — male and female — ever to appear in comics. And he matched his nonpareil visual sense with the narrative instincts of a born storyteller, propelling his daring young hero from one crisis to another with barely a panel to catch one’s breath.

Prince Valiant has previously been widely available only in re-colored, somewhat degraded editions (now out of print and fetching collectors’ prices). Thanks to advances in production technology and newly available original proof sheets, this new series from the industry leader in quality strip classics is the first to feature superb restored artwork that captures every delicate line and chromatic nuance of Foster’s original masterpiece. Comic strip aficionados will be ecstatic, and younger readers who enjoy a classic adventure yarn will be bowled over.

Volume One is rounded out with a rare, in-depth classic Foster interview previously available only in a long out-of-print issue of The Comics Journal, as well as an informative Afterword detailing the production and restoration of this edition, which you can read in its entirety right here on our website.

120-page full color 10.5" x 14.25" comic book • $29.99
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

Now in stock: The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora

mike

The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora
By Jim Flora; edited by Irwin Chusid & Barbara Economon

A third collection of amusing nightmares from the demonic wand of Jim Flora

Jim Flora (1914�-1998), long admired for boisterous 1940s and '50s record cover illustrations and a later series of best-selling children's books, has been rediscovered in recent years as an alchemist of bizarre and politely disturbing imagery. The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora burnishes the reputation of one of the great overlooked paintbox fantasists of the twentieth century.

Like its two predecessors (The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora and The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora), this anthology celebrates a visionary whose work is steeped in vari-hued paradox. Flora's figures are fun while threatening; playful yet dangerous; humorous but deadly. His helter-skelter arabesques are clustered with strangely contorted critters of no identifiable species, juxtaposed amid toothpick towers and trombones twisted into stevedore knots. Down his streets lurch demonic mutants sporting fried-egg eyes, dagger noses, and bonus limbs. Yet, despite the raucous energy projected in these hyperactive mosaics, a typical Flora freak circus often projects harmony and balance — an ordered chaos.

Like the first two volumes of Floriana, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora features paintings, drawings, and sketches from the 1940s through the 1990s — many never previously published or exhibited; more artifacts from the artist's 1940s tenure in the Columbia Records art department; and vintage newspaper and magazine illustrations.

This collection also heralds the first publication of an early, abandoned book for youngsters, "The X-Ray Eye of Wallingford Hume," which Flora drafted in 1943. Equally fascinating are original roughs, overlays, and concept images for his 1950s and '60s published kid-lit. In a curious inversion from art to objet d'art, these partial illustrations — intended to be layered for a printer's composite — are impressive, in their curious minimalism, as stand-alone masterpieces.

A gallery of 1940s pen and pencil sketches invokes a catacomb of nightmarish apparitions and inscrutable petroglyphs. Sweetly Diabolic also collects for the first time between covers a sideshow of science widgetry from a short-lived, now-obscure mid-1950s monthly, Research & Engineering, for which Flora served as art director. Chronicles of Flora's career, personal vignettes, and mementos from the family archives augment the images.

Although a lot of his work appears cartoonish, Flora didn't draw comics. He always projected a veneer of sophistication that elevated his images to the level of fine art, even when grinding out topical illustrations for newsstand weeklies. Flora deftly merged the well mannered with the maniacal — eyeball jazz that bops and bounces in unfathomable meters.

BONUS! Download an EXCLUSIVE 14-page PDF excerpt (2.7 MB) comprising the heavily illustrated Introduction, "The Flora Aura."

180-page full-color 11" x 10" softcover • $34.99
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

Daily OCD: 6/26/09

mike

A fresh heap of Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!... collects all the [Fletcher] Hanks material not included in the first book. Hanks' hyperactive, colorful, robust, and crazily disproportionate art is perfectly matched to his over-the-top storytelling... There are few artists, from the Golden Age to today, that so deftly blended goofy dialogue with terrifying violence and surreal situations; for better or worse, Hanks was a real original. [Grade] B+" - The A.V. Club

• Review: "[Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti] is a brutally funny and disturbing attempt to push some buttons, either uncomfortably or comfortably mired in taboo. The aesthetic of freaks, geeks, nerds and ugly men and women, all with dark pasts, dirty fetishes, sociopathic tendencies, and murderous habits all play out over 120 odd pages of frenetic cartoon violence, sometimes sexual, sometimes suicidal, sometimes offensive, but always funny." - Geek Pie

• Review: "Explainers [is] a veritable Bible of middle class American dysfunction... [Jules] Feiffer reveals the depths of his subject not only through the dialogue — which are filled with psychological, social and politic depths that few cartoonists have ever plumbed — but also through an amazing skill to capture the body language so crucial to human communication... Explainers is 500 pages of startling truth captured in sequential squiggles on paper, a real masterpiece worth delving into." - John E. Mitchell, North Adams Transcript

• Review: "[Nell] Brinkley was an amazing artist and craftsman and there are pages here [in The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons 1913-1940] that will stun you in their detail and composition." - Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Profile/Review: Robert Birnbaum of The Morning News proposes "a Mount Rushmore of American illustration" consisting of Bill Mauldin, Jules Feiffer, Ed Sorel, Seymour Chwast, and David Levine, adding "American Presidents is a 128-page compilation that assembles Levine’s survey of American leaders and their coteries and skewers them with delightful results. It should be a required text in American history courses—Levine’s images powerfully expose the venality, duplicity, and hypocrisy of the upper reaches of our government."

• Interviews: Inkstuds presents a two-fer of audio talks with newly-minted Mome contributors: first up, it's Noah Van Sciver (whose comics "read like they came from the mind of a crazed hobo. Seriously, they are great"); up second, it's T. Edward Bak (described simply as "great")

• Plug: Worth Your Attention discovers The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons 1913-1940

• Plug: "Olivier Schrauwen is one of my favourite new cartoonists, and one of the best artists to appear in recent issues of Mome." - Richard Cowdry, Love the Line

• Things to see: "The Press Is Hungry for Explanations" by Michael Kupperman

• Things to see: Can you imagine a Judy Drood television cartoon? Someone in TV did, and Richard Sala did some production art for it

Michael Jackson Google bait

mike

Above: cover of Amazing Heroes #117, published by Fantagraphics Books, May 1987 (artwork by Tom Yeates, I think; scan from Comic Collectors Live). Below: MJ strip by Paul Hornschemeier from the Wall Street Journal, 2008, as collected in the forthcoming book All and Sundry. Yes, Jackson's cultural influence extends all the way to Fantagraphics.

Humbug outtake: subscription mailer

mike

I just stumbled across this on Flickr today. Devlin Thompson says "I scanned this for possible inclusion in the book, but it didn't make it. You should buy the book anyway." Click for larger.

Daily OCD: 6/25/09

mike

A quiet day for Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "There's always a touch of melancholy in everything that Jason writes, but there's a bleakness in some of these stories [in Low Moon] that I haven't seen since Hey, Wait.... All told, this is still a book every Jason fan should read..." - Rob Clough

• Plug: "Buy [Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1]! It's amazingly good." - Jackson Publick (co-creator, The Venture Bros.)

• News: Robot 6 reports that Michael Kupperman will provide the cover for the 2009 Best American Comics volume edited by Charles Burns

• Sincerest form of flattery: Old Jews Telling Jokes has a familiar ring to it, no? (Found via Slog)

Ellen Forney larns ya in the ways of love

mike

Ellen Forney makes a triumphant return to the pages of our hometown newsweekly The Stranger in the new annual "Queer Issue" with the full-page strip "How to Have a Mind-Blowing, Decadent, All-Day Threesome!" They've made it available as a downloadable PDF file, enabling you to print out one copy to laminate for future reference and one to insert with her other "how-to" strips in your copy of I Love Led Zeppelin.

Bookmark: Olivier Schrauwen art blog

mike

Mome contributor Ollie Schrauwen posts intriguing images on his blog. (Hat tip: Spurge)