Most people working in the Western graphic novel business received a press release from Fantagraphics Books this week. It begins: "Fantagraphics Books Needs Your Help! Buy Books! Keep Us Alive! "

Fantagraphics has been in business for 27 years, formed around the critical magazine The Comics Journal. As they put it, "we are proud of our long-term commitment to comics as an art form and our dogged determination to push excellence down everybody's throats."

More in link.

Buy a couple of Fantagraphics books this week. I recommend in particular Black Hole.

"This could really happen. It really could. This horse could actually win the Triple Crown." -Rita Santos, in The Blood-Horse, May 24, 2003

His story.

Thanks to Maggie Estep for the link.

WASHINGTON, May 29 — A healthy and energetic mule named Idaho Gem is the first member of the horse family to be cloned, joining the barnyard of cloned animals that now includes sheep, cows, pigs, cats and rodents.

Thanks to partygirl for the link.

Nerd apocalypse.

Thanks to Matt Fraction for the link.

(Massage images Copyright 2003 Steve Geaney.)

Hal Lubash is one of those people whose mere presence lowers your shoulders half an inch. I believe that in a previous life he was a sauna. (When I met him he was a carpenter...)

Regardless, if you are in New York City you should hire Hal to come to your home or office and touch you.

Seriously. So! Good! For! You!

My best friend, Amity Worrel -- who also happens to be the most beautiful, talented and tasteful woman who e'er walked the hallowed grounds of Manhattan -- has been working with designers Tom Scheerer and Jeffrey Bilhuber (separately) since God-knows-when. I spoke to her this morning, at which point she advised me that I should pick up the July issue of House Beautiful, because one of the spaces she and Tom decorated is on the cover.

I should ALSO toss in my shopping basket the June/July issue of Elle Decor (the one with the kids in the striped towels), as Penelope Green has done a story on Tom's cottage in the Bahamas: another project Amity was on.

And, lest you think that's all, the cover of Chris Casson Madden's New American Livingrooms is a Jeffrey Bilhuber room in Darian, CT -- one more beneficiary of Miss Amity's skills.

I am very, very proud.

In other news, I'm about half way through Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and it is astonishingly good. Possibly the best non-fiction use of the graphic novel form I've ever read. I'm sure I'll write it up for artbomb.net soon, but don't wait on me. Go pick it up now.