Josh Simmons sez, "Have I sent you this link for the ABBA video I made with a friend? That's me at 6 years old..."

NOTE: while there is nothing overtly NSFW in this video, at least in the 50 seconds of it I managed to watch before having to shut it off, well, I'll just let YouTube commenter "osotope" warn you with this description: "A fascinating amalgam of K-TEL, Anton LeVey, and the 1984 NAMBLA fund raising campaign."

Tim O'Shea talks Funeral of the Heart with Leah Hayes. 

Courtesy Andrice Arp: 

He's not just a human hard drive of information. He has good taste to boot. All-Time Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings raves about our Love & Rockets books over at his blog. 

Courtesy Anders Nilsen.

Most Outrageous: The Trials and Trespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester
By Bob Levin

In May 1989, Dwaine Tinsley stood at the summit of an unlikely career. The product of a broken, trailer-trash marriage, he was a high school dropout who had decided to become a professional cartoonist while serving a six-year sentence in a Maryland prison for burglary. As cartoon editor for Larry Flynt’s notorious Hustler magazine, he had assembled a staff of pen-and-Wite-Out-wielding Lenny Bruces whose unprecedentedly offensive socio-sexual cartoons had spearheaded that publication's fight against the forces of censorship and repression that sought to overthrow the political and cultural gains of the 1960s. His primary personal contribution — spawned amidst a national hysteria that saw a plague of child sexual abuse arising everywhere from pre-school staffs to satanic sects — was "Chester the Molester," a hulking middle-aged man who craved pre-pubescent girls.

And then Tinsley's teenage daughter accused him of sexually violating her over the course of five years. And the prosecution in his ensuing criminal trial cast several storage boxes full of his cartoons against him. Most Outrageous is the story of the trial of Dwaine Tinsley as well as the story of Tinsley's family life.

Bob Levin's writings have established him as one of the most thought-provoking chroniclers of cartoonists today. While focusing upon the work and lives of the most offbeat creators in the field in order to champion the pursuit of individual vision, no matter how unorthodox or inflammatory, he has explored issues common to artists of every medium. Most Outrageous carries his search onto new, unsettling ground.

200-page 6" x 9" softcover (with B&W illustrations) • $19.99
Add to Cart • Read More...

Jeet Heer has a short look at the Underappreciated and Essential Francoise Mouly, primarily her influence as an editor from Raw to the New Yorker which is about the most badass resume a person could ever hope for.

Just learned that there's an art gallery operating in my neighborhood of Ballard here in Seattle. The Wonderful Union has a show of locals Don and Ryan Clark's work opening on Saturday, the 12th.

Or maybe you'd prefer Chicago's Steak Mtn. show. Apparently Threadless now has a gallery...

The record breaking Ninja Turtles event. What else were you doing Thursday?

Los Angeles PBS station KCET interviews Jaime Hernandez, Esther Pearl Watson & Mark Todd, Johnny Ryan and Carol Lay about their lives as cartoonists in L.A. in a special series of web shorts. (Pictured above: Johnny "Kittycat" Ryan.)

We received advance copies of a plethora of upcoming books at the office last week. Time permitting, we'll be bringing you a photographic sneak peek of a different book each day this week! Today we've got Mome Vol. 11: for a Flickr slideshow, click here, or to browse manually, click here.