Our pals at PanelToPanel.net are offering an exclusive signed bookplate edition of Jaime Hernandez's forthcoming THE EDUCATION OF HOPEY GLASS. Better yet, everyone who purchases a copy gets entered into a free drawing to win the bookplate's original art by Jaime, while a runner-up will receive a set of L&R trade paperbacks! Meanwhile, here's a new PTP interview with Jaime!

Ellen Forney: Better than Guy Deslisle, on par with George Perez! From last week's Entertainment Weekly.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who entered our Scavenger Hunt contest! We only had one incorrect answer (and one that our judges are still looking into) out of 18 entries. Our randomly-selected Grand Prize 50%-off coupon winner is Michael Pang of Phoenix, Arizona. We've notified all the winners, so if you entered, check your inbox!

For the record, here are the questions and the answers we were looking for:

1. What is the name of the mermaid character in Dame Darcy's Meat Cake?
   Effluvia
   
2. Buddy Bradley's pal Stinky was the lead singer of what band?
   Leonard and the Love Gods
   
3. What artists make guest appearances in Robert Crumb's Self-Loathing Comics #2?
   Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman, Pete Poplaski (a lot of folks missed Pete, but we let them slide)
   
4. The cover of Zero Zero #10 is a parody of what famous magazine?
   Rolling Stone
   
5. What animal did Jim Woodring's grandfather invent a trap for?
   Gopher
   
6. What famous actor provided lead voices in the "Terr'ble Thompson" musical?
   Art Carney
   
7. What does the acronym GASH stand for?
   Ghoul Appreciation Society Headquarters
   
8. Who is the Italian co-publisher of the Ignatz Series?
   Coconino Press
   
9. In which volume of The Complete Peanuts does Frieda make her first appearance?
   Vol. 6 (1961-1962)
   
10. What day is Popeye creator E.C. Segar's birthday? (Hint: try the blog for this one.)
    December 8

We're still brainstorming what our next contest might be... stay tuned!

Ladies and gents, the great Carl Ballantine, taken yesterday in Los Angeles by Stephen Cox (who also took the awesome Larry Storch pic from the weekend). 

Ladies and gentlemen, the great Larry Storch!

Speaking of Drew Friedman (and More Old Jewish Comedians), check out these three pictures of Drew's ridiculously cool studio, taken recently by (and ©) David Burd:

Here's the first look at the forthcoming Ghost World Special Edition cover by Daniel Clowes. This jpg won't do the book justice: it's a deluxe hardcover with silver ink and spot varnish and perhaps some slight tweaking still to come by Mr. Clowes. The book is going to be amazing, in the vein of the impeccable Palestine Special Edition, though with even more uncollected material than that book. Weighing in at nearly 300 pages, it includes the original classic graphic novel, the Academy Award-nominated screenplay, and almost 50 pages of supplementary material never before collected, including several new strips created for the book, a new introduction and annotations to the graphic novel by Clowes, as well as a comprehensive retrospective of every piece of GW artwork and merchandise related to the book and film. 

 We'll preview more soon; expect book to be in stores by early summer.

Above: Photo of Drew Friedman, in his studio. © 2008 David Burd.

Drew Friedman is, along with Daniel Clowes and Chester Brown, one of the primary reasons I am working in comics today and didn't abandon my juvenile love for the medium long after most boys have discovered girls and sports. So when we decided to start conducting some exclusive author interviews for Flog!, it didn't take me long to decide I really wanted to spotlight Drew, especially as we are on the cusp of releasing his new book, MORE OLD JEWISH COMEDIANS. It's astounding to me that throughout much of the 1990s and earlier part of this decade, there was a new generation of comics fans who weren't so familiar with Drew's work as those of us who came of age in 1980s and early 1990s, as Drew somewhat slipped out of the comics field to focus on other pursuits. But he was a powerful influence on me in my formative years, between his work for Topps, Raw Magazine and National Lampoon. His two early Fantagraphics collections, WARTS AND ALL and ANY SIMILARITIES TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL were two of the very earliest Fantagraphics collections I ever purchased, and remain two of my favorites. The latter is where I first discovered his strip "The Andy Griffith Show," which was easily the greatest comic strip I'd ever read at the time. I remember getting an argument with my then-girlfriend over whether the strip was brilliant satire or blatantly racist -- it was no surprise we didn't last. In his excellent introduction to THE FUN NEVER STOPS!, Clowes describes this strip as "more 'real' and truthful than any biographical comic or self-revelatory memoir... the connection I felt is like nothing I have experienced since." I couldn't agree more. Same goes for Clowes' statement that "a Friedman caricature looks more like its subject than any photograph possibly could."

Thankfully, you don't have to take our word for it: the last two years have seen the release of not one, or two, but three new Friedman books, introducing his masterful cartooning and riotous satire to a new generation of comics fans, and thankfully Drew was gracious enough to answer some questions for Flog! readers.

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