Courtesy Al Columbia. What can I say?

Courtesy Patrick McDonnell:

Happy triple-8 day. Let's head into the weekend with a whole mess of review links:

• This week's barrel of reviews and articles related to Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell include entries from the Barnes & Noble Review (see the second-from-right column), Minneapolis City Pages, this Italian site (Nova100?), the Montreal Mirror, Johnny Bacardi, and Comic Book Bin (which gives it an A+). Also, Comic Book Resources recaps "The World of Steve Ditko" panel (featuring Blake Bell, Kim Deitch and Gary Groth among others) held at Comic-Con last month.

• SF Weekly calls Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars a "Graphic Novel To Look Out For," and Print calls it "the real comic book event of the summer"

• Toque de Queda reviews Thomas Ott's The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 (en Español)

• Sean T. Collins gets in the first word on Love and Rockets: New Stories #1

• Sean furthermore provides the Review Quote of the Month with this, from his take on Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 by Michael Kupperman: "If God didn't hate us all, we'd live in a world where there'd be some way for Michael Kupperman, Johnny Ryan, and Matt Furie to do a world tour in every way the humor comics equivalent of that Guns n' Roses/Metallica/Faith No More tour my parents wouldn't let me go to back in '91--selling out stadiums, inspiring bootleg T-shirts sold in parking lots filled with drunk drivers, and causing riots when Ryan gets in a fistfight with Stephanie Seymour and blows off a show in Toronto out of frustration. But here we are, and the best we can do is get a new issue of Tales Designed to Thrizzle and laugh ourselves stupid."

• The Comics Reporter also takes on Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4

• Book By Its Cover looks at the brand new Mome Vol. 12, as does the amazingly-named Portugese-language blog Fucking With Jazz Metal (which also has an excellent header graphic)

• Cartoon Brew takes a peek at the upcoming 292nd issue of The Comics Journal

• Comic Book Bin on Meanwhile... A Biography of Milton Caniff by R.C. Harvey

...and some other items of note:

• Via Gary Groth: This analysis of There Will Be Blood quotes Gil Kane from the conversation he had with Robert Crumb in the late '80s that Gary moderated (as heard on The Comics Journal Library Interview CD Sampler)

• Speaking of Gary, Idolator mentions a little tidbit about his pre-Fantagraphics publishing career

• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer talks to Zak Sally and Nate Denver about their appearance at our store last weekend

• My Fantagraphics colleagues and myself recommend graphic novels for teen boys at Guys Lit Wire

• Editor & Publisher blurbs our next volume of The Complete Peanuts (due later this month)

• The Albany Times Union notes the 40th anniversary of the introduction of Franklin to the Peanuts gang

• DMFDP spazzes out over our upcoming Daniel Clowes exhibit

• Rediscovered: a video made by Brian Biggs in 2002 for his book Frederick & Eloise (via Letters from the Inquisition)

• Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw: on Hollywood's nightstand!

• At Blog Flume, Jonathan Bennett reports coming across a sidewalk art vendor in New York whose wares included direct copies of Ivan Brunetti Schizo panels

• Kaz was captured on film in the front row of a 1977 Ramones gig at CBGB, thereby proving conclusively that he is cooler than any of us, according to this scoop on The Comics Reporter

Here's the next entry in our current batch of daily video and photo teasers of upcoming releases: Deitch's Pictorama, a unique and exciting book of "picto-fiction" by brothers Simon, Seth and Kim Deitch. Watch the video above, and take a closer look in our photo gallery. (Note that these images are of my own personal copy, so you'll see a signature and inscription on the Table of Contents page that aren't part of the printed book.)

Ted Stearn's "The Comics Industry As Metaphor":

I stumbled across both these links today, and was going to include them in tomorrow's "Blogosphere roundup," but decided they deserve their own post: Woodring Simulacra is a blog compiling images of real-world "things that look like Jim Woodring made them up," and Jimland Novelties is a Flickr user who is posting images of an incredible collection of Woodring rarities and ephemera, with Jim's permission.

I just can't resist pointing out this editorial boo-boo by our pals over at The Stranger, mistakenly placing the graphic for next Wednesday's David B. event with today's item for the Museum of Bad Art on their SLOG blog. I'm trembling in mock outrage!

Courtesy Charles Burns:

Our latest batch of daily video and photo teasers of upcoming releases marches on with a look at the last of three releases in our Ignatz format due later this month: Sammy the Mouse #2 by Zak Sally (which some of you on the West Coast have been lucky enough to pick up at one of Zak's recent tour stops). Watch the video above, and take a closer look in our photo gallery.