Mama zama! Click for bigger. (Link updated)

Dame Darcy has posted an update to her busy, busy art/music/performance schedule, with no fewer than 10 events scheduled in Portland, Olympia and Seattle between now and the end of October, starting with a cabaret performance in Portland TONIGHT!

Paul Buckley is Art Director at Penguin Books, a publisher known for iconic design (and Art Directors), and he recently started a Flickr page featuring a small sampling of his work. Buckley is also the guy who managed to spearhead all those amazing classics-of-literature-covered-by-cartoonists. It may seem obvious-- Chris Ware doing the cover art to Candide, Jason doing Dharma Bums, Charles Burns on The Jungle, and so many more-- but getting all that through the marketing teams and other red tape at an enormous publishing house isn't just brilliant, it's tenacious.

Looks like the hits just keep coming with the biggest no-brainer of all (Tony Millionaire covering Moby Dick) plus Ho Che Anderson, Jeffrey Brown, etc.

Perhaps our next online poll ought to ask for suggestions on future Penguin Classics. My vote: Bil Keane doing Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal."

UPDATE: I have to learn not to make these sloppy blog posts. I've made a lengthy note in the comments on why, as a book designer, I consider this feat noteworthy.

More importantly, Paul Buckley has pointed out that Helen Yentus was his partner on the original round of these covers. One of the great things Yentus pulls off is making novel covers that read as complete images, a perfect hybrid of typography and image. So it makes sense she would be involved here.

Portable Grindhouse won't be out until the late holidays but after a long delay I'm pleased to finally be sending Jacques Boyreau's baby off to press. What seemed like a good suggestion at the time-- to present these old beat up video tapes as austere artifacts (my "Richard Avedon" presentation according to Jacques)-- turned into a nightmare of production. But at last, rest easy VHS fans, this thing is going to press.

Featuring 200 pages of spreads showing the front and back of video boxes selected by Jacques, the book will also come inside a light cardboard slipcase, video box style. (Note, that's not the cover above (nor is the image at Amazon), that's just Flog filler.)

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Tunes: Inkstuds presents the Jaime Hernandez mixtape: 17 songs selected by Jaime and presented for your listening enjoyment, from N.W.A. to B.Ö.C. to Mötley Crüe to Dölly Partön

• Profile: "[Fletcher Hanks's] drawings, while often clunky, have a kind of primal 'rightness' and a narrative logic so wonderfully bizarre that it wins over readers normally skeptical of the kapow, blam, boom sequences of superhero comics. Beyond the comics themselves, though, it's [Paul] Karasik's smart enthusiasm for the work that tells readers in no uncertain terms that here is something to get excited about." - Sasha Watson, Publishers Weekly

• Review: "[From Wonderland with Love] is beautiful and attractive to such a degree that it makes one feel all proud of one's country. [Rating: 5 out of 6 stars]" - Hans Bjerregaard, Ekstra-Bladet (translated from Danish; link to scan)

• Review: "Beautiful graphic craftmanship and original narratives at a level that could have been drawn straight from the American comics market's avant-garde [in From Wonderland with Love]." - Søren Vinterberg, Politiken (translated from Danish)

• Review: "...Abstract Comics... goes one step beyond to leave the accepted definition of comics outdated, noting that the expressive possibilities of this medium and this language are still unknown." - La Cárcel de Papel (translated from Spanish)

• Interview: At Verbicide, Nate Pollard talks to Zak Sally about his new album Fear of Song and his publishing ethos: "Every La Mano release is something I am intensely proud of, and stand behind 110 percent. I aspire to people trusting La Mano."

• Things to see: Roger Langridge unearths some early Fred the Clown sketches

• Things to see: Recent sketchbookery from Anders Nilsen

Scheduled to hit comics shops in the USA tomorrow: The Comics Journal #299, featuring Bob Levin's amazing investigation into the lost anthology The Someday Funnies, the Journal interview with Josh Cotter, Myron Waldman's Eve and lots more. 

Visit our product page for more details and for links to free excerpts on the TCJ.com website. Your local shop can confirm availability if you give them a buzz beforehand.

Check out this awesome bag illustration that our own Tim Lane (of Abandoned Cars fame) did for our pals David & Dave at Secret Headquarters. If you're in Los Angeles, it's worth making a trip to SHQ just to pick up a free bag!  

I can't explain the raccoon. 

The must-see comics event of the week. Michael Kupperman will performs his way through several of his comics, including one in 3-D! And yes, glasses will be provided. 

For the world to see, Hans Rickheit presents 14 pages from an earlier, "primordial version" of his graphic novel The Squirrel Machine. (To be clear: this is not the story as it appears in the book.)

Eric sent this to me to post, and I don't know where or how he found it, but it's a pretty great little slice of history: Sam Klemke documents his encounter with Ivan Brunetti at our booth at the 1999 San Diego Comic-Con and gets a good look at Ivan's convention sketchbook of unflattering caricatures (NSFW, needless to say). Dan Clowes, Jaime Hernandez and Richard Sala all make cameo appearances. And Batman. (YouTube link)