Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review/Interview: Vice's Nick Gazin looks at The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 — "I expected that the quality of the Peanuts comics would be waning by now, but I’m still laughing at the jokes and recognizing the personalities of characters I know in the gang.... It’s a beautifully designed, thick, brickish volume with lots of memorable storylines.... All in all it’s a beautiful two years worth of Charles Schulz’s creative output. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you think." — and talks to Monte Schulz about his dad's work on the strip — "The early 80s were a strange time for us. In 1981, Dad underwent quadruple bypass surgery after feeling in poor health for most of the previous year. The idea of surgery terrified him, but the medications he’d been taking had left him so debilitated that surgery became the option he was forced to consider. So he had the procedure and survived, and found a wealth of material from the experience, which he poured into his strip." — and his own career as a writer

• Review: "Jaques Tardi has already proven with West Coast Blues that he is just the man for the job when it comes to illustrating the particular brand of noir crime Jean-Patrick Manchette so deftly dished out. There’s a palpable feeling of safeness when you open [Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot] — nothing to do with the subject matter, of course, but with such certifiable masters captaining the ship you’re quite willing to... [trust] that it will lead somewhere totally unexpected, which it does.... Remember that feeling you got in your guts just before the end of Kiss Me Deadly? It feels a bit like that. The first page grabs you roughly by the hair and the book happens in those split seconds before the last page punches your lights out." – Hayley Campbell, The Comics Journal

• Review: "Fantagraphics Books has done an excellent job putting the comic strips of Mickey Mouse in this impressive volume.... Also included in this book is a section on 'The Gottfredson Archives: Essays and Archival Features.' Fans of Mickey Mouse or cartoon strips will enjoy the wonderful stories and illustrations of Floyd Gottfredson created approximately 80 years ago and beautifully presented by the publisher." – Glenn Perrett, Simcoe.com

• Interview: At art:21 Thea Liberty Nichols talks to Lilli Carré: "I frequently switch back and forth between working on comics and animation. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to work with pages, where I can really focus on the details and nuances from one panel to the next, and an overall page composition. After I’ve been working on something like that for a while, it feels very freeing to switch to working on an animation, and draw 12 drawings for every second of film. It becomes much looser in terms of each individual drawing, and is more about the overall feel and movement." (Via The Comics Reporter)

• Lore: Kim Deitch's epic memoir-in-music "Mad About Music: My Life in Records" continues at TCJ.com

One of the great pleasures of working at Fantagraphics Bookstore in Georgetown is the amazing people I meet. Like Pam, from Classic Helicopters at the south end of Boeing Field. She treated me, John and my daughter Bella to a 45-minute chopper tour of the region on Tuesday morning. Highlights included a breathtaking look down Snoqualmie Falls, a bird's eye view of the Space Needle, and a spectacular look at the Seattle skyline from above the stadiums. Here we are hovering near Lake Washington with hella Bella at the controls. Look out below!

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 (and the 1979-1982 box set) is scheduled to hit comic shops next week and PREVIEWSworld presents a 5-page preview with strips from February-April 1981!

From designer Alexa Koenings here's the striking final cover design for Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler's Oil and Water, coming in late Fall/early Winter. It's similar to the preliminary design we've already shown you, with some small but important differences. We're hoping to have the bottom half of "OIL" printed with iridescent metallic stamping for that authentic oil-spill sheen, which should look pretty fantastic if it works out.

We're also excited to share this advance praise we received from Jeff Lemire, creator of Essex County and Sweet Tooth:

"Oil and Water is smart, informative and completely engaging. We experience the disaster through the eyes of Duin and Wheeler's richly developed, beautifully illustrated characters and the result is a stunning graphic novel not to be missed."

The Hidden
by Richard Sala

136-page full-color 8.25" x 8.25" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-386-6

Ships in: August 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Is this the end of the world? How did it happen? Why did it happen? There is one man who knows...

Take a walk with the dazed survivors of a mysterious worldwide catastrophe. They are bound for a place, somewhere in the desert, where a terrible truth awaits them.

Richard Sala's books are "deliriously entertaining" (Rue Morgue Magazine), "cinematic and cheerfully over-the-top" (The New York Times Book Review), containing "brilliantly atmospheric art, full of shadows and spikes." (Booklist)

"To read a Richard Sala comic is an experience both jarring and fun. Good for a rainy day or a stormy night." – Publishers Weekly

Download and read a 12-page PDF excerpt (3.1 MB), and preview 13 pages at the official The Hidden website.

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Continuing to add new Mome contributors to the Flog fold, today we look at the work of Jesse Moynihan. Jesse's new book Forming Vol. 1, the first collection of his awesome webcomic, hits comic shops today (published by Nobrow Press out of the UK and distributed in the US by AdHouse):

The latest page of Forming:

Jesse also does storyboards for one of my 2 current favorite TV shows, Adventure Time! (Click the image to see the whole crazy pan down into the underworld.)

There's a bunch more artwork you can see on his website:

Here's a peek at Jesse's story in Mome Vol. 22:

Wandering Son creator Shimura Takako posted a few doodles on Twitter today, starting (much to my delight) with Kyle, Stan, Cartman and Kenny from South Park...

...followed by this reclining nude...

...and finally this cute character, "Yukinko" (I must confess my ignorance as to whether this is a character from one of her stories):

This is a pretty cool look at the original art for the cover and the breathtaking aerial panorama on pages 58-59 of Wilfred Santiago's 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente.

The PREVIEWSworld website presents an assortment of 7 pages from Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954, which is scheduled to hit comic shops next week! The preview shows a nice mix of Toth's horror, war and romance work.

Elsewhere on their site PREVIEWSworld also shares our promotional "BLAD" brochure for Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, previously seen here on our website.

Our summer tour continues for Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind!

After a sell-out show in Olympia [note: it was free], editor and Senior Curator of the EMP museum, Jacob McMurray, is now heading over the water to bad-ass Bellevue, WA! 

Charles Burns's iconic artwork for Sub Pop 200, from Taking Punk to the Masses

Sub Pop friends like Modest Mouse and Sunny Day Real Estate both formed on that side of the lake, and the East Side used to boast some legendary all-ages venues like Ground Zero and the Fire House.

You can join Jacob this Saturday, August 13th at Silver Platters Records in Bellevue at 2:00 PM for more local music talk and a book signing at this free, all-ages event!

Silver Platters Records is located at 15600 NE 8th St, in the Crossroads Shopping Center, next to the QFC. Keep an eye on the Fantagraphics Events page and stay tuned to the FLOG for upcoming dates on the Taking Punk to the Masses tour!