Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...Willie & Joe: Back Home... is superbly done. Like many Fantagraphics releases over the years, this book easily could be placed in a personal library or on a coffee table for public viewing. In many ways, it can be described best as a piece of art and something to be treasured by collectors, comic-strip enthusiasts and military buffs alike.... The strips are a stunning mix of blunt political messaging with dark, satirical humor." – Michael Taube, The Washington Times

• Review: "While manga isn’t usually known for its subtlety, Wandering Son is an exception. The panels have little in the way of background, and there is less exaggeration and slapstick than you will find in a typical manga. The story builds slowly, drawing you in to the quiet internal thoughts of the two children.... Takako’s Wandering Son works as an insight into how it feels to be transgendered, and also as a metaphor for growing up.... Wandering Son reminds us how hard it can be for anyone, whatever gender, to become who we want to be as a person." – Ashley Cook, Giant Fire Breathing Robot

• Review: "Technically, [The Pin-Up Art of Humorama] isn’t a graphic novel or trade collection, it’s a picture book – but an absolutely stunning one, collecting some of the best and most guiltily funny illustrations ever produced: a beguiling remembrance of a different time and the sexual mores of an entirely alien generation which nevertheless presents an enticing, intoxicating treat for art lovers and, I’m afraid to admit, many hearty laughs. This is work which is still utterly addictive and the book is an honest-to-gosh treasure beyond compare." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

Our good friends and colleagues over at Rosebud Archives have announced the forthcoming publication of Bully!, a collection of vintage political cartoons featuring Theodore Roosevelt (and not our Little Stuffed Bull pal), edited by Rick Marschall. What a great idea for a book, and it's sure to be produced with Rosebud's signature attention to quality and detail.

(Don't forget, we offer a full range of Rosebud Archives products here on our website!)

UPDATE: Rick Marschall contacted us with a correction: while Rosebud did production on the book and is selling ancilliary merchandise (prints and framed art of the book's vintage cartoons, etc.), the book is being published by Regnery History of Washington DC. See the link for more info and a sneak peek!

Here's a birthday tribute to the great Roberto Clemente, born this day in 1934, from Wilfred Santiago, creator of 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente and posted on the 21 Facebook page.

The nominees for the 2011 Ignatz Awards were announced today and we're happy to share that our artists and publications received 5 nominations in 4 categories! We're celebrating in our usual way, by offering them to you our customers for 25% off for a limited time! Winners will be announced on Saturday, September 10 at SPX. And our nominees are...

Dungeon Quest by Joe Daly

• Outstanding Series

Special Exits by Joyce Farmer

• Outstanding Graphic Novel

"Browntown" by Jaime Hernandez, in Love and Rockets: New Stories #3

• Outstanding Story

You'll Never Know, Book 2: Collateral Damage by C. Tyler

• Outstanding Graphic Novel
• Outstanding Artist

Congratulations to all! And further kudos to Mome contributors Gabrielle Bell, Renee French, Tom Kaczynski, Joseph Lambert, and Jesse Moynihan, as well as our pal Sammy Harkham, for their respective nominations.

The Man Who Grew His Beard
by Olivier Schrauwen

112-page full-color 8.5" x 10.25" softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-446-7

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

The Man Who Grew His Beard is Belgian cartoonist Olivier Schrauwen’s first American book after having staked a reputation over the last decade as one of Europe’s most talented storytellers. It collects seven short stories, each a head-spinning display of craft and storytelling that mixes early twentieth-century comics influences like Winsor McCay with a thoroughly contemporary voice that provokes and entertains with subversively surreal humor and subtle criticism of twentieth-century tropes and images. The stories themselves, though each stands alone, are intertwined thematically, offering peeks into the minds of semi-autistic, achingly isolated men and their feverish inner worlds and how they interact and contrast with their real environment. Though Schrauwen taps "surrealist" or "absurdist" impulses in his work, you will not read a more careful and precise collection of stories this year.

The stories included are: “Hair Types,” a hilarious piece that on the surface explores the pseudoscientific classification of personality as a function of hair but becomes something more akin to a fable about self-fulfilling prophecy; “Chromo Congo,” a silent story about two men on safari who meet a corpulent and obnoxious hunter; as well as “The Task,” “The Man Who Grew His Beard,” “The Lock,” “The Cave,” and “The Imaginist.”

Though this is Schrauwen’s first U.S. edition of comics, he has wowed American fans with his appearances in the anthology MOME over the last few years, and one of his MOME stories was one of three comics selected for the 2009 edition of Dave Eggers's influential Best American Nonrequired Reading.

“I don’t know much about Olivier Schrauwen, [but I] know that he’s some sort of postmodern comics genius.” — Eisner Award-winning comics critic Tom Spurgeon

Download and read an 11-page PDF excerpt (2.6 MB) with the complete story "The Assignment."

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

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...[T]he [Comics] Journal returns in a new bricklike bookshelf format (seriously, this thing has like 600 pages!), anchored by a massive Robert Crumb interview, and a whole freakin’ lot of really strong criticism. I most especially liked the Cerebus retrospective by Tim Krieder.... Great great great read!" – Brian Hibbs, The Savage Critics

• Review: "The artists that create worlds that start with the alphabet — these are the ones who have been getting in my head lately, motivating me to sort through my response to their art and settle my own ideas on alphabets. Mascots by Ray Fenwick is a great place to start. The book announces itself boldly — it is small, but its hot pink cloth cover is difficult to ignore. The title breaks across a few lines, so it is less a word than a jumble of letters — a mascot for the word 'Mascot,' so to speak. The book is appropriately titled: from the very beginning, everything announces itself as something else – forms are always changing, names are invented 'mercifully' (to use one of the narrators’ parlance) for things that are unnamable, faces that smile when the book is held in one direction are revealed as faces that frown when the book is flipped. The book conveys a sense of being stuck just outside of where everything makes sense and fits together." – Jordan Hurder, Chance Press

• Opinion: I don't think Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle knew about our upcoming series of Pogo collections when he wrote his reminiscences about the strip — "Pogo had it all: love, fear, friendship, ambivalence, pails of water, morality, plus a love of high-flown language and, not incidentally, wonderful draftsmanship" — and bemoaned the scarcity and high prices of past collections (via The Daily Cartoonist)

• Interview (Audio): Mome contributor Laura Park is the guest on the latest episode of The Ink Panthers podcast

The September 2011 issue of monthly manga magazine Comic Beam contains the landmark 100th serialized chapter of Shimura Takako's Wandering Son, featured (as one might hope) on the cover. We got some catching up to do!

She's also revealed the cover to a new 28-page comic which is debuting in Japan in a few days — if any fluent Japanese speakers would like to translate the details at those links and post them in the comments, we'd be most grateful!

Drew Friedman posted a roundup of recent illustration jobs on his blog, some of which we've already shared here but some of which is new, including...

...Keef! for Readers Digest...

...and Mayor of London Boris Johnson & British PM David Cameron posed as the "British Gothic" couple, for British GQ. Also don't miss the portrait of Drew's uncle.

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 (Vol. 16)
by Charles M. Schulz

344-page black & white 8.5" x 7" hardcover • $28.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-471-9

The Complete Peanuts 1979-1982 Box Set
by Charles M. Schulz
designed by Seth

two 344-page black & white 8.5" x 7" hardcovers in a custom slipcase • $49.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-472-6

"The early '80s were an uncertain time for Peanuts — looking at this volume, you can sometimes see Charles Schulz coasting on his innate gifts and barely bothering with joke-writing. At other times, he's trying different kinds of humor than he'd worked with before: more absurdity, more formalist gags. This isn't 'classic' Peanuts by a long shot, and it still pretty obviously deserves its place at the top of the all-time poll." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"I liked Lynn Johnston's Peanuts introduction, as it focuses on Schulz's resistance to getting older and the appeal of having an entire world completely in your control." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"Here is the book you should be paying attention to, in comic shops on Wednesday... Fantagraphics continues their fantastic reprinting of the entirety of Charles Schulz' classic comic strip." – Dave Ferraro, Comics-and-More

Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954
edited by Greg Sadowski

432-page full color 7.5" x 10.5" softcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-408-5

"An anthology of early comics by the master-without-a-masterpiece, from the early post-superhero period of his career--romance comics, as well as more violent genres. Edited by Greg Sadowski, who's really good at this particular kind of book." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"This is one nice-looking book, certainly the one I'd place my greedy paws on for a look-see in a comics shop excellent enough to carry it. Greg Sadowski always does the job. It's intriguing to me how elusive an appraisal of Alex Toth's work has become despite the work having among its primary virtues directness and simplicity." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

And at The Comics Journal, Joe McCulloch's...

"CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Editor Greg Sadowski returns with Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954, a 432-page collection of Toth things bolstered by a 1968 interview and the now-familiar heavily illustrated Sadowski endnotes; $39.99. The Complete Peanuts Vol. 16: 1981-1982 will probably be exactly that, with a foreword by Lynn Johnston; $28.99."

Our warehouse manager Nico dug up this video of Will Elder's son-in-law Gary VandenBergh speaking on the phone with Grateful Dead frontman and delicious-ice-cream inspiration Jerry Garcia about Garcia's love for Elder's EC Comics and post-MAD work. It seems a good bet that part of this interview will find its way into VandenBergh's in-progress documentary about Elder.