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Even More Old Jewish Comedians
by Drew Friedman

36-page full-color 10" x 10" hardcover • $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-489-4

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Master caricaturist/portraitist Drew Friedman’s spectacular visual tribute to, well, old Jewish comedians returns with a third and concluding installment that throws its net a bit wider to include a few women (Olive Oyl voice Mae Questel, Ed Sullivan show regular Jean Carroll, and The Rise of the Goldbergs creator Gertrude Goldberg); a handful of more contemporary figures (Richard Belzer, whose Law & Order: SVU gig has eclipsed his stand-up comedy, and Welcome Back, Kotter’s Gabe Kaplan); and pop-culture legends (Prof. Irwin Corey, legendary Warner Bros. voice artist Mel Blanc), plus among others Marty Ingels, Fyvush Finkel, Gary Morton, Sam Levenson, Bobby Remsen, Max Patkin, Marvin Kaplan, Norm Crosby, Sammy Shore, Joey Adams, Lou Jacobi, and Sid James. It’s a heaping pastrami sandwich of gloriously liver-spotted, wrinkled personalities, that will appeal to anyone who likes old people, Jews, or comedians.

Even More Old Jewish Comedians, which features a cover of comedian Stewie Stone, is augmented with an introduction from not-quite-old-yet Jewish comedian and Comedy Central roasts regular Jeffrey Ross.

"You'd have to be absolutely mushugina to pass this book up." – Juxtapoz

"This is a beautiful tribute to all the men & women who have made life a joy. If Job had a copy and had known these people, he would never had written that terrible book." — Jerry Stiller

"I grew up adoring old Jewish comedians and through Drew Friedman's renditions, I now appreciate and love them more than ever. God bless these books!" – Joe Franklin

“Drew Friedman is better than Picasso.” — Howard Stern

“I’m proud to be in the old Jew book!” — Jerry Lewis

Our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web:

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Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size):

Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

And elsewhere:

Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane:

Forming by Jesse Moynihan:

Humblug by Arnold Roth (3 new udpates!):

Keeping Two by Jordan Crane:

Maakies by Tony Millionaire:

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "The initial cartoons in [Willie & Joe: Back Home] show Willie and Joe struggling to adjust to civilian life and usually failing, albeit not without letting out a sardonic quip.... Eventually Willie and Joe faded into the background, however, as Mauldin started focusing more on other problems facing returning grunts — a housing shortage, trouble finding work — and then rather savagely (and rather bluntly) went after racists and right-wing extremists.... The end result is a collection of cartoons that both read like the work of someone desperate to rage against perceived injustices as loudly as possible, but also seemingly desperate to demolish whatever status he has attained as quickly as possible... it’s a fascinating book..." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Commentary: On his blog, Eddie Campbell says "I recently bought the Fantagraphics complete Mauldin's Willie and Joe in soft cover. Bill Mauldin is one of the indisputable geniuses in the history of cartooning and I consider it an obligation to have the best available collection of his work on my shelf," and goes on to make some fascinating observations about changes in Mauldin's cartooning during the war

• Plug: Italy's afNews.info spotlights our efforts to reprint the works of Charles M. Schulz and Carl Barks and bemoans their unavailability outside of North America

• Tribute/Interview: Entrecomics presents a transcription of the final talk given in Spain by Francisco Solano López in 2008 (in Spanish), saying "We could do a review of his career, but it would not do justice either to the immense capacity for work by the author or the influence that some of the works to which he contributed... had on several generations of readers in different countries."

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

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.