This just in! PEN Center USA announced the winners of the 2012 Literary Awards and Joe Sacco takes home the Graphic Literature award for Outstanding Body of Work. A "distinguished panel of writers, editors, critics, and journalists judge the Literary Awards" which will be given out on October 22nd, 2012 at the 22nd Annual Literary Awards Festival in California. Joe Sacco is best known for his gripping comics journalism by telling the stories from inside war zones; observing, witnessing and documenting all that he sees. From his strip Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy in The Comics Journal of yore to his newest book, Journalism published by Metropolitan Books, Sacco is a comics force of nature.

 (photo by Jacob Covey)

Say, we haven't shared these with you yet:

Above, final cover art for Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 4: House of the Seven Haunts! by Floyd Gottfredson, and below, the box set for the Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 3 + 4 Box Set. More rollicking, globe-trotting adventures starring Mickey, Minnie, their pals Goofy and Donald, and a rogue's gallery of baddies! We've put up an excerpt with 18 pages of strips from Vol. 4 which you can check out right now. These are at the printer and in the pipeline for mid-to-late Fall.

 The we'll-need-to-iron-these-papers Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Interview: Everything is coming up Barnaby this week. On the Westfield Comics, writer Philip Nel and Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds (both editors of the upcoming Barnaby collections) dish on this popular but hard-to-find strip comic by Crockett Johnson. Reynolds states, "If Peanuts was the Beatles, Barnaby was the Velvet Underground." Nel continues, "Yeah. Schulz read Barnaby. Bill Keane read it. Dan Clowes, Spiegelman, and Chris Ware are all fans of it. . . It was a strip the culturally influential loved. So it's important and influential, but it's not something that many people have read because it's not been available or hard to find."

• Review: Scripp News mentions the Barnaby book while conducting a concise account of creator Crockett Johnson's life: "Once a hugely popular comic strip, whose fans included columnist Dorothy Parker, jazz great Duke Ellington and actor W.C. Fields, 'Barnaby' now has been all but forgotten, except by comics aficionados.

• Interview: Jules from Seven Impossible Things to Do Before Breakfast interviews author Philip Nel on his Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss book.

• Interview: Creator Gabriella Giandelli of Interiorae was  interviewed on Sequential Highway by Will Scott. When asked if she sees the world a bit surreal, Giandelli said, "I try to focus on aspects of life related to the magical, the irrational. Life is hard; I place my hopes in finding all the things in the world that seem to be less harsh, less sad. I’m interested in the spirituality of many aspects of life."

• Plug: Chris Mautner mentioned in Food or Comics? on Robot 6 that he'd splurge and spend more than the $30 allotment for Dal Tokyo by Gary Panter. ". . . if my comic shop should happen to get an early copy, I’d definitely splurge on Dal Tokyo, Gary Panter’s wonderful sci-fi/punk comic strip, now lovingly collected by Fantagraphics."

• Plug: Dan Nadel of The Comics Journal boasts about Cartoon Utopia, "Ron [Regé] is one of our very best cartoonists and it’s been too long since we’ve had new material from him."

• Plug: Forbidden Planet gets excited about The Cavalier Mr. Thompson by Rich Tommaso, "It combines a great two colour fine-lined cartoon style, with the era and genre invoking a Darwyn Cooke Parker feel. . .it looks fantastic -lively and humorous. It’s been a while since I’ve been excited about an upcoming book after July’s deluge, so I’ll definitely be grabbing a copy."

• Plug: The Hypo's Noah Van Sciver and comics legend John Porcellino had a boy's night out and just went wild at the pottery painting place in Denver. Purchase your own special Van Sciver or Porcellino porcelain mugs, vases or clocks here. 

• Plug: Another drink inspired by Love and Rockets Ghost of Hoppers was created and featured at the Rye on Market in Louisville, KY today. Recipe by bartender Scott Kirkpatrick:

2 oz. Pampero Aniversario Rum (or another aged dark rum)
.5 oz Cynar
.5 oz Agave Nectar
.25 oz Ruby Port
3 dashes blood orange bitters

-combine ingredients in a mixing glass
-add ice and stir vigorously
-strain into a double glass filled with ice
-express and orange peel onto the cocktail and use as garnish

 Sounds delicious!

Behold the Bona Fide Balderdash! We just put the finishing touches on Pogo - The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2 and sent it off to the printer! (Right on schedule too, we might add.) Here's your first look at the final cover artwork (click the image for a slightly bigger version) — once again the book is lovingly edited and designed by Walt Kelly's daughter Carolyn Kelly. Look for the book to hit shelves right around Thanksgiving time; learn more about it and pre-order your copy here.

Also, although we decided not to when we started the series, we have been persuaded to release our Pogo volumes in slipcased sets of two (just like The Complete Peanuts and Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse), and the first set is also available for pre-order now. We'll share the final slipcase design with you as soon as it's ready to show off. We're still figuring out whether it will be feasible to offer the slipcases separately; stay tuned for news on that.

* Other People's Publications
** Yeah, You Know Me.

While we all eagerly await the release of Barack Hussein Obama, Larry has somehow unearthed an older title from cartoonist Steven Weissman!

Originally released in 1999 on Alternative Press, The Lemon Kids, Book 1 is a collection of stories that Steve was self-publishing under the Yikes title, and some stories that were included in the Last Gasp Comix & Stories anthology.

Fans of our other Yikes titles like Chocolate Cheeks and Chewing Gum in Church will definitely want to get their hands on this lost classic while supplies last!

The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street in Seattle's Georgetown district. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone: (206) 658-0110. Closed this Labor Day, Monday, September 3rd.

The official state slogan of Illinois is "Land of Lincoln," making it the perfect location to celebrate the release of The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln!

Join Noah Van Sciver on Wednesday, September 19th at Quimby's in Chicago, with special guest, John Porcellino, who will be debuting King-Cat #73! Together, they’ll be reading from and showing slides of their work, answering questions, and signing books.

The event kicks off at 7:00 PM. Quimby's is located at 1854 W North Ave. Gather up your pennies and five dollar bills, and head down there, Illinoisans.

Prince Valiant expert Brian M. Kane shares this graphic he created to commemorate the debut of Val and Aleta's son Arn in the strip 65 years ago today. The blessed event just happens to take place in Prince Valiant Vol. 6: 1947-1948, which just happens to be the next volume in the series and just happens to be in the works for a scheduled December release and just happens to now be available for pre-order here on our website. Imagine that!

Get blighted with our friends at the Elysian Brewing Company on Friday, September 21st, as they debut "Blight," the latest from our 12 Beers of the Apocalypse collaboration! 

"Blight" is a perfect seasonal Pumpkin Ale, available on draft, and in exclusive 22 oz. bottles with labels featuring the artwork of the great Charles Burns from his weirdly apocalyptic Black Hole series. 

The official tapping begins at 4:00 PM, followed by a survival demo by Bryan & co. at 5:30 PM, with Spuds in the Hole from 4:00 to 7:00 PM!  

Come by and collect the next stamp in your Apocalypse Beer Survival Guide. Fill your book with survival item stamps at our Apocalypse events throughout the year for an outstanding experience at our final End of the World Celebration on 12.20.12! 

The Elysian Brewing Company is located at 1221 E. Pike Street in Seattle. You better know it by now: the end is BEER!

The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that two of our newest releases come with two brand-new entries in our FBI•MINIs series of free bonus mini-comics:

"Ti-Girls: Roughs & Rejects" is a collection of preliminary and rejected pages for God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls by Jaime Hernandez. It's a rare peek into Jaime's creative process! We didn't have this comic ready when God and Science came out — heck, we didn't even know this stuff existed until Jaime mentioned it at San Diego last month! — but in addition to getting this as a free bonus when you order that book, you can also get it with any issue(s) of Love and Rockets: New Stories, including the brand-new issue #5, or (as with all of the FBI•MINIs) with any mail-order purchase of $50 or more.

Our second new FBI•MINI offering, "Crackle of the Frost: Sketches," is a selection of preliminary roughs and sketches by Lorenzo Mattotti for his and Jorge Zentner's book The Crackle of the Frost and comes free with purchase of that book (or any mail-order purchase of $50 or more). Thumbnails, layouts, alternate panel compositions and more, done in Lorenzo's energetic linear style prior to the final lush pastel renderings seen in the book.

Cartoonist and caricaturist Drew Friedman sent a letter to Jack Davis and all he got was this AWESOME DRAWING in return. Feel free to lean back and just take all this beauty in.