Hot on the heels of IFC.com's debut of The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. and our imminent release of the companion book, the Sundance Institute has announced that creator Dash Shaw is one of twelve aspiring filmmakers to be selected for the Institute's annual January Screenwriters Lab. Dash is developing a feature-length animated film titled Slobs and Nags: "Told with hand-drawn animation, a disconnected family is thrown into chaos when the scientist father loses the test subject of his experiment with appearance-altering technology." Congrats Dash!

For more info, the only direct link to the announcement is to a PDF download of the press release.

UPDATE: See our next post for many more details about the project direct from Dash.

If you want your order shipped within the U.S. to arrive before Christmas via USPS Priority Mail, tomorrow (Tuesday, December 15) is the deadline to get your order in! Orders placed with the Standard shipping option right now will most likely arrive after the holiday. After tomorrow, you'll have until next Monday, Dec. 21, for orders shipped by 2nd Day UPS. We'll post a reminder for that deadline as well.

Don't forget to check out our handy Holiday Gift Guide for lots of gift ideas for every interest and budget!

Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan's joint book tour has one last previously unannounced stop back in their mutual hometown of Chicago tonight:

"We'll be heading directly from the airport to Home Room's 101 Lecture Show at the Hungry Brain in Chicago to give a final slide show presentation, answer people's questions, sign books, and try to get the feeling back in our toes after re-embracing Chicago's chill."

The 101 Lecture Show
The Hungry Brain, 9PM
2319 W Belmont
Chicago, IL

It's your Friday installments of our three weekly webcomics!

Some street toughs plot their strategy in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson...

...the punchline is either not as gross as you think, or grosser, in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan....

...and the prez faces the national waffle shortage in this week's Barack Hussein Obama strip from Steven Weissman!

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: Politics and Prose, perhaps the most graphic novel-friendly bookstore in Washington DC, lists their Favorite Graphic Literature of the Year:

"Every few years a graphic novel comes around that is so good you have to stop reading for a while, because if you read anything else you'd only be disappointed. ... The Squirrel Machine... is a masterpiece of comic fantasy. When I finished this book, I immediately returned to the introduction and read the whole book again, and again. Read this book to see what heights serial art can achieve in narrative and in the creation of worlds that exist in one character's mind. Read it if you think you can handle it, for it abandons the typical narrative structure and accomplishes its ends as only serial art of the highest quality can. This is a fine, gut-wrenching book, written and drawn by a true master." – Thad Ellerbe

"West Coast Blues is an unflinching story, perfect for any fan of the thriller." – Adam Waterreus

"C. Tyler's You'll Never Know, Book One: A Good and Decent Man... is also an impressive and beautiful history of the era; Tyler creates a panorama of images that sweep across the page as she documents her father's childhood, her parent's engagement, and her own young life. Her pen, ink, and color transform her creative panels (at times evoking a scrapbook) into vibrant memories intertwined by her restless imagination." – Adam Waterreus

"[With Abstract Comics] it becomes a treat to take a page of art — or a simple panel — and consider how the shapes, texture, depth, and color interact with one another; to reflect on how, when one takes the time, the enjoyment one ordinarily finds in reading a purely textually-oriented, narrative-driven written story can — with the graphic form — be translated into something completely different." – Adam Waterreus

"From Wonderland with Love: Danish Comics in the Third Millennium... is fantastic! This amazing collection just blew me away. There was not one moment when reading this book — in one sitting, slouched and unblinking on my couch, coffee going cold — that I did not completely love. ... Mythic and dreamlike, meditative and fantastical, this is a superb and surprising collection." – Adam Waterreus

• Review: "...[F]rom the moment he showed up [Michael] Kupperman was a master of stomping around the living room of modern reality and shoving pieces of conceptual furniture next to one another to awesome, knees-out-from-under effect. Kupperman's work has always had that charge that the really good stuff has... Kupperman doesn't get enough credit for building a comic book vehicle in Tales Designed To Thrizzle that serves to facilitate those skills. ...I'm not certain anything under heaven or earth could make something greater than Kupperman's peerless ability to craft funny moments." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

• Review: The Oregonian's Steve Duin, while professing "I am not on the board of directors of the Gahan Wilson fan club," nonetheless finds some pleasures in Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons, declaring "This is a stunning collection, gloriously presented."

• Review: superhumanoids writes of Dash Shaw's "eccentric little Animated Web Series That Could" The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D., "Disparate animation styles and simple, hand drawn production value is the perfect vessel for a world where future-artists hone their still life sketches on rigid, unmoving droids."

• Review: "Unclothed Man delivers just the right amounts of story, whimsy, art, and heft for four two-minute entries. It offers actual nutritive cultural substance, as opposed to so much web filler one often gets. And you’ll want to go back and watch them a few more times. There’s a lot of variety behind the series’ simple elegance." – Michael Shaw (no relation), Tubefilter

• Plug: "Compiled by Portland, Oregon-based trash cinema expert Jacques Boyreau, Portable Grindhouse honors the pulp video era that inspired Quentin Tarantino." – Hugh Hart, Wired

• Plug: Clicky Overload reminds us "By the way, world's best comic publisher Fantagraphics has a collection of Krampus postcards called The Devil in Design: The Krampus Postcards."

• Gift guide: Comics Alliance recommends Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1 for the recluse in your life in their snarky "Holiday Shopping Guide for the Unemployed Comics Fan" (sorry Steve, I just reports 'em)

• Links: Time for another awe-inspiring Love and Rockets mega link roundup post from Love & Maggie

• Things to see: Actually, Derek, I kinda like it

• Things to see: In Jim Woodring's latest blog posting, Frank faces terror from the deep! Yow!

Oooh, Tony Millionaire's cover for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Moby Dick is now available as a poster. (Read Jacob Covey's commentary on the PCDE series here.)

Lots of excitement in the office today: Gary Groth has earned the Glengarry leads, closing the deal with Alec Baldwin to write the Introduction to The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978 (Vol. 14), coming Fall 2010. The title of this post comes from Gary's interoffice email, and Ted Jouflas replied with the above image. (I'm more of a 30 Rock man myself.)

UPDATE: Baldwin-mania continues as Kim Thompson confirms, in an email titled "Everybody loves my Schweddy balls," that Peppermint Patty is the cover star of that volume.

More info + music video.

TONIGHT sees the opening of a joint solo show from Femke Hiemstra and Junko Mizuno. See the Roq site for more info. If I understand the Roq blog correctly it appears that Femke's work is already sold out. Show runs through January 30th.

When we were putting together our current holiday catalog, somehow Sam's Strip: The Comic About Comics ended up being accidentally left out. This innovative strip is a clever and funny slice of comics history which deserves its place in our roster and on your bookshelf — read more about it here, and for the next week (through next Friday) you can order it at 20% off! Plus read more about the strip and the rest of co-creator Mort Walker's storied career in The Comics Journal #297 from earlier this year, also on sale at 20% off through next week!