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

Giant monster attack! in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson...

...inquiring minds want to know in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan....

...and the veep guest-stars in this week's Barack Hussein Obama strip from Steven Weissman!

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Like a Dog compiles several of [Zak Sally's] stories from the last 15 years in one sweet, annotated hardcover. I'm amazed by how the styles vary -- one minute Sally can talk about working in a punk-rock T-shirt shop, the next he's going on about Dostoevsky -- but most stories are quite compelling and, man, the guy is just so cool. Sally is an intensely personal writer, and I appreciate how much he reveals about himself within these pages. His work can get a little messy sometimes, but I say that's just another reason to like it." – Whitney Matheson, USA TODAY Pop Candy

• Review: "...[T]he work contained in [Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1] (and kudos to Fantagraphics on the excellent and handsome production work) constantly reminds you of just how stellar an artist Ditko would prove to be. ... For historians, both amateur and otherwise, who thrill to the prospect of seeing that maturity take place, this is the book for you." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Plug: Jason Parker of Benevolent Street says "I will be buying [Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box] soon!"

• Plug: Mike Sterling calls Popeye Vol. 4 "Another collection of the classic strip, and it continues to be great."

• Plugs: Among the blogs taking note of our upcoming collection of Stephen Dixon stories What Is All This?: Condalmo, Thumb Drives and Oven Clocks, Converstaional Reading and Gurldoggie

• Things to see: A new music video from The Francies (a.k.a. Al Columbia — via Floating World)

• Monsters: On Jacob Covey's Beasts! Blog, an update from monster-hunter Ken Gerhard (interviewed in Beasts! Book 2) on the trail of Sasquatch!

• Monsters: Tennessee mayor loses his shit over "our muslim president" [sic] pre-empting A Charlie Brown Christmas (link via Eric Reynolds)

Anders Nilsen provides the cover image for the new issue of Smoke Signal, the free comics newspaper put out by Desert Island, which will debut at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival this weekend. Get a bigger, readable version of this image at Anders's blog.

Now available for preview and pre-order: the 6th volume of our complete reprinting of Hank Ketcham's unparallelled run on Dennis the Menace, featuring a week-long visit from grandpa and panel after panel of Ketcham's exquisitely funny cartooning. Download an exclusive 30-page PDF excerpt containing a full month of strips right here.

Also up for pre-order now: the box set containing the 5th and 6th volumes, and the slipcase by itself for those who have purchased the volumes separately.

These items are scheduled to be in stock and ready to ship later this month and in stores (excluding the slipcase by itself, which is only available directly from us) shortly thereafter (subject to change).

View photo & video slideshow previews of the book and the box set embedded here. Click the preceding links if they are not visible, and/or to view them larger in a new window (recommended).

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: For The Barnes & Noble Review, Douglas Wolk picks his 5 "Best Graphic Novels of 2009," including You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler ("...indelible, majestically composed images. Compassionate but unsparing...") and Luba by Gilbert Hernandez ("Fiery, wildly raunchy, deliriously complicated, and bubbling over with life")

• Gift Guide: At Comic Book Resources, Steven Grant's holiday recommendations are Fantagraphics-heavy, heaping praise on West Coast Blues, Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol., Blazing Combat, Locas II, and The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion: "Don't mean to be a shill for Fantagraphics, but they really do produce splendid looking books, gift-worthy in appearance as well as content."

• Review: "[Gilbert] Hernandez's latest solo work The Troublemakers is the second in a series of self-contained graphic novel 'B-movies,' featuring one of his recurring characters, the cannonball-breasted Rosalba 'Fritz' Martinez. Here, Fritz plays Nala, one of a trio of hustlers trying to hook up with 200,000 smackers. Whether the money actually exists and who has it are anyone's guess in this drama-filled thriller — good for folks who like their graphic novels grim, gritty, and sleazy." – Brad Buckner, Portland Mercury

• Review: "Strange Suspense [The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1]... is an absolute treat! ...[T]his book looks amazing. ...[It's] filled with images that will remain seared into your psyche long after you’ve put it down. ... Strange Suspense is an absolute must have for any student of sequential art history... It’s an excellent collection of long lost work from a man whose importance cannot be overstated. There’s really no other grade to give it than an A." – Chad Derdowski, Mania.com

• Review: "Wolverton is helped [in The Wolverton Bible]... by his bold compositional sense, which aids in pushing some of his images beyond the doldrums of camp and into a certain monumentality, a grandeur that retains a shabby earthiness, without being lofty, hollow or pretentious. Without being, in a word, 'churchy.'" – Chris Lanier, The Comics Journal (beta)

• Review: "Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit is probably as close as comics are likely to come to exploitation cinema. Like the best exploitation dreck from Texas Chainsaw to Death Race 2000, Prison Pit is pure, bottom-dwelling schlock... And yet, again as with exploitation fare, the single-minded commitment to vileness is so perversely pure that it goes right past lowest-common-denominator entertainment and on into snooty, fancy-pants art. ... Ryan’s world is essentially Waiting for Godot, from the bleak landscape to the slapstick violence." – Noah Berlatsky, The Comics Journal (beta)

• Plug: Shock Till You Drop calls Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box "a must-have for any horror nut this holiday."

• Plug: Heather Buckley of Dread Central says of Portable Grindhouse, "This 200-page soft cover tome documents our ghoulish favorites from video stores past in full splatterific detail... I can’t even begin to tell you my excitement," and says of our Bookstore's 3rd Anniversary/Portable Grindhouse book launch and panel discussion, "So, my Pacific Northwest Monsters Kids, this could be fun. Heck, I wish I were out there to go myself."

• Commentary: Sparkplug's Dylan Williams presents a brief excerpt from and comments on the Gary Arlington interview in "one of the best issues of The Comics Journal ever," #264

• Things to see: Is this page by Olivier Schrauwen for a future Mome story? Man I hope so!

...this time in Norway, under the translated title Værverk, from our good friends at Jippi Forlag. North Americans can secure one of twenty "scalped" signed and sketched-in copies direct from Mr. Woodring, and/or wait for the Fantagraphics edition this coming Spring.

This Saturday, get yourself to Williamsburg for an incredible comics event! With a lineup of guest artists including (from the extended Fantagraphics family) Gabrielle Bell, Charles Burns, Kim Deitch, Michael Kupperman, Mark Newgarden, Gary Panter, David Sandlin, Frank Santoro, Dash Shaw, R. Sikoryak and many many more, an amazing slate of programming, and a stellar group of exhibitors, all organized by our esteemed pals and colleagues at Desert Island and Picturebox, the first annual Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is an absolute can't-miss! (Except we won't be there, wah.) Click here for all the info, including schedule, directions, and the full program.

Now available for preview and pre-order: the 17th volume of our quarterly anthology Mome, featuring the conclusion of Paul Hornschemeier's "Life with Mr. Dangerous," a sci-fi tale written by Tom Kaczynski and drawn by Dash Shaw, and new stories and artwork from Olivier Schrauwen, Derek Van Gieson, Renee French, Ted Stearn, Kurt Wolfgang, Laura Park, Rick Froberg, Sara Edward-Corbett and T. Edward Bak. Download an exclusive 11-page PDF excerpt containing a page from each contributor right here. This book is scheduled to be in stock and ready to ship in about two weeks and in stores roughly the same time (subject to change).

View a photo & video slideshow preview of the book embedded here. Click here if it is not visible, and/or to view it larger in a new window (recommended).

Only 2 months until Groundhog Day. Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Link: Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder & Cory Doctorow for including The Wolverton Bible and Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 on the "Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: comics/art books"

• Review: "Although the five stories in Low Moon appear to have very little in common, the glue that holds them together is Jason’s sublime artwork, a clear line approach inspired by Hergé (and dozens of other influences), and the artist’s consistent application of certain stylistic techniques and visual tropes. ... He is an artist who understands the mechanics and timing of visual storytelling, and his highly simplified style has a grace and elegance that makes it aesthetically appealing." – Marc Sobel, The Comics Journal (beta)

• Review: "Both stories [in The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book] see Dave and Paul get involved in vaguely shady -- but entirely weird -- dealings. These are basically stoner crime stories, with Dave and Paul as relative innocents who get caught up in hallucinogenic toad trafficking, or secret microwave generators that destroy wetlands. Daly doesn't rely too heavily on stoner humor, thankfully... Daly keeps these as stories about stoners rather than as stoner stories -- this isn't the way Dave would tell the story (thankfully); it makes more sense than that." – Andrew Wheeler

• Plugs: Newsarama 's Michael C. Lorah waxes rhapsodic about our February 2010 offerings as listed in the current issue of Previews: "An otherwise slow month for me is almost single-handedly blasted beyond budgetary means by Fantagraphics’ bevy of offerings..."

• Plugs: At Comics Alliance, Douglas Wolk weighs in on The Comics Journal #300 ("a thick, fascinating volume of cartoonists from different generations talking to each other... Great stuff") and Popeye Vol. 4: "Plunder Island" ("a fantastic long adventure with some phenomenal character design -- Alice the Goon is one of the creepiest-looking creatures ever to grace the funny pages")

• Contest: Tell The Daily Cross Hatch about someone you know who's not on the comics bandwagon and you could win a prize pack including Ghost World, The Left Bank Gang and some other groovy books

• Contest: Win an autographed copy of Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 in Patrick Wensink's coloring competition

• Things to see: Michael Kupperman, rejected

• Things to see: On the Covered blog, Derek Van Gieson makes Eightball #9 even creepier, if such a thing is possible

• Things to see: Robert Goodin takes a lesson from Johnny Craig