Have we got a great offer for you! Be one of the next 15 people to order the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Petey & Pussy by John Kerschbaum and you will receive an amazing bonus pack put together by John that includes:

All 3 issues of John's great self-published comic The Wiggly Reader...

... this amazing poster John drew for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC (more about which here -- and by the way, it's available from the Met gift shop as a jigsaw puzzle now!)...

...and a unique signed bookplate, each one with a different quote hand-lettered by John (just a few examples above).

And as if that weren't enough, ONE of these randomly-distributed packs includes an original Petey & Pussy sketch by John! Holy geez! Order now!

Starting with today's Online Commentary & Diversions, some minor formatting changes to hopefully make it easier to scan all that text:

• Review: "Published in the oversize Sunday page format ala the Fantagraphics’ Popeye collection (also, brilliant), Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938 collects the earliest of Foster’s tales of the exiled Prince of Thule. ... The colors are warm and vibrant, and the line art pristine. The stories themselves are a delight. ... The art is consistently stunning... each page is spectacular to behold. ... The strips in Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938 are merely the first installment of a massive, groundbreaking, and thoroughly exciting adventure saga that was better than nearly anything during its time, and remains better than nearly anything on the shelves today." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• Plug: On Twitter, The Believer calls Dash Shaw's animated IFC.com web series The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. "eye-meltingly lovely"

• Plug: "Fantagraphics is so cool. If I won the lottery I’d buy a copy of everything they stock and build a library to house it all." Thanks, Anika in London!

• Things to see: Comic Book Resources presents a hilarious one-off Peter Bagge strip from Neat Stuff #1 as part of their "Year of Cool Comic Book Moments"

• Things to see: Comicrazys presents a bunch of classic Don Flowers strips (via Mike Lynch)

• Things to see: Sean T. Collins posts a bunch of updates to his awesome David Bowie sketchbook, starting with Jon Vermilyea

• Things to see & buy: Wow, this etching by John Hankiewicz is really something (having done some etchings myself, I know a lot of work went into it), and also for sale

• Things to see & buy: How'd you like a refillable glass water bottle with graphics designed by Ray Fenwick (or one of two other artists)? Faucet Face can make it happen (via Drawn)

• Real estate: If you have $2.9 million, you could own a house that Charles M. Schulz lived in in the 1970s, reports the San Francisco Chronicle (via Comix 411, who breaks the asking price down to 58,000  Complete Peanuts box sets)

Two more overdue video & photo slideshows to share with you today: the first for Locas II: Maggie, Hopey & Ray, the new hardcover Love and Rockets omnibus from Jaime Hernandez; and the second for Love and Rockets: New Stories #2, with the newest work from Jaime & Gilbert. Hit those links to view the slideshows at higher res than they're embedded here.

Don't forget, if you want your order shipped by our Standard shipping option within the U.S. to arrive before Christmas, tomorrow (Friday, December 11) is the deadline to get your order in! (If you're shipping to a P.O. box, you'll want to select First Class or Priority Mail shipping rather than Standard.) After that, you'll have until Monday for USPS Priority Mail delivery and until next Friday for 2nd Day UPS. We'll post reminders for those deadlines as well.

If you need some gift suggestions, check out our handy Holiday Gift Guide with lots of ideas for every interest and budget!

Chock full o' Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: The Village Voice 's R.C. Baker names 2009's Best Comics and Graphic Novels. Among the choices: "A lucid nightmare, Al Columbia's dazzlingly well-drawn Pim & Francie features vignettes of its young protagonists menaced by creepy relatives or starring in exceedingly grim fairy tales. These inky visions seem unearthed from the deepest vaults of Uncle Walt's id. ... Anything but Victorian, Nell Brinkley (1886–1944) celebrated the Roaring '20s with sinuous lines and colors as lurid as William Randolph Hearst's presses could muster. Author Trina Robbins notes, in the lavishly oversize The Brinkley Girls, that the illustrator 'closely resembled the girls she drew.' But Brinkley, with her thrilling fantasias of pirate abductions and aviatrix romances, remains an inspiration beyond flapper flamboyance to any young lady seeking to break into the boys' club of high-end illustration."

• List: Greek site Comicdom is halfway through counting down the top 100 comics of the '00s. On the list so far: Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 by Michael Kupperman at #99 ("Following at a discreet distance from the legacy of Monty Python, Michael Kupperman should be considered a genius by any man who has laughed with the group of Britons"), Billy Hazelnuts by Tony Millionaire at #67 ("In the surrealist vein of Krazy Kat and the otherworldly, oneiric atmosphere of Little Nemo... misanthropy and almond sweetness"), Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco at #60 ("The shock was, however, not an end in itself, since what actually manages to come across is the sense of pain and loss that each of the interviewees had experienced"), and Fred the Clown by Roger Langridge at #53 ("Ingenious comics by an equally intelligent designer who not only knows the history of the instrument and understand what makes it work"). [Quotes cobbled from autotranslation.]

• Review: "There have been a lot of great comic book releases this year, but none has the beauty and melancholy resonance of Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant: Volume 1-1937-1938. ... As for Hal Foster, Fantagraphics has given this artist his due and helped place him in his proper context as a great American artist and master of the comics form." – Mark Rhodes, Omnicomic

• Review: "Employing a storytelling dynamic not unlike that of Serling’s science fiction classic, Thomas Ott’s The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 is itself a visit... to a dimension not of sound, but of sight and mind that at once both rewards and confuses. ... Ott’s hyper-meticulous attention to how detail relates to used space and negative space is at once both unsettling and captivating, utilizing a form of technical, pen-like cross-hatching for essentially every line that can only be described as Robert Crumb on Adderall. ... The Number is a universally literate work of fiction that is a quick first read with potential for longer lasting examination." – C.R. Stemple, Pads & Panels

• Review: "The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. is a fascinating first animated work [third, actually — ed.] from one of today's most original and unusual artists. Shaw adapts well from the comics page to the cinematic form. ... Almost as well as his comics, this film expresses Shaw's ongoing desire to look at the world from a slightly askew perspective, to express his fascination with the complexity of people's inner universes. ...[T]he film... [is] a probing, emotional examination of what it means to make art and to forge meaningful human interactions..." – Ed Howard, Only the Cinema

• Plugs: More Segar birthday/Popeye Google fallout: Mark Evanier, 

• Plug: In an interview with IFC found by our own Janice Headley, musician Chuck Prophet names Ghost World as a favorite movie: "A coming-of-age teen flick movie that pivots around Skip James’ 'Devil Got My Woman' can do no wrong with me. And shouldn’t with anyone else."

• Interview: At Comics Comics, Dan Nadel presents audio of the panel with Gary Panter & Peter Saul at the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival last weekend

• Interview: New in the TCJ.com audio archives: Gary Groth's 1997 interview with Charles M. Schulz

• Things to see in the future: The Daily Cartoonist reports that the "Schulz’s Beethoven, Schroeder’s Muse" exhibit which ran at the Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center last year is moving to an online home a week from today — we'll try to bring you a link when it launches

• Things to see: A potpourri of Amazing Facts... and Beyond! with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga (BTW we tend only to link to Kevin's AFAB...WLB strips since he's on our roster, but that's not to give short shrift to Dan Zettwoch, who routinely knocks these out of the park too)

• Things to see: An interesting oldie from Bob Fingerman

• Things to see: Progress on Tim Lane's Temptations cut-outs diorama

• Things to see: Richard Sala's "Psycho Santa Movies," in color! (from 2003)

The latest cartoon artist to get the t-shirt treatment from streetwear giant Stüssy (following the likes of Jaime Hernandez & Peter Bagge): Basil Wolverton! There's a big feature with an interview with Basil's son Monte right on the Stüssy website right now (no permanent link, though, since it's all Flash-based). Found via Tee Shirt Blog (en Français). Totally tubular!

They're long past due in terms of the books' release dates, but please enjoy these Flickr video & photo slideshows of The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974 (link to Flickr) and the 1971-1974 Box Set (link to Flickr) nonetheless.

And there are more recent photo/video uploads of summer books — I'll just link to them so as not to clog the page with embedded players:

Abstract Comics: The Anthology (slideshow - order/more info)
From Wonderland with Love: Danish Comics in the Third Millennium (slideshow - order/more info)
Rock Candy: The Artwork of Femke Hiemstra (slideshow - order/more info)

There's about 8 more to come, which I hope to have done by the end of the year, so stay tuned.

Over at the Toy-a-Day blog you can download a PDF to print out and assemble this adorable papercraft toy of R. Crumb's Mr. Natural. Well-timed with our announcement today of the first-ever hardcover edition of The Book of Mr. Natural! Thanks to Joseph Chiang for the tip on Facebook.

Just as we received our office copies of the new issue of Previews, we've already submitted our March 2010 releases for the next issue, and as always we just can't wait to give our website readers an exclusive first look at our offerings! It's another big month — heck, I guess they all are — with 9 books & comics headed your way. We've got us another Jacques Tardi masterpiece (pictured above), the next volume of The Complete Peanuts, a brand new Hate Annual from Peter Bagge, another great collection of Walt Kelly's Our Gang, our new collection of the earliest Krazy Kat Sundays, and a great, never-before-reprinted Basil Wolverton rarity, plus an R. Crumb classic in hardcover for the first time, and softcover reprints from Tim Lane and Jack Cole! Here's the scoop.

Well technically it's not comics, but arriving in comic shops across the land this week (hot on the heels of its arrival at our warehouse) is Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box. Newsarama says "it looks totally awesome," and who are we to argue?

Of course, the BEST comic shop at which to pick up this book (up at which?) is Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery this weekend at our Portable Grindhouse launch/3rd Anniversary Party & Portable Grindhouse panel discussion! Barring that, though, I'm sure your local shop would love to see you.

(Also out this week and highly coveted by me: Dark Horse's collection of Carol Swain short stories Crossing the Empty Quarter — if you haven't picked up Giraffes in My Hair yet, why not make it a Swain two-fer?)