All this week, Oil and Water artist Shannon Wheeler recounts his recent trip to Portugal via NYC for the "Cartoonist's Diary" column at The Comics Journal, with sketches from the trip drawn in a blank printer's-sample dummy of the Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons book.

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(click image to enlarge)

We've got all your holiday hits at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. (Vintage Royal Guardsmen vinyl courtesy of Georgetown Records.)

Please drop by and see us this Saturday, December 10 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the store. Holiday cheer galore with "Playing Possum: The Pogo Art of Walt Kelly," music by Sawsome (a female banjo and saw duet), Christmas carolers, and complimentary seasonal refreshments. 

I can scarcely believe it's been 5 years already. This wonderful experiment in promoting comix culture has been an awesome experience for me. I've always pictured myself as a kind of crossing guard at the uncontrolled intersection of fine art and pop culture. The bookstore has seen a lot of traffic. Here's to another 5 busy years at the crossroads. 

See an exclusive 10-page preview (including Jimmy Breslin's Foreword) of Pogo - The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly at Boing Boing, where Mark Frauenfelder says:

"Presenting his characters as animals gave Kelly the ability to explore human nature without the distraction that cartoon humans would have bought along with them. His illustration style was warm, highly expressive, and detailed without looking crowded. It's hard to think of another newspaper cartoonist who equalled his talents. Kelly's daughter, Carolyn, designed and co-edited this 290-page anthology, and her love and admiration for her father is evident in the beauty of this book. The design is impeccable and the quality of the line art reproduction is superb."

Thanks to everyone who came by and bought books at the Fantagraphics tables at the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival this past weekend! Here's a look at what events are coming up this week:

Wednesday, December 7th

• Los Angeles, CA: It's your last chance to see the The Art of Problem Solving at Giant Robot, a spotlight on the animated series from Ben Jones, featuring fellow Fantagraphics artists Jon Vermilyea and John Pham on staff. Make a pizza date out of it! (more info)

•  Seattle, WA: It's also your last chance to see the Short Run Art Show at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery! Curated by Kelly Froh, the exhibit features original comix art, illustration and book works by Max Clotfelter, Patrick Keck, Martine Workman, Elaine Lin, Jason T. Miles, Chris Cilla, Andrice Arp, Tim Root, Billis Helg, Marc Palm, Eroyn Franklin, Tom Van Deusen, Tim Miller, Tory Franklin, Jesse Reklaw, Sean Christensen, and Erin Tanner. (more info)

Friday, December 9th

• Brooklyn, NY: Get thrizzled with Michael Kupperman at Bergen Street Comics and celebrate the release of Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7! (more info)

Saturday, December 10th 

• Seattle, WA: The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery celebrates the publication of Pogo: Through the Wild Blue Wonder, Volume 1 of the Complete Comic Strips with “Playing Possum: The Pogo Art of Walt Kelly.” This exhibition of original Walt Kelly strips coincides on the occasion of the bookstore’s 5th anniversary gala.  Musical entertainment will be provided by Sawsome, a female saw and banjo duet. (more info)

• Los Angeles, CA: Join Tony Millionaire at the third annual Feral House/Process Media Winter Solstice Celebration at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery. He'll be signing copies of his gorgeous new collection 500 Portraits. (more info)

• Los Angeles, CA: The Giant Robot Post-It Show 7 opens, curated by husband-wife team of Esther Pearl Watson and Mark Todd, and featuring work from Andrice Arp, T. Edward Bak, Lilli Carre, Martin Cendreda, Eleanor Davis, Renee French, Tim Hensley, Jaime Hernandez, Jesse Moynihan, Anders Nilsen, John Pham, Johnny Ryan, Jeremy Tinder, Jon Vermilyea, Esther Pearl Watson, and Steven Weissman. (more info)

... for THIS  massive Charles Burns  art show. Charles tells me he has loaned over 330 pieces (!!!) for this exhibition. Leave it to the Belgians. Preview night is this Wednesday and formal opening is on Thursday, for you lucky Belgians. 

Speaking of Charles, we're currently working with him on an exciting, non-comics project that will be announced by the end of the year. Stay tuned for more details; your thirst will be quenched soon enough.  

Peter Bagge & his bandmates in Can You Imagine? took to the airwaves on Seattle's KEXP on last night's edition of their punk show Sonic Reducer — if you missed it, you can catch a re-broadcast at 11 PM tonight... that's less than an hour from now! Tune in to 90.3 FM in Seattle or kexp.org worldwide, or if you see this too late, find it in the KEXP streaming audio archive.

And here's another way to get in on the Can You Imagine? fun:

Pete & co. are raising funds via Kickstarter to complete their new album! Pledge now and you could get nifty thank-you gifts like an early download of the album, an original drawing from Pete, your very own cover song played just for you, brunch or a private party with the band, and the ever-intriguing "Surprise Mystery Ball"!

Read "That Sticky Machine," a charming new 7-page comic by Leslie Stein, at VICE. Flash back to the 1990s with Eye of the Majestic Creature's Larrybear!

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Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan gives Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman an honorable mention on his Best of 2011 list

• Review: "Uncut, uncensored and politically incorrect – these tales are from an alternate Disney universe, where Mickey is a red-blooded, two-fisted adventurer; they are fun to read and a delight to view. Gottfredson’s comics are as classy, funny and as slick as the Disney shorts from the same period. And as usual, co-editor David Gerstein provides a plethora of 'bonus materials'... A fine package, a full meal, and a perfect follow-up to volume 1, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 2: Trapped on Treasure Island fills a gap long-neglected in animation history. Buy it." – Jerry Beck, Cartoon Brew

• Review: "I think I’ve been waiting for this book my entire life.... At long last the complete Pogo has been compiled, lovingly, ...in the miraculous new hardcover, Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder. Buy this book.... Kelly’s drawings are just magnificent, and his sophisticated writing style was far ahead of its time. Its time has come – and Fantagraphics has gone out of its way to ensure the best possible copies of these rare strips were found, restored and preserved perfectly here for all time... A great gift for anyone – especially you." – Jerry Beck, Cartoon Brew

• Review: "Walt Kelly’s Pogo... is justifiably hailed as one of the great achievements of the postwar comic strip. In theory, it belongs to the 'funny animal' genre; in practice, it was a personal, whimsical combination of comedy and mood, dressed in linguistic wordplay and laced with sociopolitical satire.... This wonderful first volume of a projected 12-volume series contains the strip’s first two official years (plus its early pre-syndication stint in a single New York paper), with the Sundays reproduced in color, and with Kelly’s topical references annotated by scholar R.C. Harvey.... I salute this launch... [Rating] 9/10" – Michael Barrett, PopMatters 

• Review: "Small wonder that Jonathan Lethem modeled Chronic City’s protagonist on [Paul] Nelson: Nelson’s bohemian eccentricities... make his biography a more gripping read than the criticism that makes up [Everything Is an Afterthought]’s second half.... In the end, Nelson’s best epitaph comes from a sprawling essay that portrays the writer as a hermeneutic gumshoe hired to suss out the meaning of Dylan’s oeuvre: 'I know we need people like you because a world filled with romantics would be a disaster, but a world without them would be worse.'" – Jonah Wolf, The College Hill Independent

• Review: At The Factual Opinion, Tucker Stone examines The Comics Journal #38 (from 1978). A highlight: "Kim Thompson gets to review the Spider-Man television special and one of the Hulk television movies. He likes the Hulk one more than the Spider-man one, but then, he doesn't like the Spider-man one at all. (It sounds really fucking weird.) He's also really ticked off about Stan Lee re-writing the comic strip Spider-man's origin to better match the television show. Fists are shaken!" (Incidentally, this seminal issue is considered one of the magazine's historic best by both Kim Thompson and the bloggers of Love & Maggie.)

• Profile: Alec Berry of West Virginia University's The Daily Athenaeum introduces its readers to Fantagraphics in an article on independent comics publishers: "These innovative works could be characterized as dramatic, journalistic or satirical. Really, what happened was Fantagraphics stepped up and presented the thoughtful analysis that could be done on comics by publishing the trade magazine The Comics Journal, and Fantagraphics published the actual work that inspired the thought."

Publishers Weekly presents a 4-page preview of Pogo - The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly, with 2 pages of dailies and 2 full-color Sunday strips.

Elsewhere at PW, Mark Schultz introduces the preview by way of an ode to the newspaper strip and the recent boom in reprint series: "Naturally, I’m having an increasingly difficult time trying not spend all my money on these fresh new volumes, especially the handsome new collections of classics like Popeye, Peanuts, Krazy Kat, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. This week, Fantagraphics tests my will anew with the first volume of Walt Kelly’s Pogo.... You'd be smart to remember it for the nerd's nerd on your list this year, and probably for the next ten-plus years [a full six years if all goes according to schedule – Ed.]: Fantagraphics plans to release another eleven volumes. I guess I better clear out some space next to the Garfields."

As promised, Nicolas Mahler's Angelman joins our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web:

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Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

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

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

And elsewhere:

The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum at ACT-I-VATE:

Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane:

Forming by Jesse Moynihan:

Humblug by Arnold Roth (4 new strips this week, including serialization of his unpublished 1979 strip Downtown):

Lucky by Gabrielle Bell :

What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow: