I'm not usually prone to the doom-y flight of fancy, but my first thought upon seeing the photo above was: thank goodness a flaming meteor didn't hit that spot at that moment. L to R: Crumb, Ware, Clowes, Tomine, Buenaventura. Sauve, France, Jan. 27, 2009. Alvin Buenaventura has uploaded many more incredible photos such as above and below, from Sauve and Angoulême, to Flickr. Look for a guest appearance by our very own Jason T. Miles, who promises to post his own Angoulême pics soon.

Now available for preview and pre-order: The Tijuana Bibles: America's Forgotten Comic Strips Hardcover Vol. 1, a fat little hardcover compiling the original Vols. 1-4 in Eros Comix's reprints of the satirical, XXX-rated sex comics of the 1930s. This book is scheduled to be in stock in mid-February and in stores approximately 4 weeks later.

View a brief photo slideshow preview embedded above. Click here if it is not visible, and/or to view it larger in a new window; there, Flickr users with safety filters set to "moderate" or higher will be able to view additional, R-rated images (including the front and back covers).

• Blurb: The Comics Reporter says some nice things about Linda Medley's Castle Waiting Vol. II comic series in a roundup of this week's notable comics releases

• Blurb: Capree Kimball has some good stuff on her birthday wish list

• Things to see: On the Covered blog, Dash Shaw does Green Arrow

Book Expo America, the annual book festival that promotes virtually every major publisher in America, and most smaller ones, announced some changes yesterday: basically, that the show is going to be held in New York City exclusively for the forseeable future, and midweek beginning in 2010. The move was purportedly made to keep costs down for "the major publishers." Which is great if you're a giant corporation based in NYC, but ignores one salient fact: NYC is actually a more expensive place to visit than just about anywhere if you are a publisher or bookseller who doesn't already live in NY. And contrary to what Reed seems to think, there are plenty of us who fit that description. 

Paul Constant tiptoes around some of this in a Stranger blog post this morning that I mostly agree with, but I'll spell it out more clearly: Chicago or Vegas (to give two examples) are actually way better level playing fields if the goal is to keep costs down for the industry as a whole, and not just Reed Business and those "major publishers" Reed seems so concerned about.

The BEA in NYC is often insufferable when it opens on a weekday, when every "major publisher" staffer and intern and freelancer who would otherwise never in a million years get sent to BEA in any official capacity is in attendance, either as an excuse to get out of the office or to simply acquire Free Shit. This is not a means to an efficient end.

If Reed wants to attract the widest possible base of all arms of the publishing and bookselling world, it should continue to move around. There are publishers you see at a Los Angeles BEA that you would never see at a NYC BEA, and vice-versa. I presume the BEA has always moved around because this was seen as a good thing, being as inclusive as possible.   

This latest announcement is part of a recent trend by Reed Business to seemingly consolidate the entirety of North American publishing into a few major New York City corporations, as seen by its recent cancellation of Book Expo Canada, the largely uninspired New York Comicon, and the latest announcement that Vegas and D.C. are off the table for BEA.

I understand cost-cutting measures, but when seemingly every cost-cutting measure Reed engages in either costs a small publisher like us more money, or simply threatens the greater good of all, and then tries to spin it as a Good Thing, I bristle. We are constantly told we live in an increasingly borderless world, and yet as a publisher, it's sometimes hard to believe.

We'll still continue to exhibit at BEA, it's an important show for us, and New York is always a great place to visit (even if the Javits Center isn't) but let's be clear: this is not about cutting costs for anyone but Reed Business, and the result will do little but enable corporate hegemony at all levels of the book world. 

UPDATE: "Enable" is probably too strong a word. "Facilitate"? Anyway, this isn't that big of a deal except I was simply annoyed to read today that BEA will be in the most expensive city in the country for the forseeable future so that Random House or Doubleday can save some money. That struck me as a very Bush administration way of addressing the new economic climate.

We've just received a fresh batch of signed book plates from Ivan Brunetti for the new Second Edition of Misery Loves Comedy; you can obtain one exclusively from Fantagraphics at no extra charge when ordering the book! Some conditions apply; click here for more details and the complete list of books available with this FREE premium!

Explainers: The Complete Village Voice Strips (1956-66) - 2nd Printing
By Jules Feiffer

(The first printing of Explainers was a rapid sellout! The second edition is, apart from a few typographical corrections and a new cover price, identical to the first.)

In 1956, a relatively unknown cartoonist by the name of Jules Feiffer started contributing a strip to the only alternative weekly published in the US, a small radical newspaper called The Village Voice. His strip tackled just about every issue, private and public, that affected the sentient American: relationships, sexuality, love, family, parents, children, psychoanalysis, neuroses, presidents, politicians, media, race, class, labor, religiion, foreign policy, war, and one or two other existential questions. It was the first time that the American public had been subjected to a weekly dose of comics that so uncompromisingly and wittily confronted individuals' private fears and society's public transgressions. Explainers is the first of four volumes collecting Feiffer's entire run of weekly strips from The Village Voice. This edition contains approximately 500 strips originally published between 1956 and 1966 in a brick-like landscape hardcover format.

568-page black & white 9.25" x 5.25" hardcover • $35.00

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Chris Irving has a great profile of the legendary MAD and HUMBUG cartoonist Al Jaffee up at the Graphic NYC site.

Now available for preview and pre-order: the new, first-ever hardcover edition of Paul Hornschemeier's acclaimed graphic novel debut Mother, Come Home. Praised by everyone from Will Eisner to Entertainment Weekly when it was first released, this book has been out of print for quite some time. Mother, Come Home is scheduled to be in stock in late February and in stores approximately 4 weeks later.

View a photo and video slideshow preview above (click here if it is not visible, and/or to view it larger in a new window), and visit the product details page for a downloadable 14-page PDF excerpt and bonus desktop wallpaper downloads!

Now available for preview and pre-order: Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti. Compiling the panels that put the "gag" in "gag strip" from past volumes Hee! and Haw!, plus a smattering of new material, Ho! is discreetly presented in an uninviting, funereal package of unglamorous black and white. Ho! is scheduled to be in stock in late February and in stores approximately 4 weeks later.

View a photo and video slideshow preview above (click here if it is not visible, and/or to view it larger in a new window), and visit the product details page for a downloadable 10-page PDF excerpt and bonus desktop wallpaper downloads!