Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview (Audio): On the new episode of the Jordan, Jesse, Go! podcast "Cartoonist Tony Millionaire joins Jordan and Jesse at Thorn Manor to teach us etymology, school dance etiquette, and generational pop culture."

• Interview (Video): A brief 2009 video profile of a then-beardy Peter Bagge produced by Stussy to promote their line of Bagge-illustrated t-shirts has been newly uploaded to their Vimeo page (via Forbidden Planet International)

• Yeesh: The good news: the current issue of Seattle's free CityArts magazine contains an excerpt from Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 by Pat Thomas. The bad news: you might find a white-supremacist tract stapled into your copy, reports The Stranger

We pulled a fun li'l prank on readers in the final issue of Mome, in which Kurt Wolfgang's "Nothing Eve" serial was hijacked by [spoiler redacted]. Well now you can see how the story really goes as Kurt has posted the next few pages of the story up at the New Bodega blog.

The Rapture is coming!!!

Don't fear -- it's just the second beer in our 12 Beers of the Apocalypse series, a collaboration with our friends at the Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle. This heather ale will be available on draft, and in exclusive bottles with labels featuring the artwork of the great Charles Burns!

Join us on Tuesday, February 21st at 6:00 PM for the official tapping of the Rapture ale, followed by an all-important survival demo, and beer blessings til 9:00 PM, because really now, we could all use a blessing (and a beer!) in these uncertain times.

And don't forget to bring your Apocalypse Beer Survival Guide to this event to collect your second survival stamp. If you missed the first party, don't worry, we will have more guides available at this event. Fill your book with survival item stamps at our Apocalypse events throughout the year for an outstanding experience at our final End of the World Celebration on 12.20.12!

So, come survive the rapture with us at Elysian Brewing Comapny, located at 1221 E. Pike Street in Seattle! Don't forget: the end is BEER!

UPDATE: Please note the updated time for the survival demo!

... FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS WANTS YOU. 

We're super bummed to soon be saying goodbye to our longtime junior designer, Alexa Koenings, who is moving on to new challenges at the end of this month after several years of great work for us. We don't want her to go, but dammit, she's made up her mind.

One thing this means: WE'RE HIRING. We are currently accepting applications for the Junior Designer position. This is a full-time, salaried position in our office (telecommuters need not apply). If you don't currently live in Seattle, you must be willing to relocate.

SKILLS REQUIRED:

• Strong layout and typography sensibilities.
• Detail oriented-- both in your design work and in your ability to track change requests and stay on top of deadlines.
• Thorough InDesign and Photoshop knowledge required. Any other programs are a plus.
• Work well independently as well as with the various personalities of editors, artists, and authors, taking in and utilizing feedback.
• Ability to design interesting, unique solutions that respect and adhere to the vision of the artists we package.

The primary role as a Junior Designer will be doing book production and design, but you will also design ads (print and web), postcards, posters, etc. You will need to be a nimble designer, capable of solutions on a quick turnaround and able to maintain a steady workload. You will be responsible for sending press ready files to printers, so pre-press skills are a plus. 

The right candidate could be anyone with a solid design sense and a passion for doing good work. Knowledge of comics is helpful but it needn't be an obsession.

Interested parties email resumé and samples (or links to same) to Eric Reynolds: reynolds [at] fantagraphics [dot com]. Serious inquiries only, please! 

And, congrats again to Alexa, who will be missed (and who hopefully won't mind me stealing this pic from her facebook page):

Hey Hartford, CT! Zip on over to our book signing with underground comix legend Bill Griffith, and help him celebrate the release of the collection Lost and Found: Comics 1969-2003!

Bill Griffith: Lost & Found collects hundreds of Griffith’s early underground comics, most of them long out of print and unavailable. Much of the work will be unfamiliar and a real revelation to those readers who only know Griffith from his long-running Zippy strip.

He'll be signing and reading from this much-anticipated book on Saturday, March 3rd.  The zany fun starts at 3:00 PM, so don't miss your chance to meet this living legend of comics! 

Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor Street, Hartford, CT. This event is free and open to the public!

In this month's issue of Booklist you can find reviews of three of our recent releases, excerpted below:

Bill Griffith: Lost and Found – Comics 1969-2003: "Prefaced by Griffith’s long, anecdotal accounting of his work and including stories featuring other characters who’d eventually join the strip’s cast as well as 48 pages in full color..., this collection attests the perdurable wit, style, and smarts of one of the greatest of the 1960s San Francisco underground cartoonists." – Ray Olson (Starred Review)

Athos in America by Jason: "What’s amazing is how much [Jason] can squeeze from so little. Though their emotional register usually falls somewhere between disappointment and death, the stories make an eclectic bunch.... Sure, Jason’s following his muse down the wormiest of rabbit holes these days, but you wouldn’t want him any less weird." – Ian Chipman

The Big Town by Monte Schulz: "It is as impressive as it is ponderous, and the maximalist mentality of overloaded historical detail is precisely what some will love and others will leave. Readers as taken by the era as Schulz is won’t find a bigger bonanza." – Ian Chipman

It's time to go back to school with Professor DeStefano!

Our award-nominated Lucky In Love artist Stephen DeStefano is heading back to the podium at MoCCA, and this time, he'll be laying down the laws of "Drawing for Animated Cartoons" -- something he knows a thing or two about, as the storyboard and design supervisor on Adult Swim's The Venture Brothers, only one of the best cartoons out there!

Stephen will focus on design and composition for characters, backgrounds and storyboards -- in other words, on the overall drawing process for an animated production. The course will show you how to design characters and backgrounds from a script, and how to compose shots for storyboards from the same script -- all with a focus on drawing. 

Early Bird registration is going on now until March 15th, so don't delay, sign up today! Classes will be held on March 26, and April 2, 16, & 23 at MoCCA [ 594 Broadway, Suite 401 (between Houston and Prince), New York City ].

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: Critic Rob Clough names his Top Fifteen Comic Books of 2011 on his High-Low blog, including Love & Rockets: New Stories #4 at #1...

"Gilbert's stories are typically excellent in this issue, as he manages a certain luridness in one story that brings sexuality to the fore, and goes the other direction in a more oblique, subtle story. Of course, the story that got everyone buzzing was the second half of Jaime's "The Love Bunglers", which is an ending for this thirty-year cycle of stories--and one where Jaime sticks the landing with authority."

...Ganges #4 by Kevin Huizenga at #4...

"Huizenga's work is restrained and even playful in its approach but wildly ambitious in terms of its content, and he continues to successfully mine work left untouched by other cartoonists."

...Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge at #8...

"This was Bagge's first feature-length Buddy Bradley story in years, and it's a doozy. Buddy, Lisa and young Harold visit Lisa's parents in a story called 'Hell,' and Bagge truly pulls out all the stops in depicting extreme familial weirdness. His dialogue is as sharp as ever, his line is quite lively and his uncanny ability to depict the creeping weirdness of suburbia is even more disturbing than in the initial run of New Jersey stories in Hate."

...and Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7 by Michael Kupperman at #11:

"Kupperman's 'Quincy, M.E.' story in this issue is a tour-de-force of twisting narrative structures and just plain crazy silliness. Kupperman's art has become increasingly bland as his aesthetic references have changed from 1920s comic strips to 1950s comic books, forcing the reader to perform double-takes at the crazy juxtapositions he creates. If his comics aren't as visually exhausting and exciting as they once were, he still provides an avalanche of ideas and jokes for the reader to sort through."

• Review: "Norwegian cartoonist Jason has returned with more full-color stories populated by lonely, and at times sociopathic, anthropomorphic characters. Cats, dogs, and ducks steal, fight, murder, and drink themselves into oblivion. Although brimming with black humor, the tales are far from ridiculous; the disjunction between the cute creatures and their actions often serves to highlight the despair inherent in their lives. Text is light, as the images drive the narratives. In these spare, mute panels, infused with flat oranges, greens, and browns, small movements covey great meaning and emotion.... Visually exciting, at times hilarious and at times devastating, Athos in America will only add to Jason’s well-deserved reputation as a star of the graphic novel world." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "This volume [Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1] provides an illuminating look at the artist’s numerous attempts at catching Sub-Marineresque lightning in a bottle for a second time, a task that mostly eluded him. The comics studios of the golden age were product mills that threw any idea against the wall in hope it would stick, and Everett did much the same. Forgotten sci-fi and superhero creations, as well as forays into westerns, historical retellings, and crime comics, populate this loaded volume, which reads like it fell straight out of some four-color twilight zone." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "Over 150 pages of reprints, a brilliant back-of-the-book by Benson running 26 pages, and an introduction by my old buddy, cartoonist/historian Jay Lynch..., this book is a welcome addition to any comics library.... [I]f nothing else, The Sincerest Form of Parody saves you a lot of time separating the wheat from the chaff. But in and of itself, it is a very worthy book – entertaining on his own, and critical from a historical point of view. You should check this one out..." – Mike Gold, ComicMix

• Review: "[Jordan] Crane’s comic, The Last Lonely Saturday, explores the trials and release of life after loss. Crane’s story beautifully follows a husband’s weekly ritual to pay respect to his wife. In no more than a few pages, Crane retells the husband and wife’s entire history. From the comic’s meticulous book design, with its quaint size and the rounded, hand-lettered type in the first pages, readers can expect the story to be heart-warming. But Crane pulls at readers’ heartstrings with surprising grace. While the story is rooted in the traditional American cliché of lovers reunited in the afterlife, the story is told deftly." – Juan Fernandez, The Tartan (via Robot 6)

• Review: "[Freeway] captures the frustration of being stuck in traffic, particularly the array of images (violent and otherwise) that traffic brings to my mind (even better than Falling Down). Like me, Alex also relieves his frustrations with a lot of swearing." – Gene Ambaum, The Unshelved Book Club

• Plug: "I ran into animator Michel Gagné at the Annie Awards last week (where he picked up an Annie for Best Video Game, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet) and asked him about his next project. Turns out Gagne had been toiling on a labor of love (literally) that has just gone on sale this week.... That book, Young Romance: the Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics, is not the usual thing we endorse here at Cartoon Brew – but as a life-long Jack Kirby fan and oddball comic book buff, this project is right up my alley.... I’ve ordered my copy and highly recommend it, sight unseen. Thanks, Michel!" – Jerry Beck, Cartoon Brew

• Plug: "Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America but they literally created the romance comic genre. The pages [of Young Romance] were packed with dialogue and dramatic art as women fought for love." – Will Harris, KOMO News

• Plug: Anime News Network picks up the news of Wandering Son Vol. 1's inclusion on the ALA GLBT Round Table's Rainbow List, pointing out that it's the first manga ever to make the list

 

• History: At The New York Times Local East Village Blog, Kim Deitch writes about The East Village Other's Joel Fabrikant

Before there was Frank & Estelle Costanza on Seinfeld there was Leo & Sylvia Schauzer on Car 54, Where Are You?, portrayed by Charlotte Rae and Al Lewis. Car 54 aficionado Drew Friedman brings the bickering couple to life in this new illustration, available now as a signed, limited-edition print from Drew Friedman Fine Art Prints.

The Best Show on WFMU gets even better this Tuesday, February 14th, as host Tom Scharpling welcomes our own Michael Kupperman to the airwaves!

WFMU streams their broadcasts online in multiple formats, so anyone can listen, from anywhere in the world -- just tune in at 9:00 PM EST and await the awesome!

And just so y'know, it's the WFMU 2012 Marathon through March 4th, and freeform radio is a good, good thing!