Come and get it, indeed! Be one of the very first people to get your hands on a copy of Glitz-2-Go -- the long-awaited first-ever comix collection from the legendary Diane Noomin!

This groundbreaking artist will be making a rare appearance to celebrate the release, on Monday, March 5th at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York City.

Starting at 6:00 PM, you can view original panels of “Baby Talk”, one of Noomin’s most controversial cartoons, as part of the Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women exhibit currently running through April. And then at 6:45 PM, join this pioneering cartoonist for a reading and discussion!

The Yeshiva University Museum is located in the Center for Jewish History [ 15 West 16th Street, between 5th and 6th Ave ]. Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women is sponsored by the Jewish Daily Forward.

Wednesday, February 8th

• Seattle, WA: It's your last chance to view the Tony Millionaire Portraits show at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, featuring original artwork from his recent collection, 500 Portraits! (more info)

Friday, February 10th

•Detroit, MI: Joshua White and Gary Panter’s Light Show opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit!  Stay tuned to the FLOG for more details about this fantastical event! It runs through April 29, 2012.

Saturday, February 11th

• Seattle, WA: Join us for a free Comic Book Layout Workshop with artist and TCJ Contributor Frank Santoro, at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery starting at 5:00 PM... (more info)

• Seattle, WA: ...and then at 6:00 PM, it's the opening reception for our group exhibition "Funny Valentines: A Tribute to Jack Davis," featuring original artwork from Peter Bagge, Ellen Forney, Johnny Ryan, Jim Woodring, and many, many more! We'll be conducting a video chat with the man himself at 6:30 PM, so do not be late! (more info)

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "While other colleagues have seen their short stories and graphic novels draw serious attention in literary circles, Griffith remains the 'Are we having fun yet?' guy to many. Perhaps the long-overdue collection Lost and Found: Comics 1969-2003 will change that. Leaning heavily on the stories Griffith drew in the early ’70s for undergrounds like Young Lust, Short Order Comix, and the revolutionary Arcade, Lost and Found shows off more facets of Griffith, putting his obsessions with Hollywood, suburbia, and a certain type of corporate cockiness into a larger context." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "Diane Noomin has seen her work scattered around anthologies like Wimmen’s Comix and Twisted Sisters since she made her comics debut in 1972, but has never received the dedicated study afforded by her new book Glitz-2-Go: Collected Stories, which brings together nearly 200 pages of Noomin’s work.... From the cluttered panels to the bracing honesty, these strips are very much of a piece with the original underground comics movement, and may not be immediately accessible to people unused to that tradition. But for those who fondly remember the glory years of Dori Seda, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Joyce Farmer, and Roberta Gregory, it’s a pleasure to see Noomin get her own showcase." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "...Nancy possesses in spades the quality common to all great art — a singularity of vision.... The clarity and unity of purpose made it quite impossible to miss a single punch line. Nancy  is simplistic, yes — but it is simplistic by design, a strip without clutter, diagrammatic in its relentless formalism. Set against today’s comic-strip landscape, where Doonesbury has the ambition and scope of the Great American Satirical Novel and even gentle family comedies like Zits and Foxtrot boast character casts expansive enough to baffle a new reader, the dumbness of Nancy starts to look like some kind of genius. The roly-poly, Brillo-mopped mischief-maker and her lowlife pal Sluggo stand eternal, as iconic as the puppets in a Punch and Judy show or the Columbines and Harlequins of commedia dell’arte." – Jack Feerick, Kirkus Reviews

• Review: "At 7.6% ABV, Nibiru is a beer that doesn’t pull any punches, but its potency is disguised by the refreshing herbal and citrus flavours on offer. Like its European cousin, Duvel, it's light enough to be easy-drinking, but the intensity of alcohol mean that it’s a beer that demands to be savoured." – Gavin Lees, Graphic Eye

• Interview (Audio): On the new episode of the Mostly Harmless Podcast, host "Dammit Damian" chats with Noah Van Sciver about "how Noah got into making comics, his family and making comics for a living," among other topics

• Scene (Video): Graphic Eye's Gavin Lees captured Jim Demonakos & Mark Long's slideshow presentation of their graphic novel (with Nate Powell) The Silence of Our Friends on video at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery this past Saturday

Joe Sacco at the Fantagraphics office, 04/09/07 // photo credit: Jacob Covey

We're excited to announce a rare hometown appearance by our International Man of Mystery, Joe Sacco!

He will be a guest at the Portland Central Library on Saturday, February 18th, where he will discuss his internationally acclaimed works, like Safe Area Gorazde and Palestine, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM.

Our friends from Floating World Comics will be on site to sell these titles so you can have them signed by Joe after the discussion!

Tickets for this event are free, and will be available 30 minutes prior to the program. Space at programs is limited, and seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Portland Central Library is located at 801 S.W. 10th Avenue in lovely downtown Portland, and this event will take place in the U.S. Bank Room. Do not miss it!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery this past weekend as we celebrated the release of Listen, Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965 – 1975.  It was the very first time we were able to present the book to the public, and every copy just blew outta the store!

We were also honored to be joined by local authors Mark Long and Jim Demonakos (also the founder of Seattle’s Emerald City Comicon!), who together with cartoonist Nate Powell, created the graphic novel The Silence of Our Friends. The chilling story was inspired by real-life incidents that Mark experienced growing up in the racially-tense environment of Texas in the mid-60s.

And then editor Pat Thomas stepped up to the projector for his slideshow on Listen, Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965 – 1975, with our friends at the adjacent store Georgetown Records providing the soundtrack with the companion CD of the same title from Seattle-based Light in the Attic records.

And his presentation was riveting! It was so cool hearing the stories behind these rare tracks that Pat discovered, many of which are being released on CD for the very first time ever!  I ended up going home and staying up until 2:00 AM reading his book, and supplementing it with internet research on the Black Panthers. My mind is blown.

If you're also intrigued by the musical scene behind the Black Power movement, Pat is going to be giving a 90-minute presentation on Thursday, March 1st at the historic Washington Hall here in Seattle! More details, including ticket information, can be found on the FLOG here.

And Pat promises, if you get there early, you can hear the entire 20 minute radio segment that Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver recorded after he helped Timothy Leary escape from prison... aaaand then put him under  "revolutionary arrest" when he got sick of him! Hilarious!

We are overjoyed to welcome two prodigal sons back to the Fantagraphics fold: Mike Catron (pictured), who co-founded Fantagraphics with Gary Groth in 1976, rejoins us as an editor, and O.G. staffer Preston White returns to our art department.

The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon has all the scoop, and he also talked with Mike about what his new position entails and what he's been up to in the meantime: "So all of a sudden, the original four of us are together again, like the fabled Musketeers. (Everyone does know there were four, right?) The stars, after all these years, finally aligned once more. Call it the new Age of Aquarius for Fantagraphics." He also reveals his first major editorial project for us, a book which hasn't been revealed or reported elsewhere! Truly your must-read for the day.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions (none yesterday):

• Review: "If Spielberg shed the skin of Hergé’s style in an effort to get to the heart of his stories, the compelling work of Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte performs the procedure in reverse.... Swarte, equally inspired by the underground comix that emerged from the American counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s, adapted the clear line and reanimated it with subversive content unlike the perennially chipper Boy Scoutism of Hergé’s Tintin. ...Is That All There Is?, collecting the bulk of his comics oeuvre to date (excluding a body of children’s comics), provides an overdue opportunity to linger over and consider his narrative work.... Like a Rube Goldberg machine designed according to De Stijl aesthetics—with a rhythm and blues soundtrack—Swarte’s comics communicate a historically freighted, European sense of the absurd, poised toward a globalizing, postmodern present." – Bill Kartalopoulos, The Brooklyn Rail

• Review: "The real joy of Swarte’s work... is the architectural elegance of his illustrations and his fine ability to colour them using everything from watercolour to retro duo-tones. Looking at Swarte’s mostly 20th century work [in Is That All There Is?] now, what’s also — and tangentially — interesting is the retro-futuristic look of it: the settings are near-future, but everything’s styled circa the 1940s, much in the same way Ridley Scott imagined the future in Bladerunner. For sheer design swagger you need to check Swarte out." – Miles Fielder, The List

• Review: "These stories [in Athos in America] are a little less open-and-shut than Jason usually makes. His comics are always good, but I usually don't think about them too much after reading them. This one's more of a think stimulator than previous books.... It's a beautiful book. This is definitely Jason's best book yet. Good job, Jason." – Nick Gazin, VICE

• Interview: Chicago Publishes has an interview with Mome contributor Laura Park: "I’m really happy with the stories I did for MOME. I love short stories. Novels are the format now — it’s a selling format. You can have graphic novels in a bookstore, because non-comics people might buy them. Whenever you can get a comic from the comic shop into a bookstore, it’ll make more money. But short stories are kind of magical to me. My favorite writer is Flannery O’Connor. She has novels, but her short stories are the ones that linger and itch away through you."

• Bibliography: Love & Maggie presents a comprehensive annotated guide to Jack Jackson-related materials in back issues of The Comics Journal

• Scene: Paul Karasik has a delightful report from Angoulême; Stan Sakai has one too, with Usagi sketches

Running a little thin this week — our only exclusive update is Nicolas Mahler's Angelman — but we've got the usual links to strips from around the web:

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Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

And elsewhere:

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

Amazing Facts... and Beyond! with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga:

Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane:

Forming by Jesse Moynihan:

Humblug by Arnold Roth (two new updates):

Maakies by Tony Millionaire (and anonymous photographers):

The Pain — When Will It End? (plus answers to last week's "Ghandi or Batman?") by Tim Kreider:

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow:

Woo, great big Drew Friedman illustration in today's The Wall Street Journal! Stepping in the dip is a party foul, Madonna.

It's still over 8 months away but the Alternative Press Expo folks are wasting no time in announcing their first batch of special guests, including 3 Hernandez Brothers (Gilbert, Jaime & Mario), continuing their Love and Rockets 30th Anniversary U.S. Domination Tour (not the actual name of the tour), and the one and only Jim Woodring, debuting (knock on wood) his new book Problematic: Selected Sketchbook Drawings 2004-2011!

Mark your calendars for October 13-14 at the Concourse in San Francisco, and stay tuned for future news and updates!