When I stumbled across "Crustache: The Mustache Sandwich Cutter by Fred & Friends" I immediately emailed Steven Weissman to contact his lawyer. He thinks it's cool though so he's letting it slide.

Delivered this morning: advance copies of Popeye Vol. 6: "Me Li'l Swee'Pea" — the final volume of our complete E.C. Segar Popeye collections. We're excited but also a little sad that the series is coming to an end. Stay tuned for more updates and more/better photos & previews, as always.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Besides a particularly gleeful dark humour, this collection of short stories by Norweigan artist Jason [Athos in America] is tied together by a certain obsession with Hollywood genres: science-fiction and crime are the main targets, and Jason infuses them with both a slightly tweaked pathos and a taste for melancholy macabre. His drawing style is sparse and uncluttered, but that works something like keeping an even tone during a dry remark: his punchlines and gut-punches are that much sharper for having played it cool. All of these stories have an underlying sadness — something that seems to stem from the bleak futility of all our existence — but the best has to be 'Tom Waits on the Moon,' four seemingly unconnected vignettes that ruminate on various relationship troubles before tying up in [a] surprising and funny end. That’s not to discount any of these, though: this is just fantastic stuff for sad bastards and the people who love them." – David Berry, National Post

• Review: "I’m going to go out on a limb and assume anyone reading a review of comics is aware enough of Walt Kelly’s landmark Pogo series that they don’t need much in the way of description, but suffice to say that any strip artist worth their salt has taken serious cues from Kelly’s rich dialogue, playful illustration and at-times fierce politics. This first edition, which features for the first time full-colour Sunday strips, definitely leans towards the sweeter side, but there’s simply no denying Kelly’s mastery: he evokes full characters with nothing but a few choice words, and the sprightliness of his visual style is all fun here, laying the groundwork for what would become profoundly subversive later. The included essays, as is usually the case for Fantagraphics reissues, absolutely nail the context and import of the strip, too. I just don’t think you can say you love comics and not have this around." – David Berry, National Post

• Review: "[Action! Mystery! Thrills! Comic Book Covers of the Golden Age] is a fucking mind blower for me since it's just full-size reproductions of cover art of the most important comic book issues you never saw, printed on glossy paper with information about what makes them so special on the back.... The brain of the casual art looker or person who thinks comics are a genre and not a medium will look at this stuff and try to make it ironic or perverse. To appreciate the work in this book you have to turn off those parts of your cynicism and open whatever part of yourself receives beauty. America's golden-age comic books are some of the greatest art our country has produced." – Nick Gazin, VICE

• Interview: At Examiner.com, part 2 of Gillian Gaar's Q&A with Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 author Pat Thomas focuses on the accompanying soundtrack album

Take the plunge! What better way to spend your quadrennial extra day by loading up on comics! Today only (February 29, 2012), take 29% off every item in your order (including already-discounted items) by using the coupon code LEAPDAY at checkout on our website. (Or, just mention this offer if ordering by phone — 1-800-657-1100 or 206-524-1967 outside the U.S., 9 AM to 5 PM. Sorry, sale not in effect at Fantagraphics Bookstore.) Jump for joy and spread the word! Shop shop shop!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Awards: Jaime Hernandez's Speedy Ortiz dør (the Danish edition of The Death of Speedy from Aben Maler) was named winner of the Ping Prisen for "Best International Comic in Danish"

• List: YALSA's blog The Hub spotlights their previously-announced Great Graphic Novels for Teens Top Ten 2012: "Shimura Takako’s Wandering Son Volume 1 rounds out the Top Ten list for 2012 with a sensitive look at two fifth grade students struggling with gender identity: Shuichi Natori is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino Takatsuki is a girl who wants to be a boy. This is a complex and sensitive subject, but Takako handles it very gently, allowing the story to unfold in a way that is not only natural but sympathetic. Takako’s artwork is spare and evocative, supporting the story but never getting in the way of its telling. This one is for teens who like contemporary stories about real world problems."

• List: At LitReactor, Kelly Thompson runs down 10 Graphic Novels for the Literary Minded, with Castle Waiting Vol. 1 by Linda Medley recommended "for fans of fantasy": "Castle Waiting, a brutally funny book with a giant heart, has a new spin on fairy tales with a feminist bent that will draw you in and keep you reading from page one.... Medley’s world is expertly crafted and completely believable, while her black and white artwork is clean and highly detailed with an emphasis on character design and acting."

• Interview: At SF Weekly, J Poet talks to Pat Thomas about Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975: "As you can see from the scope of the book, there were hundreds of recordings connected to the Black Power movement. At Fred Hampton's funeral, they blasted The Supremes' 'Someday We'll Be Together' from loudspeakers. Huey Newton loved Bob Dylan's line, 'Something's happening and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?' The movement was inspired by music and the movement inspired many people, especially jazz musicians, to refocus their sound and energy."

• Plug: Check out Ernest Hardy's review of the Listen, Whitey! companion album on Pop & Hiss: The L.A. Times Music Blog, which includes a mention of the book

• Plug: Denise Sullivan also digs into the Listen, Whitey! album at Blurt

• Roundtable (Audio): On the Inkstuds radio programme guests Joe McCulloch, Matt Seneca and Tucker Stone and host Robin McConnell discuss recent comics including Is That All There Is? by Joost Swarte and The Cabbie Vol. 1 by Martí as well as George Herriman's Krazy Kat

• Review: "Buddy Does Seattle collects the first 15 issues of Hate, in which the protagonist has relocated to the Pacific Northwest and become the consummate slacker.... First published when Seattle was exploding in popularity due to the rise of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and various grunge bands, Hate offered a decidedly un-romanticized take on a particular time and place. ...Bagge's artwork took the public's perception of '90s youth as angry and volatile and pushed it to hysterical levels. Heavily influenced by late-'60s counterculture cartoonists like Crumb, Bagge's drawings are fluid and grimy-looking, with frequent use of exaggerated facial expressions helping to cultivate an atmosphere of chaos. As a work of cultural commentary it's brash and invigorating, and remains so years later." – Phil Guie, Critical Mob

• Interview: Nick Thorburn's tour with his band Islands brings him to Seattle next week and the Seattle Weekly's Dave Lake asks him about his connections to the city: "...I had a comic strip in the last couple issues of Mome, which is a Fantagraphics anthology, which is a Seattle-based comics publisher. I love Fantagraphics. I got a check from them recently for being in those comics and it would have made the 13-year-old me die with joy, seeing a check with my name on it from Fantagraphics. That's beyond my wildest teenage fantasy."

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview: Our own Eric Buckler talks to Wilfred Santiago at our own The Comics Journal: "Unlike working with someone else’s script, there’s no linear method when I work on my own. That is to say I write while I ‘toon, and I ‘toon while I write. So the most important step is editing–what’s left on the page before going to the printer and into the sweaty hands of readers. I do believe writing has improved my cartooning. I don’t think it’s an accident that some of the best cartoonists are writers. I’m not putting myself in that group but I strive for it."

• Review: "This is a wonderful collection of golden age material from Bill Everett, all never before reprinted.... For fans of golden age material or Bill Everett Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives, Vol. 1 is a must have look at early comics from lesser known publishers... At $40 it’s an investment into rarely seen material." – Scott VanderPloeg, Comic Book Daily

• Review: At Danish comics website Nummer9, Nikolaj Mangurten Rubin looks at Kolor Klimax: Nordic Comics Now, calling it "A many-headed troll monster of a book" and giving it a 4 out of 5 rating

• Review: "Not many music writers warrant a biography. Lester Bangs was one. Maybe Tosches or Kent. But Everything Is an Afterthought, by Kevin Avery, is a singular piece of work, a hybrid bio and anthology. Nelson was the Orson Welles of rock letterdom, a man whose profiles of Springsteen and Zevon were masterpieces of the form. A slow stone-cutter of a writer, a cinephile and a noir buff (and an inveterate deadline-misser), he shot himself in the foot many times, but Avery’s book makes the reader misty-eyed for a time when music journalism was populated by hard-nosed evangelists, not suck-ups or career snarks." – Peter Murphy, "Blog of Revelations," Hot Press

• Review: As part of ComicsAlliance's series focusing on sex in comics, Douglas Wolk looks at Gilbert Hernandez's Birdland: "Birdland has been out of print for a while, which is a pity. It's witty, eccentric, bursting with joy, and utterly, cheerfully smutty.... And the whole thing is drawn in a style that's the erotic equivalent of Jack Kirby's fight scenes: grounded in the way actual bodies interact, but pumped up to an imaginative intensity way beyond anything the naked eye has ever seen. On top of that, Birdland is funny -- not corny-funny or nudge/wink-funny, but absurd and sly, with a terrific sense for what can make the overfamiliar language of pornography fresh again."

• Plug: "I’ve been waiting for No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics since I first heard about it last summer.... I can’t wait!" – Daniela Capistrano, Daniela's Lair

Writers Talking: Joe Sacco on Feb. 18, 2012 from Multnomah County Library on Vimeo.

If you weren't one of the lucky Portlanders who was able to attend Joe Sacco's talk at the Multnomah County Library main branch on Feb. 18 (or if you were and you would like to relive it), the library has now posted video of the entire presentation and Q&A session online (hat tip: Forbidden Planet International). 

Pat Thomas has been all over the television and radio dial talking about Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975. He was host Nancy Guppy's guest on Friday's episode of Art Zone on the Seattle Channel — the segment begins at the 8:00 mark in the video embedded above or available here [Edit: link updated to jump directly to the segment].

Florangela Davila of NPR station KPLU talked to Pat this morning; streaming audio and a recap of the segment are available here.

Pat's appearance last Wednesday on WNYC's Soundcheck is embedded below and archived here.

Pat's guest spot on The Roadhouse with Greg Vandy on KEXP last Wednesday is available in the KEXP Streaming Archive through Wednesday of next week.

And if you prefer your interviews in good old text format Gillian Gaar has a Q&A with Pat at Examiner.com.

Meanwhile, the print press has been rolling in — here's a tremendous review by Mark Anthony Neal in the current issue of SPIN (click image to enlarge):

Ian Abarahams gives the book a 4-star review in Record Collector magazine:

Jon "Mojo" Mills reviews the book and album for Shindig!:

Another 4-star review, from Lois Wilson in Mojo magazine:

We've got our new Nicolas Mahler Angelman page for you! And in lieu of a new Up All Night strip Michael Kupperman has provided a classic from his vaults.

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Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

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

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Some of the most interesting travel books happen by accident. If Alexander Theroux’s wife had not gone to Estonia on a Fulbright Scholarship, it is unlikely that he would have spent an extended period in the tiny Baltic republic, an experience that impelled him to write this book [Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery].... Despite all [his] genuine delight in the quaint, not merely linguistic but extending also to Estonian architecture, what Mr. Theroux mostly shows us about the country and its people is exasperation, irritation, furious rage. To say that it — and they — get on his nerves is the mildest of understatements. He takes endless potshots at their food, admittedly an easy target, but by the time you get near the end of the book and find a section titled 'What did I hate about Estonia,' it’s no surprise." – Martin Rubin, The Washington Times

• Plug: "The premise of Pat Thomas's handsome book [Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975] is that this was an era in which revolutionaries such as Bobby Seale and Angela Davis were treated as pop cultural icons, while musicians became revolutionaries – meaning Gil Scott-Heron, the Last Poets, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and more." – Caspar Llewellyn Smith, The Guardian