Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: John Mueller of ComicImpact names The Hidden by Richard Sala one of the Best Comics & Art Books of 2011: "Imagine your unease if all the ghouls and ghosts of the Halloweens of your forgotten youth were suddenly made real, so real that they are about to come crashing through your front door at any moment. Oh, and don’t bother running to the neighbor’s because the monsters have stopped there first. That’s what reading The Hidden is like and that’s also what makes it not only one of the best books of the year, but one of Sala’s best works period."

• List: Curt Holman of Creative Loafing Atlanta lists his "most anticipated new books of 2012" including Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons: "While Flannery O'Connor secured her fame with her Southern Grotesque fiction such as the novel Wise Blood, she set out to be a cartoonist as a young woman. This anthology focuses on O'Connor's work for high school and college publications in the 1940s, and offers an intriguing glimpse into the gestation of a great Southern writer."

I don't think this needs further comment. (Click image to enlarge.)

Flog readers surely know all about Stinckers, the super-fun line of vinyl stickers produced by Steven Weissman & Mats?!.

Well, we're happy to announce that they've just launched an Etsy store as a one-stop shop for uncut production sheets of stincky fun, including designs from Daniel Clowes (as seen above, designed for Meltdown Comics in L.A.) to Johnny Ryan to (well, of course) Steven Weissman! They are quite suitable for framing, and shipping is free!

This one's Steve's stincker sheet...

And heeeerree's Johnny's!

Our wildly entertaining and talented cartoonist friend Tony Millionaire will appear at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday, January 7 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM for a book signing and art show. He'll be exhibiting brilliantly sedate work from his new book 500 Portraits, recently released by Fantagraphics Books.

500 Portraits collects over two decades of work by the beloved creator of Drinky Crow's Maakies, Sock Monkey and Billy Hazelnuts. Tony Millionaire's gorgeous fountain pen illustrations are pretty amazing. Many of these 500 portraits were created for The Believer, the magazine founded by Dave Eggers that Millionaire helped define visually with images of interview subjects in every issue. The book also includes dozens of illustrations from various other publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and others.

The artist will be present to sign copies of his many Fantagraphics titles as well as the recent Encyclopedia of Hell and other works. The evening will also feature the premiere of the short live-action film "Everybody Loves Drinky Crow" by Fantagraphics Bookstore curator Larry Reid.

The store is located at 1201 S. Vale Street at the corner of Airport Way S. in Seattle’s historic Georgetown arts community. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sunday till 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110

Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics
by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon; edited by Michel Gagné

208-page full-color 7.75" x 10" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-502-0

Ships in: January 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Together, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created such classic two-fisted comic series as Captain America, Boys' Ranch, The Newsboy Legion, and The Boy Commandos. But few people realize that one of their greatest successes — from 1947, when they singlehandedly created the genre, to the end of the 1950s — was... romance comics!

In such best-selling titles as Young Love and Real Western Romances, Simon and Kirby delighted a generation of girls and women (and probably a fair number of boys and men as well) with hundreds of charming and endlessly inventive stories of love and heartbreak.

And now, for the first time since their original publication in the 1940s and 1950s, 21 of these classics have been meticulously restored and are printed herein — in full, glorious color. So get out your handkerchiefs and enjoy the trials, tribulations, tragedies and triumphs of Suzi, Marjorie, Annaliese, Toni, Kathy, Sari... and 15 other star-crossed young lovers from half a century ago.

Download and read a 16-page PDF excerpt (3.6 MB) with the stories "Fraulein Sweetheart" and "Shame."

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Need something to listen to while you're perusing your newly-acquired copy of Bill Griffith: Lost and Found – Comics 1969-2003? Download the soundtrack to Zippy the Pinhead: The Musical, which had its debut staging in November 2010 in Baltimore, now available on iTunes. 19 songs, from the Overture to "Don't Goad the Toad" to "Pinhead Love." All songs by Lorraine Whittlesey. YOW!!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship to our mail-order customers:

Bill Griffith: Lost and Found - Comics 1969-2003
by Bill Griffith

392-page black & white/color 8" x 10" softcover • $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-60699-482-5

See Previews / Order Now

Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown at left as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.

Bill Griffith is best known as the creator of the Zippy daily comic strip, currently running in over 300 newspapers nationwide, but Zippy was conceived as an underground comix character before he became embraced in the main- stream, and Griffith himself was a seminal figure in the underground comix movement, during which he was a cartoonist, an editor, and an entrepreneur.

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.

Beginning in 1969, Griffith contributed stories to a long list of legendary undergrounds. Lost and Found is not only a collection of these underground comix — hand-picked by the artist himself — but a mini-memoir of the artist’s comix career during the early days of the San Francisco Underground and his nearly twenty year on-again, off-again involvement with Hollywood and TV. Griffith’s running recollections and commentary serve as a wry and often hilarious counterpoint and context to the stories themselves. Lost and Found follows Griffith’s career from New York to San Francisco in stories taken from The East Village Other, Screw, Arcade, Young Lust and Griffith's solo comic Griffith Observatory, featuring the first Zippy appearances and a cast of characters including Claude Funston, Mr. The Toad, Shelf-Life, The Toadettes, and Alfred Jarry.

While the vast majority of the book is non-Zippy comics, it also features the earliest appearances of Zippy, not seen in any other collection. Zippy fans will be happy to see the very first Zippy stories from 1971 to 1974, when Zippy was primarily a sidekick for Griffith’s first major character, Mr. The Toad. Also included is a 19-page, unfinished, never-before-published comics version of the first few scenes from the Zippy movie screenplay, Zippyvision. Intended as a companion piece to the unproduced film, the story details Zippy’s sideshow origins and his later life in a boarding house catering to showbiz wannabes.

Previously uncollected later work features Griffith’s comics for High Times, The National Lampoon, The San Francisco Examiner and The New Yorker.

Bill Griffith: Lost and Found finally collects the work of one of the great, pioneering cartoonists.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Wandering Son Vol. 2 is a great sophomore collection from Takako; I feel like the slightly choppy nature from the early chapters in Vol. 1 is gone, and Takako’s starting to expand the cast and the plot in a way that provides more of a dramatic bite. Based on the class trip sequence in this volume, Takako’s just getting ready to make Wandering Son a lot more heavy and less idealized for the characters. If it goes anything like we see here, we’ve got a hell of a ride ahead of us. With beautifully designed hardcovers (and a pleasing weight and feel to the books too, with a good paper stock to boot), Wandering Son is the sort of series you’ll be proud to have on your bookshelf. I’m ready for the next volume now." – Greg McElhatton, Read About Comics

• Review: "...I should warn you: this book is dark and bleak even for Sala, and that's dark indeed. There are still hints of his mordant humor, and his precise lines and color washes are as ghoulishly appropriate as always -- but The Hidden out-Salas any of the prior Sala books, which is an unlikely and impressive thing." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Interview: At USA Today Pop Candy , guest contributor Grace Bello chats with Tony Millionaire: "I'm still stuck with my love for fantasy. When I say 'fantasy,' I don't mean wizards and swords -- I mean anything that pops into my mind. I like stuff that doesn't have a contemporary feel to it. I mean, if I draw a telephone, it's got to be one of those old-fashioned phones that you hold with two hands. But that would be the problem with anything that's autobio; I'd have to draw modern cars and telephones, and I don't want to do that yet. If I draw an autobio comic, it's got to be about me in 1727."

• Interview: At Comic Book Resources, Alex Dueben talks to Michel Gagné about restoring Simon & Kirby's romance comics for our upcoming collection Young Romance: "Like a snowball, the project kept getting bigger and bigger. It was one of those things you have on the back burner for years and you constantly have to give it some attention. Finding the material was difficult and costly, the restoration process was long and tedious, but the book kept looking better all the time so I stayed motivated throughout. I wanted that book on my shelf!"

• Interview (Video): Mr. Media®'s Bob Andelman talks to Kevin Avery about Paul Nelson and Everything Is an Afterthought: "Paul Nelson had a fascinating life. If we worked together, it would not have been the same book; being a very private man, Paul would not have revealed everything that I found out."

• Commentary: Patrick Pritchett recalls an evening spent with Paul Nelson as part of an essay on the "Poetics of Failure"

• Plug: The Austin American-Statesman's Joe Gross looks ahead to some of his most-anticipated 2012 books, including Listen, Whitey!: The Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975: "Producer and writer Pat Thomas spent five years researching this tome, exploring the vinyl legacy of the Black Power movement from recordings of speeches by activists such as Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown to Motown's activist imprint Black Forum to the role white figures such as Bob Dylan and John Lennon played in the movement. Probably the book on this list to which I am most looking forward."

A new limited-edition R. Crumb etching is now available from Wildwood Serigraphs, featuring the final panel from the story "Whiteman Meets Bigfoot" in Home Grown Funnies (collected in the currently out-of-print The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 8), completely redrawn for this edition.

As we guessed, Lost Cat will indeed be the title of Jason’s next book after Athos in America. He confirmed the title today on his blog along with this, the first panel of the story. Check out his other posts for more teaser artwork and his thoughts on various films and other subjects.

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