Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Plug: USA Today Pop Candy's Whitney Matheson, posting that Wilco music video with Popeye & co. that's everywhere today, adds "If you're looking for more Popeye, I highly recommend the beautiful collections from Fantagraphics."

• Plugs: Lee and Gwen of Comics and... Other Imaginary Tales comment on a few of our upcoming releases, including Angelman by Nicolas Mahler, Significant Objects, and Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli

More honors coming in from the American Library Association following yesterday's Great Graphic Novels for Teens announcement: the ALA's Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Queer Round Table has selected Esperanza by Jaime Hernandez for their 2012 Over the Rainbow List of recommended books for adults and Wandering Son Vol. 1 by Shimura Takako (Matt Thorn, editor & translator) for the 2012 Rainbow List of recommended books for younger readers (jointly selected by the ALA's Social Responsibilities Round Table)! We're greatly honored that these books have been selected for young and/or GLBT readers. Support your local library!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "And indeed, [Carl Barks's] work of c. 1948–54 ranks amongst the most consistently inspired, inventive, touching, and plain fun in the history of comics. Fantagraphics’ inaugural volume in their complete edition of Barks’s Disney comics [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes] drops the reader in right at the onset of this creative surge, covering the years 1948–49. ...[T]his is a series that finally promises Barks done right, promising a major revival of one of our greatest cartoonists." – Matthias Wivel, The Comics Journal

• Interview: The Believer blog presents part 1 of an interview with Jim Woodring conducted in 2008 by Ross Simonini: "There’s a Robinson Jeffers poem about a guy who has made wounds on the back of his hands and keeps them fresh by cutting them over and over again with a sharp piece of clean metal. That always struck me as being akin to what I do. I wouldn’t let those childhood wounds heal. The tunnel kept trying to close behind me, and I kept forcing it open so I could remember those primordial things, the way that the world seemed to me as a child. It’s been a vocation for me to keep that view intact."

• Interview (Audio): Matt Smith-Lahrman of New Books Network talks to Kevin Avery about Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson; in Smith-Lahrman's written introduction he says "In Avery’s biography, Nelson is a man who deeply believed in the idea of the American hero as a maverick: tough, brave, in touch with the essence of what it means to be human, and, importantly, alone. Nelson died in 2006, just as Avery was beginning to write this book. He died alone.... Nelson’s writing is deeply personal, inviting readers into the relationships he had with the people he wrote about. Avery’s biography similarly invites readers into Paul Nelson’s life, lonely as it was."

• Plug: "New from Fantagraphics, a decade spanning comics anthology from icon maker Bill Griffith. Griffith is surely best known as the creator of the polka-dot robe wearing daily strip character, Zippy the Pinhead, but Griffith's productivity reaches far beyond Zippy. Lost and Found is a collection of comics, handpicked by the artist, many rare and out of print, from 1969-2003 (but with the first third of that time period, the heyday of the underground, occupying the majority of the book). Though most of the comics in Lost and Found aren't about Zippy, there are some unique and important Zippy moments included, like the icon's first appearance..." – 211 Bernard (Librairie Drawn & Quarterly)

• Plugs: Robot 6's Michael May & Graeme McMillan look ahead to a couple of our upcoming releases:

Angelman – I’ve not read much by Austrian cartoonist Nicolas Mahler, but I think I’m won over just by the idea of his new book, which satirizes not just superheroes, but the business behind them. [Graeme]

Interiorae – Lovely, lovely art by Gabriella Giandelli in this collection of his Ignatz series. (It’s also in full-color, unlike the original serialization, which is another win.) [Graeme]

I don’t know why it’s taken this long for Fantagraphics to collect the comics that got their cool Ignatz format a few years ago, but I’ll shut up and be grateful. I greatly enjoyed Giandelli’s creepy tale of an apartment building, its residents, the large rabbit who roams its halls, and the creature the rabbit seems to serve. What’s also exciting though is that this means Richard Sala’s Delphine will get a collection too. [Michael]

• Plug: "Malcolm McNeill was just finishing art school when he began his seven year collaboration with the author, William S. Burroughs. This work, which has never been published, is finally going to see the light of day. Fantagraphics has two books coming out this Spring by McNeill: one with his lost drawings and paintings, and the other a reflection on the relationship between word and image which has made an indelible mark on the artist and master draftsman." – Laura Williams, Lost at E Minor

• Analysis: Comic Book Resources' Greg Burgas examines a 1941 Fletcher Hanks "Stardust the Super Wizard" page as reprinted in I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!

The American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services Association has announced their final Great Graphic Novels for Teens 2012 list and Wandering Son Vol. 1 by Shimura Takako (translated and edited by Matt Thorn) is in the Top Ten! Additionally, Wilfred Santiago's 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente has been named to the overall list. Congratulations all!

Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975
by Pat Thomas

204-page full-color 10" x 10" hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-507-5

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

Noted music producer and scholar Pat Thomas spent five years in Oakland, CA researching Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975. While befriending members of the Black Panther Party, Thomas discovered rare recordings of speeches, interviews, and music by noted activists Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Elaine Brown, The Lumpen and many others that form the framework of this definitive retrospective.

Listen, Whitey! also chronicles the forgotten history of Motown Records. From 1970 to 1973, Motown’s Black Power subsidiary label, Black Forum, released politically charged albums by Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, Bill Cosby & Ossie Davis, and many others, all represented.

Also explored are the musical connections between Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Graham Nash, the Partridge Family (!?!) and the Black Power movement. Obscure recordings produced by SNCC, Ron Karenga’s US, the Tribe and other African-American sociopolitical organizations of the late 1960s and early ’70s are examined along with the Isley Brothers, Nina Simone, Archie Shepp, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Clifford Thornton, Watts Prophets, Last Poets, Gene McDaniels, Roland Kirk, Horace Silver, Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, Stanley Crouch, and others that spoke out against oppression.

Other sections focus on Black Consciousness poetry (from the likes of Jayne Cortez, wife of Ornette Coleman), inspired religious recordings that infused god and Black Nationalism, obscure regional and privately pressed Black Power 7-inch soul singles from across America. 90,000 words of text are accompanied by over 250 large sized, full-color reproductions of album covers and 45 rpm singles — most of which readers will have never seen before.

Download and read a 15-page PDF excerpt (1.7 MB) with the Table of Contents, Introduction and complete Chapter 1.

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

A wonderful endorsement for Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7 from the lovely and very funny Robert Popper, creator of the BBC series Look Around You (along with Peter Serafinowicz, for whose self-titled comedy sketch show Kupperman wrote) which aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and Friday Night Dinner which aired on BBC America and of whom I'm a fan so shut up it's exciting (and we didn't even have to accost him at Comic-Con this time)!

Hey look, photos I took at Tony Millionaire's "Portraits" art show & book signing at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery a couple weeks ago! It's always a blast when Tony's in town and we had a fantastic crowd for the event — thanks to everybody who came out! The show continues for a couple more weeks so get on down to see it.

Everybody who got their copy of 500 Portraits signed got a quickie portrait of themselves in it as well, with Tony barking instructions at the subjects ("DON'T SMILE!") — there's Tony working on one above. Below, Tony adds facial hair to his portrait of John Hodgman, as per Hodgman's promise to do the same for anyone who brings him a copy of the book:

Larry Reid introduces his masterful smash-hit short film "Everybody Loves Drinky Crow" as some DOOK DOOK DOOKing goes on:

A still from said film... drink, Drinky, drink!:

Surprise! Charles Burns was in town and made a guest appearance! Here he's chatting with Lynn Emmert & Eric Reynolds:

Fantagraphics' own Ian Burns gets in on the action and gets Tony's addition to his Animal sketchbook — you can see the finished product and a few more snaps from the evening on the blog of our own Stephanie Hayes:

A view of the exhibit — get a closer look at the artwork and see more photos from the evening on our Flickr page!

(Thanks to Janice for help with this post, including the headline!)

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: On the Inkstuds radio programme's "Best of 2011 with the Cartoonists" episode, Aaron Costain, Dustin Harbin and John Martz discuss their favorite comics of 2011 with host Robin McConnell, including:

Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Jacques Tardi & Jean-Patrick Manchette
Approximate Continuum Comics by Lewis Trondheim
Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks
Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse by Floyd Gottfredson
Prison Pit Book 3 by Johnny Ryan
Mome Vol. 22

• List: Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 was the second-highest vote-getter in Forbidden Planet International's "2011 FPI Master List" survey of "various comic types" to determine the best-loved comics of the year

• Review (Audio): Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture is a topic of discussion with host Mark Frauenfelder and guests Ruben Bolling and Dean Putney on this week's Boing Boing "Gweek" podcast

• Review: "You know who’s great? Lewis Trondheim, the incredibly prolific French cartoonist. Evidence comes in... Approximate Continuum Comics, an English translation of a six-part series Trondheim published in the 1990s concerning his struggles in the comics industry, desire for success and acclaim and just general angst, anxiety and feelings of self-doubt. It sounds all terribly self-involved to the point of tedium, but Trondheim is simply too skilled a storyteller to allow his own ego to override the quality of his work. Approximate is filled with wonderful visual inventions, like an early daydream about dealing with obnoxious passangers on the subway. More to the point, Trondheim’s self-effacing sense of humor is so charming and revealing that the book never becomes too solipsistic or insufferable." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review (Audio): Extra Sequential Podcast hosts Kris Bather and Mladen Luketin examine Young Romance: "Legendary creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby effectively created the romance comics genre which was surprisingly dominant during the 1940s and 50s. We look at Fantagraphics’ entertaining new collection of some of their work."

• Review: "Paul Nelson's life narrative is too good and too tragic.... The painful thing about reading this book [Everything Is an Afterthought], beautifully written and edited by Kevin Avery, is a lot of people are going to identify with Nelson's love for culture and what it means to him/us/them.... A very sad book. But the interviews with his fellow critics and friends (most love him to bits) [are] quite moving and a tribute to those who write to expose how 'their' feelings are attached to the shine or the mirror-like image of pop culture." – Book Soup Blog

• Analysis: Comic Book Resources' Greg Burgas examines a 1957 Steve Ditko page as reprinted in Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 2

We love it when folks share their fan tattoos and it's even better when it's someone from one of our favorite comic shops: Julie from Secret Headquarters in L.A. just got this one based on a Jason illustration. Go buy some comics and ask to see it in person!

Our weekly strips from Mahler & Weissman — Kupperman is on a secret mission and has to miss this week — plus links to other strips from around the web:

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Black Classroom by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

Angelman by Nicolas Mahler (view at original size):

And elsewhere:

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

Forming by Jesse Moynihan:

Humblug by Arnold Roth (3 updates this week):

Lucky by Gabrielle Bell :

Maakies by Tony Millionaire:

The Pain — When Will It End? by Tim Kreider:

Les Petits Riens by Lewis Trondheim:

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow: