Here is a picture of Daniel Clowes, who took his son to the Alameda County Fair a couple weekends back, only to discover an unlikely act on one of the stages. Dan reports, "Unfortunately, we missed their set."

You can't make this shit up, folks.

The good news: you get two of each strip this week (they're doubled up on the page) since we missed last week's update due to Comic-Con! The bad news: see below...

This week's is the FINAL Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan EVER! Not a joke! Not an imaginary story! (Actually it's literally both, but we're not kidding about it being the last one.)

Buckle in for two weeks worth of clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• Jaime Hernandez, 1977 (from friend/fan Bernie Ramirez on the Love and Rockets Facebook page)

• Anders Nilsen's Dennis Hopper for Cinefamily is magnificent

• How about a little Dennis the Menace/Lost mash-up at Big Shiny Robot?

• Moscow-born San Francisco-residing cartoonist Roman Muradov sends us some pages done in homage/tribute to Jason — they're good, and got a thumbs-up from Jason

• Again with the Comics presents a Scooby-Doo story drawn by... Ivan Brunetti?? (via Steven Thompson)

• Jason's sketch of Jean-Pierre Melville, plus more recent blog entries about Lino Ventura, Alain Delon, and summer reading

• Rosebud Archives presents a super-rare promotional flyer for Charles M. Schulz's Young Pillars

• It's the two latest weekly installments of "Cartoon Boy" from John Kerschbaum

• Gipi describes his new video "Antony" as "a classic film thriller"

• For The Bold Italic, Jon Adams profiles 3 real-life Bay Area Comic Book Guys (via Robot 6); also, two installments of Truth Serum

• From Kevin Huizenga, a new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond

• From Dash Shaw: a new silkscreen print; sketchbook pages; Ruined Cast sketches; The Lion King

• From Steven Weissman: "I, Anonymous" for last week and this week; Lumpy Noodle

• Frank Santoro gives another sneak peek at his Strange Tales Silver Surfer

• Drew Weing presents Set to Sea pages 112, 113, 114 & 115. Also, could someone snag me a set of these buttons? 

• Tim Lane's Belligerent Piano episodes 21 and 22

• A 1950 profile of Jim Flora

• Johnny Ryan has a bunch of new prints for sale. We saw Matt Groening admiring the one above at Comic-Con, our own Kristy Valenti very happily bought the cat one, and the "Nachos" one is just 100% pure genius

• Debbie Drechsler's latest round of nature sketches features squirrels, birds, bugs & spiders

• From Mark Kalesniko, two sets of quick sketches

• Sergio Ponchione posts some pages of his artwork from Cattivi Soggetti, an anthology of noir stories written by Danielle Brolli

• Paul Hornschemeier's latest t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop

• Noah Van Sciver posts an excerpt from Blammo #5

• From Josh Simmons & co: King Quackers, Skeezy Quacker, Quacker dreams, Quokkers, cupcake crimes

• Renee French has too many updates to link all of them individually; just go to her blog and work your way down. This, this, and this are highlights for me

• Steve Brodner's latest segment from PBS's Need to Know, "Obama Where Art Thou?" and his tribute to the late John Callahan

• I think the painting from Josh Simmons's House snuck into Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary

• Tom Kaczynski's sketches from the La Mano 2nd Annual Report and another show

• Something new & untitled from Joe Kimball

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Intentionally or not, Mome #19 is almost a theme issue, with the usual mix of abstraction and autobiography giving way to multiple narrative-driven stories with their roots in genre fiction. ... All-in-all, a solid outing for one of the best (and last) alt-comics anthologies on the market. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Rhymes, lyrics, words used by your grandma (and only if they had emigrated to the U.S.) and situations that have been extinct for many years are the main features of Culture Corner. But when is this so bad? ... So this is a release of great value for fans of Wolverton, but also a great opportunity to learn about one of the most famous and funny in the business." – Thomas Papadimitropoulos, Comicdom (translated from Greek)

• Comic-Con: Eden Miller of Comicsgirl reports on the Moto Hagio spotlight panel at Comic-Con last week

• Interview: Frank Santoro joins Brandon Graham, Michael DeForge, and host Robin McConnell for an Inkstuds roundtable on "fusion in modern comics"

Photo by Matt Thorn, who describes the historic meeting between these two greats in his blog report from Comic-Con. Bradbury is holding a copy of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories.

This looks like an excellent and well-due survey of a robust but underacknowledged area of comics: "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" opens at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum on October 1, featuring work by Vanessa Davis, Bernice Eisenstein, Sarah Glidden, Miriam Katin, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Miss Lasko-Gross, Miriam Libicki, Corinne Pearlman, Sarah Lightman, Sarah Lazarovic, Diane Noomin, Trina Robbins (above), Racheli Rottner, Sharon Rudahl, Laurie Sandell, Ariel Schrag, Lauren Weinstein, and Ilana Zeffren.

From the announcement: "The Forward, the leading independent Jewish weekly newspaper and web site, is media sponsor, and will publish the show’s catalog as an eight-page newspaper broadsheet. The catalog will include the last story written by Harvey Pekar, the legendary writer and pioneer and autobiographical comics. Pekar had been collaborating with artist Tara Seibel on the essay for 'Graphic Details' at the time of his death."

Get all the latest details and updates on the Graphic Details blog or on Facebook.

This is somewhat belated news, but we didn't get the photo uploaded until just now: Peter Bagge, Moto Hagio and C. Tyler were all awarded with Inkpot Awards at Comic-Con this year! Above, Peter and Carol pose with their trophies; Moto didn't bring her trophy to her signings, so if anyone has photos of her receiving or holding the award, we'd love to see them!

Update: found at Comicsgirl!

Xaime!

Beto!

Mario!

My favorite photo of the Con: a next-generation fan enjoying a comic by a next-generation artist (Natalia's The Cat Eyes #1)!

It became a daily thrill seeing what Moto Hagio would draw on our whiteboard for each of her signings:

Stephen DeStefano was very generous with fans:

Final done-in-one Day 4 update coming soon...

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Tunes: At Largehearted Boy, Cathy Malkasian provides a musical playlist for her new graphic novel Temperance

• Interview: Snap Judgment's Stephanie Foo talks to Mome contributors Jon Adams & Robert Goodin, among others, about their superhero juvenilia in a slideshow with audio

• History: At Comics Comics, Tim Hodler posts a 1954 letter from Charles M. Schulz to Walt Kelly provided by Jeet Heer

• Plug: Eat, Sleep & Read! spotlights Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso

• Reviewer: For the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux reviews Gary Shteyngart's new novel Super Sad True Love Story

Okay, that's a loaded opener and implies that I had an unhappy experience this year. I didn't; I just couldn't resist. But my way of navigating the show and finding ways to make it more enjoyable have definitely evolved over the years. I've been to every Comic-Con but one since sometime in the early-to-mid-1980s (and I'm only 39 -- you do the math), long before the current convention center was built. I've gone as a child, an adult, a fan, a retailer representative, a journalist, a publicist, and a publisher. I know my way around the show. And the way that I've found I can make the best of it anymore is, frankly, by making the least of it. I've given up on trying to soak in as much as I can and find I'm happier if I let go and try to soak in as little as I can. Work the booth, talk to fans, enjoy a few quiet dinners, go to the Eisners. That's about the extent of it. Forget walking the floor, forget hitting the best parties, forget cramming as much into as little time as possible. It's madness, and my body can't take it anymore.

So, Mike Baehr has already chronicled the Fanta goings on at Comicon far better than I ever could -- I still can't figure out how Mike had time to take pictures and tweet all day, every day, while he was also constantly helping customers and our authors and barely had any breaks for about six days straight. Mike rules.

But here's what I can tell you: On behalf of all of the Fantagraphics staff, I really want to thank everyone who came all the way down to our end of the hall with a little bit of money left in their wallets and bought some books from us. When you think about it, what with all of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of items that are for sale at Comic-Con, to know that enough people find what you're doing worthwhile enough to cover our significant expense of exhibiting is really kind of incredible. I say that as someone who knows our books are great; I just don't necessarily expect anyone else to agree with me. So when you do, well, it makes us feel good, and I know I can speak for everyone we had down there that we honestly enjoy talking to the people that read our books. We have a lot of really nice customers. My biggest fear about Comic-Con is that it is getting so big that casual comics readers unwilling to make plans a year in advance are getting squeezed out by hardcore fans who only want to see Twilight panels or whatever. That's not to sound anti-Hollywood; it's just the reality of the logistics of Comic-Con anymore.

That said, I kept telling folks all weekend that even though it's in my nature to complain, I had almost nothing to complain about in regard to this year's show (which I realize makes for a boring con postmortem). Yes, I find it weirdly condescending and annoying that every retail worker in downtown San Diego now seems to wear some generic comics-related t-shirts or capes for five days straight (especially when you know they're being forced to do it and probably resent it every bit as much). But so be it. When I go to a nice restaurant downtown, I can promise you that I'm not so hungry to relive my day on the floor that I need Green Lantern-themed cocktails or steaks named after the wild creatures of Pandora. But I will be famished enough to forgive it.

Oh, sure, I could complain about "Hollywood," I suppose. At the Eisner Awards, I was sitting with two nominees in one of the categories that the cast of Scott Pilgrim presented. Given that one of the other nominees actually was a Scott Pilgrim book, I guess I could complain that the presenters effectively eliminated any element of surprise over who was going to win. But really, we just thought it was funny. If you can't laugh during the Eisners, you're in for a long night.

So, I can dig it. My 13-year-old con-going self would have stabbed somebody in the eye to see a panel about an Avengers movie. Nowadays, I'm fairly ignorant to the pervasiveness of the cult of celebrity of Comic-Con. I'm good at tuning things out. This year, I noticed the creeping influence of tinseltown less within the show than I did outside. As soon as I stepped outside the convention, that's where I felt the constant, sensory assault of shameless hucksterism, with sidewalk salesmen shoving video game and movie-related hype left-and-right into my face and hands whether I wanted it or not (I didn't). The con itself is a breeze compared to walking up First Ave. on Saturday night at 7PM.

Within the con, I keep to the comics end of the floor and rarely set foot more than a row or two past our own aisle towards the "popular" end of the show. It's civil and peaceful; everybody likes each other. And if you get bored, there's a lot of good books to read, and a ton of really great cartoonists who will do free drawings for you. If you come next year, see for yourself. And if you came this year, thank you.