Look what arrived on our doorstep today: advance copies of The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978! This new volume will be debuting at Comic-Con and should hit stores in August.

Vol. 19 of Mome isn't even out yet and we're already wrapping up work on the landmark 20th volume, due in October. Beginning with this issue the anthology sports a new design by Fantagraphics Art Director Adam Grano. The cover star is Fuzz from Ted Stearn's current ongoing Fuzz & Pluck serial "The Moolah Tree."

A set of photos from the 1974 San Diego Comic-Con at the Comic-Convention Memories blog has been making the rounds. Of particluar interest at the end of this batch: photos of Charles M. Schulz on stage talking and sketching, joined by Peanuts animation director Bill Melendez. Oh, to have been in that audience!

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "This graphic memoir chronicles the author’s struggle with the aging of her father and stepmother. The subject matter isn’t pretty. Still, [Special Exits] is intriguing, well-written and thought-provoking."  – Nick Smith, ICv2

• Reviews: The new episode of Easy Rider, the radio show for "rock, punk rock, country, power pop, garage and comics" from Radio PFM out of Arras in northern France, features Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird by Tony Millionaire, Abandoned Cars by Tim Lane, and Hate Annual #8 by Peter Bagge among their Comics of the Week

• Review: "You have to be a real expert in Jason-character physiognomy to even be able to tell that the lonely expat main character in Werewolves of Montpellier is sometimes wearing a werewolf mask. After all, the guy's an anthropomorphized dog at the best of times. In the end, that ends up being the gag. You're not some uniquely unlovable monster, you're just a guy with problems, like anyone else..." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Review: "I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the Peanuts comic strip. I grew up on the old paperback collections and it was always a great day when my mom bought me a new one. Now, thanks to Fantagraphics, the entire run of Peanuts is available to fans in their beautiful, year-by-year collections of Charles Schulz’ masterful and hilarious comic strip. This collection puts us into the years of 1975 - 1976 and includes all of the daily and Sunday strips for the period. ... Thank you Fantagraphics! Grade A" – Tim Janson, Mania

• Review: "The most recent issue is probably the strongest [Hate] Annual to date, 36 pages of concentrated hilarity, including the longest Buddy Bradley story in quite some time. Just as impressive are his one-page strips about scientists from Discover Magazine..." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Analysis: "For the first time, this hapless figure, this half-man, half-animal is a picture of heroism and nobility, his metamorphosis achieved not through cosmic dances or tops but by cruelties inflicted on him by that creature of many masks and tricks, Whim. Earlier in Weathercraft , an infernal creature plucked from the pig-man’s gullet sanctions enlightenment. He who once resembled the demons surrounding the decapitated Ravana becomes whole and fully clothed, now cognizant of his true nature." – Ng Suat Tong, The Hooded Utilitarian

• Interview: From last Friday, Chris Mautner's revealing conversation with Tim Hensley at Robot 6: "Sometimes it's infuriating to read about a bunch of attractive saccharine pupils in the suburbs. Maybe [Archie] could add a brain damaged character. Maybe Moose, but more likely he never learned to read — have they already done that? Somewhere off-panel there's a convalescent hospital with all the rejects in it. But I wasn't attempting a Dark Knight makeover where everyone has stubble and never prevaricates."

• Scene: Arrested Motion reports from the opening of Dave Cooper's Mangle exhibit at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, with copious photos

Our weekly visit with the stubbly girl and the PotUS:

Here's something I don't think very often: I wish the world were more like this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan...

Periodic clips & strips -- click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• Set to Sea pages 104 and 105 from Drew Weing

• It's your all-new weekly installment of "Cartoon Boy" from John Kerschbaum

• Lots of Kevin Huizenga updates: a new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond strip, Fight or Run's Chopper at rest; and minicomic sketchbooks at New Construction (not to mention a peek at his new D&Q book)

• A heartbreaking "I, Anonymous " from Steven Weissman

• Sketches of sculptures by Aristide Maillol by John Hankiewicz

• A scene with power lines by Frank Santoro

• New crafts (including this vampire wedding cake topper) and photos from Portugal in Dame Darcy's latest blog update

"THEN, OUTA NOWHERE… Grunt. Shriek. Bash. Crash. Ook. Ook!"

• A new short short story from Gary Panter

• A luscious new story page and this week's Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane

• A 1967 Mexican cityscape by Jim Flora

• Debbie Drechsler sketches squirrels

• It's Paul Hornschemeier's new weekly t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop — I can just hear the funky theme song

• Noah Van Sciver is waiting on tenterhooks to hear if the story this page is from has been accepted for Mome (sorry Noah, I got no scoop)

• Quackers silliness here and here and Randy Gander raunchiness here and here from Josh Simmons & cohort

• From Renee French: photo, platform, tire swing, hair rock

• Steve Brodner's tribute to Sen. Robert Byrd

• Something new from a work in progress, an article for Il Post, and a video about the Mafia by Gipi

• Nate Neal, payin' the bills

• Two illustrations by Marco Corona for Internazionale

• Two new installments of Truth Serum by Jon Adams

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Kelso’s work radiates a warmth, poetry, sympathy, and simultaneously earthy and otherworldly essence that few comics creators have brought to the table with such quiet confidence and grace. The closest comic in recent memory to match Artichoke Tales, both in breadth and depth, is Jeff Smith’s Bone. [Grade] A" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "...Fantagraphics’ hardcover edition of The Book of Mr. Natural feels like the perfect introduction to R. Crumb’s most enduring creation—and to the sexual peccadilloes that occasionally get both character and creator in hot water. ... It’s fascinating stuff, and should be mandatory reading for anyone who squirmed through Terry Zwigoff’s excellent Crumb documentary—or for anyone looking to get their danders up at Crumb’s allegedly misogynistic tendencies. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "[Editor Eric] Reynolds has done an amazing job of balancing serials with a variety of single-page strips and one-shots. Expanding Mome to include translations from international cartooning stars, short works from established cartoonists and left-field contributions from illustrators not known in the comics world have kept things interesting on an issue-to-issue basis. The eccentricity of Reynolds’ taste as an editor has been another major factor in preventing Mome from getting into a rut. ...[T]his issue of Mome is a fine overall read, and the first half is especially spectacular." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Review: "Percy Gloom is a moving, engaging, enlightening book. It’s exactly the sort of comic readers should be demanding – thoughtful and intelligent, a beautifully drawn narrative that unfolds its layers over the course of multiple readings. Cathy Malkasian’s produced two winning graphic novels, and she’s clearly a talent that deserves a far wider readership." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• Profile: For The New York Times, Reyhan Harmanci reports on how Mark Bodé is carrying on his late father Vaughn's legacy: "Vaughn Bodé created a world in his comics that Mark has fleshed out, making oil and spray paint paintings from his father’s cartoon panels and unfinished sketches. The younger Mr. Bodé perfected his father’s signature pieces: the ever-slouching Cheech Wizard, the science-fiction-inflected planet full of lizards, the cartoonishly lewd 'Bodé broads.' As Mark Bodé, 47, who is based in Daly City said, 'I am mortal and he is immortal, and the two of us work well together.'"

More specifically, Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden need help tracking down scans of tearsheets for several Nancy strips for inclusion in the forthcoming standalone expanded edition of How to Read Nancy:

NANCY 6/ 29/55
NANCY  8/8/59
DEBBIE (AKA LITTLE DEBBIE) by Cecil Jensen 6/ 27/ 55
FRITZI RITZ 12/31/30
Any examples of pre-1925 work by Bushmiller
Any MAC THE MANAGER strips (1924)

And, of course, Nancy's first appearance : Fritzi Ritz 1/2/33

Complete details and contact information are at Stripper's Guide. Image ganked from ¡Journalista!

Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist
by Norman Pettingill; Introduction by Robert Crumb

144-page full-color 12" x 9" hardcover (with wood cover) • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-319-4

Ships in: August 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

Norman Pettingill is a true underground cartoonist, known and admired by a small coterie of cartooning connoisseurs, but completely unknown in the wider world.

Norman Pettingill was an avid trapper and fisherman from Northern Wisconsin, and a self-taught artist. In 1947, at the age of 51, he created hundreds of pen-and-ink drawings and marketed many of them as postcards, printing and distributing them himself. His cartoon drawings were relatively huge and his postcards, therefore, had to be uniquely over-sized at 7” x 10”. He combined a gift for the fine detail and verisimilitude of illustration with the visual exaggeration and outrageous wit of cartooning.

By merging his fascination with nature and backwoods culture with his wild sense of humor, he depicted an out-of-control hillbilly wonderland of talking grizzlies, dancing morons, nightclubs, giant mosquitoes, tumble-down shacks, pipe smoking grannies, flying skunk fur, google-eyed drunks, hilarious hunting mishaps and moonshine soaked fishermen! Pettingill’s world is reminiscent of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip, but Pettingill’s hillbilly heaven is made grittier and more tangible by his obsessive penwork and the attention he gives to each teetering outhouse, every overflowing spittoon and each wiry hair growing out of a mountain man’s warty face. He reveled in exposing the commercialization of outdoor activities, debunking the romance of a woodsman’s life, and demythologizing the expertise of the outdoors-man. His landscapes and drawings of wild animals could be breathtakingly wondrous, and even his most grotesque depictions of hillbillies were fused with a love and respect for the rituals of a primitive life in the boondocks.

This book is the first published retrospective of Pettingill’s work, containing over a hundred of the artist’s best and rarely seen drawings, printed in an oversized format under a unique cover printed on plywood.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 10-page PDF excerpt (13.4 MB).

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

Our selection of books that are available with signed bookplates as a free bonus has just expanded! We've added or restocked bookplates for the following titles:

• Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley (Most of our bookplates are designed in-house, but this full-color beauty was done specially for us by Tim himself!)
• Penny Century, Locas & Locas II by Jaime Hernandez
• All and Sundry by Paul Hornschemeier
• You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! by Fletcher Hanks (signed by editor Paul Karasik)
• Billy Hazelnuts by Tony Millionaire
• Prison Pit, Book 1 by Johnny Ryan
• Maniac Killer Strikes Again, Mad Night, Peculia, & Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires by Richard Sala
• Like a Dog by Zak Sally
• Unlovable Vol. 2 by Esther Pearl Watson

Click here for the full selection of books available with these free bonus signed plates, and get yours while supplies last!