Our second preview of the day is of The Comics Journal #291, which features Tim Sale, Josh Simmons, Ralph Steadman, Dan Gordon and a whole lot more. It's due in 2-3 weeks and is now available for pre-order! Watch the video above and click here for a gallery of preview photos.

We've uploaded a whole slew of preview images and video for several new and upcoming books to our Flickr account. First up, it's Angry Youth Comix Vol. 2 #14 by Johnny Ryan, which is available now! Watch the video above and click here for a gallery of preview photos.

Steven Weissman was on a birthday bender last week and didn't turn in his "Chocolate Cheeks" strip... Actually, we just skipped a week because I was at MoCCA in NY and wasn't able to update the site. In any event, Ribs says "Here's this week's strip: ripped from the headlines!" (Remember, you must be registered and logged in to read.)

Dan Goodsell uploaded an old Howard Johnson's Kids Menu comic book to his Flickr page. If you've sat through 2001 you know that HoJo's really had their hand on the pulse of childhood fun with that one.

Blake Bell joins the Inkstuds radio program to discuss all things Steve Ditko. A must-listen for Steve Ditko fans. Above image from Creepy #13, reproduced in STRANGE & STRANGER: THE WORLD OF STEVE DITKO.

Courtesy Roberta Gregory: 

This is the first review to hit of Blake Bell's STRANGE & STRANGER: THE WORLD OF STEVE DITKO. They seemed to like it. Out of dozens of film, tv, book, game and comic reviews in the issue, it's the only "A+" in the mag.

As I prepare "BEASTS! Book Two" for Fantagraphics to release this fall (mostly at night and mostly while the baby sleeps) I am doing research that ends up with very little appearance in the books but keeps me motivated to wrangle 90 artists creating original art on a deadline. Art that has more to do with symbolic passion than literal interest.

"Unproven" creatures like the Unicorn and Leviathan make frequent appearances in ancient texts, but what amazes me is how frequently they turn up in zoological and generally scientific texts-- usually in proving terms. It's easy to dismiss these creatures nowadays because of the popularity of Science and the Experiential over the Mystical and Spiritual but reading the ernestness of these old texts is disorienting and, in spite of Logic, incredibly inspiring.

As George Caspard Kirchmayer writes in "On the Basilisk " (one of many apparently popular treatises he wrote from about 1680): "To deny the existence of the basilisk is to carp at the evidence of men's eyes and their experiences in many different places. Accordingly, we allow the basilisk a place in nature, as the most deadly and venomous creature and plague in the animal creation. We would have it understood we are not here maintaining that ridiculous and more than monstrous story of the manner of its birth, nor the deadly effect of its look, nor those other points which are more like old wives' stories than anything else. It is for the existence of this most venomous reptile that we are now contending."

I love that Kirchmayer is asking us (in elegant and intelligent terms) to forgive us the hype, the basilisk is a good guy who deserves to live. Let's not kill him off simply becuause we can't prove he exists.

And while Kirchmayer is disputing Pliny and similarly popular thinkers he'll also zealously defend the Unicorn at length: “Over the whole world it is a common saying that the unicorn perished and became extinct at the flood, and that not a single individual of the Monoceros species survived. We shall correct this injustice, and shall, with God's help, find a means of putting a stop to this universal blasphemy.”

God help those who are not curious.

We'd like to bring to your attention the first-ever east coast store signings by America's Sweetheart, JOHNNY RYAN. Johnny will be appearing in New York and Boston this June to promote the release of ANGRY YOUTH COMIX #14. In Boston, Johnny will be joined by fellow Fantagraphics author (and, coincidentally, America's other sweetheart) LEAH HAYES, who will be signing copies of her acclaimed new graphic novel, FUNERAL OF THE HEART.

WHO: JOHNNY RYAN
WHAT: ANGRY YOUTH COMIX #14 release party!
WHERE: Desert Island
540 Metropolitan, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
WHEN: Friday, June 13, 6PM - 9PM

WHO: JOHNNY RYAN and LEAH HAYES
WHAT: ANGRY YOUTH COMIX #14 and FUNERAL OF THE HEART book signings
WHERE: The Million Year Picnic
99 Mount Auburn St., Harvard Square, Cambridge
WHEN: Sunday, June 15, 2PM - 4PM 

Irwin Chusid notes the passing of jazz composer/arranger (and Jim Flora cover subject) Bill Finegan.