HOW IS THIS EVENT NOT SOLD OUT ALREADY?!?

Seriously, New York. You'd be a fool to miss this rare appearance from the legendary Lou Reed, this coming Monday, June 27th at The Strand.

Lou will be reading from his book The Raven, a collaboration with Italian artist Lorenzo Mattotti -- and if you ask me, it's a far more thrilling collaboration than that other one making the news right now!

Ticket holders will receive a signed copy of The Raven, your choice of a famous standard-size Strand tote bag, and the opportunity to meet Lou Reed. 

Price of the ticket? $35 bucks. Getting to meet Lou F'ing Reed? Priceless.

The event starts at 7:00 PM in the Rare Book Room at The Strand [828 Broadway].

Today's lone Online Commentary & Diversion:

• Review: "As you can see on every page of Fantagraphics' gorgeous new collection Mickey Mouse: Race to Death Valley, the young Mickey was a brash, spirited, resourceful, and endlessly charming character, a pluckish everymouse adventuring through life one scrape — and one daily comic strip — at a time. Poring over this book is like swimming in the very headwaters of popular American culture.... Mickey Mouse: Race to Death Valley stands beside Fantagraphics' collections of E.C. Segar's Popeye and Charles Schulz's Peanuts as a treasure of modern American culture — a reminder that, once in a while, the most popular thing is the best thing." – Alan Scherstuhl, SF Weekly

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new title. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about it (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the link, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips Vol. 2 (1936-1937)
by Roy Crane

144-page full-color 10.5" x 14.75" hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-391-0

Sneak peek at Diamond's PREVIEWSworld website

"The 1936-1937 Sunday installments of Roy Crane's proto-lots-of-things adventure comic strip continue." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"...I’d also consider one of the nice collected editions of vintage comics that is coming out this week; the Fantagraphics Captain Easy collection looks tempting..." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6

"Magnificent color adventure comics from Roy Crane, published as crisply as modern collection technique allow. I'm reading this right now." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips Vol. 2 (1936-1937) will in all likelihood give you what the title indicates, in addition to an illustrated introduction by Paul Pope, an essay by the late Bill Blackbeard and comments by editor Rick Norwood..." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

Well, a black eye you'll want, anyway!

It's Black Eye 1: Graphic Transmissions to Cause Ocular Hypertension, a new anthology featuring many Fantagraphics artists packed in those pages, including Al Columbia, Robert Goodin, Glenn Head, Michael Kupperman, Mark Newgarden, and Jon Vermilyea.

(You may remember Black Eye as the anthology that got confiscated on the way to TCAF...)

Ivan Brunetti, Lilli Carré, and Paul Hornschemeier are also featured in this collection, and they'll be signing (along with Paul Nudd and Onsmith) this coming Friday, June 24th at Quimby’s Bookstore [1854 W. North Ave, Chicago]. The metaphorical punches start flying at 7:00 pm!

Today's singular Online Commentary & Diversion:

• Review: "I held off buying the new hardback series collecting Hal Foster's Prince Valiant because I already have complete reprint collections of that groundbreaking comic strip. But I finally broke down and bought Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-38, and I'm glad I did. The reproduction is crisp, and the strips are presented in the size they originally ran, that of a newspaper broadsheet. This is how Foster's gorgeous artwork was meant to be seen, and I have to be careful not to drool on the pages." – Andrew A. Smith, Scripps Howard News Service

There's another exclusive preview of The Comics Journal #301 to be seen at TCJ.com today: an excerpt from Tim Kreider's must-read critical essay "Irredeemable: Dave Sim's Cerebus."

Comic Book Resources' Alex Dueben rang up our fearless leader, Gary Groth, for a wide-ranging chat about the state of Fantagraphics and the comics industry in general. It's chock full of ever-so-juicy tidbits and Gary's trademark unvarnished opinions on topics like the comics market, Pogo, digital, The Comics Journal, the DC "renumbering gambit," working with Disney, copyright battles... just go read it already!

• Wilfred Santiago is making more progress on his painting of 21 subject Roberto Clemente — see the latest stages at the 21 Facebook page or on Wilfred's Flickr page

• An Eleanor Davis illustration for a New York Times op-ed piece this past Saturday

• Will Johnny Ryan's new comic for Vice have a happy ending?

• Thanks to Steve Brodner for pointing out this cute New Yorker cover by John Cuneo (you may recall the book we did with John a few years back) — and don't miss Steve's own Istanbul sketches

And more Things to See from the past week:

• From Jason , vintage artwork at Cats Without Dogs and even-more-vintage artwork at The Old Cat and the Dog

• Steven Weissman's latest "I, Anonymous" spot and church sketchin'

• Two new mixed-media pieces by John Hankiewicz

• A new drawing and sketches by Mark Kalesniko

• New drawings from Renee French on her blog

• This sketchbook strip by Anders Nilsen is a real punch in the gut

• Augh, again with the sketches of medical deformities by Hans Rickheit

• Nate Neal's latest men's magazine humor strip

Working on the weekly Things to See roundup and didn't want to overwhelm it with all this great stuff posted by Tim Lane on his blog last week:

Two new pages from the story "Notes of a Second Class Citizen"...

...this hard-hitting cover for the Riverfront Times...

...and this spot illustration for The Nation.

Hot on the heels of Groucho comes another limited-edition print from Drew Friedman, this time a panorama of 1934 Barnum & Bailey sideshow freaks. Is it just me or does Drew just keep getting better and better?