From our fine colleagues at Éditions Cornélius comes this gorgeous and excellently-titled hardcover collection La Crème de Crumb, of interest to Fantagraphics loyalists because a) duh, it's Crumb and b) it includes the 1988 interview with Crumb from The Comics Journal #121 by our fearless leader Gary Groth, translated into French (as are all the comics, natch). Francophone Seattleites take note, we'll have a couple of copies for sale at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery next week.

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

New York Mon Amour
by Jacques Tardi, Benjamin Legrand & Dominique Grange

84-page black & white/duotone 8.25" x 10.75" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-524-2

"Four short stories by the French Tardi set in New York City. The biggest thing about Tardi is his range, even within the confines of a single story. He can effortlessly move from silly, mannered humor to explosive, gruesome violence. Tarantino, if he had become a cartoonist, would have wished that he could be this guy." – Ao Meng, Novi Magazine

"Among this week’s crop of new releases is another in Fantagraphics’ excellent and continuing series of extremely welcome English language editions of the diverse body of work by the great Jacques Tardi, surely one of the top exponents of the comic form.... I’m so glad the Fanta crew has been making these titles available again to English language readers." – Joe Gordon, Forbidden Planet International

"I mentioned New York Mon Amour last week, but how can you possibly cite Jacques Tardi too many times? All I know is that four NYC stories are included, in black, white & red; $19.99." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

"If I had $30, I’d make the difficult choice between two top-notch offerings from Fantagraphics this week. One: New York Mon Amour, a collection of Manhattan-themed stories by the one and only Jacques Tardi, including the Kalfkaesque “Cockroach Killer.” The other would be the third volume in the ongoing Mickey Mouse collection, High Noon at Inferno Gulch. I’m an unabashed Floyd Gottfredson fan, so the Mickey book would probably win out. But I’d be sure to save my coins for next week so I can get the Tardi book then." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

Out of the Shadows
by Mort Meskin; edited by Steven Brower

200-page full-color 7.5" x 10.5" softcover • $26.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-532-7

"Assuming I don’t blow all my splurge dough on the Tardi book, there’s a number of solid options here [including] Out of the Shadows, a collection of Mort Meskin’s early non-DC work..." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"Also dropping is Out of the Shadows, a 200-page collection of Golden Age comics by Mort Meskin, edited and designed by Steven Brower; $26.99." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

"The Mort Meskin book is a must-have simply because of the way Meskin has muscled his way into the conversation about great and influential mainstream craftsmen -- I think maybe through a door left ajar a few places by Art Spiegelman, although I honestly couldn't tell you the exact provenance of his rediscovery." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 3: High Noon at Inferno Gulch
by Floyd Gottfredson

280-page black & white/color 10.5" x 8.75" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-531-0

"These volumes have been a revelation, showing a generation who had only seen the dull, squeaky clean corporate Mickey exactly why he was the darling of the 1930s. Pure rollicking high-adventure, they’re also filled with background material and essays by cartoon scholars such as editor David Gerstein. A must for any cartoon fan collection." – Sean Gaffney, Manga Bookshelf

"...Fantagraphics’ hilarious little mascot returns for more Floyd Gottfredson-headed antics in Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 3: High Noon at Inferno Gulch, boasting 60 or so pages of supplements toward a 280-page total; $29.99. " – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 (2nd Printing)
by the Hernandez Brothers

100-page black & white 7.5" x 9.25" softcover • $14.99
ISBN: 978-1-56097-951-7

Back in print!

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8
by Michael Kupperman

32-page full-color 6.75" x 9.5" comic book • $4.95

Ships in: July 2012 — This item will be available for order concurrently with its release to comic shops in a couple of weeks.

Break out your crayons as Red Warren, "America's Grandpa," brings you his highly educational "Train & Bus Coloring Book." The guests at a sophisticated weekend party sure get nervous when a certain mystery writer shows up on her goat. Learn the story of French national hero Bertrand de Copillon, a.k.a. "The Scythe." And originally serialized in the Washington City Paper and online at Fantagraphics.com, the true story of the first lunar mission, "Moon 69." All this and more in the eighth issue of the series that changed the face of comic book humor, Tales Designed to Thrizzle!

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

It's actually really lovely at the Elysian Brewing Company, but tomorrow night Thursday, June 21st, they bring us "Wasteland," the latest from our 12 Beers of the Apocalypse collaboration! 

"Wasteland" is an Elderflower Saison, available on draft, and in exclusive 22 oz. bottles with labels featuring the artwork of the great Charles Burns from his weirdly apocalyptic Black Hole series. 

The official tapping begins at 5:00 PM, followed by a survival demo by Bryan & co. at 6:30 PM, with cavepainting til 8:00 PM. As always, themed attire is welcome, so grab your spelunking helmet!

Come by and collect the next stamp in your Apocalypse Beer Survival Guide. Fill your book with survival item stamps at our Apocalypse events throughout the year for an outstanding experience at our final End of the World Celebration on 12.20.12! 

The Elysian Brewing Company is located at 1221 E. Pike Street in Seattle. It's the end of the world as we know it, and the end is BEER!

This month's issue of Booklist reviewed two recent releases by Fantagraphics creators, excerpted below:

Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion by Hans Rickheit: "Here are early stories by the graphic novelist whose work... comes closer than any other’s (except Nate Powell’s) to the prose stories of Zoran Živkovi, Andrew Crumey, Kelly Link, Ray Vukcevich, Theodora Goss, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and other practitioners of what’s been called slipstream fiction. They feature people, animals, and flesh-and-machine hybrids in all stages of development and dissolution, from fetus and pupa to suppurating near-corpse to skeleton . . . Among their protagonists, a bear-headed man in a long coat and high boots and identical teen sisters Cochlea and Eustachia, who wear only black masks and very short-skirted tops, recur often. Rescued from their original appearances in Rickheit’s slim, stapled-together Chrome Fetus Comics, these stories are less polished than his current stuff . . . but fully developed in every other aspect of his puzzling, engrossing, and disturbing storytelling." — Ray Olson

Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli: "A large and (mostly) invisible rabbit looks over the affairs of various tenants in a modern apartment building: an elderly woman dying in one apartment, a couple entrenched in unhappiness and unfaithfulness in another, young schoolgirl friends in a third, and a happy group of ghosts in a fourth . . . the rabbit as harbinger of change [leaps] from panel to panel, view to view, addressing the reader enough to keep the outsider engaged in asking what might happen to whom next. The images are gorgeously penciled and inked, with coloring to note moods and approaching climaxes and denouements in the various tales. The rabbit’s own identity — or power — finds explanation in an Algonquin tale found in an open book on a bed in one scene; figuring out who is the Boss in the basement, sometimes referenced by the rabbit, takes more digging. Beautifully rendered art and sweetly told, serious stories." — Francisca Goldsmith

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Early readers of the third volume of THE DITKO ARCHIVES, Mysterious Traveler, have already noticed two unfortunate glitches. The story "The Forbidden Room" is missing its ninth and final page (above), and "The Menace of the Maple Leaves" is also missing a page (below). Editor Blake Bell has been busy tearing his hair out ever since we learned this.

The fix, fortunately, is very simple: We'll just reprint both stories (in full, at full size), in the next volume of THE DITKO ARCHIVES, coming in the Spring, so collectors will have the full stories. For those who don't want to wait that long, we're also providing a downloadable PDF of the missing pages (7.9 MB).

You don't have to send us ass-kicking emails because our asses are already sore from self-inflicted kicking. And rest assured, we'll be very, very vigilant on future books.

(Click for larger image.)

We're coming down the home stretch on the second volume of Walt Kelly's Complete Pogo, and the good news is that we've got literally 99% of the never-beforere-reprinted, full-color Sundays from the two years covered in this collection. The bad news is that we're missing a half dozen panels still.

How can we be missing panels and not strips, you ask? Simple: the Pogo Sunday was put together in an odd configuration in which of the three possible formats -- full page, half page, and third page -- only one, the third page, contained the complete strip. The third page was missing the full top tier, and the full page was missing one square panel in the middle of the strip that was designed to be removable so that the strip could be assembled in this format.

So if we've got the half-page we're fine. If we've got both the full and the third page we're also fine because the two "complete each other" (to be romantic about it).

However, in the case of the following four strips:

July 8, 1951
December 9, 1951
September 14, 1952
October 12, 1952

We have only the full page, which means we're missing that little square. (We actually have a black-and-white version of all except December 9, 1951 hanks to a book reprint, so if push comes to shove we can colorize them and insert them -- but December 9, 1951 is the tricky one, we've only got a bad microfilm version of that panel.)

There is also August 19, 1951, for which we have only the third (meaning we're missing the entire top third of it) -- here again we have access to a black and white version (which seems to have been edited for the book version, another problem) but nothing else.

So we're sending out a call to collectors: If you know of or can find or can put us on the track of HALF or THIRD page versions of the first four strips, and FULL or HALF page versions of that final one... do let us know!

Graphic artist Dale Yarger was at the center of activity in Seattle throughout the 1980s and '90s as our city prepared to engage popular culture on a global scale. Yarger's tenure at The Rocket magazine in the 1980s included designing Bruce Pavitt's monthly Sub Pop column, where he refined the look and the ubiquitous logo of the future record label. He moved from there to the position of head art director at Fantagraphics Books during the formative period of alternative comix. He later left to become art director of The Stranger and helped guide that magazine to regional prominence and a national profile. Sadly, Yarger lost a long battle with cancer and passed away earlier this year at the age of 61.

The public is invited to celebrate the legacy of this remarkable artist at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Sunday, July 1st from 4:00 to 8:00 PM. "A Tribute to Dale Yarger" will include an exhibition of Dale's memorable design work, along with testimonials and anecdotes from his many friends and colleagues in Seattle. Please join us. The exhibition will remain on view through July 10, 2012.

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street in the heart of Seattle's historic Georgetown arts community. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

Jewish Images in the Comics
by Fredrik Strömberg

424-page black & white 6" x 6" hardcover • $26.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-528-0

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

Jewish Images in the Comics showcases more than 150 comic strips, comic books and graphic novels from all over the world, stretching over the last five centuries and featuring Jewish characters and Jewish themes.

The book is divided into chapters on Anti-Semitism, the Old Testament, the Holocaust, Israel, the Golem and much more, featuring everything from well-known comics like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the work of Will Eisner to much more obscure (and in some cases far less savory) but no less culturally and historically interesting examples of how Jewish culture has been depicted in comics.

As with Strömberg’s previous two books for Fantagraphics, each strip, comic, or graphic novel is spotlighted via a short but informative 200-word essay and a representative illustration. The book is augmented by a context-setting introduction as well as an extensive source list and bibliography.

Jewish Images in the Comics is the third book in a series in which Strömberg examines different phenomena in our society, as mirrored in comics. Black Images in the Comics examines the way Black people have been portrayed in comics and The Comics Go to Hell looks at how the Devil has been used as a comics character.

33-page excerpt (download 1.5 MB PDF):

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

The most-current Online Commentaries & Diversions: 

•Interview: MTV Geek questions Noah Van Sciver about his new graphic novel, The Hypo, and why he chose to focus on the man before the president. ". . . it’s important to see who [Lincoln] became, or I should say how he became is more spectacular when you think about who he was, and where he came from, because I don’t even know if that’s possible anymore, to come from nothing and then become a president, you know?"

•Review: Drew on ComicAttack.net reviews kid-friendly The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. "It’s not quite Betty and Veronica, but it’s not quite Calvin and Hobbes; it’s that special place in between that catches that transition from childhood into adolescence, which doesn’t get captured on the comic book page much, and is a rare treat that Hernandez delivers here to such perfection."

•Interview (audio): ABC News Radio's Sherry Preston interviews Daniel Clowes (at the 30 minute mark) as his work is on display at the Oakland Museum of California. "I was more interested in kinda funny comics and comics about real life situations. And I thought it made no sense that there weren't comics about every subject you can imagine." You'll love the following story.

•Commentary: TURN IT OUT in clothes inspired by Daniel Clowes' Ghost World and America's two favorite juveniles on Trent.

•Plug: Follow the White Rabbit eloquently mentions Jacques Tardi's New York Mon Amour. A rough translation might say,  "Altogether, a perfect Edition for the lovers of this French author that already amazed us at 'The cry of the people,' 'The war of trenches' or 'The extraordinary adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec'."

 •Commentary: Chris Mautner of Robot 6 gives a nice mention to Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8. "A pretty solid issue overall, the best and funniest part being the opening segment, a parody of coloring books, this time involving trains that … well, it’s not fit for polite conversation, really."

•Review: Greg Burgas of Comic Book Resources breaks down one beautiful page by Archie Goodwin and Alex Toth from Blazing Combat. "This story shows off [Toth's] strengths very nicely, because it’s one of the bleaker stories in the volume (none of them are happy; I mean “bleak” in that the landscape is stripped of vegetation and is dotted with destroyed building, giving this story its post-Apocalyptic tenor) and Toth does very well with that." 

•Plug: The Daily Beast features an excerpt from Joe Sacco and Chris Hedges' new book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.  In this article, they "detail the effects of coal mining in West Virginia, a state destroyed by mountaintop removal."

•Interview: Peering from under a swell hat, Noah Brand from The Good Men Project interviews TCJ contributer and cartoonist Tim Kreider on the art of writing. "Cartooning also seems to allow me to express a much sillier, stupider, more puerile part of my personality than writing. I get all stiff and serious and writerly when I sit down to write prose."

•Commentary: Rick Klaw lists Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell as part of the comic book essentials. "Bell shines light on many diverse corners of the comics industry in an attempt to understand the reclusive Ditko."