Get ready for the HOTWIRE comics slide show! That’s right, the Eisner and Harvey nominated anthology comic is about to chew up the scenery live. Presented by HOTWIRE editor Glenn Head and Carousel host R. Sikoryak.

Featuring these great artists performing their comics for your delectation: Danny Hellman, Sam Henderson, Michael Kupperman, Tim Lane, Jayr Pulga, David Sandlin, Chadwick Whitehead, plus Head and Sikoryak. This show is sure to offer both spontaneous cartoon funk and the slickest of production values. Live comic entertainment at its best!

MoCCA Thursday, March 25, 2010. 7pm
Admission: $5 | Free for MoCCA Members
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art
594 Broadway, Suite 401
New York, NY 10012
212-254-3511

For more information about MoCCA please visit www.moccany.org.
For info on HOTWIRE visit www.hotwirecomics.com.

I might have to start posting these art-blog roundups on the weekends too... these Monday updates are outa control...

• Airbrushed Zippy the Pinhead art (artist unknown)! Posting this on Facebook, Bill Griffith says "This is the 2-page spread ad for the 'Zippy Movie' from Variety magazine, 3/29/90. The ad was taken out by the Aspen Film Society (at that time they were the producers of the movie) in hopes of attracting a studio/distributor. Are we in turnaround yet?" More about it (and the likewise never-to-be Zippy TV show series) here

• Check out all the artwork from the Covered art show here on the Secret Headquarters Flickr page — I'm pretty sure I haven't featured this Johnny Ryan piece on Flog before — and organizer/curator Robert Goodin has a report and photos from the opening on his blog

• Michael Kupperman awards the Oscar for best Oscar

• John Hankiewicz does Ditko , plus another sketchbook page

• A 1994 minicomic by Frank Santoro & Jon Good

• Jewelry and accessories "made from 100% genuine doll" by Dame Darcy

• Several new pieces by Richard Sala available at Comic Art Collective or direct via Richard's blog

• Detail of a mid-1990s Jim Flora illustration

• The conclusion of Gabrielle Bell's New York story

• Mark Kalesniko is really channeling Egon Schiele in this one

• Yowie! Sergio Ponchione presents a full-color Grotesque story from the pages of the new issue of Linus

• This one from Renee French is even creepier as the follow-up to this one

• Ectopiary page 14 and a Cochlea and Eustachia one-pager from Hans Rickheit

• More from "Tales of Abstraction House" by Derek Van Gieson

• Three more structures by Tom Kaczynski: "incoherent amalgamation," "basalt garden" and, above, "The Tomb of Jack Kirby"

• More new Jordan Crane at What Things Do

The latest Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Dash Shaw seems set to become a name to be reckoned with in comics... [The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.] is a wonderful introduction to Shaw’s work, and should certainly find its way into the hands of those craving more." – Grovel

• Review: "I'm so glad I started reading this series and can't wait to catch up. Usagi Yojimbo is that rare breed of animal comic that works for me, blending Sakai's cartoon style with a story that would not be out of place in Lone Wolf and Cub. Fans of comics set in historical Japan should definitely check this out. You'll be glad you did. I think it would also be a good fit for manga fans looking to try a non-Japanese comic. I enjoyed this book a lot, and look forward to reading more." – Panel Patter

• Review: "Yet another reason to love Fantagraphics is their meticulous sequential collections of classic newspaper strips such as... Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace. This volume collects the strips from 1961 - 1962 in a huge 654-page volume. What has always stood out about the Dennis the Menace strips is that they were single panel cartoons. It takes an incredible level of talent write a single panel cartoon and Ketcham was one of the best. ... Truly a delight that has lost none of its humor in fifty years.  Grade A" – Tim Janson, The Gouverneur Times

• Review: "West Coast Blues might be an off-kilter story of insufficiently motivated violence and random ennui, but it's a gorgeous-looking one." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "...Ho Che Anderson's Sand & Fury... [is] a slightly twisty tale of sex, serial killers, and the supernatural, told very stylishly in black, white, and red. Blood and shadows therefore get a lot of play across Anderson's desolate southwestern landscapes; and although his lines can be thick and blocky, his figures evoke a good bit of emotion. There's a lot of nudity, a whole lot of violence, and so the plot can be boiled down to a very simple level: revenge, good vs. evil, etc. However, Anderson's anonymous main character, and the people she befriends, are more than just nominally sympathetic. I feel like I'm not doing the book justice, because it is a very raw tale, full of death and sex, and I liked it a lot." – Tom Bondurant, Robot 6

• Plug: Sequential spotlights Ho Che Anderson's Sand & Fury, saying it's "nice to see something new after he told Howard Chaykin he was giving up comics in the Comics Journal 300 interview."

• Plug: "King creator Ho Che Anderson has a brand new Scream Queen book, Sand & Fury. Ho's work always looks good, and I'm personally pretty happy to see this one..." – Chris Butcher, The Beguiling

• Interview: At Robot 6, Tim O'Shea talks to Ho Che Anderson about the new Special Edition of King ("That’s one thing I wish I could have done more of, slashing dialog, rewriting more of it, but at a certain point you gotta let it go. (Yes, George Lucas, I am talking about you.)") and his new graphic novel Sand & Fury ("To me, sex and horror or sex and violence seem to go naturally together. They seem to stem from the same twisted areas of our psyches. What scares us can often arouse us, sometimes despite ourselves, and vice versa.")

• Profile: CNN's Bob Greene pays tribute to Bill Mauldin on the occasion of the release of Mauldin's commemorative US postage stamp this month: "Mauldin, and his work, meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines." (hat tip to Walt Simonson)

• Commentary: At Comics Comics, Dan Nadel pulls a quote about Hal Foster from the interview with Burne Hogarth in The Comics Journal #166

GARY PANTER

"NEW PLANET"

EXHIBITION: MARCH 15 - MAY 1, 2010

Public lecture by the artist: Monday, March 15, 7 PM

Reception for the artist: Monday, March 15, 8:30 - 9:30 PM

Related event: In conjunction with his residency, Gary Panter is presenting an artist's talk by Bob Zoell, Wednesday, March 17, 3 PM

More info here.

Drew Friedman's astonishing rendition of the great Groucho Marx, now available as a limited-edition fine art print.

Why look, it's Messrs. Hornschemeier & Kupperman at the "Strange Tales Saturday" signing event at Chicago's Challengers Comics. Many more photos here.

...the story that Anime News Network broke and is spreading like wildfire is true.

We'll have a full announcement and press release as soon as tomorrow. Stay tuned, manga-lovers.

We apologize for once again being tardy in presenting our weekly batch of new online strips:

Wet 'n' wild in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson...

...Wedgie to the rescue in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan....

...and in this week's Barack Hussein Obama strip from Steven Weissman: Hillary! More colors!

More like Alien Lovin' Form, am I right? Gabe from Desert Island reports that the 4th issue of the free broadsheet comics anthology Smoke Signal is off to the printer. With work by cover-boy Johnny Ryan, Michael Kupperman, Dash Shaw, our own Jason T. Miles and many more.

Your daily art bloggery:

• Reminder: the Covered art show at Secret Headquarters opens tomorrow night! Here's a piece by show curator/organizer Robert Goodin as revealed on Steven Weissman's blog...

• ...and Richard Sala posts his own contribution

• Tim Lane's serialized strip Myth of Jack Theatre Presents: Belligerent Piano begins running this week in the St. Louis Riverfront Times and on Tim's blog

• Corporate motivation, Jim Flora style, 1956

• Paul Hornschemeier on the Oscars for the WSJ, with process art on his blog

• Pucker up for some Renee French — and this one too, ooh

• You want a bunch of Jaime Hernandez superheroine sketches gathered all in one place? Scans Daily has you covered

• Derek Van Gieson keeps up his feverish pace — can't go wrong with a cat in a suit

• Tom Kaczynski captioned this drawing "unnatural megalithic formation" — 'nuff said

• T. Edward Bak draws Dr. Strange??