The Utne Reader presents a gallery of illustrations by Joe Sacco that draw parallels between economically depressed urban America and the war-torn regions Sacco has visited.

Yesterday we got in a few advance copies of Johnny Ryan's new book, TAKE A JOKE. I had a blast putting this book together with Johnny, I think it's by far his best collection yet in just about every way: the work itself, the sequencing, the production and printing, etc. It collects the last four (and strongest) issues of Johnny's ANGRY YOUTH COMIX (issues #11-15) as well as a slew of short pieces, mostly from VICE Magazine but also HOTWIRE and elsewhere. It's an unrelentingly dense frisson of discomfit and guffaws like only Johnny seems capable of delivering anymore. 

While putting the book together, deciding what to include and what not to, we realized we had a couple of extra pages to play with. We considered this and that, not really finding the answer we were looking for until Johnny jokingly suggested to me on the phone one day, "Maybe we should do an index like you do in The Complete Peanuts." 

He wasn't even remotely serious, but I thought it was a brilliant idea, providing something akin to a word cloud for Johnny's id. I set right to work and think it's the perfect beat to end on. It highlights the absurdist side of Johnny's humor, and demonstrates what an infinite well of profane ideas he seems able to tap. He makes it look easy, but it ain't. All hail Johnny "Cock Snot" Ryan!

How is it that I'd never before heard this adorable song about Ted Stearn's Fuzz & Pluck by Swedish band The Pohjolas before? HOW??? It appears on their 2005 album I Cracked My Head on a Rock. Delightful!

We're especially knocked out by Giant Robot's upcoming group exhibition, Power Punch, curated by Fantagraphics' artist Esther Pearl Watson, along with Mark Todd!

Esther and Mark gave all the artists identical 8" X 8" panels to work on, and starting Saturday, April 2nd, you can see what fellow Fantagraphics artists Johnny Ryan, Jeremy Tinder and Jon Vermilyea did with theirs.

Actually, we've got a sneak peek from Johnny right here:

"Hey, Lep! Fuck you, lucky charms!"

Power Punch opens Saturday, April 2nd at GRSF [618 Shrader Street, San Francisco] with a reception from 6:30 - 10:00 pm. The show runs until April 24th.

It feels kinda wrong that I'm writing about this, and not our resident Star Wars expert, but anyway...

Comedian Jackie Kashian is the overlord of The Dork Forest, a podcast about comic books, movies, music, and more, that she's been doing for five years now.

And this Sunday, March 27th, she'll be recording an episode at The Vera Project with special guest Peter Bagge, featuring music from his delightful pop-combo Can You Imagine?.

Also on the bill is Eisner Award-winning writer Ed Brubaker, Star Wars collector extraordinaire Gus Lopez, and comedians Paul Merrill and Kermet Apio. Tickets are $8, and you can get 'em online here.

We recently found a whole box of Unseen Peanuts, our 2007 Free Comic Book Day offering, on a forgotten shelf here in our office, so we sent 'em down to our shipping facility and while supplies last we'll be including one FREE copy with almost every order we receive (except, ironically, for single Complete Peanuts orders, since we have custom shipping boxes for those that the comic won't fit in). Sellers on eBay are currently offering copies for anywhere from $5.99 to $24.20, so nuts to them!

If you missed it the first time around, it's a quality 32-page package with dozens of strips from the 1950s-1960s that were never reprinted until we started up our Complete Peanuts series lo those several years ago, with illuminating and amusing commentary by our own Kim Thompson. Scoresville!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview (Audio): Inkstuds host Robin McConnell chats with contributing Mome cartoonist Aidan Koch

• Analysis: At The Comics Grid, an essay titled "Ghost World[s] and Non-Places" by Tony Venezia: "By mapping Augé’s notion of non-places onto the grids of Ghost World we can get an idea of how such supermodern environments are represented via a medium particularly well suited to figuring spatial representations." (Via Spurge.)

• Analysis: Lisa Pollifroni offers a (spoiler-filled) feminist reading of Gilbert Hernandez's Human Diastrophism: "I believe what Hernandez is trying to get at with Luba is the ways in which a woman can feel when they are seen as mainly a sexual object. Luba wasn’t born a Female Chauvinist Pig, she was taught to be one by the way she is treated due to the fact that yes, she does have large breasts, and yes, she is pretty. Instead of trying to get people to see beyond those attributes, she plays up to them, and that is what makes her, in this story at least, a Female Chauvinist Pig."

If you're a member of the press, retailer or other comics industry person who needs a digital file of one of our logos for any reason (such as the above emblem by Daniel Clowes), we've just uploaded a selection of them to a Flickr set for you to grab and use. (If you need vector files, you'll still have to contact us.) And don't forget to check out all of our other digital assets on our Resources for Press and Retailers page!

Merci beaucoup! Thank you to everyone who attended the opening of our latest exhibit on Jacques Tardi, "Better Tardi Than Never: How France's Greatest Living Cartoonist Took a Mere 32 Years to Break Through to American Audiences." It was especially wonderful to see our friends from the Alliance Française de Seattle.

Not only did we present the world debut of Tardi's fifth book, the epic "icepunk" tale The Arctic Marauder, but we were fortunate to have Fantagraphics co-publisher, editor, and Tardi translator Kim Thompson on hand for the always-informative and often-hilarious presentation "You Don't Know Jacques. Tardi: 20 Books in 20 Minutes." And you can know Jacques yourself, by watching the entire 45-minute talk below (or on the YouTube page)!

And while supplies last, you can get yourself your very own build-it-yourself Tardi diorama free with a purchase of $100 or more at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Kim put this one together himself that Saturday afternoon!

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.)
Seattle, WA 98108 206.658.0110
Open daily 11:30 - 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM

Our Free Comic Book Day offering for this year is a 32-page doozy featuring strips from Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley by Floyd Gottfredson! There's also some bonus material included like an intro by series co-editor David Gerstein, an essay by certified Disney Legend Floyd Norman, and the cutest photo of Gottfredson with Carl Barks you ever did see. Check out a 5-page preview at the FCBD website! FCBD is on Saturday, May 7 this year.