Daily clips & strips -- click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• More juvenilia from Bob Fingerman

• Another lithograph by John Hankiewicz

• Nice fledgling bird sketches by Debbie Drechsler

• Stinckers by Steven Weissman & co. are now available at Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis

• This week's Truth Serum by Jon Adams

• T. Edward Bak's Steller Sea Lion linocut/letterpress print (part of his research expedition fundraising effort)

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "In reviewing Jaime Hernandez's Penny Century, I could point to the frenetic pace of many of the stories; the cute, odd, and endearing sort of strangeness spawned in this lightly magical universe; or even the beautiful art, which is truly the mark of this master cartoonist. But, no, I am going to hype the very first story, 'Whoa Nellie,' beyond anything else in this fantastic volume. ... Such a wonderful, and grounded, story is a nice start-off point for the still compelling, yet far stranger and sexier, tales that follow. Soup to nuts, this is a great book." – Jeremy Nisen, Under the Radar

• Reviews: The new episode of Easy Rider, the radio show for "rock, punk rock, country, power pop, garage and comics" from Radio PFM out of Arras in northern France, features High Soft Lisp by Gilbert Hernandez and Penny Century by Jaime Hernandez among their Comics of the Week

• Reviews: In comics form, Every Day Is Like Wednesday's J. Caleb Mozzocco documents a friend's reactions to Dungeon Quest Book 1 by Joe Daly, High Soft Lisp by Gilbert Hernandez, and Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley

• Review: "R. Kikuo Johnson's debut graphic novel, Night Fisher, is a compelling yet unsentimental coming of age story. It’s a portrait of awkward adolescence on the cusp of adulthood illustrated with the darker, more realistic tones of teenage life. Night Fisher is filled with bold artwork, psychological intricacies, and mature depictions of immature actions. ... R. Kikuo Johnson has proven himself as a masterful storyteller in his first graphic novel." – Steve Ponzo, Multiversity Comics (via ¡Journalista!)

• Interview: The Los Angeles Times' Noelene Clark questions Tim Hensley about Wally Gropius: "I did grow up in sort of a show business family, so I was continually in an environment of going places where a lot of people were famous, and I was sort of tagging along. I had the idea of somebody who is continually mistaken for someone really famous, but actually has nothing to do with that."

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater continues his conversation with Gene Deitch: "Terr’ble Thompson was a style I adapted for that comics strip. I wanted something that looked like a comic strip, was a little ahead—something that had the UPA influence. ... Of course, if you’ve seen my other book, The Cat on a Hot Tin Groove, my jazz cartoons, that’s a completely different style. I’m used to working in all different styles. I don’t want people to say, 'this is in Gene Deitch’s style.' I want to do everything."

• Interview: At Unabashedly Bookish: The Barnes & Noble Community Blog, Jill Dearman chats with Derek Van Gieson: "I don't sit down with an idea and hack away, I need a trigger, something that sets my brain loose to just improvise and create on the spot."

• Plug: The Casual Optimist spotlights Jacob Covey's design for What Is All This? by Stephen Dixon

• Plugs: Graphic Novel Reporter names just about every one of our Summer releases as among "The Hottest Graphic Novels of Summer 2010"

• Reviewer: At Comics Comics, Dash Shaw examines The Anime Machine by Thomas Lamarre

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

The Search for Smilin' Ed!
by Kim Deitch

162-page black & white 6" x 8.75" softcover (with full-color foldout) • $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-324-8

Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

Originally created in 1997 and 1998 for the underground anthology Zero Zero, The Search for Smilin’ Ed is the latest of Kim Deitch’s graphic novels to showcase his obsessive burrowing into the nooks and crannies of vintage American popular culture.

Where Boulevard of Broken Dreams focused on the earliest days of the animation industry, Alias the Cat delved into the history of comic strips, and “Molly O’Dare” (collected in Shadowland) concerned vintage movie serials, The Search for Smilin’ Ed explores the wacky world of children’s TV shows.

Launched on his latest investigation by a remark from his brother about a shared childhood favorite (“Y’know, I heard that when Smilin’ Ed died... his body was NEVER found!”), Deitch begins to uncover some truly amazing things about the kiddie-show host and his malevolent sidekick, Froggy the Gremlin. Meanwhile, Deitch’s muse and nemesis Waldo the Cat abandons Deitch to hang out with some demon buddies, and soon both Waldo and Deitch are closing in on the mysteries of Smilin’ Ed and Froggy.

Ranging across the entire 20th century, replete with flashbacks, stories within stories, and guest appearances from other Deitch regulars, The Search for Smilin’ Ed is a narrative whirligig that shows Deitch at his wildest and woolliest. For those whose heads have started to spin at the complexity of Deitch's mythology, we've included a full-color two-way fold-out guide to "The Kim Deitch Universe," and Deitch scholar Bill Kartalopoulos offers a lengthy essay on the ins and outs of this ever-evolving, ever-expanding world where fantasy, reality, and satire combine, clash, and are sometimes downright indistinguishable.

Bonus! Deitch has also created a brand new story starring Waldo in his 21st century post-Alias the Cat state of domestic bliss, stumbling across an army of (French-) talking beavers. Of course, there’s a story behind that...

“Kim Deitch has created a private world as fully realized in its own way as Faulkner’s. He’s an American original, a spinner of yarns whose beautifully structured pages and intricate plots conjure up a haunting and haunted American past.” – Art Spiegelman

Download an 11-page PDF of Bill Kartalopoulos's Introduction (1 MB) and an EXCLUSIVE 10-page PDF excerpt of the first part of the story (1.4 MB).

Also available now:

Order The Search for Smilin' Ed! + Deitch's Pictorama together for a discounted price of $29.99 (a savings of about 6 bucks)!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

The Best American Comics Criticism
Edited by Ben Schwartz; cover illustrations by Drew Friedman

360-page 6" x 9" illustrated (b&w) softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-148-0

Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

Whether you choose to call them “comics lit,” “graphic novels,” or just “thick comic books,” book-length narratives told in words and pictures confidently elbowed their way into the cultural spotlight in the first decade of this new millennium — beginning with the simultaneous 2001 release of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Daniel Clowes’ David Boring, and continuing on through ground-breaking and best-selling works such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Robert Crumb’s Genesis, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Joe Sacco’s Palestine.

This renaissance in turn brought forth a chorus of critical commentary that not only addressed these recent works, but also initiated a much-needed look back at the previous century’s neglected and forgotten masterpieces.

This chorus, as presented in The Best American Comics Criticism, comprises both criticism (Douglas Wolk on Frank Miller and Will Eisner, Robert C. Harvey on Fun Home, Donald Phelps on Steve Ditko and Phoebe Gloeckner) and history (David Hajdu on the 1950s comic-book burnings, Jeet Heer on Gasoline Alley, Ben Schwartz on Little Orphan Annie, Gerard Jones on the birth of the comic-book business), as well as revelatory peer-on-peer essays by novelists (Jonathan Franzen on Peanuts, John Updike on James Thurber) and cartoonists (Chris Ware on Rodolphe Töpffer, Clowes on Mad’s Will Elder, and Seth on John Stanley).

Add in still more voices (The Daily Show’s John Hodgman on Jack Kirby, Sarah Boxer on Krazy Kat, Ken Parille with a meticulous deconstruction of Clowes’s David Boring), and a selection of revelatory interviews with comics masters (Kim Deitch, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Marjane Satrapi, Will Elder, Chester Brown) and cartoonist tête-à-têtes (Eisner/Miller, Jonatham Lethem/Clowes, Dan Nadel/Sammy Harkham), and The Best American Comics Criticism offers a riveting and comprehensive look at a medium finally come into its own—not just creatively, but in terms of the respect and prominence within American culture it has so long deserved.

The Best American Comics Criticism is edited by Ben Schwartz, a contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, The Atlantic On-Line, and Bookforum.

See the full Table of Contents and read Ben Schwartz's Introduction in this EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF download (193 KB).

Three new compact softcovers wending their way into comic shops this week. Plentiful previews, bonus downloads, and more information about each book await you at the links below. Your local comic shop can divulge availability at their particular establishment if contacted in advance. Read on to see descriptions and comments from the comics bloggers:

The Best American Comics Criticism
Edited by Ben Schwartz; cover illustrations by Drew Friedman

360-page 6" x 9" illustrated (b&w) softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-148-0

"Definitive title notwithstanding, this 360-page Ben Schwartz-edited volume actually concerns itself with writing pertinent to (though not exclusively concerned with) the maturation and rise in public consciousness of North American ‘literary’ comics..." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"Disclaimer: I've got an essay in this Ben Schwartz-edited anthology, which features criticism as well as interviews and historical pieces." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon refers you to his interview with Ben Schwartz, which he prefaced by saying "It's the kind of volume that starts fights... — but that's okay and it's part of the fun. There's a lot of good work in the book and one or two absolutely inspired choices. Anyone with an interest in comics should at least give it a flip-through, and anyone with an interest in writing about the medium should use it as a springboard to discover a host of excellent new favorites."

"...[N]othing but transcriptions of Twitter feeds, message boards and comics blogs, mostly dealing with Stephanie Brown and how messed up Identity Crisis was. Oh wait a minute, I’m thinking of The Worst American Comics Criticism, the volume of comics writing I’m editing, in my mind." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

Dungeon Quest, Book 1
by Joe Daly

136-page black & white 6" x 8.25" softcover • $12.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-347-7

"...[T]he 136-page latest from the always-fun Joe Daly..., a hugely vulgar quest adventure imposing video game RPG tropes on the aggressive banality of suburban navigation..." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"Joe Daly's latest, an Angouleme Festival essential book this year in its French-language iteration, is so deeply weird it makes his oddball Hergé pastiche in his last work look like actual, straight-forward Hergé." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"I’m not doing a very good job of describing it, I know, but that’s only because it’s so damn weird. Hopefully I’ll do a better job when I sit down to write a formal review. In the mean time, give it a flip-through tomorrow! It has a character named Lash Penis in it!" – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

The Search for Smilin' Ed!
by Kim Deitch

162-page black & white 6" x 8.75" softcover (with full-color foldout) • $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-324-8

"Nice – a spankin’ new Fantagraphics collection of one of the major ’stray’ Kim Deitch works, a 1997-98 serial from the pages of the publisher’s old funnybook anthology series Zero Zero. Join your humble artist/narrator and Waldo the cat as they explore the demon-visited world of children’s programming..." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"A major collection from an A-List comics talent. This time out the great Kim Deitch examines the nature of entertainment through the ways audiences encounter, process and recall it. The joyful image-making couldn't be more entertaining to drink in." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Daily clips & strips -- click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• From Jim Woodring, a bounty of new Frank sketches (including one with his new female counterpart Fran) here, here and here

• Johnny Ryan's "unnamables" — UPDATE: Details on the piece (it's for a Lovecraft-themed art show) at Johnny's blog

• Bob Fingerman presents comics he did when he was 10 years old, starring Gerald Ford

• Jim Flora's endpapers for his 1959 children's book Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys

• Gabrielle Bell's new Lucky strip kind of reminds me of an episode of The IT Crowd I just watched

• The filename identifies this Renee French piece as "prune slug"

• Steve Brodner takes on the triple threat of Rand Paul, Helen Ukpabio and Lost

• It's your all-new weekly installment of "Cartoon Boy" from John Kerschbaum

• Page 25 of Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary

• From Derek Van Gieson, more "Abstraction House," another "Devil Doll" teaser, and a preview of an upcoming strip debuting right here on the Fantagraphics website soon

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon counts down "The Best Goodbyes" in comics, with Love and Rockets Vol. 1 #50 in the #3 spot

• Review: "In this installment [of Hate Annual], Buddy’s wife Lisa takes center stage, discovering her 'Creative Outlet' along with a wife she meets through a parent-teacher conference. Hilarity will ensue, of the inimitable, irreplaceable Bagge vintage uncorked with caustic, mordant glee. ... Here Bagge’s vivid caricatures animate the most routine of actions, effectively suggesting how cozily, in this life, the mundane cohabits with the outrageous. Bagge extends his world-wariness, bemusement and cynicism though the short comics of the Annual..." – Rich Kreiner, The Comics Journal

• Plug: "Is it wrong to think that this will be on my best of year list even before it’s been published? ... Freeway is out in July from Fantagraphics. It will be marvellous." – Richard Bruton, The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

• Interview: Jordan Crane interviewed by Royal Jelly from John Orlow on Vimeo

Ivan Brunetti provides the cover for the new issue of The New Yorker. Love the fretboard margin. Found via The Ephemerist.

"★★★★★"

I promise I didn't write the review above. I do, however, agree with it.

The Architektur Forum in Linz, Austria recently hosted a fascinating-looking exhibition of "Architecture and Comics" in association with the Next Comic-Festival. The exhibit included reproductions of work by Jim Woodring, Johnny Ryan , Joe Sacco, Gipi, Lorenzo Mattotti, Chris Ware and many others, including this 3D reconstruction of George Herriman's Coconino County Jail from Krazy Kat constructed by exhibit curator Christian Wellmann, who provided this photo. For more photos and information about the exhibit (in German), visit Unkraut Comic Magazin.