Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: At The Hooded Utilitarian, Noah Berlatsky presents an unedited version of his review of Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 by Michael Kupperman, which originally ran in the Chicago Reader

• Plugs: Library Journal's "Graphic Novels Prepub Alert" for September 2010 releases features A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio ("When Fantagraphics jumps into magna, they splash big: with the 'founding mother' of modern shojo manga and a pioneer of the BL (boys love) genre. These four decades of short stories feature gorgeous art—some in color — and intellectually subtle plotting"); Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips. Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly ("As THE pioneering humor-satire strip inspiring countless other cartoonists, Kelly and Pogo should need no introduction"); and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Vol. 1 by Jacques Tardi ("A pterodactyl loose in Paris! A fetching young reporter off to tackle mummies! And that’s just the first of ten volumes. ... Wonderful for Indiana Jones fans hankering for even more over-the-top plots.")

• Links: Love & Maggie rounds up links to recent interviews with Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez

• Profile: Mark Kalesniko re-posts Mark David Nevins's essay about his work which originally appeared in The Comics Journal Special Edition, Winter 2003

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6
by Michael Kupperman

32-page full-color 6.75" x 9.5" comic book • $4.95
ISBN: 978-1-60699-422-1

Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

Now in FULL COLOR! This issue includes Jungle Princess battling rhino traders, a story of Broadway theatrics in “All About Drainage,” more of America’s favorite physicist/writer duo, Twain & Einstein, plus slightly cursed merchandise, Cockney grave robbers, and Cowboy Oscar Wilde.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 4-page PDF excerpt (4.7 MB) starring Jungle Princess!

Also available now:

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Dungeon Quest, Book 1
by Joe Daly

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

Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

One day Millennium Boy decided to grab his hobo stick, his bandanna, and his Swiss Army knife, bid his mom goodbye, and head off on a quest for adventure. Joined by his best friend Steve (weapon: baseball bat; clothing: wife beater, cargo pants and sandals), they soon find themselves in a violent altercation with two other adventure seekers. It ends badly for their antagonists (“Whoa, check it out, dude! You actually knocked this dude’s brain right out of his cranium!”) and Millennium Boy and Steve become the proud owners of fancy weapons upgrades (a crowbar and a steel chain). So on they trek, and the next inductee to their group is the muscle-bound Lash Penis.

And then things start getting weird!

Readers of 2009’s Red Monkey Double Happiness Book will recognize Joe Daly’s delightfully unique stoner/philosopher dialogue and distinctive character designs, but the hilarious over-the-top Role Playing Game action (complete with periodic updates for each character’s status in ten criteria, including “dexterity,” “intelligence,” and “money”) propel this new story into a heretofore unachieved action-comedy realm. By the end of this book (the first chapter of a projected four-part epic), the trio has been joined by Nerdgirl the Archer, Lash Penis has nearly had his arm cut off, they’ve acquired a whole new nifty bag of tricks, and the menaces have become increasingly surreal and lethal. Where will it end?

Winner, Prix special du Jury (Jury Prize), 2010 Festival International de la Bande Desinée d'Angoulême

Download an EXCLUSIVE 12-page PDF excerpt (725 KB).

Also available now:

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

• Dash Shaw made this zine to distribute at the Sundance-organized table-read of the script for his in-development animated feature The Ruined Cast (interior pages at the link)

• I like this Frank Santoro image, whatever it is

• Jim Woodring redefines "treehugger" — yikes!

• This week's Truth Serum by Jon Adams

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Part theater of cruelty, part joyous liberating revolution, Jim Woodring's freakishly beautiful Weathercraft is at once the most direct and most elliptical of his Frank comics that I can remember reading." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly  

• Plug: Newsarama's J. Caleb Mozzocco calls Dame Darcy's Meat Cake "something to get excited about"

• Links: Love & Maggie rounds up links to recent Love and Rockets-related reviews

It couldn't be a finer time to be a Fantagraphics fan as we have three major book releases scheduled to land in comic shops this week (with scuttlebutt that some shops may have received them last week). Read on for blogospheric descriptions and reaction:

Weathercraft
by Jim Woodring

104-page black & white 7" x 9.75" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-340-8

"Anecdotal as this is, I’ve heard absolutely nothing but good things about this new Jim Woodring project, a 104-page return to his signature Frank character, although the story itself focuses on damned, slovenly humanoid swine thingy Manhog as he taps into strange cosmic powers. As it was before, expect Woodring’s excellent command of physical comedy (and his story pacing, which always seems to denote improvisation but never dawdles or rambles) to segue from the pliable bodies of cartoon figures into something mythic and transformative about mysteries lurking just behind the atmosphere." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"The all-new Weathercraft is my book of the week and would be my book for most weeks, frankly." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Wally Gropius
by Tim Hensley

64-page full-color 10" x 12.5" hardcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-355-2

"...Tim Hensley... mix[es] and sampl[es] elements in a self-evident way for a gleeful result, though this artist takes it so far that individual character poses seem exclusively isolated from long-forgotten humor comics and pressed into the service of a patchwork ideal of a ‘teenage’ comic (teenage-as-a-genre), possibly going down as the most striking of the original MOME serials once the goats are culled from the sheep. Here’s the collected edition, a 10″ x 12.5″ hardcover album, 64 color pages, almost all of them pretty to very funny. Yet it’s oddly difficult to describe Wally Gropius in more specific terms, but know that it’s about a rich boy and a determined girl and their courtship, and how prolix borrowed comic devices can build into something distressing indeed." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"Tim Hensley’s sly satire of silly ‘60s kids comics is an amazingly accomplished, spot-on imitation of the look and feel of those books, but with a sharper edged and heavier weight. One-part Archie Andrews, two-parts Richie Rich, Wally Gropius isn’t the German architect (although he’s often confused for him), but is rather a teen rock star bazillionaire." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips Vol. 1 (1933-1935)
by Roy Crane

114-page 10.5" x 14.75" full-color hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-161-9

"...an anticipated-by-many contemporary reprint project collecting Roy Crane’s influential Sunday spin-off from the comedic daily strip titled Wash Tubbs back when it started in 1924, but had since itself become an adventure-toned showcase for the Captain Easy character. Edited by Rick Norwood, with a vintage (1974) foreword by Charles Schulz and a new introduction by Jeet Heer..." – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"The best adventure comic everywhere; Crane's clean, thought-out action scenes are a tonic for all those confused superhero fight scenes out there today." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

As always, complete details and extensive previews of each book can be found at their respective links. Bug your local comic shop to make sure they have them in stock before smashing open your piggy bank.

I was excited to see this photo posted on Twitter by Kristin Hersh yesterday, with Gilbert Hernandez's cover art for her upcoming memoir Rat Girl, to be released by Penguin in the U.S. on August 31. Besides being a phenomenal songwriter and performer with Throwing Muses, 50FOOTWAVE and solo, Kristin is one of the best storytellers and writers in the performing arts biz, no lie, and she has some amazing tales to tell. This book is a must-get.

UPDATE: I just found out it was colored by our own Jacob Covey! It just keeps getting better.

BEN SCHWARTZ, SAMMY HARKHAM, and ROBERT FIORE discuss BEST AMERICAN COMICS CRITICISM at SKYLIGHT BOOKS!

WHEN: Thursday, 05/27/2010 | 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Ben Schwartz, editor of the new anthology Best American Comics Criticism, will discuss comics and comics criticism with Kramers Ergot editor Sammy Harkham and comics critic Robert Fiore at L.A.'s SKYLIGHT BOOKS!

Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90027

UPDATE! Just added: JOE MATT and BRIAN DOHERTY! 

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

• From Scott Eder Gallery, a selection of Jim Woodring's penciled roughs for Weathercraft, plus two paintings

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

• A new portrait of Johnny Cash and other news from Dame Darcy

• Anders Nilsen reveals where it all went wrong

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Operating in the territory of Rube Goldberg, Wolverton's convoluted plans for achieving his ludicrous goals [in The Culture Corner] rely less on mousetrap-like technical gewgaws than the artist's signature grotesques, which are laugh-out-loud joy. While a must-have for Wolverton completists, even newcomers will find the humor readily accessible." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "Just what is Dash Shaw on? And may I please have some? ...The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. [is] an anything-goes anthology quite attractively packaged by Fantagraphics Books, right down to the transparent, animation-cel-esque jacket. ... Yeah, [the title story] is different. Yeah, it’s awesome. ... Much of Unclothed Man is stunning..." – Rod Lott, Bookgasm

• Review: Thanks to our Twitter follower Tim Leng for the following alert: "Awesomely positive review of The Art of Jaime Hernandez (and L&R in general) on BBC 6music this afternoon!" For a limited time the show is streaming here (click on Tuesday)

• Plug: At EarlyWord, Robin Brenner singles out Weathercraft by Jim Woodring as one of "the most artful finds" at TCAF

• Profile: The University of Cincinnati, where C. Tyler teaches, presents a news release about her 2010 Eisner Award nominations for You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man

• Profile: The Chicago Tribune's Rick Kogan remembers Bill Mauldin after purchasing the Mauldin commemorative first class stamp, and calls Willie & Joe: The WWII Years an "amazing and beautiful collection" (via ¡Journalista!)

• Interview: Greek site Comicdom presents a brief Q&A, in Engish, with Peter Bagge: "Almost all my story ideas are based on people and events from real life. Truth is always stranger than fiction."

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch presents the first of a 4-part talk with Gene Deitch: "It’s really bad to look back on the communist time with nostalgia [laughs]. There was a downside. But the animation studio here was kind of a Shangri-La. First of all, nobody in the communist hierarchy had any idea what we were doing or how, but they knew it was popular and they left us alone."