Flog exclusive (unless you're Drew's friend on Facebook)! Drew Friedman shared this new portrait of the great Will Elder, commissioned by Elder's son-in-law Gary VandenBergh (quite possibly related to the documentary on Elder he's directing). Click the image to embiggen it slightly.

If you're on our mailing list, the Fantagraphics Winter 2011 Catalog should be arriving in your mailbox right around now! If you're not on our list you can get your free copy by calling 1-800-657-1100 (206-524-1967 outside the U.S.) or by emailing us — or download it as a PDF (8.3 MB). It's 100 pages jam-packed with hundreds of new, upcoming, and backlist titles, including exciting exclusive items — A Century of Comic Strips, Comic Books, Graphic Novels and More!

For the second year in a row we've caught Cyber Monday fever! Today only (Monday, Nov. 29, 2010), all of our regularly-priced, currently-available and pre-orderable 2010 releases are marked down 30%! That's a fantastic deal on over 75 items, including but not limited to:

• Deluxe gift-worthy box sets like Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition, Unlovable: The Complete Collection, and the latest Dennis the Menace and Peanuts sets

• Gorgeous, oversized, impressive-under-the-tree volumes of classic newspaper strips Captain Easy and Prince Valiant

• New & reprinted stuff from beloved veterans Peter Bagge, Dave Cooper, R. Crumb, Dame Darcy, Kim Deitch, Joyce Farmer, Drew Friedman, Bill Griffith, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Tony Millionaire, C. Tyler, and Jim Woodring

• Classics from Jack Cole, Steve Ditko, George Herriman, Basil Wolverton, and the various artists of Blazing Combat and Four Color Fear

• Volumes from international living legends Moto Hagio and Jacques Tardi

• New comics from cutting-edge faves Ho Che Anderson, Joe Daly, Stephen DeStefano, Ray Fenwick, Tim Hensley, Jason, Megan Kelso, Michael Kupperman, Cathy Malkasian, Linda Medley, Mezzo & Pirus, Nate Neal, Johnny Ryan, Drew Weing, Steven Weissman and our international stable of Ignatz Series artists

• All-ages treats from David B., Stéphane Blanquet, and Mitch Schauer & co.

• Eye-popping anthologies like Mome, Hotwire and Newave

• Deluxe biography/art books about Bill Everett, Rand Holmes and Mort Meskin and amazing art books like Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist

• Stephen Dixon's short-story collection What Is All This?

• Insane pop culture tomes like Catalog No. 439 and Destroy All Movies!!!

• And much much more — see the whole selection here!

It's been another mind-boggling year... and now's your best chance to get caught up and spread the love of comics with beautiful gifts for all your friends and family!

Sale begins RIGHT NOW — midnight PST, Monday Nov. 29 — and ends exactly 24 hours later. Don't delay! Order online or by phone (1-800-657-1100; 206-524-1967 outside the U.S.); this sale does not apply at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.

Online Commentary & Diversions, back from the U.S. holiday:

• Gift Guides: Rob McMonigal of Panel Patter goes through our new mail-order catalog (about which more soon!) to pick out his holiday gift-giving recommendations; The Beat and The Comics Reporter both post guides to holiday gift books with several of our books mentioned

• Review: "Freakazoid producer Mitch Schauer's debut graphic novel Rip M.D. is a warm and spooky tale for monster kids of all ages. [...] Drawn and inked in pitch-perfect EC Comics monster style, Rip M.D. pushes every one of my monster-loving buttons. The writing is witty, the plot sprightly, and the monsters are the heroes I always knew them to be. What's not to like?" – Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

• Review: "Beto’s contribution to the Igort-edited Ignatz line of international art-comic series, [New Tales of Old Palomar] present[s] a suite of stories from Palomar’s past. They fill in a few notable lacuane — where Tonantzin and Diana came from, what was up with the gang of kids we’d occasionally see who were a few years older than the Pipo/Heraclio group, how Chelo lost her eye. A lot of this turns out to be really fascinating... But to me it’s not what’s told that matters, but how it’s told. [...] Beautiful stuff." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Review: "[Fire and Water: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics] is a good and valuable book, but one wonders what Bell could do with a better documented figure, if he can find an angle or provide insights not seen before. But enjoy it for what it is, a portrait and gallery of a talented, troubled artist whose work should be better known today." – Christopher Allen, Trouble with Comics

• Review: Andrea Ciolfi of Lo Spazio Blanco on the Italian edition of Locas in Love by Jaime Hernandez

• Plug: "...I’ve read a lot of books about weird films, but I’ve never seen one quite like Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film by Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly ($35, Fantagraphics). Printed in black-and-white and day-glo pink, the book catalogs virtually every single movie that ever featured a punk on-screen. I’m not just talking about the classics, like Rock ’N’ Roll High School and Repo Man, either. I’m talking about movies like Star Trek IV, which features a punk rocker in exactly one scene. And the book has an interview with the actor, too! Now that’s attention to detail." – Will Pfeifer, Rockford Register Star

• Plug: The Seattle Times travel section calls Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery a "hot shop" in Georgetown and says it's "heaven for fans of comics"

Norman Pettingill is the subject of a newly-opened art exhibit in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. From the announcement, as reported by NewsoftheNorth.Net: "Forty Pettingill drawings, now part of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center collection in Sheboygan, are on display or the first time in 15 years and will remain so until Jan. 16. More than 100 drawings from this renowned collection are featured in Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist, a new hardcover book published by Fantagraphics." (Note that the JMKAC website seems to be down at press time.)

Chapter 10 of Kurt Wolfgang's serialized story "Nothing Eve" will run in Mome Vol. 22 (the Spring 2011 issue); Kurt presents the first two pages (1, 2) at the New Bodega blog.

Would you like to watch Jacques Tardi draw for three minutes? Sure you would! Here he is working up a panel from his recently-published semi-sequel to IT WAS THE WAR OF THE TRENCHES, PUTAIN DE GUERRE. (My best translation: FUCKING WAR. Will need to rethink that for when we do our edition of the book.) Around  0:50 Tardi complains that he always screws up the boots and has to bring out the Wite-Out. So he is not a god. But almost.

The Comics Journal's Tom Crippen presents some samples of Gahan Wilson's National Lampoon strip "Nuts" (to be released in a complete collected edition by your pals here at Fantagraphics in the not-too-distant future).

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Drew Weing's slender, hand-sized debut graphic novel Set to Sea is a crosshatched masterpiece. [...] Weing draws in an elaborate, crosshatched style that's half Popeye, half Maakies, and it meshes brilliantly with the subject matter and the storytelling. Set to Sea is so lovely in places that I found myself exclaiming aloud -- it's got a naive-but-self-conscious grace that is impossible to describe and that few have ever mastered. This one is highly recommended." – Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

• Review: "In the first and the second volume [of Mome] there are a lot of things to enjoy. Stories differ both in length (there are one-page strips, too) and in narrative technique. [...] In these two books there [is] a lot [that is] interesting and confusing, enjoyable and intriguing. Do not be a mome, read these first-rate collections of comics." – Ray Garraty, Endless Falls Up

• Review: Attentiondeficitdisorderly's Sean T. Collins looks at Gilbert Hernandez's half of Love and Rockets Vol. II #20 (as reprinted in the Luba hardcover) in his ongoing "Love and Rocktober" series: "At long last he returns to Venus, Petra’s daughter and one of the least damaged, most well-adjusted, most self-assured characters in the whole post-Palomar oeuvre. [...] It’s an uplifting note to end on after all this darkness."

• Plug: NPR's Glen Weldon recommends "Five Tomes to See You Through Your Turkey Coma": "In honor of the 25th anniversary of this classic all-ages 'funny animals' tale of Miyaomoto Usagi, a stoic samurai rabbit who roams 17th-century Japan, Fantagraphics has collected the first seven trades in a sumptuous 2-book, 1200-page hardcover edition [Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition]. Which, uh ... won't be out until December. Until then, you can pick up a couple volumes and get a taste of Sakai's masterful, action-packed, richly detailed storytelling, and see why it's become such a beloved series."

• Plug: "Mascots, [Ray] Fenwick's forthcoming follow-up [to Hall of Best Knowledge], is similarly a series of episodes told through inventive typography and absurd yet hilarious text. But integrating these elements with brightly colored paintings, the book depicts a more surreal, frenzied world that is strangely resonant with today's super speedy internet age." – Space 15 Twenty

• Reviewer: Dash Shaw on the Osamu Tezuka documentary Secrets of Creation at Comics Comics

It's time for a new episode of Yikes! animated adventures! Look at all those familiar names in the credits: Steven Weissman (creator), Martin Cendreda (animation), Johnny Ryan & Walt Holcombe (voices)... it's an explosion of talent and hilariousness!