Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly will be signing copies of Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film, with musical performances by local bands The Creamers and Cruddy, at a release party at Austin, TX record store End of an Ear this Saturday, Dec. 4, 6-8 PM. More info/RSVP on Facebook here!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: East Bay Express's Anneli Rufus names Jim Woodring's Weathercraft one of the Best Books of 2010: "It's a wordless masterpiece from a Harvey Award-winning autodidact who executes his rhapsodically weird yet somehow relatable surrealistic visions with a lush, lifelike, retro-tinged precision that recalls Edward Lear and Winsor McCay. In an age when too many cartoonists draw with a lazy, defiantly fuckoffish lack of skill, Woodring's museum-quality mastery puts most of his colleagues to shame."

• Review: "Comic book historians Greg Sadowski and John Benson edited this fun time capsule [Four Color Fear], compiling over three dozen spine-tingling tales from the likes of Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Iger Studio, Joe Kubert, Basil Wolverton and others. Also included is a beautiful cover section, plus background commentary on each entry and an introduction by John Benson. Grade: A-" – Mike Sebastian, Campus Circle Newspaper

• Plug: "Bent... is more beautiful red and black ink drawings and hazy, lush, desaturated oil paintings of mostly pillowy girls." – Matt Forsythe, Drawn

• Plug: "Castle Waiting Vols. 1 and 2 HCs (Fantagraphics) — These two huge hardcovers can currently be had for less than 50 bucks, and offer up a whole new world of wonder. Perfect for anyone who loves to be transported to another place and time." – Alan David Doane's Holiday Gift Guide, Trouble with Comics

• Plug: "Some reference books will tell you all about movies that won Oscars or about movies that come from certain countries. Who needs that? Destroy All Movies is the only book in the world that will tell you all about every single movie that contains a punk. And I mean every single movie. Editors Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly have done exhaustive years of research, and they’ve located every liberty spike wearing extra, every mohawked background actor and every safety pinned day player in cinema history. And then they wrote a whole bunch of funny, interesting stuff about those movies, and did some interviews with filmmakers and punks for good measure." – Dennis Faraci, Badass Digest "Badass Gift Guide"

• Reviewer: For the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux (author of The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, coming soon) examines two new dictionaries: one of birdcalls, one of American slang

Anders Nilsen is cleaning out his flat files and offering a bunch of prints and whatnot in a new online shop, just in time for the holidays.

There's a new Michael Jackson song called "Much Too Soon"? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! (Top image ganked from TMZ; link via Drew.)

• I'm going to go ahead and guess that the next panel says "NN" and going by the spot color that maybe this is a glimpse of the next issue of Ganges from Kevin Huizenga? Also new from Kevin: Fight or Run Post-its

• Ray Fenwick Mascots originals for sale (including the abandoned original cover)

• A short looped animation from Lilli Carré (video embedded above)

And more Things to See from the past week:

• Illustrations and other artwork at Matthias Lehmann's Bloc-Notes blog

• Early strips, illustrations, outtakes and film reviews by Jason at his Cats Without Dogs blog

• Steven Weissman's latest "I, Anonymous" spots and other things on his Chewing Gum in Church blog

• Harold Gray fan art at John Hankiewicz's Clip Joint blog

• Sketches by Frank Santoro at the Cold Heat Comics blog

• A portrait (?) of Marco Corona's upstairs neighbor at his Il Canguro Pugilatore blog

• Vintage Jim Flora illustrations & artwork at the Jim Flora blog

• Nature sketches with running commentary by Debbie Drechsler at her Just Around the Corner blog

• More sketches for Mark Kalesniko's forthcoming graphic novel Freeway (now up for pre-order!) at his blog

• Paul Hornschemeier has two new t-shirt designs available in the Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop since our last update from his News and/or Head Lice blog

• Laura Park and some animal friends on her Flickr page

• Illustrations at Splog!, the Sergio Ponchione Lost Objects Gallery blog

• Drawings, sketches, photos from Renee French

• Daily drawings from Dash Shaw at The Ruined Cast blog

• A public transportation portrait by Steve Brodner

• Pages and panels by Derek Van Gieson at his These Days I Remain blog

• Some familiar creators post some new Trubble Club collaborative comics

• New sketches by Eleanor Davis at her We Be Ouija blog

Coming soon (and debuting this coming weekend at the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Fest, where Johnny'll be) from our buds at the phoenix-like Pigeon Press: a softcover collection of Johnny Ryan's New Character Parade! Soon to join The Klassic Komix Klub and Comic Book Holocaust on your bookshelf. More info at Johnny's blog.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Profile: "Joyce Farmer is a surprise. The gentle, white-haired 71-year-old, whom you’d half expect to greet you at the door with a pan of steaming muffins, recently has emerged as one of the most provocative voices in the comics and graphic-literature landscape. Her debut book, the 208-page illustrated memoir Special Exits, chronicling the slow, freaky decline and ultimate death of her elderly parents, comes out next week from Fantagraphics carrying the enthusiastic endorsement of no less than R. Crumb. 'It’s a completely unique work,' he says. 'Nobody else will ever do anything like that again.' [...] The book... is an almost uncomfortably honest memoir that’s dense with details. It’s also layered with meaning and sub-themes. [...] Like many memoirists, Farmer wrestled with guilt over airing her family’s stories; she even changed all the names in the book, including her own. 'I felt like I was really invading their privacy.' But she’s since come to terms with it. 'I just worked through it. I know what I did, and I take responsibility for it.'" – Deborah Vankin, The Los Angeles Times

• Review: "Destroy All Movies!!! is that very rare thing in publishing, a book you didn’t know you needed until someone wrote it. I certainly didn’t, and now I’m finding it indispensable. It’s an absolute must-have for cult-movie fans, movie trivia buffs, aspiring filmmakers and everyone who feels that punk never got its fair due for revolutionizing music and shaking up the status quo." – John G. Nettles, Flagpole

• Plug: "Destroy All Movies is a book on cult cinema... that is kind of the end all be all of ridiculous B-movies involving punks in any way, shape or form. It's at once a collection of titles, a love letter and a historical document. [...] It's a hell of an off beat and quite brilliant gift for the movie nerd or punk in your family!" – Quint, Ain't It Cool News

• Review: "...[Fire & Water,] Blake Bell's biography of Bill Everett (among other things the father of the Sub-Mariner but also the co-creator of Daredevil) helps to rectify an injustice by shining a spotlight on a cartoonist those importance and personality have never been properly recognized. A book which, without going into excessive detail, begins to clear the ground and, in particular, focuses heavily on the human element..." – Xavier Fournier, Comic Box (this is an improved translation by Kim Thompson of a previously-posted link)

• Review: "So, does it all mean anything? Who knows? But [Weathercraft] is certainly a fascinating read, full of arresting images that seem like they are triggering some deep impulse in our lizard brains, and that’s a pretty significant achievement in itself. If nothing else, it’s often quite funny... If you can accept that as something entertaining and play along with its dreamlike logic, you should be able to enjoy the book at the very least, and maybe you’ll even feel like you get something out of it. I know I did, and even if it was just confusion, it was worth it." – Matthew J. Brady, Warren Peace Sings the Blues

• Review: "The absence of words is matched by the most crazy drawings that depict surreal, unbelievable moments that make us stop to look again — and again. It's all so wacky and unusual that not infrequently we find ourselves laughing, reflecting on the silliness that we keep inside us all. For large and small, Weathercraft is sure to [bring] multiple pleasures." – Gilberto Custódio Junior, Soma (translated from Portuguese)

• Review: "Peanuts wasn't in its first flowering in the mid-70s... but it was still a smart, perceptive, deeply funny and humanistic strip. [...] The Complete Peanuts: 1975-1976 is the lucky thirteenth volume in Fantagraphics' reprinting of the entirely of Schulz's great strip; it's also the halfway point between 1950 and 2000. And the more interesting question about Peanuts circa 1975 isn't 'How come it wasn't as good then as in 1952 or 1967,' but instead 'How come Peanuts was still this good after twenty-five years?'" – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez are not just two of the best and most consistent comics creators of their generation, they're so far out in front that the only question is which of the two is preeminent. [...] Year after year, they keep expanding and deepening their worlds, telling new stories as powerful as they've ever done — they're our Balzacs, our Trollopes. Besides their various sidebar projects... they're still providing a yearly dose of the mothership, in the annual Love and Rockets: New Stories trade paperback." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "I originally posted this review on January 18, 2008. This was before I’d read much, if any, of Gilbert’s Fritz material from Love and Rockets. I think the review holds up, which is why I’m re-running it; but with all of Beto’s post-Palomar Palomar-verse work under my belt now, if anything I find Chance in Hell, both its content and its very existence, even more disturbing." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Interview: Robot 6's Tim O'Shea talks to Nate Neal: "Even in the conceptual stage, I knew The Sanctuary didn’t need any words to get the story across. With a made up language the words would take on a symbolic stance that they otherwise wouldn’t have. That helps get across one of the important ideas of the book: how things get fucked up when a society thinks too symbolically. Or at least thinks too symbolically without being aware that that’s what they’re doing. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the world we live in now!"

• Plug: "I finally cracked What Is All This?, Stephen Dixon’s mammoth collection of previously unpublished stories — and it’s terrific stuff. The book itself is also quite pleasing. Dixon still composes his stories on a typewriter (a Hermes Standard, the same brand Douglas Adams used), and Fantagraphics’ whiz art director, Jacob Covey, has mimicked the unevenness and smudges of typewritten text on the cover and section pages. It’s great design porn." – Nicole Rudick, The Paris Review

• Plug: "Thanks to the arrival this week of Castle Waiting 2, Linda Medley's second subversive collection of fairy tales, I'm on yet another kick of traditional fairy tales retold." – Nathalie Atkinson, National Post

• Plug: "...Mark Kalesniko’s Freeway is still a book I’m really, really looking forward to. It’s the continuing adventures of Kalesniko’s semi-autobiographical character Alex. I loved that book, I reckon I’m going to love Freeway just as much." – Richard Cowdry, The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

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.