TIME's Techland blog features an exclusive 9-page preview of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec today. Check out the excerpt from "Pterror over Paris"!

Our weekly strips from the Steves, plus links to other strips from around the web (apologies for tardiness — things got a little ahead of us last week as they sometimes do):

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Monday's Strip by Stephen DeStefano (view larger)

Originally run as an experiment on Stephen's blog starting in 2008, Monday's Strip is re-presented here.

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Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

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And elsewhere:

Lucky by Gabrielle Bell:

Ectiopiary by Hans Rickheit:

Maakies by Tony Millionaire:

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: The New York Times's George Gene Gustines recommends Moto Hagio's A Drunken Dream and Other Stories in their "Graphic Books Roundup — Holiday Gift Guide 2010": "This 10-story anthology shifts from young romance to supernatural mystery to kitchen-sink drama, so there will probably be a touchstone tale for everyone."

• List: New York Magazine presents "Dan Kois's Great New Autobio Graphic Novels," including Joyce Farmer's Special Exits at #4: "The final four years in the lives of underground cartoonist Farmer’s father and stepmother, told with honesty and humor. A book that will resonate for anyone facing the loss of a loved one."

• List: At Robot 6, Chris Mautner compiles "Six x-rated comics you can read without shame," half of which are old (mostly out of print) Eros gems: Birdland by Gilbert Hernandez, Small Favors by Colleen Coover, and Nipplez 'n' Tum Tum by Mary Fleener.

• Review: "Authors Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly spare no one in Destroy All Movies!!! from the moment the introduction starts. Yes, there are swear words in the book. If you appreciated your time during the 1980s this cultural reference goes beyond just scenes in movies that have punks in them. [...]  The short reviews of each flick give an honest and hilarious appraisal of each piece. I wish every movie review would be as succinct as these two authors because it would save a lot of reading and muck to wade through in a film review. [...] If you are a punk film buff, Destroy All Movies!!! is definitely worth the purchase." – William Browning, Yahoo! Movies/Associated Content

• Review: "Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly got the wild notion to write a guide to every movie that ever contained a punk in it, and the result of their labors is the loveably cumbersome Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film. ...[I]t's a treat that it exists, and we're lucky to reap the benefits from Carlson and Connolly's obsession." – Ned Lannamann, The Portland Mercury

• Review: "Among the 1,100 titles cataloged, mocked and celebrated by [Zack] Carlson and co-editor Bryan Connolly in this future coffee-table classic [Destroy All Movies!!!] are Hack-O-Lantern, Rock and Roll Mobster Girls, Revenge of the Nerds IV and Invasion of the Mindbenders, none of which you have seen, of course, but all of which you will desperately want to experience after dipping into Connolly and Carlson’s obsessive-compulsive masterwork. If you ever wondered what it would be like if the 'Psychotronic' section of sleazebag anti-classics at Movie Madness grew a brain and then threw up on you, well, here’s your chance." – Chris Stamm, Willamette Week

• Plug: "There's no shortage of scholarship about every conceivable genre of film, from film noir to Westerns to crazy-disturbing B-movie schlock. But admit it: when was the last time you found a comprehensive study of punks on film? Well, that appallingly underrepresented genre can boast its own volume: Destroy All Movies!!!: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film, published by our Seattle friends, Fantagraphics Books." – Kristi Turnquist, The Oregonian

• Plugs: Also covering the Destroy All Movies!!! tour events: L.A. Weekly, The Portland Mercury, and The Oregonian

• Review: "Being free of logical constraint and internal consistency, Zippy’s daily and Sunday forays against The Norm can encompass everything from time travel, talking objects, shopping lists, radical philosophy, caricature, packaging ingredients, political and social ponderings and even purely visual or calligraphic episodes. It is weird and wonderful and not to everybody’s tastes… The collected musings of America’s most engaging Idiot-Savant have all the trappings of the perfect cult-strip and this latest volume [Ding Dong Daddy from Dingburg] finds cretin and creator on absolute top form. If you like this sort of stuff you’ll adore this enticing slice of it. Yow!" – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!  

• Review: "Fear of Comics is a wonderful book, one of the finest short-story collections the medium has ever produced. It’s laugh-out-loud funny at times, filthy at others, disgusting and poetic and black as midnight at still others. And it’s a showcase for comics’ premier naturalist to abandon that style altogether, to take his distinctive and exaggerated figurework to their absolute extremes, to tell stories that feel like neither the magic realism nor the science fiction for which he is best known but rather like fairy tales, or even myths of some creepy nihilistic religion." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Review: "Richard Sala... knows how to skillfully mix humor with horror and the grotesque. [Peculia] is a collection of short stories whose protagonist is a mysterious girl who lives in a world populated by monsters and strange creatures... Dreams are mixed with reality and the stories could go on forever, and even if the book has a conclusion, this does not answer the questions and doubts of the reader. Never mind, because the stories are still entertaining and illustrated with an original style that combines influences from gothic expressionist cinema and even a purely pop style and very fun." – Valerio Stive, Lo Spazio Bianco (translated from Italian)

• Plug: Our pals at Tiny Showcase are excited for Ray Fenwick's new book Mascots and hint that they're scheming something up for the launch

(not final cover)

• Coming Attractions: Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston notes our May 2011 publication of Lou Reed and Lorenzo Mattotti's adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

• Commentary: At Filmicability, Dean Treadway sifts through The Complete Peanuts for references to film and moviegoing, with plentiful examples

Watch this adorable chat that The KB Life had with the creators of Rip M.D. at the Long Beach Comic Con a couple of weeks ago.

At What Things Do, it's a new installment of "Dark Day," the new chapter in Jordan Crane's ongoing sequel to The Clouds Above.

See works from Sophie Crumb's debut solo exhibit at DCKT Contemporary in NYC at the gallery's website. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)

A new short silent animated video from Dash Shaw. Dash explains at The Ruined Cast blog.

Now available in the Jim Flora Fine Art merch shop: a new large (13" x 17") letterpress calendar, SHEFFIELD ISLAND, adapting a 1954 Flora woodcut of a maritime silhouette, plus small letterpress 2011 calendars, in three designs, featuring 1950s illustrations by Flora. Click the links for more info and to order.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "First off: a round of applause to Kim Thompson for his translation of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec. The French title of the first volume translates literally as 'Adele and the Beast,' and that was the title of the previous American version (20 years or so ago) — but 'Pterror over Paris' is way funnier, and in line with the overheated, not entirely serious style of this book. ...[T]his is really charming stuff... and it's super-fun." – Douglas Wolk, TIME/Techland

• Review: "This is a powerful tale about creativity, morality, verity and above all, responsibility which demands that the reader work for his reward. As an exploration of imagination it is subtly enticing, but as an examination of Mankind’s unchanging primal nature The Sanctuary is pitilessly honest. Abstract, symbolic, metaphorical yet gloriously approachable, this devastatingly clever saga is a 'must-see' for any serious fan of comics and every student of the human condition." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Review: "In collecting all the (mostly) non-Locas, non-Palomar odds’n'ends from the initial run of Love and Rockets from both Gilbert and Jaime — and Mario too, the 'sometimes Y' to Beto and Xaime’s AEIOU — Amor y Cohetes reinforces [a particular] conception of the brothers’ working relationship. It’s not one-upsmanship, it’s not trading eights, it’s more a matter of pulling from a collective pool of ideas about comics." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Interview: For the L.A. Times Hero Complex blog, Deborah Vankin talks to Robert Crumb (actually an outtake from a slightly longer Crumb interview done for a feature on Joyce Farmer running in the print version of the Times soon): "Maybe I’m less angry. I don’t know. Actually, I’m not less angry. When I go back to America, after a few days I am once again filled with this kind of angry alienation and disgust with this thing there that America has got — you have no idea how pervasive it is there. The public relations and propaganda put out by the corporate mono-culture there is so pervasive."

Graphic designer (and hero of our Art Director Jacob Covey) Art Chantry wrote an appreciation of rock stickers for the PictureBox website and featured this old one by Jaime Hernandez as the illustration. Our own Eric Reynolds comments: "I no longer recall the exact origin of that sticker. The Damachers were one of Hopey's more obscure bands from the pages of L&R. There was no real purpose for the sticker. It wasn't even promotional, exactly. Just something fun Jaime made up."

We still have a few of these floating around the office here. No, you can't have one.