Above, Paul DiFilippo and Jim Woodring pose with their new collaborative book/objet d'art Cosmocopia (from our fine friends at Payseur & Schmidt) at the release party and exhibit opening at our Seattle bookstore on Saturday night. Click here for lots more photos. Below, DiFilippo reads an excerpt from the book (video link):

A couple more photos:

Stuff about our books from around the web... pay close attention, there's some publishing news sprinkled in here:

• The Globe and Mail looks at various graphic novels including Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw

• The Star Clipper Blog reviews Sublife Vol. 1 by John Pham

• Spanish site Tinta Digital looks at King by Ho Che Anderson (Google translation)

• Lady, That's My Skull examines Ghost World: Special Edition by Daniel Clowes; Plastic Scene also gives it a look

• Hero Spy chooses Sergio Ponchione's Grotesque as its first-ever Featured Comic

• Comics' By Products praises Usagi Yojimbo Book 1: The Ronin by Stan Sakai

• Sequart examines Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers

• Sequart also rounds up four recent issues of titles in our Ignatz Series

• Newsarama strongly recommends Most Outrageous: The Trials and Tresspasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester by Bob Levin

• Comiquero gives Daniel Clowes' Eightball its due (en Español; Google translation)

• Mike Sterling notes a couple of interesting things about our latest volume of The Complete Peanuts

• The self-described "DC Nerd" at Comic Fodder also enjoys Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman

• Conflict of Interest Dept: For comiXology, Kristy Valenti presents the first of a two-part essay on how Daniel Clowes' Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron "freaked [her] right out"

• Have you heard about our forthcoming anthology of abstract comics? Contributor Grant Thomas shares his contributions

• Speaking of forthcoming anthologies, here's a peek at another one, courtesy of cover colorist Jim Blanchard

• Metabunker checks out Scrublands by Joe Daly

• The Forbidden Planet International blog calls Mark Kalesniko's Alex "the best book about an alcoholic dog ever published"

• Ookworld takes a quick look at Krazy & Ignatz 1941-1942 by George Herriman

• Newsarama calls Jessica Farm Vol. 1 by Josh Simmons "a real stunner of a book"

• PLAYBACK:stl looks at The Portable Frank by Jim Woodring

• Something from 2006 that showed up in my alerts today for some reason and it's so good I'm sharing it again: for the Minneapolis City Pages, Zak Sally talks Popeye

• The Comic Book Haters video podcast takes on Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes (their faux poster is pretty great too)

Whew, I think this might be the longest list yet. Let's keep going with some interviews and other links of interest:

• Courtesy of Bully, a fine selection of Lucy Van Pelt beatdowns

• The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and The Globe and Mail profile David Levine

• As the Boston Spaceships tour rolls on, so do the interviews with Robert Pollard: Smile Politely, the Chicago Sun-Times (with an interesting look at Pollard's creative process for songwriting and visual art), the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

• In The Wall Street Journal, Laura Warholic scribe Alexander Theroux reviews The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

• Musician Ryan Adams enthuses about the artwork of Leah Hayes as seen on the cover of his new LP and in her two publications from Fantagraphics

• Calvin and Hobbes as drawn by Paul Hornschemeier

• Observe illustrator Bob Staake creating a New Yorker cover

• Comic Book Resources profiles Willie & Joe creator Bill Mauldin

• talking cupcake is a fan of Ray Fenwick

• Minneapolis City Pages declares "Jim Woodring is God"

• Comic Book Resources talks Zippy with Bill Griffith, who also answers reader questions at Boston.com

• Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog looks at some Frankenstein-related early Roger Langridge work

• Here's Zak Sally again, talking about Jaime Hernandez and the Twin Cities Book Festival

Don't forget that you can track these links in a more timely fashion on our Delicious page and RSS feed, or by adding us to your Delicious network.

Time for the twelfth installment of Steven Weissman's in-progress pages from "Blue Jay," an epic 32-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures. In this week's episode: Oh Elzie Crisler, so cute and yet so bad!

And guess what? You no longer have to be registered and logged in to read our webcomics (though we still encourage you to sign up)! We've decided that we want to share the fun with everyone. Why now? Because starting Monday we'll be bringing you (drum roll)...

...daily (Mon.-Fri.) installments of Rocky, the hilarious smash-hit Swedish comic strip by Martin Kellerman beloved by everyone from Eurocomics über-aficionados like our own Kim Thompson to world-famous rap mega-star 50 Cent (no fooling)!

Meanwhile, if you haven't been able to read "Blue Jay" until now, you can catch up on past installments on Steven's blog. Enjoy!

This exhibit opens tomorrow evening at 6PM at scott eder gallery in Brooklyn and includes work by a slew of Ignatz Series fumettisti including series founder/co-publisher Igort (Baobab), Marco Corona (Reflections), Gabriella Giandelli (Interiorae), Gipi (Wish You Were Here), and Lorenzo Mattotti (Chimera) along with other greats. More info and online preview right here. Another must-see!

John Hankiewicz presents the first half of a four-page collaborative strip he did with Onsmith for this month's issue of Chicago Artists' News.

John Pham has a joint release party for his Sublife Vol. 1 and Ron Regé Jr.'s Against Pain at Family in LA on Sunday October 19 at 7 PM. Music by Ron in the guise of Discombobulated Ventriloquist. Sounds like a must-go to me!

While going through some of Craig Yoe's comic books here at the office I came across a particularly great example of the old pulp coloring. Why they didn't bother to just build the entirety of the suit's black color with cyan I don't know... (That's a Boody Rogers comic page.)

 UPDATE: "Jacob, Man, you and Frank Santoro should have a blog where you just say stuff that doesn't make sense to anyone." - Tom Devlin.

Response to our free signed bookplate offer has been so great, we're replenishing our limited quantities when and where we can. We've just restocked Dash Shaw (shown above) and some Dan Clowes, and more are hopefully on the way soon. Click here for the full selection.

(Disclaimer: Signature plates are limited in quantity and available only while supplies last. In the event that we run out, signature plates will not be backordered. Bookplates are not available separately from their respective books and are only available to individual consumers.)

Above: Drew Friedman's killer illo for this article in The New York Observer.