Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1 went to the printer today and series editor Blake Bell celebrates by revealing the final cover art for the book — a snappy number designed by Alexa Koenings in our art department. At Blake's blog you can see the entire cover spread (front, back and spine) and read Blake's thoughts and background info on the book, which is due in December.

Speaking of gorgeous art books that we just got advance copies of... Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture – A Career Retrospective arrived at the office today. Page after page after page of mouthwatering eye candy from one of the undisputed giants of illustration, all wrapped up in Tony Ong's eye-catching carnival-esque design. Just showing one spread like this does not do the book justice AT ALL, so be on the lookout for our upcoming previews!

We got our advance copies of Tony Millionaire's 500 Portraits at the office yesterday and man oh man, what a gorgeous little book. Designed by our Art Director Emeritus Jacob Covey and smartly edited by Jacob and Eric Reynolds (Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, Ian MacKaye, Louis Armstrong and Léon Theremin in one spread? Genius), this is going to be the must-have gift book for the holidays. Stay tuned for more and better previews!

Fantagraphics Books is offering a tasty treat this Halloween season — a FREE Donald Duck mini-comic by cartoon genius Carl Barks! In the "Jet Witch," our plucky duck buzzes Duckburg on a jet-powered broom. Predictably, all manner of hilarious Halloween havoc ensues.

This story from 1961 provides a preview of the delicious treats to come in Fantagraphics forthcoming series The Carl Barks Library, with the first volume Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes arriving next month. For information on where to find this Halloween favor visit Comicshoplocator.com.

British comedy giant Peter Serafinowicz just can't seem to stop tweeting about Michael Kupperman's new book Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 and I just can't stop posting screenshots. I'm excited, okay? Shut up!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Every now and then, if I’m lucky, I might just bump into a stone cold masterpiece. The kind of art that makes you just want to shout and scream it is so good. So, in the interest of doing just that, let me say that this Jaime Hernandez’s 'The Love Bunglers' (Love and Rockets: New Stories no. 4) is such a work. I don’t even need to qualify it for myself (i.e. 'what’s coming later; what’s come before; shouldn’t there be a cooling period?') when I say: This is not just Jaime’s finest work, but one of the best (at this moment I’d rank it in my top five of all time) works ever created in the medium. You can hold that over me in twenty years and I’ll still be right..." – Dan Nadel, The Comics Journal [SPOILER WARNING]

• Review: "Jaime Hernandez is my favorite cartoonist. I think he is the greatest cartoonist of all time. My opinion.... No art moves me the way the work of Jaime Hernandez moves me. I am in awe of his eternal mystery." – Frank Santoro, The Comics Journal

• Review: "I picked up a copy of the new issue at a signing Jaime was doing here in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. It was a packed house, and there were a lot of people I was happy to talk to. Amidst all the socializing, I allowed myself a quick glimpse inside the comic, and when I randomly flipped to pages 92 and 93, I felt like I’d been blind-sided. I had to look closer to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing." – Adrian Tomine, The Comics Journal

• Commentary: Robot 6's Sean T. Collins spotlights the above TCJ links, saying "Paying off thirty years of continuity and character development. Delivering shocks, gasps, cheers, and tears in equal measure, seemingly at the author’s whim. Offering a master class in everything from laying out a double-page spread to drawing clothes. Telling a story about beloved characters so emotionally engaging that even their most ardent fans wouldn’t mind if this were the last one ever told. Any way you slice it, Jaime Hernandez's 'The Love Bunglers' — his contribution to the recently released Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 and the conclusion to the already wildly acclaimed 'The Love Bunglers'/'Browntown' suite from last year’s issue — is a hell of a comic. But you don’t have to take my word for it."

• Review: "As I finished reading Love and Rockets: New Stories #4, I had to sit back and just take a moment to take it all in and collect myself, as I know that I had just completed reading one of the greatest works in comics for 2011. Love and Rockets has been a source of inspiration within the comics industry for years, so it’s not like I’m the first one to praise the Brothers Hernandez for their contribution. But it’s even more incredible to see that after nearly 30 years, both Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez are creating some of the best comics of their careers and making them completely accessible to new readers. Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 is an achievement for the Brothers Hernandez and has earned a permanent spot on my required reading list for anyone interested in reading the great works of modern comics creators." – Ron Richards, iFanboy "Book of the Month"

• Links: Another comprehensive round of Hernandez Bros.-related links from Love & Maggie

• Review (Audio): "The artwork [in Pogo] is fantastic because Kelly, coming from a Disney background, had really great technical chops and he was able to put a lot of detail into a small daily strip while at the same time giving it breathing room despite the fact that the characters are quite talkative…. He crowded an awful lot into each panel without making it feel crowded, which is a neat trick. He really pulled it off well. …It's just a joy to look at, and it's so much fun to read too because the characters all have really funny personalities that are… very dimensional… It is beautifully designed by Walt Kelly's daughter Carolyn Kelly, and she and Fantagraphics did a really good job of finding all these strips… lovingly scanned and restored so that you get to see the line art in all its detailed glory…. I highly recommend it -- it's going to be one of my prize books... that I'm going to hang onto for a long time." – Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing "Gweek" podcast  

• Review: "When you read the first volume of Fantagraphics' complete reprint of Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse — the first of its kind anywhere — you understand quickly why Disney decided to keep him on the daily strip. He was simply a natural talent." – Matthias Wivel, Nummer 9 (translated from Danish)

• Review (Audio): The hosts of The Comic Cast podcast look at Isle of 100,000 Graves by Jason & Fabien Vehlmann

• Commentary: At The Panelists, Charles Hatfield's examination of "'Independent Comics' in the 21st Century" includes discussion of Love and Rockets: New Stories, Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button, and Mome

• Commentary: "...Jim Woodring is not one to rest on his laurels where his funny-animal protagonist Frank is concerned. Lately he’s been posting breathtaking images... to his blog on a surprisingly regular basis. They appear to show Frank up to his old mischievous tricks, and to augur another Frank book on the horizon. Check them out here and here, and marvel that a cartoonist of Woodring’s caliber is tossing these things out there for free like it ain’t no thing." – Sean T. Collins, Robot 6

• Flicks: For your Halloween rental-queue pleasure Drew Friedman picks his top 10 horror movies at TCM's Movie Morlocks blog (via TCJ)

Wilfred Santiago, creator of 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, celebrates another Clemente milestone anniversary today: the 40th anniversary of the Pittsburgh Pirates' 1971 World Series victory, for which Clemente was named series MVP.

Laura Park contributes a recipe comic for a quick-n-easy, tasty-sounding dish at fancy-pants foodie mag Saveur — click through to read the whole thing.

[See our Tumblr blog for more recent Things to See.]

photo credit: the great Alex Cox from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

The reports of Mark Twain's death were greatly exaggerated indeed!  Why, he's been all over the New York area lately, promoting the smash-hit Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010, as transcribed by the wonderful humorist and cartoonist Michael Kupperman.

Here he is, at the New York Comic-Con this past weekend, signing with our friends at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund...

photo credit: M. Sweeney Lawless

...meeting Chewbacca...

photo credit: Emily Flake

...Oscar the Grouch...

photo credit: M. Sweeney Lawless

... and making lots of new friends! You can check out more photos from his NYCC adventures at Mr. Kupperman's Flickr page.

photo credit: Edwina Hay

And earlier this month, Twain made an appearance at Littlefield in Brooklyn for the Twain in the Membrane Comedy Party:

photo credit: Edwina Hay

Ben Franklin showed up to challenge Twain to a duel, and apparently won by faking a heart attack. 

photo credit: Edwina Hay

There was a Twain-lookalike contest...

photo credit: Edwina Hay

... and as we reported, yes... frog-humping.  Although apparently no one was brave enough to compete! Enjoy tons more awesome pics at photographer Edwina Hay's Flickr page here.

As you can see, things have been zany with our good friend, Twain-y, so stay tuned to the FLOG for future dates in the Twain in the Membrane tour!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Comic strips, as printed in American papers, have been linked to advertising since their very inception, and have been a constant staple of ad campaigns. Now a good-looking, large-format book shows much of the history of advertising cartoons: Drawing Power: A Compendium of Cartoon Advertising 1870s - 1940s... Many of the cartoons in this colorful collection are handsome, and in hindsight, many are so silly that they call into question any 'American Intelligence,' despite what Lucky Strikes told us. That cartoons made such pitches, and with seeming success for their time, is a little embarrassing; either people were dumb enough to fall for the ridiculous pitches here, or high paid advertising companies thought they were. It is, however, all part of the enormous fun of this volume." – Rob Hardy, The Dispatch

• Review: "Jaime has not only managed to maintain the standard that he set in his Locas stories back in the 1980s and ’90s, at times I would say his work is better than ever.... [Love and Rockets: New Stories] #4 sees the end of 'The Love Bunglers,' a story that is every bit as tragic, funny, and ultimately life-affirming as one could wish. In the incoherent words of Reno, Jaime sums up what his stories and his characters are about: 'there’s somethin’ that happened once in our lives that keeps us … keeps us livin', hopin' that…'." – Tony Keen, FA

• Plug: New York magazine's Dan Kois recommends Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery (minor spoiler ahoy)

• Plugs: Robot 6's Michael May looks at "What Looks Good in Previews" for December: "Young Romance: The Best of Simon and Kirby’s Romance Comics – Not only am I extremely curious from an historical standpoint, but damn it, sometimes you just wanna read about kissing. Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons – Growing up in the South like I did, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories were required reading. I had no idea she made comics too."

• Reviewer: Estonia author Alexander Theroux reviews Ha Jin's Nanjing Requiem for The Wall Street Journal