Meet Princess Kitty

Look what I stumbled on when I went to watch a funny cat video: Johnny Ryan's illustration for the Found Footage Festival has been animated motion-comic style for the intro to the FFF's series of videos for The A.V. Club (see it following the commercial). Neat. Also: you tell 'em, kitty.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review/Roundtable: TIME/Techland's "Comic Book Club" roundtable of critics (Douglas Wolk, Graeme McMillan, Evan Narcisse and Mike Williams) discusses You'll Never Know Book 2: Collateral Damage by C. Tyler. Wolk leads off: "The first volume of You'll Never Know, Carol Tyler's projected three-volume series about her father's experiences in World War II — and all the family history connected to it — was my favorite graphic novel of last year. The new volume, Collateral Damage, is even stronger in a lot of ways."

• Photo of the Week: That's a funny one of Stuart Immonen at Robot 6

• Breaking News/Quote of the Week: "I think I was more opposed to the show moving to Los Angeles/Anaheim than I was in favor of it staying in SD or going anywhere else. I'm not even sure why I was opposed to it, because I love visiting L.A. But it would just feel like we let the terrorists win at that point." – our own Eric Reynolds, quoted at The Comics Reporter

At Wired.com Scott Thill presents a gallery of 8 images from Dave Cooper's Bent and writes "Canadian artist Dave Cooper's latest comic book collection, Bent, is stuffed to the breaking point with surreal, sexual grotesques and caricatures. Which is probably why Hollywood's own resident king of magical horror Guillermo Del Toro wrote the book's glowing introduction (and, like some of the city's other creative talents, snapped up Cooper's work for his own personal collection). [...] Bent, out Oct. 27 from indie comics powerhouse Fantagraphics, collates Cooper's nightmarish nudes and bizarro dreamscapes from recent solo gallery shows in New York and Los Angeles, just in time for Halloween."

The Sanctuary pt II from Andrew Perrine on Vimeo.

Nate Neal and Chenukee offer a tutorial on the language in Nate's new graphic novel The Sanctuary. (Follow the link for a higher-def version... or just hit the full-screen button.)

 ...Or girls, for that matter.

As work progresses on our first volume of Ernie Bushmiller's NANCY (yes, it's late, we admit it), collecting 1942 through 1945, we belatedly realize that our source for most of the strips is missing the first year. Oops. So we are sending out the plea to NANCY collectors: If you have clippings for 1942's NANCY daily strips, we would love to hear from you. (For that matter, as we are missing a handful of strips from 1943-1945, and some of the ones we do have are a little rough around the edges in terms of repro quality, if you have ANY NANCY tearsheets from this period...)

Contact editor Kim Thompson at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (and yes, we are in contact with the Ohio State Library, but even they have significant holes in their NANCY run) — and be sure to pass on this plea to anyone else you think might have contacts, message boards, what have you. NANCY fans unite!

If we can't get our hands on the elusive 1942 we'll probably just switch the first volume to 1943 through 1946 (we do have all of 1946) and get back to 1942 in the future when we've had more time to dig, dig, dig for source material.

In other NANCY news, the much-anticipated HOW TO READ NANCY by Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden has unfortunately been delayed 'til next Summer or Fall, as Paul and Mark have been vastly expanding the contents with additional images, additional interviews, additional research, and additional fact-checking. This will be a completely mind-blowing book when it is finished, so we ask that eager fans adopt a Bushmiller-like serenity and it'll be there before you can say "three rocks."

At Grids, the official blog of the Society of Publication Designers, Robert Newman presents a selection of images from Drew Friedman's new book and says "Over the past 15 years, Drew Friedman has been one of the most popular and prolific illustrators in the magazine world. [...] Now Friedman has a brilliant new collection of his magazine work, Too Soon?: Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010, published by Fantagraphics Books. It's hardcover, 200+ pages, packed with hundreds of  comics and caricatures and even more laughs. And it's graced with a wonderful introductory essay by Friedman that is a great history of both his illustration career and magazine illustration in general over the past 15 years."

Stephen DeStefano has posted some great photos (taken by Siobhan DeStefano) from his exhibit opening 2 weeks ago in NYC. Here are just a few; click here for more on Stephen's blog.

Crowd:

Lucky in Love writer George Chieffet:

Stephen drawing Lucky Testaduda outside on the sidewalk:

Remember a month ago today when we were touting the availability of the 1987 first hardcover edition of Love and Rockets Book 3 (Las Mujeres Perdidas, as it was known for subsequent editions)? Turns out, these copies have an original signature plate signed by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez! They're still offered at a deeply discounted price — just try and resist!

With the imminent arrival of the landmark Mome Vol. 20 we are pleased to offer two new additions to our selection of bargain-priced Mome multi-packs: the Mome Vol. 11-20 Mega-Bundle for $99.99 and the Mome Vol. 16-20 Five-Pack for $49.99 — each priced at nearly 1/3 OFF the combined cover prices! Pre-order now and we'll ship the whole pack(s) to you when Vol. 20 arrives in our warehouse.

If you're interested in what's "happening" and "now" in comics, there's one place to turn: Mome, our quarterly anthology of the best in contemporary, cutting-edge cartooning from around the world. With so many volumes in print, it can be difficult to know where to start... so we've made it easy for you by offering these convenient, affordable multi-packs. They also make an amazing gift. Don't miss out on this incredible deal.

Johnny Ryan done went and got hisself a fancy-pants new website. News, merch, artwork, comix, it's all there. Bookmark it, RSS it, live it, love it.