Could it be? Peter Bagge's Hate Annual is... back on an annual schedule? We'll be soliciting it for sometime in Spring 2011 — just 12 months (or less!) after the last issue! And oh yeah, how 'bout that cover! Jeezum crow!

Mome Vol. 20 - Fall 2010
by various artists; edited by Eric Reynolds

120-page color/b&w 7" x 9" softcover • $14.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-365-1

Ships in: October 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

We have reached the landmark 20th volume of Mome. For those of you who read the box scores, that’s 5 years, 20 volumes, 72 artists, and 2,352 pages of comics.

Much is new in this anniversary volume. Fantagraphics' flagship anthology now boasts a new design courtesy of art director Adam Grano (who also chips in a few pages of art), and we have 4 other artists making their Mome debuts: Steven "Ribs" Weissman's haunting story "This Already Happened" makes its first appearance in print after being serialized at What Things Do; Sergio Ponchione provides a full-color prequel story to his acclaimed series Grotesque (translated from its appearance in Italy's Linus magazine); and we welcome Chicago stalwart Jeremy Tinder and Portland illustrator Aidan Koch to the fold with their new stories.

From our returning champions: another "Blind Date" from Dash Shaw; a forest fable from Sara Edward-Corbett; part 2 of "The White Rhinoceros" from Josh Simmons and The Partridge in the Pear Tree; the continuation of T. Edward Bak's "Wild Man," Derek Van Gieson's "Devil Doll," and cover-boy Ted Stearn's "Fuzz and Pluck in: The Moolah Tree" serials; another atmospheric Conor O'Keefe story; a star-studded story in verse from Nate Neal; and more autobiographical vignettes by Nicolas Mahler. It all adds up to another diverse and rewarding volume of this literary comics juggernaut.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF excerpt (4.3 MB) with a page from every artist in the issue, plus the Table of Contents.

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Coming Soon: Bargain Mome Mega-Bundle multipacks containing Vols. 16-20 and Vols. 11-20 will be available soon — stay tuned to Flog for updates!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Zippy: Ding Dong Daddy from Dingburg
by Bill Griffith

216-page black & white/color 8.5" x 8.5" softcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-389-7

Ordering Info & Previews

In Zippy’s latest collection of daily and color strips (with additional pages!), the tour of “Dingburg” continues; we drop in on dozens of Dingburgers and observe them in their natural habitat. The city “inhabited entirely by pinheads” can be seen as a metaphor for the world we live in today — or not.

In any event, we watch as Zippy the Pinhead and his fellow Dingburg residents hunt and bag “Speedy Alka Seltzer,” hear voices in their refrigerators, become addicted to Riboflavin, enjoy fondling newsprint, believe that “wahoo bark” attracts the opposite sex, and worship Joan Rivers.

There’s also the extended series in which Zippy has a long (and donut-based) conversation with God and another in which we meet a pinhead poet who bears a striking resemblance to Charles Bukowski. Are we having fun yet?

Bonus Savings: Order Ding Dong Daddy from Dingburg together with the previous Zippy volume Welcome to Dingburg and save 20% off the combined cover prices!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s
by various artists; edited by John Benson and Greg Sadowski

320-page full-color 7.5" x 10.5" softcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-343-9

Orderin Info & Previews

Of the myriad genres comic books ventured into during its golden age, none was as controversial as or came at a greater cost than horror; the public outrage it incited almost destroyed the entire industry. Yet before the watchdog groups and Congress could intercede, horror books were flying off the newsstands. During its peak period (1951-54) over fifty titles appeared each month. Apparently there was something perversely irresistible about these graphic excursions into our dark side, and Four Color Fear collects the finest of these into a single robust and affordable volume.

EC is the comic book company most fans associate with horror; its complete line has been reprinted numerous times, and deservedly so. But to the average reader there remain unseen quite a batch of genuinely disturbing, compulsive, imaginative, at times even touching, horror stories presented from a variety of visions and perspectives, many of which at their best can stand toe to toe with EC.

All of the better horror companies are represented: Ace, Ajax-Farrell, American Comics Group, Avon, Comic Media, Fawcett, Fiction House, Gilmor, Harvey, Quality, Standard, St. John, Story, Superior, Trojan, Youthful and Ziff-Davis. Artist perennials Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Jack Katz, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, and Wallace Wood contribute both stories and covers, with many of the 32 full-sized covers created by specialists Bernard Baily, L.B. Cole, William Eckgren, and Matt Fox. (See below for a link to the full Table of Contents.)

Editors John Benson and Greg Sadowski have sifted through hundreds of rare books to cherry-pick the most compelling scripts and art, and they provide extensive background notes on the artists, writers, and companies involved in their creation. Digital restoration has been performed with subtlety and restraint, mainly to correct registration and printing errors, with every effort made to retain the flavor of the original comics, and to provide the reader the experience of finding in the attic a bound volume of the finest non-EC horror covers and stories of the pre-code era.

Click here to read the Introduction by John Benson and see the full Table of Contents with story titles and artist credits.

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics
by Blake Bell

192-page full-color 9" x 12" hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-166-4

Ordering Info & Previews

This book is available with a signed bookplate as a FREE premium! The bookplate has been uniquely designed for this book, and each bookplate is printed on acid-free cardstock and hand-signed by the author Blake Bell and Bill Everett's daughter, Wendy Everett! (Click here for more books available with signed bookplates.) Please select your preference above before adding the item to your shopping cart. Note: Signature plates are VERY limited in quantity and available only WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.

In 1939, decades before it would become the powerhouse behind such famous super-heroes as Spider-Man, The X-Men, and Iron Man, Marvel Comics launched its comics line with a four-color magazine starring a daring new antihero: The Sub-Mariner.

As created and rendered by the great Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner was an angry half-breed (half-man, half sea-creature) who loathed and fought against all mankind — until he joined the Allied Forces to defeat the Nazis during World War II. Seventy years later, Everett’s aquatic creation remains one of the pinnacles of the Marvel super-hero universe (as attested to by the character’s recent option for a major motion picture).

The Sub-Mariner alone, and his status as the original Marvel (anti-)hero, would have insured any cartoonist’s place in comics history. But Everett was a master of many kinds of comics: romance, crime, humor, and the often brutal horror comics genre (before it was defanged by the Comics Code Authority in the 1950s), for which he produced work of such stylish and horrifi c beauty that he ranks with the artists who kept the legendary EC comics line awash in blood and guts.

Written by Blake Bell (the author of the best-selling critical biography of Steve Ditko, Strange and Stranger) and compiled with the aid and assistance of Everett’s family, friends, and cartoonist peers, Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner & the Birth of Marvel Comics is an intimate biography of a troubled man; an eye-popping collection of Everett’s comics, sketchbook drawings, and illustration art (including spectacular samples from his greatest published work as well as never-before-seen private drawings); and an in-depth look at his involvement in the birth of the company that would revolutionize pop culture forever: Marvel Comics!

Bonus Savings: Order Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics by Blake Bell and From Shadow to Light: The Life & Art of Mort Meskin by Steven Brower together for just $51.99 — that's 35% off the combined cover prices!

Aspiring animators, join Stephen DeStefano for a 3-session intensive course in "How to Do Storyboards for Animation" at MoCCA in NYC starting November 22. Stephen's been in the animation biz for almost 20 years and his resume is out the wazoo. (Of course, we love him best for his graphic novel Lucky in Love. And The Venture Bros.) More info at the MoCCA website.

[You guys have no idea how long I've been waiting to use this FLOG post title...]

In addition to our regular strips from the Steves this week, it is our distinct privilege to bring you an exclusive video view and looping animation of Jim Woodring's Moebius strip comic:

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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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Moebius strip comic by Jim Woodring (view larger sizes):

Video:

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview: For Suicide Girls, Alex Dueben, who says "Dame Darcy is a renaissance woman. The Idaho-born artist has crafted a broad and powerful body of work. [...] She is an artist in the finest sense of the word," gets the full scoop from the artist herself: "I come from a family of cowboy poets in Idaho who played music, painted and wrote. So I was always exposed to art as a normal part of life. I began drawing sequential stories when I was two. My great Grandma Marler was a cowgirl and a school teacher, she taught me to read and write at an early age, which I am thankful for because without her help dyslexia would have made it even harder for me to be a writer than it already is. I think my will to tell stories got me through it, and I can remember wanting so badly to be able to write the words over the pictures."

• Commentary: At Amazon's Omnivoracious books blog, Alex Carr examines Ken Parille's essay on Daniel Clowes in The Best American Comics Criticism

The Comics Reporter's weekly reader-participation feature "Five for Friday" is all about us, us, us this week. (Above, one of Tom Spurgeon's choices.)