For over thirty years Nell Brinkley's beautiful girls pirouetted, waltzed, vamped and shimmied their way through the pages of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, captivating the American public with their innocent sexuality. Accomplished cartoonist and women's comix "herstorian" Trina Robbins examines the work of this unjustly forgotten artist in The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons from 1913 - 1940. Robbins will present the work of this remarkable illustrator with an exhibition, slide talk and book signing at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday, October 8 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM.

A brash Nell Brinkley arrived in New York in 1907 at the tender age of 22. Within a year, her work began to appear newspapers illustrating her high society gossip column. Her cartoon serials popularized the bobbed hairstyle and flapper fashions of the era, while reflecting period art nouveau and deco aesthetics. Such was her influence that the Ziegfeld Follies costumed their dancers as "Brinkley Girls." Pop music heralded her creations and a line of hair products carried her name. As the war years approached, her comic strip serials evolved from naive romantic themes like "Billy and Betty and Their Love Through the Ages" to presenting women in less traditional roles like "Heroines of Today." Championing the cause of better pay and conditions for workingwomen, Brinkley became an early archetype of the contemporary American woman.

Trina Robbins has long championed the work of women cartoonists. Her early underground work appeared in the groundbreaking Wimmen's Comix anthology. In 1969 she co-created the character Vampirella for Forrest Ackerman and later collaborated with Colleen Doran on a provocative Wonder Woman series. She has written several volumes on the role of women in comix including From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Women's Comics from Teens to Zines. Robbins co-founded Friends of Lulu in 1994, a nonprofit organization promoting women's readership of comics and increasing profile in the comix profession. In addition to her appearance at Fantagraphics Bookstore, Robbins will be a guest at Geek Girl Con held at the Seattle Center October 8 and 9.

The "Brinkley Girls" exhibition includes a dozen Brinkley comics pages, as well as Brinkley-illustrated sheet music, hair accessories, photographs, and related ephemera. Robbins will discuss Nell Brinkley's fascinating career followed by an informal reception and book signing from 6:00 to 9:00 PM on Saturday, October 8 at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, 1201 S. Vale St., Seattle. Phone 206.658.0110.

This event coincides with the lively Georgetown Art Attack featuring visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic neighborhood.

Here's your first gander at the final cover for our mammoth upcoming collection of Zippy creator Bill Griffith's comic book work, Lost and Found. The especially observant among you will note that the artwork is the same as the preliminary version; we just have a new title treatment. The book's running a bit behind schedule because it has expanded quite a bit from when we first announced it — the original subtitle was "Comics 1970-1994" — but it's off to the printer now for a late December release!

Here's a fine-feathered one for the Fantagraphics Fashion Files: a mustachioed duck tee from Paul Hornschemeier.

Read that again. A mustachioed duck tee.

Apparently, it's a character from somebody else's book. But I don't really care. 'Cause it's a duck. With a mustache. And a portion of the t-shirt sales go to Young Chicago Authors.

As Michael Kupperman reported last week on Twitter, Tales Designed to Thrizzle ain't done yet, and to prove it, he's giving New York City a sneak peek at the upcoming issue TONIGHT!

Join Kupperman and kompany at Luca Bar in the East Village [ Ave. B & 13th St ], starting at 7:00 PM. He'll be giving a presentation of the new strip "Quincy, M.E." which is making its debut in Tales Designed to Thrizzle #7 (in stores this November).

Kupperman tells us, he will also be dissecting the late-70's TV show, Quincy, starring Jack Klugman, and the Quincy episode "Snake Eyes" (Season 2 Episode 1), which he says he was forced to watch as research. 

Also appearing will be Onion editor Joe Randazzo and New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake -- clearly, it'll be a night to remember! Don't miss it!

• Lettering by Jason for Athos in America; other recent Cats Without Dogs blog posts include Woody Allen movie reviews and an R.E.M. top 5

• From Kevin Huizenga, a couple of images from an upcoming anthology contribution (the originals of which are part of the Dylan Williams benefit auctions)

• Frank in the Museum of Sex, a recently-completed painting by Jim Woodring; also, Frank and the Living Rock, a drawing; Icebreaker, a drawing; and Frank in an unusual place, a photo

• Aqualad action by Steven Weissman at Repaneled; also his weekly "I, Anonymous " spot

• Unused (amazingly) poster design by Jim Blanchard for EMP's Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses exhibit

• Cartoon Utopia drawings by Ron Regé Jr. (still raising cash to aid in the completion of the book)

• Eleanor Davis robot portraits and trial sketches for the GR2 Robots art show; also a band sketch and custom book cover

• Paul Hornschemeier continues posting Forlorn Funnies prep artwork and other drawings on his The Daily Forlorn blog

• Stephen DeStefano gets Trekky in this recent storyboard work

• Versions of Lorenzo Mattotti's cover illustration for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in various states and media

• Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest and more by Max

• Prison Pit fan art by Jon Light

Plus:

• Updates on Frank Santoro's Tumblr including new drawings

• New updates on the Jim Flora blog with vintage spot illustrations

• Glow-in-the-dark prints by Lilli Carré

• A Noah Van Sciver "Chicken Strips" story from 2007

• One of Renee French's patented cute-n-creepy guys

• Steve Brodner redesigns the symbol of justice in light of the Troy Davis execution

• More travel sketches by Anders Nilsen

If you would like your copy of Mome Vol. 22 to come with "a bunch of weird drawings on the indicia page" by Josh Simmons and Wendy Chin, you can buy such a copy from Josh here. (Josh explains his contributions and collaborations in the issue here.)

Josh also has a new edition of his Cirkus New Orleans minicomic available (documenting his time in the sex circus, as chronicled in his interview in The Comics Journal #291).

Tim Lane's 5-page illustrated feature for the Riverfront Times on St. Louis's "Hopeville" homeless camp (here in Seattle our homeless camp is called "Nickelsville" after our former mayor) is now up on his blog to read. Above, the RFT cover (designed by art director Tom Carlson), which was featured as a "Cover of the Day" by the Society of Publication Designers, with a scan from Tim's sketchbook; below, the finished page based on that sketch.

Astute readers know that one of the webcomics we regularly feature in our weekly roundup here (and one of my personal faves) is Amazing Facts... and Beyond! with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch (the latter of whose strips we regretfully skip due to the fact that he is not a member of our roster of published artists, even though they are equally awesome to Kevin's... but I digress). Not one but TWO new minicomic collections of the strip are now available through the Catastrophe Shop: Vol. 4, Brain Dump, and Vol. 5, Factual Healing. Get yours now and get self-factualized!

For some reason, the Eisner Awards are being held on a cruise ship, and I'm in charge of announcing all the winners, wandering from room to room with a microphone, being broadcast to the entire ship. Many of the winners are written down in languages I can't pronounce (including a particularly long title in Greek) and I try to make light of my mangling of the titles; appreciative roars of laughter from the audience indicate that I'm pulling it off and I think to myself, "I'm doing okay, I guess Jackie Estrada will have me back next year again to do this."

Then I'm in the Washington D.C. Capitol building. The legislative session has apparently ended, and a half-dozen senators rush down to the floor, where someone has set up card tables with comic books and little cardboard hand-written name plates, like at the last tiny local comic book convention you attended. Apparently the senators are selling mini-comics, although it's unclear whether this is some sort of fund-raising thing, or whether the senators wrote and drew them themselves. (Also, for some reason I get the idea they're all Democrats.) Curious, I walk up to the closest senator, who happens to be the actor Peter Boyle. (It has slipped my mind that he died about five years ago.) His comic is flipped open to a page of a huge erect penis, which I recognize as having been drawn by Gilbert Hernandez in full-tilt Birdland mode. I think to myself, "I never thought I'd see the day when they were selling pornographic comics on the Senate floor," an insight I wish to share with Tom Spurgeon, who is sitting at his own little table a few yards away. I move toward him, but before I can engage him in conversation, my dog barking in the basement wakes me up.

[For Kim's three previous comics-oriented dreams and more, see our newly-created "Adventures in Slumberland" Flog category. – Ed.]

The delivery guy just dropped off our advance copies of Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks and we couldn't wait to tease you with a couple of photos! This is a book that many of us here have wanted to see for a very long time, we worked very hard to make it happen, and we're pretty darn pleased with how it came out if we do say so ourselves. We'll have more comprehensive previews in our usual photo & video formats for you soon.