Comics Alliance has an exclusive 7-page sneak peek of Michael Kupperman's brand new blockbuster hit Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010. Read all about Twain's hobo exploits!

I am pleased to announce that we have amended our territorial contract with the respective licensors and are now able to sell all of our Jacques Tardi books throughout the world, including in the United Kingdom. Mail order, distribution through wholesalers and retailers, etc.

And in the "my life is better than yours" gloating category, I believe I am the only person in the world who has read both Jason's next book (Athos in America, going to the printer in a week or two) and Tardi's next book (the new Manchette adaptation Ô Dingos! Ô Châteaux!, which we are planning to release in 2013) — both of which are just as unfathomably awesome as you might expect. Bonus: The ruthless killer (who dispatches an unfortunate victim with a sawblade through the heart in the first page of the book, as seen below) is named Thompson!

Gary Panter's psychedelic-rock combo is hitting the streets of Brooklyn this weekend! Catch Devin, Gary & Ross at Union Pool [ 484 Union Ave ] on Saturday, September 24th. Don't miss the merch table — Gary usually brings some customized one-of-a-kind collage-style CDs!

WOW! From all the reports we've been seeing online, it sounds like Drew Friedman's book party at the legendary Friars' Club was a legend in its own right! Thanks to everyone who came out for the event, and thanks so much to The Friars Club for hosting the release party for Even More Old Jewish Comedians!

[ All photos courtesy of Drew Friedman's blog! ]

Just look at that line outside The Friars Club! The event was packed!

According to a report from Ronald L. Smith, comedian/cover model Stewie Stone remarked, "If you told 'em there was a buffet today, an early bird dinner, there would be twice as many people here!" HA!

As the NY Daily News reports, Friedman pointed to Stone and said, "How could I not put that face on the cover of the book. I know what sells!"

It may be Stewie Stone's mug on the cover, but on the back of the book, there's a blurb from comedian Gilbert Gottfried!  Doesn't he look thrilled about it!?

And look! It's our own Humbug legend Al Jaffee seen here with "Handsome" Dick Manitoba!

And speaking of "handsome," look, it's Abe Vigoda!

There are tons more wonderful photos to check out at Drew Friedman's blog, and over at the New York Photoscene blog! (No wonder Drew draws these guys! Such great expressions!) Get yourself a copy of Even More Old Jewish Comedians today!

California! Get ready to look into the Eye of the Majestic Creature as Leslie Stein kicks off her West Coast mini-tour TONIGHT at Secret Headquarters in Los Angeles!

The event starts at 7:00 PM, and the staff promises "boozy beverages" will be in supply. I'll bet Leslie will also have a supply of her latest comic, Eye of the Majestic Creature #5! It's a beaut!

Secret Headquarters is located at 3817 W. Sunset Blvd. Don't miss this rare West Coast appearance from this Brooklyn-based artist!

Yesterday & today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "This latest in Fantagraphics' line of books featuring Jacques Tardi and the second of those books to feature an adaptation of the work of Jean-Patrick Manchette is lovely-looking, stylish and bleak as hell.... The short third act, where we learn what becomes of the assassin, proves so ruthlessly depressing it's almost a human rights violation. Tardi's artwork is beautiful here, although you probably already knew that. No one in comics does the frowning face better than Tardi, and Like a Sniper [Lining Up His Shot] proves to be an absolute showcase of down-turned mouths and the unhappy people bearing them.... What a show." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

• Review: "These are two masters at their best [in Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot]. Crime novelist Manchette pulls no punches in delivering gritty, violent episodes that still can shock even the most jaded reader. Jacques Tardi’s confident, almost brazen artwork is just as dark, cold and gripping. His beautiful fluid lines juxtaposed with the stark ambivalence Martin Terrier, the contract-killer antihero adapts in applying his brutal trade is something that has to be experienced. Get this book!" – "Horatio Hornblower," The Comic Book Snob

• Review: "Undisputable fact: a new full-length Richard Sala book is a literary and comics event that makes you sit up and take notice. It's appointment reading, and ought to demand the attention of any serious enthusiast of the medium.... The newest from Sala is the graphic novel The Hidden... This book is a magic trick, the kind you'll want to share with friends because you can hardly believe what you've witnessed when it's all done.... Around the hundred page mark this book started scaring the living shit out of me. Sala's art is wonderful and holds up to a close analysis.... Like his peers from Fantagraphics' all-star squad, Sala conveys internal truth (fear, pride, jealousy) through body language and a minimum of lines. There's not a jot or gesture wasted on the page, and his color work is loose and instinctive but still pleasing." – R.J. Ryan, Comics Bulletin

• Review: "...[Johnny Ryan] is easily one of the four or five most vital and important cartoonists working today. Prison Pit is like someone making a comic strip out of Mayhem's Live in Leipzig, played at half speed and double the volume your speakers can safely process. If you've never heard that album, then I'll spell it out for you: this is a brutal fucking comic.... The cosmic brutality of Ryan's story is emphasized by his lingering gaze. He doesn't just draw the big action moments, but the lulls and gaps and silences between them. The pace is non-stop, but that doesn't mean it can't slow down. In fact, it's those slowed-down sections that give the skull-smashing and throat-fisting the impact that they deserve." – Patrick Tobin, Multiversity Comics

• Plug: "Prison Pit 2 was TACO’s book of the year in 2010, and Prison Pit 3 is the early frontrunner for 2011. Featuring the series’ characteristic extreme ultra-violence, gore, scatophilia, and brutality, it’s another hit from artist Johnny Ryan." – L.A. TACO

• Review: "Here's the plot of Mark Twain's Autobiography [1910-2010]: Mark Twain, freed from the shackles of mortality, bums around the Twentieth Century doing whatever the hell he feels like and occasionally having untroubling yet far-fetched adventures.... Kupperman maintains a straight face throughout this look into the world that might have been, had Mark Twain roamed the earth, immortal and more than a little strange. This poker-faced treatment of juvenile, abstracted humor pays off in strokes both broad and small." – Patrick Tobin, Multiversity Comics

• Review: "Very few words are needed in Weing's debut graphic novel [Set to Sea] to tell the story of a poet wanna-be who is kidnapped by pirates and learns the ways of the sea through hard labor and even tougher battles. The cross-hatch styling is reminiscent of old engravings and perfectly suits the subject matter. Each page features just one frame, full of detail and atmosphere. With hints of The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Popeye and Treasure Island, Weing has created a modern classic in the pirate genre." – School Library Journal

• Plug: "Artist, editor, entrepreneur, publisher and cartooning auteur; in his 70-year career in comics this pioneering creator has done it all. The deluxe full-color coffee table book [The Art of Joe Kubert] traces Kubert’s history of comics spanning career from 1938 to the present with beautifully reproduced artwork alongside critical commentary." – "Horatio Hornblower," The Comic Book Snob

• Plug: "David B. intertwines history and myth in his carefully crafted tales of magic gods and grand battles. A master storyteller, his bold, timeless artwork and literary senses creates a kind of magic all their own. The Armed Garden and Other Stories collects three epic tales of adventure, faith, power, and love." – "Horatio Hornblower," The Comic Book Snob

• Scene: Daniel Herbert reports on the Friars Club launch party for Drew Friedman's Even More Old Jewish Comedians for The Paris Review: "The crowd’s spirits were high, which seemed due to more than just the release of Friedman’s book, or even the emergence of more canapés. Guests were happy to meet their idols; the comics were happy to convene for an event that wasn’t a funeral. And the celebration of the comedians’ Jewishness was significant."

Our new David B. book The Armed Garden just dropped, but did you know that this is actually the second major English-language David B. book to be released in the past couple of months? A UK publisher called Metromedia / SelfmadeHero released its edition of Par les Chemins Noirs (collecting both volumes to date of the French edition) to the British market earlier this summer. Samples here. This book has not yet been released stateside, but we're told that will happen sometime soon. Impatient David B. fans can buy a copy on Amazon U.K., where it will run you about thirty bucks including shipping to the U.S., which isn't bad for 120 pages of large-size full-color (colored by Jason colorist Hubert, incidentally) David B. art. (There are also a few copies available from sellers on US Amazon.) It's the most "European" of David's books in format, style, and subject matter, and his first adult full-color book to be released in English.

Metromedia also published Patrick McEown's remarkable Hairshirt and is scheduled to release a more affordable and available (than the various odd US editions) complete Incal by Moebius/Jodorowsky later in the fall, so these are guys to watch. Hopefully their books will get some US distribution soon.

In honor of Bill Schelly's The Art of Joe Kubert being released in comic shops this week, PREVIEWSworld offers a 7-page sneak peek of the book!

A report released this week by Auburn University shows that the oil unleashed on the Gulf of Mexico by the BP oil spill is not degrading and poses a long-term threat to coastal ecosystems. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is the subject of a new graphic novel by journalist Steve Duin and cartoonist Shannon Wheeler. On Saturday, October 1, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery will host a reception for Duin and editor Michael Rosen where the public will get the first glance at this remarkable new book from Fantagraphics, Oil and Water.

On a trip to examine the aftermath of the BP oil spill, ten friends from Oregon discover that "Oil and Water" is just the first of many insoluble contradictions. Between the tarred sands of Grand Isle and the fouled waters of the Louisiana bayou, they discover that Gulf Coast residents are economically dependent upon the very industry that is wreaking havoc on their environment. In the shadow of the greatest ecological disaster of our time, they are forced to reassess their roles as witness, critic and environmental steward.

In this 120-page graphic novel — written by Steve Duin, a columnist for The Oregonian, and illustrated by award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler — readers will tour the shark-pocked beach at Grand Isle with the local head of Homeland Security; step aboard the crabbing boat of a 20-year-old Mississippian who works 16-hour days and spends his nights dreaming of M.I.T.; enter the "Hot Zone" where volunteers work desperately to save brown pelicans drenched in British petroleum; and hear residents describe what happens to their livelihood when 200 million gallons of oil flood the scene. The readers' perspective on what hope and what mission remains along a ravaged coastline will be changed as irrevocably as that of these ten Oregonians.

Duin and Rosen will conduct a workshop at the Northwest Conference for Teaching Social Justice in Seattle before the reception at Fantagraphics Bookstore. The public is invited to meet these activists and informally discuss their observations from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. A limited number of advance copies of Oil and Water will be available for sale. Fantagraphics Bookstore is located at 1201 S. Vale Street in Seattle's Georgetown arts community. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

Mark your calendars for these exciting events the first week of October: Wednesday, October 5 at 7:00 PM, we co-present Craig Thompson discussing his much-anticipated new book Habibi in the Microsoft Auditorium at the Seattle Public Library central branch. Thompson's talk will be followed by a book signing with copies of Habibi available for purchase; and don't miss comix legend Trina Robbins at the bookstore on Saturday, October 8 at 6:00 PM presenting The Brinkley Girls with a Nell Brinkley slide talk, art exhibition and book signing, in association with that weekend's Geek Girl Con.

Somewhat belatedly, a portfolio of candid photographs by roving
photojournalist Lynn Emmert. Captions by her husband (me).

Now that is one fine lookin' booth.

And then I woke up in a cold sweat, as the memories came flooding back.

Kim Thompson and Frank Stack, separated at birth.

Natalia Hernandez, more adorable than three Zooey Deschanels, next to one of her daddy's comics.

Speaking of whom... Partying like it's 1982 (San Diego Comic-Con premiere of Love and Rockets #1, if you'll recall).

It's always sad to see older cartoonists who have become so jaded they can't muster up any enthusiasm when meeting their fans.

Mark Kalesniko, happy to be finally off the FREEWAY (notice clever integration of book title into caption). Also visible, right to left, paying customer, Conrad Groth, Mike Baehr, Eric Buckler, Gilbert Hernandez.

"Well, hello there, do you come here often?" Frank Stack hits on Joyce Farmer by (almost literally) showing her his etchings.

21 author Wilfred Santiago (rockin' the indoor sunglasses) and Sanlida Cheng.

Eisners, man!

Sometimes in the middle of a convention I like to shave my beard down to a goatee and pretend I'm someone famous.

Eric Buckler, Conrad Groth, and Kristy Valenti, workin' the booth.

Did we mention?... Two Eisners for IT WAS THE WAR OF THE TRENCHES! Janice Headley displays.

And it's not a San Diego convention without Stan and Sharon Sakai!

And in case you missed it...