How great is the great John Severin's cover for the new 10th issue of Desert Island's esssential free tabloid comics anthology Smoke Signal? Even greater with the watercolors of Mome contributor Victor Kerlow! Also in this issue: Michael DeForge, Bill Griffith, Sam Henderson, Keith Jones, Kaz, Benjamin Marra, Dane Martin, Jesse McManus, Tony Millionaire, Donny Robinson, Jim Rugg, Matthew Thurber, James Turek, and Noah Van Sciver. A stellar lineup as always! Get your FREE issue at Desert Island in Brooklyn, or if it's not geographically convenient you can pay a paltry 4 bucks and have one shipped to you.

Jaime Hernandez's signing at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn the other week was a total success, no surprise there!  Thank you so much to everyone who came out to celebrate the release of Love & Rockets: New Stories, Vol. 4 with Jaime, and thank you so much to Tom & Amy from BSC* for hosting such a wonderful event!  All photos are courtesy of their Facebook page!

[ * Bergen Street Comics, NOT the "Baby-Sitters Club"... ]

My wish came true!!!  Here's Jaime with my longtime-literary-crush, John Hodgman.

Adrian Tomine also stopped by!

Some happy Love & Rockets fans!  [ l-r: Joe Hughes, Ivan Brandon, Jenny Lee, and Cliff Chiang ]

The store was packed!

 A display of Love & Rockets: New Stories, Volume 4, before it got wiped out by fans! Have you gotten your copy yet? Brooklynites, swing by Bergen Street Comics [ 470 Bergen Street ], or order online today! 

Hair fresh from my shower, I walk into the Fantagraphics office, still in my robe. Gary has convened a meeting and is complaining vociferously about misuse of an intern, who was apparently given a job to perform above normal intern capabilities — or who had screwed up a job as a result, I'm not quite sure which. He starts quizzing me about it, and in fact I suspect it was me who gave this intern (note to current and past interns: it was none of you) a huge interview-transcribing job that is the issue, but I deflect the interrogation by pointing out that I just got up and need a moment to settle in. He subsides, at which point Leslie Stein (of Eye of the Majestic Creature fame), who is standing next to him, picks up a microphone and begins signing a pop hit, with full musical accompaniment. (Fantagraphics has a karaoke machine? I don't question it.) Her singing is excellent. I decide I need to find a specific Tintin album for some reason, and as I'm looking for it on the office bookshelves — I keep finding clusters of Tintin books, but the one I need is always missing — I realize that Leslie is singing a Britney Spears song. (I don't remember which one. It's not one of the big hits, like "Oops! I Did it Again" or "Womanizer," and not that awful new Autotuned one either.) I smugly think to myself, "I bet Gary has no idea that's a Britney Spears song." (That Gary, he's so out of it.) Leslie finishes the song to deserved applause from the staff. She starts into a second one. In the meantime my search has shifted over to a search for a Love and Rockets collection, with similar lack of success. I hear a dog barking in the distance. It is my dog Ludvig. I wake up; he's downstairs barking to be let out.

Dream guaranteed 100% accurate. For earlier dreams go here and here.

The last time I walked into the Fantagraphics office in a robe with wet hair was 1984. I am not (at all) a Britney Spears fan, although I do think this is pretty awesome.

Washington State-based arts foundation Artist Trust has announced the shortlist of finalists for its 2011 Arts Innovator Award, including Queen of the Black Black and Artichoke Tales creator Megan Kelso! The award consists of a nice fat cash prize (and two other finalists get smaller cash amounts) out of the deep, deep Dale Chihuly coffers. This would certainly be a huge boon to Megan as she works on her next book. Recipients are announced next week. Good luck Megan!

It's been a while since Paul Hornschemeier has had a new t-shirt design, but he's back... and he means business.  As in this t-shirt design. Go get one and go for that promotion, available online at Paul's Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop.

We're still reeling from the amazing weekend Fantagraphics had at the 2011 Small Press Expo earlier this month! Kim's awesome wife has some photos she's gonna share with us later, but in the meantime, here's some photos, thanks to our friends at the SPX Facebook page!

Here's our fearless leader Kim Thompson accepting Jaime Hernandez's "Outstanding Story" Ignatz for "Browntown" from Love and Rockets: New Stories #3!

And here's Mome newcomer Joseph Lambert accepting either the award for "Outstanding Cartoonist" or "Oustanding Collection" for I Will Bite You!

Presiding over the evening's events is SPX Executive Director, Warren Bernard... also, the editor of our collection Drawing Power: An Exhibition of Cartoon Advertising!

Jim Woodring signs a copy of the fancy brand-new edition of The Frank Book. (You can pre-order a copy here, and get a signed bookplate, while supplies last, by the way!)

Here's Johnny Ryan, on panel.

And here's Diane Noomin and Paul Hornschemeier, signing at the Fantagraphics table!

Check out even more pics at the SPX Facebook page. And thank you so much to our artists, the organizers of SPX, and everyone who came by our table and bought books!

The Twain in the Membrane Tour rages on with a reading and signing this Wednesday, September 21st at BookCourt in Brooklyn, NY!

The fun kicks off at 7:00 PM during "Cousin Corinne's Live Comix Block," MC'ed by Jeff Newelt, and curated by Dean Haspiel.

Michael Kupperman will be doing a slideshow and reading of Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010, and Ben Katchor will also be in attendance, signing his latest, The Cardboard Valise.

Time Out New York listed this as one of the 20 Top Book Events this Fall!

Don't miss it!  And keep an eye on the Fantagraphics events page, so you don't miss any future dates on the Twain in the Membrane fall tour!

Our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web:

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Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size):

Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

And elsewhere:

Amazing Facts... and Beyond! with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga:

Cochlea & Eustachia by Hans Rickheit:

Humblug by Arnold Roth:

Maakies by Tony Millionaire:

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow:

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010 is both hilarious and very strange. The book exudes a unique mood of giddy amazement... Credit for both the mirth and oddness belong to cartoonist Michael Kupperman, who illustrated the book based on a manuscript he says was given to him by Twain. Given the fact that the off-kilter humour of the book is very similar to the sensibility displayed in Kupperman’s earlier work, notably his dada-esque comic book Tales Designed to Trizzle, the cynical might assume that Mark Twain is only the nominal author of this book. Yet it’s fair to say that the spirit of Twain hovers near the volume.... Aside from his debt to Twain, Kupperman belongs to the tradition of erudite humor that runs from Robert Benchley to Monty Python." – Jeet Heer, The National Post

• Review: "...[Eye of the Majestic Creature] is phenomenal.... The character, Larry, who is leagues more animatic and expressive than some of the characters around her (no doubt on purpose, as the character leaps out of each panel) is responsible for carrying the entire weight of the narrative through dialog. She does so fluidly, and through nuanced avenues.... I really enjoyed this collection, and I want to see more from this creator.... There is significant depth to this fantastic story about a girl, her guitar, and the quirks associated with staying alive." – Alex Jarvis, Spandexless

• Review: "Set to Sea is the kind of comic that you give to people you love with a knowing look that says 'read this, you'll thank me later.' The kind of book that is not exclusively reserved for aficionados of the comics art form. The kind of work that, by virtue of its poetry, leaves the reader in an emotional state once he's read the final page, and that simply demands to be flipped through again immediately so that the reader might breathe in this adventure's perfume for a little longer." – Thierry Lemaire, Actua BD (translated from French)

• Review: "Paul Hornschemeier uses the medium of cartooning [in The Three Paradoxes] as the message he is sending, as each new chapter in the book references different cartoon styles and axioms.... The skill of Hornschemeier is abundant on these pages, as he effortlessly transitions from style to style. Despite that, each style fits within the story; none is so strange that it breaks the reader out of the story.... The book gets a lot of information packed into its relatively smaller frame. The book’s presentation is similarly phenomenal...; it’s really solid and uniform.... I loved it. Well done, Paul." – Alex Jarvis, Spandexless

• Plugs: Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald's list of recommended recent comics and related books for Publishers Weekly includes The Art of Joe Kubert by Bill Schelly ("The great war artist’s entire history is surveyed in spectacular fashion, along with critical commentary by Schelly") and Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly ("The whimsical, wise adventures of the residents of the Okeefenokee swamp are collected in a deluxe edition for the first time")

• Plug: "Fantagraphics has prepared a nice preview video for the fourth and final [Final??? Not at all — I don't know where they got that idea. – Ed.] issue of Love and Rockets: New Stories in stores soon. It features a 35-page story called ‘King Vampire’. Oh boy, if even the Hernandez bros succumb to the vampire craze, this really is the end of the world now, isn’t it?" – Frederik Hautain, Broken Frontier

Ah yes, I remember that. 1976 or 1977. My family had just moved from Munich, Germany to Montpellier, France, and my Mother, my brother, and I were cooling our heels in our usual summer vacation spot of Copenhagen, Denmark while my Father was setting up our new Montpellier digs. (That would be the same Montpellier that currently serves as home base for Lewis Trondheim and Jason.) WIth ample time on his hands, my Father, who was (and is) an avid photographer, had just discovered the age-old trick of photographing someone multiple times in front of a black backdrop to create the illusion of multiple iterations of the same person (no, kids, there was no Photoshop then), and had sent us some hilarious fumetti of himself in various goofy disguises interacting with himself.

Around the same time, future Marvel Editor-in-Chief Mark Gruenwald (whom I knew well through correspondence) — at the time still a fan, of course — had self-published his TREATISE ON REALITY, one of the central tenets of which was that the Marvel and DC universes contained an infinite amount of "realities" each of which was created by an individual human decision (a kind of sci-fi version of chaos theory in which the butterfly does AND doesn't flap its wings). So in one reality Peter Parker decided not to go to that science exhibit and didn't get bitten by that spider, or Bruce Wayne's parents didn't duck down that dark alleyway, etc. Those reality-creating "decision points" he dubbed "nexuses" (or "nexi"?). Somehow in my geeky mind this combined with the technique my father had been playing around with and the whole family got together (note my Mother's credit for "flying cucumber" effect) and created this illustration of what would happen if, as I was reading Mark's treatise, I found myself having to decide among continuing to read it, going for a snack, or going to bed (the trifecta of choices pretty much anyone faces when reading late at night).

Everyone got a kick out of it (including Dean Mullaney, who was very much the "nexus" of that group) and I've been lugging around that set of Xeroxes for three and a half decades — until some wisenheimer in the Fantagraphics offices found it in a box and slapped it up on Flog.

Tom Spurgeon's recollection on his comicsreporter.com blog that this ties into a group of round-robin fan correspondents that included Rob Rodi and Jo Duffy (also Ralph Macchio — the future Marvel editor, not the Karate Kid star) is on the nose.

I don't even want to think about how many of this blog's readers weren't even born when I did this.

Rest in peace Mark Gruenwald, a good guy who died far too young. Hopefully there are thousands of other alternate realities where he's still happily editing Marvel comics.