The PREVIEWSworld website went coo-coo-nutso with the sneak peeks over the weekend, posting previews of all three of our books scheduled to land in comic shops on Wednesday:

5 choice pages from The Hidden by Richard Sala...

...the first 3 pages, plus another from later in the book, from Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Jacques Tardi & Jean-Patrick Manchette...

...and an assortment of 5 pages by various contributors from Mome Vol. 22 (beware of out-of-context spoilers)!

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:

Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane:

Humblug by Arnold Roth (3 new udpates):

Maakies by Tony Millionaire (and various tattoo artists):

Rumbling by Kevin Huizenga at What Things Do (we're late to add this — be sure to catch up on past installments)

Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

 Underworld by Kaz & co. (click for animated strip):

Yesterday's and today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Sala consistently introduces red-cheeked, innocent characters and then puts them through the meat-grinder, and in The Hidden he plays with mad science. ...Sala’s novel features plenty of 'tell,' because if it’s one thing mad scientists enjoy, it’s expository dialogue. There are gorgeous single-panel pages filled with huge dialogue balloons, and it’s to the author and illustrator’s credit that it’s always a hoot; Sala is a professional when it comes to tongue-in-cheek visuals (the friendly looking characters with spilled intestines) and storytelling.... Its ending is... abrupt..., but it leaves ample room for a welcome continuation. The lushly colored package is vintage Fantagraphics, of course." – Alex Carr, Omnivoracious (Amazon.com)

• Review: "Relaunching in a book-sized format, Comics Journal #301 came out from Fantagraphics this summer, and has already gone through a second printing. The magazine is dense, with over three hundred pages, containing enough essays, interviews, reviews, and art pages to easily fill 2-4 of the old issues.... Where else in comics journalism are you going to find a viewpoint of comics encompassing enough to put so many different realms of the artform under the same microscope and give it all due consideration? The drastic shift in format indicates a willingness of Fantagraphics to take risks with its flagship publication." – Greg Baldino, Bleeding Cool

• Review: "...[T]his gentle, inviting series about two transgendered elementary school students... has truly captured my attention.... Wandering Son feels at times more like a series of character sketches that all connect together than a narrative-driven book, but it’s a structure that makes me that much more intrigued... Takako’s art is beautiful here, delicate line drawings that fit well with her story.... Last but not least, props need to go to Fantagraphics for a great physical design of the book.... This isn’t quite like anything else on the market right now, and I’m thrilled to see Fantagraphics exposing it to a wider audience." – Greg McElhatton, Read About Comics

• Plug: "One of the great things about the major newspaper comics collection projects is that you look at a new volume, like this one in the Prince Valiant series, and you realize there is volume after volume of high-quality work to come." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

• Interview: The normally Love and Rockets-focused Love & Maggie blog steps out of their usual purview to hit up Gary Groth for more information about our forthcoming series Jack Jackson's American History (starting next year with Los Tejanos/Lost Cause) — if you're at all interested in these books, definitely check this out

• Lore: "Before resuming I should say this: Drug taking, by myself and others, really peaks in this chapter. It isn’t something I’m proud of or a thing I endorse. But it is the way it all happened." So begins the ninth installment of Kim Deitch's epic memoir-in-music "Mad About Music: My Life in Records" at TCJ.com

Michel Gagne, editor of our forthcoming 2012 book Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's 1940s-50s Romance Comics, has posted some samples of his restoration work and some fascinating backround information on the long gestation of this labor of love on the Collected Editions Discussion Forums hosted by MarvelMasterworks.com. For more, see the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center blog.

Dear old golden rule days are back, and kids, even your grandparents knew that comics are WAY more fun than homework. In that spirit we're offering 30% OFF our kid-friendly All Ages and Young Adult categories for one week only!

For younger kids, save on classics like Peanuts, Popeye, Prince Valiant, and, yes, Pogo, not to mention Dennis the Menace, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse! Our full range of Usagi Yojimbo books is marked down, including the deluxe box set. Plus our new bande desinee reprints and modern classics from Belgium & France, a bunch of other kid-friendly but still cutting-edge stuff, and much more!

For teens and sophisticated tweens we've got heroic biographies like 21 and King, nautical adventures like Isle of 100,000 Graves and Set to Sea, the smart fantasy of Castle Waiting, bittersweet and hilarious high school misfit tales like Ghost World, A Mess of Everything and Unlovable, a whole bunch of Zippy the Pinhead collections for the teen who loves offbeat humor — and that's just for starters! We've got dozens and dozens of titles to choose from in both categories, and of course they can all be enjoyed by adults of all ages as well.

Some of these books might not fit inside the ol' math book for surreptitious classroom smuggling but they'll all provide plenty of quality reading for kids and parents alike. This sale ends next Friday, September 9, 2011, so don't miss the final bell! And don't be afraid to ask us about age-appropriateness if you have any questions.

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago is now available to our mailorder customers with a signed bookplate at no extra charge! Supplies are limited and may run out without warning, so act with appropriate haste.

Wilfred signed these plates back in May when he was visiting Seattle and we promptly misplaced them (whoops), so if you ordered the book from us between May 4 and now, let us know and we'll be happy to send you one.

We constructed this 3D image of the Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol. 1 & 2 Box Set to show you how the books look in the slipcase. Below, a look at both sides (click for slightly larger versions):

Design for the series is by Jacob Covey. Stay tuned for more previews coming soon!

A new limited-edition giclee print of a reworked version of Mr. Natural #2 by Robert Crumb is now available from Wildwood Serigraphs.

And there appears to be a new (I think) installment of "Crumb on Others" where the man holds forth his candid opinions on various prominent figures in comics and popular culture, from his underground contemporaries to Charles Schulz, from Walt Disney to Walt Kelly, from The Beatles to Bettie Page. Must read!

At his Cats Without Dogs blog, Jason is posting rough sketches and brief notes on each of the stories in his upcoming book Athos in America. Above, "So Long, Mary Ann," followed by "The Brain That Wouldn't Virginia Woolf," with more to come. There's something else great on his blog that we're saving for later. (You've seen it already if you follow our Tumblr.)

Via our colleagues at AdHouse, it's the cover illustration for the 2011 SPX program guide by newly-minted Mome contributor Jim Rugg... and what's that making a cameo appearance? It's Tim Hensley's Wally Gropius being read by the girl in the foreground, who, if she's to scale with the book, is about 9 feet tall (without the boots).