Recently Fantagraphics stopped by Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Columbus. This structural testament to housing and preserving original cartoon strips makes it a one-of-a-kind-place. Curator Jenny Robb said hello but my after-hours and behind the scene tour guide was librarian Caitlin McGurk!

Students of OSU and traveling scholars (like me!) can request to see original art and read books in the main reference room. The room itself is lined with popular comics reference material, less Marvel's Anatomy and more History of Chinese Comics that was written by a scholar rather than a draw-er. 

Caitlin pulled everything I asked for from the collection and more! Fantagraphics utilizes the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library when creating our classic reprint lines. They even have an amazingly sophisticated camera for large scans---we're talking longer and wider than a human.

Prince Valiant by Hal Foster lay inside one of the drawers, well many strips lay in there just begging to be looked at.

Dan DeCarlo's Betty & Veronica cover was not only environmentally topical but sassy like most of his artwork. 

Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. People seem to love her or hate her but Ernie Bushmiller's mathematically complex and erudite leading lady is a joy to see. Caitlin pulled one of the wackiest strips she could find for me dating back to November 16th, 1947. 

How many can YOU blow?

Last but not least, was an original Nell Brinkley in a gold frame. Having won over the hearts of many a Gibson girl Brinkley's sparkling ladies went from pining lovers to adventurous maidens. 

The collection also boasted some amazing newspaper inserts called The Book of Magic, originally printed with broadsheet newspaper The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Book of Magic was full of comics, stories and ads geared towards children. 

A big, warm hug to Caitlin McGurk for the after hours tour and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum for existing! You should make a stop there on your next visit to Ohio or on a road trip. Look out because in 2013 they are moving to a primo new building complete with comics festivities!

The freshest Online Commentary & Diversions:

•Review: Today on the Comics Alliance, writer Matt D. Wilson covers the unique career of Michael Kupperman. The king of one-man anthologies cannot be classified, "There's no need to elaborate on how or why [Mark Twain and Albert Einstein] know each other; Kupperman wants to get straight into the laboratory ghosts and ant colony visits. Kupperman's humor doesn't rest in relationships; it's invested in concepts."

•Plug: Fantagraphics creator Michael Kupperman will be performing his own blend of comedy with geek rapper, Adam WarRock, on July 10th (for those of you not going to the Significant Objects party at The Strand). Tickets available now for the show at Littlefield in Brooklyn.

•Review: Bookstore McNally Jackson lovingly writes on about Stephen Dixon's collected stories, What Is All This?: Uncollected Stories . Dustin says,"Let us call that the first tenet of Stephen Dixon: the world can be—though we are in it, of it—ill-fitting, like pants. The world is like pants. And the pants always win."

•Commentary: The Hooded Utilitarian couldn't get enough of the Fantagraphics stylish booth at BEA. Cheryl Lynn Eaton enjoyed the seating the fact we "provided free sample books to those who had questions. Eric Reynolds even took the time to help a lapsed reader like me sort through the intricate history of Love and Rockets, which was greatly appreciated! I was highly impressed."

The public launch of SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS: THE BOOK is coming up at the Strand on Tuesday, July 10!

Join contributors LUC SANTE, MATTHEW SHARPE, MIMI LIPSON, BEN GREENMAN, ANNIE NOCENTI, SHELLEY JACKSON, JASON GROTE and Editors JOSHUA GLENN and ROB WALKER as they read their stories from and celebrate the release of SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS: 100 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES ABOUT ORDINARY THINGS.

Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object? The Significant Objects project set out to answer that question once and for all, by recruiting a highly impressive crew of creative writers to invent stories about an unimpressive menagerie of items rescued from thrift stores and yard sales.

That secondhand flotsam definitely becomes more valuable: sold on eBay, objects originally picked up for a buck or so sold for thousands of dollars in total — making the project a sensation in the literary blogosphere along the way. But something else happened, too: The stories created were astonishing, a cavalcade of surprising responses to the challenge of manufacturing significance. Who would have believed that random junk could inspire so much imagination?

The founders of the Significant Objects project, that’s who. This book collects 100 of the finest tales from this unprecedented creative experiment; you’ll never look at a thrift-store curiosity the same way again. An object becomes valuable once it has a narrative attached. How to test that theory? Via eBay! Each narrated object was sold on eBay, and they reported that “$128.74 worth of thrift-store junk sold for $3,612.51.” This collection of tiny stories tells the tales of these “significant purchases.”

Buy Significant Objects or a $10 Strand gift card in order to attend this event. Both options admit one person. Please note that online orders require payment at the time of checkout to guarantee admission. The event will be located in the Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway and 12th Street.

Additional copies of the book (and previous books by the author, when applicable) will be available for purchase at the event.

WHAT: Significant Objects: Hosted by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker
WHO: Joshua Glenn, Rob Walker, Luc Sante, Matthew Sharpe, Mimi Lipson, Ben Greenman, Annie Nocenti, Shelley Jackson, Jason Grote, and others t.b.a.
WHEN: July 10, 7:00PM – 8:00PM
WHERE: The Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway, New York City

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview: On the National Post, Nathalie Atkinson interviews Gabriella Giandelli on her graphic novel, Interiorae., and the retrospective exhibit at the Italian Cultural Institute. Giandelli states, "There are some stories where it would be possible to have the soundtrack of what you listened to during the work for every page of the story. Or sometimes the song is inside my work — nobody knows but for me it’s there."

• Review: The Weekly Crisis solves the weekly dilemma for you with a "buy it" verdict for Gabriella Giandelli's Interiorae. Taylor Pithers says, "Giandelli also weaves magic on the way the other characters speak. There is a certain rhythmic beauty to the dialogue that gives the whole book a feeling of quiet, almost as if everyone is speaking in soft tones."

• Review: The Boston Phoenix gets a slap in the face from Hans Rickheit and asks for more. In the review of Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion, S.I. Rosenbaum says, "It's as if other masters of visual bodyhorror — Cronenberg, Burns, Dan Clowes, Tarsem Singh — are weird by choice. Rickheit, it seems, just can't help it. There's a conviction to his creepiness, a compulsive nature even in his early draftsmanship."

•Commentary: BEA was last week and Publishers Weekly couldn't get enough of Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds and new book, The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver. Heidi MacDonald and Calvin Reid teamed up to cover the event: "Eric Reynolds said it was a good show for the house, noting that all the galleys for Van Sciver books were taken and there was “huge interest” in Fantagraphics titles, like the Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons."

•Review: The Comics Bulletin reviewed God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls by Jaime Hernandez. In the wake of near-universal criticism for super hero comics, Jason Sacks gives an angsty-yet-positive review: "[God and Science] is indeed very indy and quirky and idiosyncratic and personal and uncompromising as any of Jaime's comics."

•Plug: The blog for CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo) mentioned the our newest collection, No Straight Lines.  "LGBTQ cartooning has been one of the most vibrant artistic and countercultural movements of the past 40 years, tackling complex issues of identity and changing social mores with intelligence, humor, and an irreverent imagination. No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics . . . is the most definitive collection to date of this material, showcasing the spectrum from lesbian underground comix, to gay newspaper strips, to bi punk zines, to trans webcomics." Debuting this weekend at Cake in Chicago, you can find editor, Justin Hall, at table 76.

•Review: A short-and-sweet review on Scripp News popped up today. Andrew A. Smith tips his hat to Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 3. " . . .despite the stultifying constriction of the draconian Comics Code of 1954, Ditko managed a remarkable body of work in both volume and content. Even more amazing is his accelerated learning curve, which shoots straight up from first page to last."

•Commentary: Alt-weekly The Austin Chronicle writer Kimberley Jones mentions receiving Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things. "Maybe those kitty saucers and crumb sweepers will have to leg-wrestle Cary Grant for space in tomorrow night's REM picture show."

Fantagraphics is proud to announce it has obtained the rights to the first two books by award-winning cartoonist Charles Forsman.

The first book, The End of the Fucking World, will be released during the 2013 Spring / Summer season (exact release date t.b.a.). The 128 page black and white graphic novel, which will include all twelve issues of the critically-acclaimed minicomic series, follows the unfeeling, sociopathic teen James and his earnest girlfriend, Alyssa, on the brink of adulthood.

The second book, to be released during our 2013 Fall Season, is an original graphic novella titled Celebrated Summer. This funny and moving story escalates the humor and tension between two acid-fueled teens, Mike and Wolf, on a turbulent road trip. Celebrated Summer is clocked in at 48 pages of resplendent black and white comics.

Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds says publishing Forsman was a "no-brainer."

"Like a lot of folks, I've been reading Chuck's minis for a few years and loving them," says Reynolds. "He has a keen ability to write brutally honest and hilarious stories about adolescence, and pitch-perfect dialogue. His cartooning is also wonderful; I see echoes of very fine company, from Schulz to Huizenga, but it's entirely Chuck's voice."

Forsman modestly says, "When I was a kid reading Hate and Eightball in my bedroom, I knew I wanted to be the kind of person that would make comics like those. Now that Fantagraphics has agreed to publish my comics, I guess I am now that person."

Charles Forsman graduated from The Center for Cartoon Studies in 2008. That same year he won two Ignatz awards for his series, Snake Oil. Now, Forsman is himself a mini-comics publisher, called Oily Comics, and he also creates a monthly comic strip for Rhode Island newspaper, Mothers News. A consummate small-press advocate himself, Forsman created the Muster List to comic and zine lovers' delight. He lives in Massachusetts with his partner, Melissa, and has a cat named Bruce.