Daily clips & strips -- click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• From Jim Woodring, a bounty of new Frank sketches (including one with his new female counterpart Fran) here, here and here

• Johnny Ryan's "unnamables" — UPDATE: Details on the piece (it's for a Lovecraft-themed art show) at Johnny's blog

• Bob Fingerman presents comics he did when he was 10 years old, starring Gerald Ford

• Jim Flora's endpapers for his 1959 children's book Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys

• Gabrielle Bell's new Lucky strip kind of reminds me of an episode of The IT Crowd I just watched

• The filename identifies this Renee French piece as "prune slug"

• Steve Brodner takes on the triple threat of Rand Paul, Helen Ukpabio and Lost

• It's your all-new weekly installment of "Cartoon Boy" from John Kerschbaum

• Page 25 of Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary

• From Derek Van Gieson, more "Abstraction House," another "Devil Doll" teaser, and a preview of an upcoming strip debuting right here on the Fantagraphics website soon

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "In following Prince Valiant through the third and fourth year of his four-color adventures, it is fascinating to watch Hal Foster shape his hero's personality and his reader's expectations. ... These lessons in how a prince and an adventure strip should conduct themselves are gloriously drawn and gloriously packaged. And to think: Fantagraphics will treat us to 30 more years of the same." – Steve Duin, The Oregonian

• Interview: Marco on the Bass talks to Bob Fingerman about his illustration work for The Toasters and other ska bands

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Ghost World feels like a really apt bit of social history to me now, rather than a piercing look at real life.  I believe it, but I believe it happened, not that it happens, at least not quite this way, at the age shown here. But, what is timeless is the theme that crops up towards the end: the unsettling feeling one gets when contemplating the lurch into adulthood." – Christopher King, Timmy's House of Sprinkles

• Plugs: The bloggers at Comics And... Other Imaginary Tales comment on our offerings in the current issue of Previews, including Four Color Fear ("This will be awesome!"), Grotesque #4 ("This is a great story with great art and well worth the money"), and Wally Gropius ("The dichotomy between the clean and wholesome lines and the dirtyness of the story is what's pulling me in.")

• Profile: Christina Whiting of the Homer News reports on Jim Woodring's current residency at the Bunnell Street Arts Center: "The Bunnell gallery space has been transformed into an exhibition of Woodring's art and into a working studio. His work table is covered with pads of paper, bottles of ink, quill pens and unfinished drawings — basic tools of his trade. ... Throughout the month, Woodring also has been working on a 100-page graphic novel, which he plans to publish. The first 20 pages are currently displayed in the gallery exhibit area, and he is adding a new page to the wall every couple of days. 'I'll likely create ten new pages while I'm here,' Woodring said."

• Interview: At The Comics Journal, Alex Dueben talks to Ho Che Anderson about his new book Sand & Fury: "I’ve always been highly, highly influenced by movies, as much if not more so than comics. There were certainly comic book influences on S&F, like Richard Sala’s work and also Richard Corben whom I’m a big fan of, and even a little Jason Lutes though it’d be difficult to see. But it’s true that the majority of the influences were cinematic, particularly Dario Argento and David Lynch."

• Interview: Bob Fingerman (right) & comedian Marc Maron (left) chat it up on Marc's WTF podcast

Let's start out with a little showin' off!

• Mr. Gahan Wilson was kind enough to contribute this astonishing page to my Yoda theme sketchbook. (Mr. Wilson having been one of my favorite cartoonists since I was about 8 — 3 decades — this was an unparalleled thrill.) I just scanned and uploaded about 50 previously unseen Yodas — of particular interest to Fantagraphics fans may be (chronologically) T. Edward Bak, Bob Fingerman, Derek Van Gieson, Kurt Wolfgang, From Wonderland with Love contributors Christoffer Zieler & T. Thorhauge, Sara Edward-Corbett, Gary Panter, Trina Robbins, Lewis Trondheim, Roger Langridge, Frank Santoro, R. Sikoryak, and Anders Nilsen... and that ain't even the half of it!

• Speaking of Gahan, Golden Age Comic Book Stories presents a selection of his mid-1970s newspaper feature Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics

• The latest Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga

• Speaking of Kevin H., here's some manner of Wild Kingdom "remix"

• A happy flower (1943) and an odd creature (1993, not shown here) by Jim Flora

• John Pham is readying some artwork for an upcoming solo show at GR2 (stay tuned for an announcement — image yoinked from Facebook)

• Drinky Crow, by Mother Nature (ganked from Tony Millionaire's Facebook) — somebody call the Vatican

• Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary, page 11 , plus layouts for the cover of The Comics Interpreter #1

• For The Nation, Steve Brodner on that shitty recent Supreme Court decision

Presidents Day does not stop the Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "In Hernandez’s hands, [The Troublemakers] unspools on the page like a Russ Meyer production, from the in-your-face nudity, right down to the cartoony violence played for laughs. ...[I]t sure is fun." — Rod Lott, Bookgasm

• Review: "Even if I finally accepted that [Sublife Vol. 2] did not answer any of my questions from the first volume... I still admired the growth in Pham’s work on display between the two volumes. Volume 2 shows a terrific range, beginning a Clowes-like opening series of strips about a murderous blogger with an under-read blog that shows a biting wit not on display in the first volume. The tour de force of the volume is the second piece, which picks up (for those paying incredibly scrupulous attention) on a deep space adventure from the inside covers of Volume 1. Here Pham lets his instincts for architectural design sense take off in a trippy sequence that is pure pleasure to look at. ... In some ways — in many ways actually — the first two volumes of Sublife evoke memories of the early volumes of Acme Novelty Warehouse [sic]. And that could be a very good thing." – Jared Gardner, The Comics Journal

• Review: "...I am delighted to report that The Great Anti-War Cartoons offers an impressive showcase of political cartooning. Many of its contributors have never had their work reprinted with as much care. Even the most well-informed reader will stumble across pieces they have never seen or names they have never heard of." – Kent Worcester, The Comics Journal

• Review: "[There are] ...a number of strong stories to be found here [in Mome Vol. 17], and a number of rewards to be gained by those who were following serials like Paul Hornschemeier’s 'Life With Mr. Dangerous' or the second chapters of the stories done by Renee French and Ted Stearn." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Plug: Robot 6's Chris Mautner describes his experience so far reading The Comics Journal Library Vol. 5: Classic Comics Illustrators

• Interview: Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s editor Michael Dowers talks to Robot 6's Tim O'Shea: "I want people to see that if you believe in something hard enough and never give up that you can get somewhere in life. Here is a group of creative types who couldn’t take no for an answer and made their own world of comics."

• Interview: David-Wasting-Paper subjects Drew Friedman to a rigorous Q&A about process, influences and more

• Feature: The Seattle Times talks to Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery curator and unofficial Georgetown spokesmodel Larry Reid about the emerging neighborhood

• Industry: Our own Eric Reynolds weighs in on the annual book-trade-vs.-direct-market sales-analysis kerfuffle in an essay for The Comics Reporter

• Events: The lineup for the Covered art show opening March 6 at Secret Headquarters was just announced and looks pretty great

• Events: Bring some of your old Bob Fingerman comics down to Rocketship this Friday so he has something to sign besides his new TPB

• Satire: Oh Spurge, you crack us up

Chock full o' Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: The Village Voice 's R.C. Baker names 2009's Best Comics and Graphic Novels. Among the choices: "A lucid nightmare, Al Columbia's dazzlingly well-drawn Pim & Francie features vignettes of its young protagonists menaced by creepy relatives or starring in exceedingly grim fairy tales. These inky visions seem unearthed from the deepest vaults of Uncle Walt's id. ... Anything but Victorian, Nell Brinkley (1886–1944) celebrated the Roaring '20s with sinuous lines and colors as lurid as William Randolph Hearst's presses could muster. Author Trina Robbins notes, in the lavishly oversize The Brinkley Girls, that the illustrator 'closely resembled the girls she drew.' But Brinkley, with her thrilling fantasias of pirate abductions and aviatrix romances, remains an inspiration beyond flapper flamboyance to any young lady seeking to break into the boys' club of high-end illustration."

• List: Greek site Comicdom is halfway through counting down the top 100 comics of the '00s. On the list so far: Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 by Michael Kupperman at #99 ("Following at a discreet distance from the legacy of Monty Python, Michael Kupperman should be considered a genius by any man who has laughed with the group of Britons"), Billy Hazelnuts by Tony Millionaire at #67 ("In the surrealist vein of Krazy Kat and the otherworldly, oneiric atmosphere of Little Nemo... misanthropy and almond sweetness"), Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco at #60 ("The shock was, however, not an end in itself, since what actually manages to come across is the sense of pain and loss that each of the interviewees had experienced"), and Fred the Clown by Roger Langridge at #53 ("Ingenious comics by an equally intelligent designer who not only knows the history of the instrument and understand what makes it work"). [Quotes cobbled from autotranslation.]

• Review: "There have been a lot of great comic book releases this year, but none has the beauty and melancholy resonance of Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant: Volume 1-1937-1938. ... As for Hal Foster, Fantagraphics has given this artist his due and helped place him in his proper context as a great American artist and master of the comics form." – Mark Rhodes, Omnicomic

• Review: "Employing a storytelling dynamic not unlike that of Serling’s science fiction classic, Thomas Ott’s The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 is itself a visit... to a dimension not of sound, but of sight and mind that at once both rewards and confuses. ... Ott’s hyper-meticulous attention to how detail relates to used space and negative space is at once both unsettling and captivating, utilizing a form of technical, pen-like cross-hatching for essentially every line that can only be described as Robert Crumb on Adderall. ... The Number is a universally literate work of fiction that is a quick first read with potential for longer lasting examination." – C.R. Stemple, Pads & Panels

• Review: "The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. is a fascinating first animated work [third, actually — ed.] from one of today's most original and unusual artists. Shaw adapts well from the comics page to the cinematic form. ... Almost as well as his comics, this film expresses Shaw's ongoing desire to look at the world from a slightly askew perspective, to express his fascination with the complexity of people's inner universes. ...[T]he film... [is] a probing, emotional examination of what it means to make art and to forge meaningful human interactions..." – Ed Howard, Only the Cinema

• Plugs: More Segar birthday/Popeye Google fallout: Mark Evanier, 

• Plug: In an interview with IFC found by our own Janice Headley, musician Chuck Prophet names Ghost World as a favorite movie: "A coming-of-age teen flick movie that pivots around Skip James’ 'Devil Got My Woman' can do no wrong with me. And shouldn’t with anyone else."

• Interview: At Comics Comics, Dan Nadel presents audio of the panel with Gary Panter & Peter Saul at the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival last weekend

• Interview: New in the TCJ.com audio archives: Gary Groth's 1997 interview with Charles M. Schulz

• Things to see in the future: The Daily Cartoonist reports that the "Schulz’s Beethoven, Schroeder’s Muse" exhibit which ran at the Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center last year is moving to an online home a week from today — we'll try to bring you a link when it launches

• Things to see: A potpourri of Amazing Facts... and Beyond! with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga (BTW we tend only to link to Kevin's AFAB...WLB strips since he's on our roster, but that's not to give short shrift to Dan Zettwoch, who routinely knocks these out of the park too)

• Things to see: An interesting oldie from Bob Fingerman

• Things to see: Progress on Tim Lane's Temptations cut-outs diorama

• Things to see: Richard Sala's "Psycho Santa Movies," in color! (from 2003)

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "The different techniques — ink on paper, watercolor, pencil, black or color, collage, digital manipulation, minimalist drawing, patchwork, cartoony lines... — associated to the different strategies and presences of 'comics' elements in these variations will make us wonder, on the one hand, on a progressive dilution of any formal determination in relation to this art (bringing it closer, thus, to freer or more conceptual artistic disciplines, in which the gesture is more important than, say, talent, virtuosity, technical prowess), and, on the other hand, in the phantasmatical emergence of an unifying idea (a name: 'abstract comics'), but which is, in the last instance, irreducible to something directly analyzable." – Pedro Vieira de Moura, SuccoAcido

• Review: "I wish to add my voice to the chorus of those who really, really like Johnny Ryan's left-hand turn into violent fantasy with the promise of more to come, Prison Pit. ... Prison Pit should help anyone paying attention to appreciate how carefully Ryan designs and executes his work. You could not achieve the gruesome effects and consistent energy Ryan does here without being absolutely on top of that style... Ryan's general intelligence — I think he's one of the smartest cartoonists — is also on display in how quickly he picks up the rhythms of the kind of sprawling manga and art-comics fantasies that this book frequently recalls. ... Crucially, I never knew exactly where Ryan was headed but every scene in Prison Pit seemed to flow naturally from the previous one right up to the brutally funny, icky and appropriate ending. I hope there are ten more." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

• Review: "Unlike anything Ryan's done thematically, or really, unlike anything Fantagraphics has published before, Prison Pit is a non-stop action comic. It's pretty successful in that regard, with imaginative character designs and some surprising battles, full of many odd transformations and characters surviving the loss of limbs, even a head. And although the genre is different, Ryan can't seem to deviate from a fascinating mix of sex and violence and bodily fluids." – Christopher Allen, Comic Book Galaxy

• Plug: "[Pim & Francie] is an arrangement of drawings — sometimes preparations for drawings — generally honed in on the journey of two old-timey animation-looking kids. Sometimes there's dialogue, sometimes there's 'scenes,' but most of the work's interest comes from wrenching you though time and space as the narrative stretches just thin enough to part in spots, only to gum together again for a little while, until it's pulled again." – Joe McCulloch, Jog - The Blog

• Plug: "Hal Foster's Prince Valiant is probably my all time favorite comic strip, and this new collection consolidating the strips from 1937-1938 is very well produced." – San Antonio Board Gamers

• Reviewer: TCJ Assistant Editor Kristy Valenti puts on her freelancer cap once again and reviews Samuel R. Delaney & Mia Wolff's Bread & Wine for comiXology

• Events: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater reports from last weekend's King Con in Brooklyn, with audio from the Bob Fingerman Spotlight panel

• Things to see: Several vintage Jim Flora illustrations (including possibly some previously unpublished ones) ran in last Sunday's UK Telegraph Sunday jazz supplement — the Jim Flora Art blog has a link to a PDF

Wrapping up another week's worth of Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Bookmark: Presenting the newly redesigned BobFingerman.com

• Feature: At the Washington Post blog Double X, Sasha Watson recounts the emergence of female underground and alternative cartoonists, talking to Trina Robbins, Carol Tyler, and others, with an accompanying slideshow featuring Tyler, Jessica Abel, Lilli Carré and 10 more

• Review: "I really love comics. Reading a collection like Joe Daly's Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, I'm reminded of just why. ... It's drawn like a combination of Tintin, Dilbert, and King of the Hill. It's hilarious, both in terms of the plot and the one-liners. So, like so many other great comics, it's sui generis. ... Daly's plots move at a breezy pace, but his art is sharply detailed, and drawn expertly from a variety of perspective points. The palette is vibrant and fun. ...[T]his is some seriously funny shit." – Byron Kerman, PLAYBACK:stl

• Review: "Rickheit’s artwork [in The Squirrel Machine] is stunning, from the beautifully disgusting instruments to the ornate architecture. It’s like steampunk crossed with the animal-appropriating art of Damien Hirst or Ebony Andrews, with complicated machines adorned with the heads and torsos of unfortunate livestock." – Garrett Martin, The Boston Herald

• Review: "It's like a great adaptation of an old 1990s straight-to-video erotic thriller made unpredictable with a touch of magical realism. Hernandez's strength remains his depictions of women; like Love and Rockets, the female leads of The Troublemakers are both strong and believable, no matter how atypical their situations and dimensions may seem. – Garrett Martin, The Boston Herald (same link as above)

• Review...?: "Prison Pit is un-reviewable; it is what it is... [Johnny] Ryan is one crazy motherfucker, man — and I mean that in the nicest possible way." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Plug: Cartoonist Mike Lynch ogles the photos of Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons and shares a delightful Wilson anecdote

• Interview: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan talks to Greg Sadowski, editor of Supermen! and our upcoming series of Golden Age reprints: "Any comic I want to read I can borrow from one of the collectors I know. I don’t need to own them. As you get older, you realize the folly of having too many possessions."

• Interview: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning author and well-known Love and Rockets fan Junot Díaz about his favorite comics; of course, L&R comes up

• Things to buy: The new Robert Pollard DVD, The Devil Went Home and Puked (a compilation of Guided by Voices and Pollard solo footage) is now available for pre-order

• Things to see: Tim Lane's "complete classic five Temptations" cut-outs

• Things to see: Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty by Kevin Huizenga

Today brings some big-deal Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: At Comics Comics, Frank Santoro declares The Troublemakers by Gilbert Hernandez "Best in Show" at APE and gives it a wordless review that says it all

• Review: "Translated into English for the first time since it was written, more than 25 years ago, Jacques Tardi & Jean-Claude Forest’s You Are There proves well worth the wait. Forest’s satirical, minimalist writing lampoons French society and human greed with equal skill, and Tardi has never done better art: It’s all deep, dark pools of blackness that perfectly match the pitch-dark humor of the writing. Equal parts Beckett and Kafka, the story explores the conflict between greedy speculators and the last heir of an aristocratic family whose land has been reduced to a series of precarious walls and towers. Tardi’s intricate, gorgeous art gets better and better until the book’s spectacular ending. It’s an absolute must-read for anyone interested in how European comics got to where they are today. Had this been translated earlier, it likely would be counted as one of the masterpieces of the rich period of the mid-’80s… [Grade:] A" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "One of the best things about Mome is that, as a reader, I feel like I'm getting work from each artist that's their 'A' material. [Lilli] Carré and [Dash] Shaw have many other outlets for publication, but it's clear that they take a special delight in having an outlet for their short story ideas. [Nate] Neal and Kurt Wolfgang have Mome as their primary outlet for publication, and clearly go all-out in every story. ... I'd like to see young artists like [Conor] O'Keefe and [Sara] Edward-Corbett grow more ambitious and perhaps even serialize a story in the anthology. Of course, seeing outstanding work from old favorites along with translated short stories of European artists has been another welcome trend for what continues to be a must-read book, issue after issue." – Rob Clough

• Profile: Robot 6's Chris Mautner, undoubtedly echoing the sentiments of many, makes his plea for a collection of the early work of Al Columbia

• Interview: C. Tyler appeared on Cincinnati NPR station WVXU yesterday to discuss You'll Never Know Book 1: A Good and Decent Man on the Around Cincinnati program (direct MP3 link)

• Interview: Art historian and critic Catherine Spaeth talks to Abstract Comics editor Andrei Molotiu: "One thing that is interesting to me about abstract comics is exactly that they contain no preexisting narrative and therefore no excuse for a sense of diegetic time. You’re not following a story, so what you are left with are the actual visual elements on the page (panels, shapes) that move your eye from panel to panel but outside of a fictional time frame."

• Events: Vince Keenan has a brief recap of the Fantagraphics-sponsored comics panel at Seattle Bookfest

• Things to read: Michael Kupperman blogs two short prose stories starring Twain & Einstein

• Things to see: A Halloweeny animated drawing by Lilli Carré

• Things to see: A new Glenn Ganges two-pager, sans dialogue, from Kevin Huizenga

• Things to see: Jim Blanchard sure gets some cool commissions

• Things to see: Bob Fingerman draws a "big butt girl" (I know, shocker, right? I kid, I kid)

Blast from the past: On his blog, Kevin Nowlan shows the various stages of his artwork for the back cover of Bob Fingerman's Minimum Wage #2 from 1995. Found via Bob on Facebook.