• List: Aron Nels Steinke presents his Top Ten of 2008, including Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw and Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga

• List: At Robot 6, Chris Mautner declares Bob Levin's Most Outrageous: The Trials and Trespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester one of the "five most criminally ignored books of 2008"

• Review: Rob Clough examines Grotesque #2 by Sergio Ponchione

• Review/Things to see: French cartoonist Olive Booger posts her impressions of Bottomless Belly Button (original French; Google translation) with bonus fan art!

• Blurb: Irregular Orbit devotes 9 perfectly-chosen words to Zippy: Connect the Polka Dots by Bill Griffith

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch concludes their three-parter with Bob Fingerman

• Interview: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon found a video file of Jonathan Lethem interviewing Daniel Clowes at the 2005 MoCCA Festival; he can't remember where it came from but he's posted it anyway

• Things to see: Steven Weissman's HLK

• Oddity: "Chris Ware can show Video Games the path to manhood"

• Michael C. Lorah's "Top Eleven: Best of 2008" at Newsarama includes The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez and Deitch's Pictorama by the brothers Deitch

• On Jog's "Twenty 'Hot Ones' from 2008" best-of list: Mome Vol. 12 (#18), Angry Youth Comix #14 by Johnny Ryan (#9), and Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga (#7)

• Comic Book Resources' new multi-author blog Robot 6 presents their "favorite comics of 2008," which include Tom Bondurant's choice of Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw; Chris Mautner giving Popeye Vol. 3: "Let's You and Him Fight!" by E.C. Segar the top spot; and Tim O'Shea including The Lagoon by Lilli Carré and Daddy's Girl by Debbie Drechsler

• The Oklahoman's "top 10 periodical comic book series of 2008" places "the comics of Kevin Huizenga" at #4

• In their "Bull Tongue" column for Arthur Magazine, Thurston Moore & Byron Coley check out Town of Mirrors by Robert Pollard and declare it "stunning"

• Newsarama talks to Craig Yoe about Boody Rogers and our upcoming Yoe-edited collection of Rogers's work, Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers

• Comic Book Resources' "Comics Should Be Good" spotlights the comics of Michael "Tales Designed to Thrizzle" Kupperman

• LIT MOB looks at The Lagoon by Lilli Carré

• The Northwest Science Fiction Society takes note of Beasts! Book 2

• The Daily Cross Hatch presents part 2 of their 3-part interview with Bob Fingerman

• Douglas Wolk has started sharing pages from his convention sketchbook; here's Roger Langridge

• Looking for our books in Tokyo? When Comic Books Ruled the Earth recommends Tower Records in Shibuya

• According to Boing Boing, "snoopy" is the 192nd worst password of all time (beating out "buddy" but just behind "chester")

• Entertainment Weekly ranks Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw #5 on their "Best Fiction of 2008" list

• The Oklahoman's Nerdage blog names Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw and The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez two of the top ten of "2008's best graphic novels"

• comiXology's "Top Ten Comics of 2008" includes Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 by Michael Kupperman (#8), Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw (#3) and Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga (#1)

• Newsarama's "Top 5: Best Archival Comics, 2008" includes Jules Feiffer's Explainers (#3) and E.C. Segar's Popeye Vol. 3: "Let's You and Him Fight!" (#2)

• The Synesthetic Fugue Incident looks at Explainers

• The Daily Cross Hatch presents the first of a three-part interview with Bob Fingerman

• Now Read This! loves Sublife Vol. 1 by John Pham

• Mr. Thirsty delves into Blood of Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez (also collected in Human Diastrophism)

• The Village Voice places Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes and Most Outrageous: The Trials and Tespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester by Bob Levin on its list of "2008's Best Comics, Clip Art, and Pedophilia"

• Pol Culture looks at The Lagoon by Lilli Carré

• Bob Fingerman presents outtakes from his upcoming book with us, Connective Tissue

Courtesy Bob Fingerman: 

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off!

Today's installment features a title by Bob Fingerman which, again, didn't exactly escape notice when it was released, having been heaped with praise by the likes of Augusten Burroughs, Margaret Cho, Penn Jillette, Entertainment Weekly and many others... but it's been a while, so we're thrusting it back into the spotlight:

Beg the Question

Bob Fingerman's Beg the Question tells the story of Rob and Sylvia, two twenty-somethings navigating the labyrinth of New York City life. Imagine a cross between Seinfeld and Caligula, set in Manhattan, and you'll have an idea of Fingerman's caustic wit. Beg the Question follows Rob & Sylvia's relationship through all of its ups-and-downs, from courtship to marriage, rentals to real estate salesmen, public sex to unwanted pregnancies, and everything in between. Performance art, extended families, the comic book industry and Screw magazine are just a few of the other topics subjected to Fingerman's satirical microscope. Fingerman's mid-1990s comic book series Minimum Wage was a breakthrough success, and this marks the first collection of the entire run, completely retouched, with added gray tones that give the art a much fuller, richer look, plus almost 40 pages of never-before-published material. Find out why Beg the Question is one of the most critically acclaimed graphic novels we've ever published!

240-page black & white 6" x 9" softcover
regularly $16.95 • ON SALE $12.71
Order Now

Bob Fingerman revealed this cover art for his upcoming book Connective Tissue (currently due from Fantagraphics in Spring '09) over on his "Art Blog Thinger," where he's also been posting some cute-n-gruesome art samples.