The Architektur Forum in Linz, Austria recently hosted a fascinating-looking exhibition of "Architecture and Comics" in association with the Next Comic-Festival. The exhibit included reproductions of work by Jim Woodring, Johnny Ryan , Joe Sacco, Gipi, Lorenzo Mattotti, Chris Ware and many others, including this 3D reconstruction of George Herriman's Coconino County Jail from Krazy Kat constructed by exhibit curator Christian Wellmann, who provided this photo. For more photos and information about the exhibit (in German), visit Unkraut Comic Magazin.

"Graphic Novel Event" is something of an understatement as Chicago cartooning titans Jeffrey Brown, Ivan Brunetti , Anders Nilsen & Chris Ware converge at the Block Museum of Art on the Northwestern University campus for a roundtable discussion on Weds. May 5, 2010 at 6:30 PM. More info here. (Via Oscar Arriola.)

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

• Catching up with the last two installments of The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour from John Kerschbaum — curse you, RSS-less ACT-I-VATE!

• Say it ain't so: the last New Character Parade strip by Johnny Ryan EVER!

• The new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond is brought to you by the letter F — what is it with Kevin Huizenga and that letter lately?

• Our counterparts over at D&Q have the rejected (!!!) cover for the Fortune "500" issue by Chris Ware

• Dan Clowes fans & Strand Bookstore tote bag collectors alike are sure to be thrilled with the Strand's latest tote release; those in the overlap area of the Venn diagram may explode from excitement. It's pretty damn cute! Peggy's got a close-up of the art.

• Marco Corona's story for a comics anthology on the theme of art theft (I think; Google Translate has a little trouble with the Italian)

• I really like the composition of Debbie Drechsler's sketch of her neighborhood vultures

• Oh man, these little hand-bound silkscreened books (titled Don't Drink from the Sea) by Lilli Carré look so great — more pics at the link

• Only Renee French knows whether this weasel is doing a jaunty dance or poised to scamper away — I vote the former

• That was fast — Steven Weissman's new series of Stinckers is almost ready to go to press already

• Andrice Arp is gearing up for the Stumptown Comics Fest this weekend

• Derek Van Gieson takes us deeper into Abstraction House

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: We published 3 of "The 6 Most Underrated Comics of 2009" according to Robot 6's Chris Mautner, including Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock 'n' Roll Life by Bruce Paley & Carol Swain ("Swain's low-key, nonchalant art fits perfectly with Paley's tales of hippie wanderings and punk-era decadence, stripping the stories of any rock glamor and tinging them with a genuine sadness. Really, this book just underscores how talented and sharp an artist Swain really is") From Wonderland with Love: Danish Comics in the Third Millennium ("...Nikoline Wedelin's haunting, chilling Because I Love You So Much... still resonates with me months after I wrote this review. The unflinching regard for its subject matter is not going to have people beating a path to its door, but the sheer daring artistry on display deserved much  more attention than it got") and Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons ("It's a testament, not only to Wilson's genius (the material never flags or gets rote, no matter what the decade) but also to Fantagraphics skill in presenting this material in such a stellar fashion. Really, it was the best retrospective collection of the year, and I wish more people had noticed it.")

• Review: In the interest of balance, Byron Kerman of PLAYBACK:stl loves Johnny Ryan but didn't care for Prison Pit Book 1

• Commentary: I don't check in with the TCJ message boards as often as I should -- there's some good discussion of the new volume of The Complete Peanuts going on over there (via ADD at Comic Book Galaxy)

• Panel: The concluding installment of The Comics Journal's presentation of a never-before-published panel discussion between Charles Burns, Chip Kidd, Seth and Chris Ware, moderated by Jeet Heer, that occurred October 29, 2005 at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto, Canada, turns things over to audience Q&A

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "There are two types of war stories: war as the great human drama, man accomplishing amazing feats in the most horrible of circumstances, or war as the great human tragedy, the ultimate loss of life without any rhyme or reason.  Tardi’s book fits very firmly into the latter category. ... Ink-soaked and gory, Tardi’s detailed renderings drive home the grotesquery of the war and the ordeal of the young men fighting in it. ...It Was the War of the Trenches creates an aura of loss, regret and terror." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• Interview: Listen to the Inkstuds roundtable on Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s with editor Michael Dowers and artists  Mary Fleener, Wayno, and Colin Upton — I haven't tuned in myself yet but apparently there's dirt on the early days of Fantagraphics

• Panel: In the second part of The Comics Journal's presentation of a never-before-published panel discussion between Charles Burns, Chip Kidd, Seth and Chris Ware, moderated by Jeet Heer, that occurred October 29, 2005 at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto, Canada, discussion turns to Peanuts and Krazy Kat

• Appreciation: "There are lots of things to love about [Steven] Weissman: his art (from the kids-who-look-like-middle-aged-people of his early work, to the light, beautiful strokes that characterize his later stuff), his nuanced understanding of what it's actually like to be a kid, his intransigent weirdness. But the thing I've really been digging about him lately is the strangeness of his sound effects." – Ben Owen, Parabasis

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "The quality of [Gilbert] Hernandez's cartooning is unassailable. Part of the reason [High Soft Lisp] is so hard to quantify is his uncanny ability to shift focus on a moment's notice, effortlessly jumping from one character to another, suggesting whole thought processes and histories with just a handful of images." – Jason Michelitch, Comics Alliance

• Review: "The sort of horror Columbia presents in Pim & Francie works even better without the trappings of recitation and the cause and effect on which they depend. This sort of dread-inducing fright functions without regard to the recognizable comforts of logic and the niceties of narration. This is visceral, elemental terror that generally festers below — or alongside invisibly — human reckoning. ... Frontwards, backways, sneak-a-peek sideways, it all packs a monumentally disturbing wallop." – Rich Kreiner, "Yearlong Best of the Year," The Comics Journal

• Plugs: The Gosh! Comics Blog highlights recent arrivals Penny Century by Jaime Hernandez ("This volume picks up right after Perla La Loca left off, beginning with the now out-of-print graphic novel Whoa Nellie! which is probably the best female wrestling comic in town") and It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi ("Since only a fraction of Trenches was ever available to us English-speaking folk it’s a nice to see the whole lot of it in one place.")

• Panel: The Comics Journal presents the first part (of three) of a never-before-published panel discussion between Charles Burns , Chip Kidd, Seth and Chris Ware, moderated by Jeet Heer, that occurred October 29, 2005 at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto, Canada

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch 's Brian Heater, who says "Released late last month, Fantagraphics’ massive collection, Newave, has already made a strong case for its place on 2010’s list of most essential reissues," talks to the book's editor Michael Dowers: "I’ve always been into art and stuff, so I thought that [minicomics] would be fun to do. I used to do paintings, I did a bunch of wood carving, I built a few stringed instruments. I was always doing things with my hands. It wasn’t until I discovered minicomics that it just all came together. I never dreamed that, 30 years later, I would be writing a book about this stuff."

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Newave! The Underground Mini Comix Of The 1980s is a small but substantial celebration of the movement, an era during which creators let their ids run riot on the page without worrying about sales, censors, editors, or an audience. Many newave mini-comics had print runs as low as a dozen or so, while others became relative bestsellers; in Newave!, one of the form’s pioneers, Michael Dowers, has edited a gorgeous, utterly essential document of these artifacts, a thick-as-a-fist tome full of stark, crude, obscene, nihilistic, and at times genius comics. Everything from grotesque pornography and freeform surrealism to pop-culture parody and post-hippie rage dwell within, and each turn of the page is a delightful new assault on the visual cortex—not to mention propriety. ... Interspersed with brief interviews with the artists, the compact Newave! is not only an ideal package for such an anthology, it’s done an immeasurable service to the comics medium as a whole. Beyond that, it also just might realign your synapses… [Grade] A" – The A.V. Club

• Profile: The latest "Comics College" feature at Robot 6 focuses on Chris Ware: "Simply put, he's the most influential contemporary cartoonist to come out of the indie scene of the '80s and '90s, perhaps even the most influential cartoonist alive today. Love him or hate him, there's no denying Ware changed the way people think about comics, both on the shallow 'wait, you mean these funnybooks are real literature' level and on the 'wow, he's completely made me rethink what comics are capable of' level."

• Interview: Ho Che Anderson talks about past and future projects in the second part of Alex Dueben's Q&A with him at The Comics Journal: "Right now I’m doing an omnibus book that will collect a bunch of my stuff from hither and yon over the years, and I’m taking the opportunity to complete Miles From Home, a sequel to I Want To Be Your Dog that I started literally 20 years ago, published some of in Pop Life in the ’90s, but never got a chance to finish. But once that page is done and the rest of the book is assembled, I’m focusing on this other thing to the exclusion of all else."

The advance copies have been rolling in to the office all week and here's the lo-fi proof:

Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune Vol. 1: 1933-1935 by Roy Crane

Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918: Love in a Kestle or Love in a Hut by George Herriman (designed by Chris Ware)

Weathercraft by Jim Woodring

We will, as is customary, be bringing you better-quality and greater-in-quantity photo and video previews in the near future. Our Twitter and Facebook followers are first to get these glimpses, so the impatient among you are encouraged to add us to your feeds there.

A nice short Online Commentary & Diversions update:

• List: Comicdom continues their Top 100 of the 00s with Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library at #3: "Whatever the format, or content of the story, each issue of Acme Novelty Library is a special 'objet d'art,' which is part of the vision of an author who redefined what can be considered 'comics' and provided us new ways of storytelling." (from Google translation)

• List: At ComicsDC, Mike Rhode John Judy reviews the year in comics, with nods to Blazing Combat ("Kudos to Fantagraphics for putting this together"), Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1 ("You must have this"), and You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! ("Highly recommended")

• Review: "The list of excellent graphic novels released in 2009 seems to grow with every other book read, and [You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man]... stands out even in its crowded field. Carol Tyler really makes a name for herself with this 'graphic memoir,' as the cover calls it, demonstrating an incredible grasp of storytelling structure and a layering of personal and historical incident into a complex, cohesive whole that illuminates her own life along with her subject's. It's an impressive achievement, and as the first volume of a projected trilogy, it's indicative of the quality to come." – Matthew J. Brady

• Coming Attractions: The bloggers at Comics And... Other Imaginary Tales comment thoughtfully on a couple of titles from our February solicitations

• Things to see: Josh Simmons has compiled a handy list of his comics that are available to read for free online