Look what arrived on our doorstep today: advance copies of The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978! This new volume will be debuting at Comic-Con and should hit stores in August.

Vol. 19 of Mome isn't even out yet and we're already wrapping up work on the landmark 20th volume, due in October. Beginning with this issue the anthology sports a new design by Fantagraphics Art Director Adam Grano. The cover star is Fuzz from Ted Stearn's current ongoing Fuzz & Pluck serial "The Moolah Tree."

More specifically, Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden need help tracking down scans of tearsheets for several Nancy strips for inclusion in the forthcoming standalone expanded edition of How to Read Nancy:

NANCY 6/ 29/55
NANCY  8/8/59
DEBBIE (AKA LITTLE DEBBIE) by Cecil Jensen 6/ 27/ 55
FRITZI RITZ 12/31/30
Any examples of pre-1925 work by Bushmiller
Any MAC THE MANAGER strips (1924)

And, of course, Nancy's first appearance : Fritzi Ritz 1/2/33

Complete details and contact information are at Stripper's Guide. Image ganked from ¡Journalista!

Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York City presents Mangle, an exhibit of paintings and drawings by Dave Cooper. It opened last Saturday and continues through July 24. Most, if not all, of the works in the show will be collected in the book Bent, which I believe is at the printer now for a September release. (Hat tip: The Beat.)

Nate Neal reveals the jacket wraparound for his forthcoming graphic novel The Sanctuary, coming this Fall from Fantagraphics. Click for a larger view on Nate's Flickr page.

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Plugs: The bloggers at Comics And... Other Imaginary Tales look at and comment on our upcoming August releases

• Profile: Tom Mason of Comix 411 asks "Where in the World is Spain Rodriguez?"

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: At The Hooded Utilitarian, Noah Berlatsky presents an unedited version of his review of Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 by Michael Kupperman, which originally ran in the Chicago Reader

• Plugs: Library Journal's "Graphic Novels Prepub Alert" for September 2010 releases features A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio ("When Fantagraphics jumps into magna, they splash big: with the 'founding mother' of modern shojo manga and a pioneer of the BL (boys love) genre. These four decades of short stories feature gorgeous art—some in color — and intellectually subtle plotting"); Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips. Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly ("As THE pioneering humor-satire strip inspiring countless other cartoonists, Kelly and Pogo should need no introduction"); and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Vol. 1 by Jacques Tardi ("A pterodactyl loose in Paris! A fetching young reporter off to tackle mummies! And that’s just the first of ten volumes. ... Wonderful for Indiana Jones fans hankering for even more over-the-top plots.")

• Links: Love & Maggie rounds up links to recent interviews with Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez

• Profile: Mark Kalesniko re-posts Mark David Nevins's essay about his work which originally appeared in The Comics Journal Special Edition, Winter 2003

Jim Woodring just dropped by the office to drop off the first 36 pages of his in-progress follow-up to Weathercraft, titled Congress of the Animals. We don't have a release date set for it but I'm guessing it will probably be about a year from now. Click the photos for bigger images.

Online Commentary & Diversions (through yesterday; we're a bit behind):

• Review: "...[E]ven [Basil Wolverton]'s throwaway work — in this case, half-page gag strips (emphasis on the 'gag') that appeared in Fawcett's Captain Marvel titles during and after World War II — is fully worthy of rediscovery. Like a Bizarro Dr. Seuss, Wolverton packs each Culture Corner with goofy, rhyming advice... While silly and inconsequential, these strips revel in the subversive, surrealist glee that would develop more fully in Wolverton's later output for Mad and others, a style that would help unlock the inner cretin inside everyone from Robert Crumb to Peter Bagge. ...Fantagraphics has to be applauded for tenaciously keeping Wolverton and his eye-gouging, subliminally influential work from slipping through the cracks of comics history. [Grade] B+" — The A.V. Club

• Review: "...Tardi’s [It Was the] War of the Trenches is the most powerful comic I’ve read on World War One since Charley’s War... The black and white art is perfectly suited to the era being covered... while Tardi, not for the first time, proves himself a master of expression, the looks on the faces of the men caught up in the war speaking absolute volumes... It’s a hugely powerful work, both moving and horrific and filled with anger for the suffering and injustices one group of ‘civilised’ humans can visit upon another... [A]s the last voices of those who were actually there are fading into silence works like this are needed to remind us of the monstrous acts we can be capable of in service to the beasts of jingoism and nationalism and hubris, that we should read them and take cautionary lessons from them. Never forget." – Joe Gordon, The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

• Interview: Avoid the Future has an illuminating talk with Joe Daly: "The environment is surreal, in that it combines the fantastical with the urbane. I try to meld these two sides together into a continuum that supports both the phantasmagoric  and the banal, in a naturalistic kind of way. On a conceptual level, I’m also interested in combining extreme stupidity with a bit of cleverness (which the title ‘Dungeon Quest’ is supposed to invoke)." There's also a glimpse of Dungeon Quest Book 2!

• Interview: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon grills Ben Schwartz, editor of The Best American Comics Criticism, saying "It's the kind of volume that starts fights... but that's okay and it's part of the fun. There's a lot of good work in the book and one or two absolutely inspired choices. Anyone with an interest in comics should at least give it a flip-through, and anyone with an interest in writing about the medium should use it as a springboard to discover a host of excellent new favorites." Schwartz on pitching the book: "Gary was the most skeptical. Early on he asked me if I seriously thought I could fill a whole book with good writing on comics. He sent me his essay 'The Death of Criticism.' Nice to know that's on your publisher's mind!"

• Interview: Canada's National Post has a Q&A with TCAF special guest Jim Woodring: "My name is Jim Woodring and I’m a cartoonist. I’m going to TCAF by invitation, with an assist from Fantagraphics Books, my publisher. I have a new book out called Weathercraft and I’m going to answer questions about it.

• Plugs: At The Cool Kids Table, Rickey Purdin runs down some recent acquisitions, including a couple volumes of Mome ("constantly entertaining") and the Weathercraft and Other Unusual Tales free comic ("...this free sample is PROBABLY about to set me on a path of Woodring fanaticism. Well played, Fantagraphics.")

• Plug: "Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle is that rarest of comic books: It's actually, genuinely a comic experience, with several guaranteed laugh-out-loud moments per issue." – Paul Constant, The Stranger

• Plug: Comics Worth Reading's Johanna Draper Carlson spotlights Mark Kalesniko's Freeway in a roundup of upcoming graphic novels

• Links: Love & Maggie present a "monster-sized" edition of their exhaustive Love and Rockets link roundups

• Police blotter: "Man dressed as Snoopy in 'worst attempted jail-break ever'" (via our own Eric Reynolds)

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

• Stephen DeStefano announces that his graphic novel Lucky in Love (coming this Summer from Fantagraphics) is in the can and reveals these character designs for the sequel, already in progress

• The Esther Pearl Watson 's Unlovable Fan Page on Facebook presents a classic Tammy strip as it first appeared in Bust magazine

• Steven Weissman continues to tease his pieces in the Butter and Blood art show at GR2 with "Wah! Wah! I Wanna"

• Nut shot! It's this week's Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane

• This week's Truth Serum by Jon Adams