Dame Darcy & Paul Hornschemeier both recently wrote stories for Marvel — and not for the Strange Tales series!

Dame Darcy's story is drawn by Robin Ha and will be available online as a "Women of Marvel Digital Comics Exclusive" next week. So reports Marvel editor Ryan Penagos, via Sean T. Collins.

Which reminded me, I happened to glance through Marvel's Halloween horror anthology one-shot Tomb of Terror at ye olde comick shoppe last week and noticed Paul's writing credit on the lead-off story starring Man-Thing (with art by Mark Texiera). That was a cool surprise!

A lot of catching up to do with this batch of clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing and possible artist commentary at the sources:

• A couple of things Bill Griffith has recently shared on Facebook: the rejected first draft of the home screen for the Zippy Comix iPhone app, and a "lost" Wacky Packages design that Bill says is "almost sacrilegious"

• Dr. Hermes Retro-Scans presents "The Photo-Finish!", a 4-page Kim Deitch story from Corn Fed, 1972 (via ¡Journalista!)

• At Potrzebie, Bhob Stewart presents Roy Crane's 1920s Mexico sketchbook (via ¡Journalista!)

• Jim Woodring presents "Spectacularly unpleasant goings-on from CONGRESS OF THE ANIMALS, page 60"

• It's Stephen DeStefano's 'Mazing Man redux (and seemingly feminized)

• From Matthias Lehmann, one more work-in-progress photo and, above, the finished product 

• From Jason: promotional "bubblegum cards"; a catalog cover (one of ours? I don't have them handy to check); and a book cover illustration (with a different take on the dog-headed figure)

• From Steven Weissman: a new "I, Anonymous" spot; new stuff on sale at Comic Art Collective; the cutest damn sidewalk chalk drawing ever; "School Spirits" & "Series 3" Stinckers

• From Frank Santoro: more Silver Surfer art; something titled Pompe11; "Postcard from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania" for Internazionale, with translation

• A new batch of crafts & merch from Dame Darcy in her latest blog update

• 19 new illustrations by Eleanor Davis for a local organic farm newsletter and a letterpress print in the new edition of the Cloudy Collection

• A handful of vintage Richard Sala sketchbook pages

• The latest installment of Tim Lane's Belligerent Piano

• Now available, a licensed Jim Flora font complete with "Flornaments" dingbats

• From Debbie Drechsler's nature sketchbook: woodpeckers, turtles, fungi, squirrels

• From Lilli Carré: the cover of the Chicago Reader's Fall Arts Guide; animated loop drawings in progress, completed and projected

• Gabrielle Bell presents part 7 of her "San Diego Comic-Con Comicumentary" and her strip from the San Francisco Panorama

• More AMC Pacer studies for Freeway by Mark Kalesniko, including action/disaster shots

• A Sergio Ponchione illustration for a radio talent show (I think)

• A message from Noah Van Sciver, plus an announcement and other updates, and an excerpt from his Lincoln story at Top Shelf 2.0

• Laura Park documents a day in the life with chronic back pain

• From Josh Simmons: Rickles, swaying Quackers

• From Renee French: Bugatti toy photo, sculpt of slug masked girl, e's, Barry with stick, tongue mask, mitt dude, slug girl sketch, shadowy creature, turds, Otto

• Dash Shaw's Daily Drawings no. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, & 14

• Steve Brodner's latest newsmaker portraits with commentary: Marty Peretz, John Boehner, Christine O'Donnell, Hamid Karzai, Cantor Yosele Rosenblatt, Sarah Palin & Rupert Murdoch

• Anders Nilsen's Great Gatsby cover for Penguin UK, with preliminary studies; a car engine; and a portrait of Richard Brautigan

• A concert poster from Derek Van Gieson's archives

• The latest Maakies from Tony Millionaire 

• Jordan Crane's cover illustration for the latest Cinefamily newsletter

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview: For Suicide Girls, Alex Dueben, who says "Dame Darcy is a renaissance woman. The Idaho-born artist has crafted a broad and powerful body of work. [...] She is an artist in the finest sense of the word," gets the full scoop from the artist herself: "I come from a family of cowboy poets in Idaho who played music, painted and wrote. So I was always exposed to art as a normal part of life. I began drawing sequential stories when I was two. My great Grandma Marler was a cowgirl and a school teacher, she taught me to read and write at an early age, which I am thankful for because without her help dyslexia would have made it even harder for me to be a writer than it already is. I think my will to tell stories got me through it, and I can remember wanting so badly to be able to write the words over the pictures."

• Commentary: At Amazon's Omnivoracious books blog, Alex Carr examines Ken Parille's essay on Daniel Clowes in The Best American Comics Criticism

In response to my previous Flog post Eric plopped the new issue of the Oxford American onto my desk yesterday morning and not only does it include comics and illustrations by Drew Weing and Josh Simmons as previously reported, it also has Dame Darcy, Michael Kupperman, Eric Haven, Josh Neufeld, Jeremy Tinder and other, less-familiar talents. Let's hear it for comics in lit mags!

Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing and possible artist commentary at the sources:

• Drew Friedman illustrates the latest crop of pop stars-cum-reality TV stars for Billboard (with commentary)

• The cover of a new minicomic Miss Lasko-Gross is debuting at SPX (via Facebook)

• From Kevin Huizenga, a new Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond strip

• Two more stages in Matthias Lehmann's scratchboard work in progress

• From Jason: a 1996 anthology story page; a lizard lady; an illustration of U2; and three early cartoons

• Steven Weissman drew Courtney Love for The Stranger's Bumbershoot guide; also, "I, Anonymous" (original, as printed), and ice cream roundup

• Two more panels from an upcoming comic by John Hankiewicz 

• Two good ones at the Covered blog: Jeffrey Meyer does Al Columbia's Pim & Francie and Derek Van Gieson does New Mutants #33

• Relatedly, at his Wood Paneled Basement blog Robert Goodin says "The Criterion Collection curated a film festival for this year's All Tomorrow's Parties in New York. Comic artists were asked to create posters for the different movies and I did the one above for Gomorrah."

• Original art, crafts and other good stuff in Dame Darcy's latest blog update

• Drew Weing posts this snippet of a comic story he has in the current issue of the Oxford American; Josh Simmons posts an even less revealing bit of his strip from the same issue

• The latest installment of Tim Lane's Belligerent Piano

• At the Jim Flora art blog: a 1960 tempera sketch, 1991 sketchbook & journal pages

• Debbie Drechsler sketches squirrels and other fauna, plus a heron

• Gabrielle Bell's San Diego adventures continue in part 6 of her Comic-Con Comicumentary

• Mark Kalesniko's AMC Pacer reference sketches for Freeway move to the interior

• Sergio Ponchione presents "Riunione di Condominio" ("Condo Meeting") from the new issue of Linus

• Paul Hornschemeier's latest t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop

• Another heartrending Lewis strip from Laura Park 

• Josh Simmons presents his strip from Bound & Gagged; also, "Quacker Alley" isn't credited to Josh but it sure looks like one of his

• From Renee French: scrote face girl, Barry the bird swimming, bunny with twine, a popsicle, and a series of shadowy things

• Dash Shaw's Daily Drawing nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7, plus his animated sitcom pitch — I'd watch it

• Steve Brodner takes on a hero and a villain: Paul Conrad and Pastor Terry Jones respectively

• Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary page 40 — our Dutch-speaking readers may be interested to know that Ectopiary is being translated and serialized at Serieland

First a bit of related happy news: Peter Kuper's "Ceci n'est pas une comic" (which Peter generously allowed us to host here following its various print appearances) was selected for inclusion in Best American Comics 2010, edited by Neil Gaiman.

This week we're pleased to bring you a sexy & romantic Flog-exclusive unpublished 5-page story by Dame Darcy, a hilarious new strip by Stephen DeStefano which will run for the next 11 weeks, and our usual weekly visit with the President from Steven Weissman:

"The Tunnel of Love" by Dame Darcy (permanent link):

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Monday's Strip by Stephen DeStefano (view larger)

Originally run as an experiment on Stephen's blog starting in 2008, Monday's Strip is re-presented here starting with this fine how-do-you-do, seen here in color for the first time.

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Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

Visitors to the "Counterculture Comix" exhibition at Bumbershoot in Seattle this weekend will get a preview of the latest installment of Hooked on Comix. Director David P. Moore will attend all three days of the festival and screen clips from the new volume, featuring Fantagraphics favorites Dame Darcy and Tony Millionaire [seen below together at Comic-Con - Ed.], who will be at Bumbershoot on Monday.

The show features continuous screenings of classic early volumes of Hooked on Comix. The exhibition celebrates Seattle's legacy of alternative comix awesomeness. It's free on Friday, and the holiday weekend includes giants of pop music (Bob Dylan, Courtney Love, Neko Case, Mary J. Blige, Weezer, etc.), as well as contemporary film, lit, visual arts, and more.

After whetting your comix appetite at the Bumbershoot exhibition, drop by our store to stock up on reading material and the last viewing of Dame Darcy's delightful show of original artwork. Open Friday and Saturday until 8:00 PM, Sunday 11:30 to 5:00 PM. The store will be closed on Monday for Labor Day. Mark your calendars for the Carol Tyler event the following Saturday, September 11.

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Meat Cake is a tour de force showcasing the most primal of passions! It is an issue of Creepy edited by Edward Gorey! It is a Gothic soap opera as written by Victorian lolitas! It is a celebration of love and hubris, beauty and decay! There is no other comic in the world that offers a titillating parade of mermaids, ghosts, sailors, sirens, faeries, witches and wolfmen in intriguing and compromising situations! You will be dazzled, you will be entertained, but above all, you will be enchanted!" – STORM (guest columnist), Robot 6

• Review: "Werewolves of Montpellier is a sad and even somewhat funny novel about the fact that loneliness is not hiding under the mask. Is this novel better or worse than other works of Jason? Probably not. Despite repeated methods in his books, [his] novels are utterly worth reading. If you have a werewolf friend, buy him this book. If you don’t, buy two." – Ray Garraty, Endless Falls Up

• List: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon names Ici Même (You Are There) as one of "25 Emblematic Comics of the '70s": "This grand effort by Jacques Tardi and Jean-Claude Forest may seem like an extravagant oddity now, but it gets credit from some for igniting a wave of alternative voices in a French-language comics industry whose mainstream had the added appeal of actually making its creators popular and wealthy successes. Even if you don't like the tune — and while it's a song I could personally listen to every day, I know many people couldn't — at the time I have to imagine that many comics readers weren't even aware that the medium could play some of these notes."

• Roundtable: The Comics Journal presents a critical roundtable on The Best American Comics Criticism, with Ng Suat Tong, the book's editor Ben Schwartz, and Noah Berlatsky weighing in

• Profile: "Just like Peter Parker, the most celebrated co-creation of the subject of his first book, Toronto writer Blake Bell was bitten by a strange bug as a youngster. And just like Peter Parker, he was transformed beyond all recognition — into the Amazing Comic Book Historian Guy." – Canadish

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

• Our pals at Presspop share this, the cover illustration by Archer Prewitt for the novelization of the upcoming film Morio (Toilet)

• Gabrielle Bell kicks off "Season 3" of Lucky with the first part of her San Diego Comic-Con diary; also, her previously-serialized strip "Manifestation" is presented in its entirety at What Things Do

• Dame Darcy's Black Madonna painting and other new stuff in her latest blog update

• Bob Fingerman illustrates "Queen of Mean" Lisa Lampanelli for Royal Flush magazine, plus more quick sketches

• Maggie-through-the-years fan art by Mike Hawthorne at Comic Twart

• Tony Millionaire posted this week's Maakies on Facebook while his new website is being built (if that last link doesn't work try this)

• Paul Hornschemeier's latest t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop

• A couple of teasers from Part 4 of Derek Van Gieson's Mome serial "Devil Doll"

• This week's "I, Anonymous " by Steven Weissman

• Life drawing studies by John Hankiewicz 

• Collage and some guidelines from Frank Santoro 

• Drew Weing's Set to Sea pages 118 119 & 120

• Richard Sala presents his strip from the July 1994 issue of Pulse magazine

• Tim Lane extends Belligerent Piano into the audio realm with "The Cowboy's Lament"

• A preview of the next Jim Flora art print, available for pre-order

• Debbie Drechsler sketches some lakeshore fauna

• From Lilli Carré: sketchbook pages, illustrations for Kordian, and a story for Chicago Magazine

• A quartet of recent illustrations by Sergio Ponchione, including one for 826 Brooklyn

• Noah Van Sciver vs. Batman

• From Josh Simmons, The Golden Quackers

• From Renee French, a couple of rocks and a peek

• Steve Brodner thinks maybe it's about time for the President to start losing his cool. Also, a grocery store incident as political allegory

• From Kevin Huizenga, a couple of hot panels and a tale of narrowly-averted disaster

• A new Truth Serum strip by Jon Adams 

• Joe Kimball shares several glimpses of a whole bunch of stuff on his Flickr page

• Two recent Ray Fenwick illustrations for Threadless and Cottage Life magazine respectively

We packed three powerhouses of alternative comics behind one table and the result was one of our busiest signings in a week full of busy signings!

Peter Bagge was kept busy by a long line of fans requesting sketches of Bizarro, Buddy Bradley and so on:

He also used the occiasion to debut his band's new CD!

Dame Darcy brought along her usual assortment of lovely couture dolls and other merch:

Poor Tony Millionaire got lost in the convention hall for a while but quickly settled in for a brisk round of signatures and Drinky Crow sketches:

Tony was joined by a camera crew from our pals at Bright Red Rocket, shooting footage for an in-progress documentary about Tony.