Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Part theater of cruelty, part joyous liberating revolution, Jim Woodring's freakishly beautiful Weathercraft is at once the most direct and most elliptical of his Frank comics that I can remember reading." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly  

• Plug: Newsarama's J. Caleb Mozzocco calls Dame Darcy's Meat Cake "something to get excited about"

• Links: Love & Maggie rounds up links to recent Love and Rockets-related reviews

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

• From Scott Eder Gallery, a selection of Jim Woodring's penciled roughs for Weathercraft, plus two paintings

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

• A new portrait of Johnny Cash and other news from Dame Darcy

• Anders Nilsen reveals where it all went wrong

To celebrate the launch of the new improved Meat Cake collection we've got some free downloadable treats for Dame Darcy fans!

First up, a smashing desktop wallpaper based on the title pages from the book. Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." More wallpapers...

800 x 600 | 1024 x 768 | 1152 x 864 | 1280 x 960 | 1280 x 800

Next, download and print out four pages of "Paper Doll Fun" (1.6 MB PDF) to cut, color & assemble without breaking the spine of your book on the photocopier (or, heaven forfend, cutting up your book)!

Meat Cake
by Dame Darcy

240-page black & white/duotone 7" x 10.25" softcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-346-0

Ships in: June 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

For a limited time, receive a FREE issue of the Meat Cake comic when you order the collection! Choose from issues 14, 16 or 17 (15 is sold out) when placing your order.

COLLECTING THE BEST STORIES FROM THE FIRST DECADE OF MEAT CAKE COMICS

Dame Darcy is one of the most beguiling presences on the comics scene — musician, actress, cable TV star, fortune teller, dollmaker, and last but not least, cartoonist to the core — and has been bewitching readers for over 15 years with her neo-Victorian horror/humor/romance comic Meat Cake. Alternating between one-off (often cruelly tragic) fairy tales and ongoing romps starring her eclectic cast of characters, including Effluvia the Mermaid, the roguish roué Wax Wolf, Igpay the Pig-Latin pig, Stregapez (a women who speaks by dispensing Pez-like tablets through a bloody hole in her throat), the mischievous Siamese twins Hindrance and Perfidia, Scampi the Selfish Shellfish, the stalwart Friend the Girl, and the blonde bombshell Richard Dirt, all delineated in her inimitable luxurious scrawl, Meat Cake is like a peek into the most creative, deranged dollhouse you ever saw. Meat Cake is an expanded reprint of the out of print hardcover with more stories assembling the very best of Darcy’s work (including “Hungry Is the Heart,” the legendary collaboration with Watchmen’s Alan Moore) from the first 11 issues of the beloved comic.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 20-page PDF excerpt featuring all the highlights of issue 4 (3.5 MB), PLUS a 6-page PDF including the Table of Contents, Foreword by Margaret Cho, Introduction by Dame Darcy, and "An Interview with the Meat Cake Characters" (1.4 MB), PLUS 4 pages of "Paper Doll Fun" (1.6 MB) that you can print, color & cut out without ruining your book!

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

"[Darcy] has created a childlike, otherworldly realm, a land that hovers in the twilight space between the whimsical and the macabre. Ghosts and goblins, foul-tempered stepmothers, lovesick mermaids and charmed forests are all rendered in Darcy's distinctive hand, loose and flowing lines reminiscent of the work of Edward Gorey." – Los Angeles Times

"Darcy's comics are aesthetic manifestos… Darcy is a star. Mark my words. Meat Cake will prevail, as luxury takes over America. And the world beyond." — The New York Times

"I think she's exquisite, let's put it that way. I wish I knew her in high school." — Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth)

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

• Another new episode of The All-New Cartoon Boy Adventure Hour by John Kerschbaum at ACT-I-VATE

• "Tuppence" is another Butter and Blood piece from Steven Weissman, who adds "There are photos here and a catalogue eventually here."

• New Stinckers, including 2 new Steven Weissman designs, are now in stock at GR2

• Dame Darcy announces a sale in her Etsy shop and an extensive tour of Portugal!

• Richard Sala presents "Recent drawings commissioned for a book of ghost stories"

• Gabrielle Bell presents her full-color strip from the current issue of The Believer (based on a poem by Sasha Chernyi)

• "Girl Wearing Red Sunglasses" by Mark Kalesniko

• Sergio Ponchione posts this teaser from Grotesque #4 (available soon!) and announces he'll be at the Salone Internazionale del Libro in Turin this weekend

• Steve Brodner brings you a news dispatch from "Matt Sludge"

• Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary, page 23

• "Children of the Grave" (in color!) and another "Abstraction House" page from Derek Van Gieson

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

• A heck of a Seattle Weekly illustration by Jeremy Eaton

• Here's a color test for that series of School Spirits Stinckers that Steven Weissman's been working on (and here's another one — I like the green one better)

• Dame Darcy has info on framed original art, a bunch of new handmade dolls (we saw them at Stumptown; they're gorge), new purses and more on her blog

• Some great-looking digital prints of illustrations by Newave! artist Wayno are now available from Rockpop Gallery

• It's this week's Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane

• ...and this week's "I, Anonymous" spot by Steven Weissman

• ...and this week's Maakies by Tony Millionaire

• ...and this week's new Forlorn Funnies t-shirt (featuring artwork from All and Sundry) from Paul Hornschemeier (buy)

• Steve Brodner's pointed portrait of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer

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

• A new Vice comic by Johnny Ryan

• Steven Weissman's new series of Stinckers is taking shape

• On his Clip Joint blog John Hankiewicz says "My lithograph No Argument is part of the 30th Annual National Print Exhibition at Artlink Gallery in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The show, now open, runs until May 26th. More information here."

• From Frank Santoro, what I can only assume are process pics of some color backgrounds using airbrush or spray paint... they're pretty, whatever they are

• Get yourself a Dame Darcy Witch Craft Kit for all your charm-casting needs

• Debbie Drechsler draws a fallen crow

• Gabrielle Bell re-runs her story "Roosevelt Island"

• It's Archer Prewitt's packaging design for Presspop's forthcoming Allen Ginsberg vinyl figurine

• I don't imagine Renee French intends to remind us to floss, but that's what I'm getting here

• This looks like it might be the cover to a new mini by Kevin Huizenga but maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part

• "Blond Girl in a Black Dress 2 " by Mark Kalesniko

• Josh Simmons & Wendy Chin have been keeping the cute coming on the Quackers blog

• I'm super excited for Roger Langridge's new Thor series

• Ectiopiary page 20 and "an ancient illustration" by Hans Rickheit

• Jon Vermilyea posts a teaser from his upcoming TMNT zine

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

• This limited-edition print by Sergio Ponchione is available at festivals (I think — the autotranslation is a little sketchy) from Coconino Press. Sergio also reveals that Grotesque #4 is in the can (and coming this summer from Fantagraphics); the complete Italian run of Grotesque will be available in a slipcased set with additional materials, and the slipcase will be available separately (hopefully U.S. fans will be able to order it from overseas); and the full-color Grotesque stories from Linus magazine will appear in future volumes of Mome (hey, that was my suggestion)!

• More progress on Steven Weissman's ghosts-in-progress

• Go-Getters is a new lithograph from John Hankiewicz

• Dame Darcy provides illustrations for The Penalty of Hope, a book of poetry by Vincent D. Dominion — more info

• The new installment of Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane

• This week's Truth Serum by Jon Adams

• Soon to be on the Covered blog? Our own Eric Reynolds gives his take on a Jesse Marsh Tarzan cover, in color and black & white

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

• Dame Darcy is selling framed original spot illustrations from Frightful Fairytales in her Etsy shop for crazy cheap (if they're not already all sold). How can you resist Zombie Jesus?

• Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond keeps bubbling along with Kevin Huizenga's latest

• Thank goodness Renee French is giving the teeth a rest — this guy's name is Rocky

• From Hans Rickheit, page 17 of Ectopiary and another unpublished Cochlea & Eustachia strip

• All those nutty Derek Van Gieson pages I've been posting here lately? They're part of his self-published Whiskey Is the Key Says Me, available at the MoCCA fest in a couple weeks

• What it says on the tin: Noah Van Sciver depicts scenes from a juggalo concert for the Denver Westword

• Steven Weissman's peanut butter & jelly ice cream sandwiches and the illustrated tags thereof (I sure hope he's not kidding about that recipe book)

• The continuation of Gabrielle Bell's new Lucky story "Manifestation"

• "Red Haired Girl in a Pattern Vest" by Mark Kalesniko

Well lookee here:

Memoirs of a Scanner (Pillows Edition) from Damon Stea on Vimeo.

• Watch carefully or you'll miss a certain cameo appearance in this clever video that Kim came across on The Daily Dish a few days ago

• A Johnny Ryan drawing for a good cause

• And the logo for that school? It's by Jordan Crane (the above two items via Steven Weissman on Twitter)

• Three Men in a Tub's Ted Dawson posts this 1976 self-portrait by Charles M. Schulz. Dig those pants! (Via The Comics Reporter)

• Hand-embellished purses (and bunny ears) made by Dame Darcy, very reasonably priced

• A flurry of activity from Lilli Carré: a print for Artifice Magazine, a silkscreened accordion book she's selling at the Chicago Zine Fest this weekend, and two watercolor drawings

• New sketches from Mark Kalesniko

• Paul Hornschemeier's latest illustration for the WSJ; also, last chance to order that commission you've been wanting

• Another in a series from Tom Kaczynski

• A cut Mome one-pager from Derek Van Gieson