Periodic clips & strips (normal posting schedule returns next week, probably) — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• On the Rosebud Archives blog, a rare Peanuts promotional flyer (Rosebud Archives at Fantagraphics)

• A video from Dash Shaw... some kind of teaser or something? Even if it's just a joke, it's pretty funny

• T. Edward Bak, Lilli Carré and John Hankiewicz (top to bottom) all have pieces in Pony Club Gallery's current print show The Great Outdoors (available for purchase here)

• This is one part of a three-piece screenprint by Eleanor Davis for a print show at GRNY

• A painting (background?) and collage by Frank Santoro

• From Kevin Huizenga: Burier vs. Exer at Fight or Run

"The doleful sirens are beginning to wail over on the ziggarat. Feeding time."

• Another short story from Gary Panter

• Drew Weing's Set to Sea, pages 106 & 107

• A whole bunch of watercolor portrait sketches by Marco Corona

• This week's Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane introduces a new character

• Mid-1950s magazine and record cover details by Jim Flora

• New Johnny Ryan art for sale on Comic Art Collective's recent additions page

• New bird sketches by Debbie Drechsler here, here and here

• "Girl in Orange Stripes" by Mark Kalesniko

• From Noah Van Sciver, a "homeless comic" and some old Blammo pages

• From Josh Simmons & Co., numerous Quackers and Randy Gander updates

• From Renee French: bird, dog, iPhone sketch (?), worm, woolyman, bird

• From Steve Brodner, birthday greetings to Calvin Coolidge & George W. Bush, plus Yankee Stadium sketches

• A few more things to consider from Anders Nilsen

• Page 31 of Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary; also, this is NSFW

• Robert Goodin draws the Fantastic Four — more please!

• A bunch of new drawings by Derek Van Gieson

• This week's Truth Serum by Jon Adams

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

• Dash Shaw identifies this only as "scrap"

• Mark Kalesniko presents the original art for the cover of Mail Order Bride

• A short autobio strip from poor Noah Van Sciver

• From Renee French: beetle, trap, trap

• Page 30 of Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary; also, this is NSFW

• Why not go look at some Drew Friedman classics over at Golden Age Comic Book Stories?

• Get a daily dose of Dan Clowes at Fuck Yeah Daniel Clowes

• Anders Nilsen presents some things to consider

• Two great things that go great together: Eleanor Davis artwork on the cover of the next Elf Power record, as revealed by Pitchfork — via Drew Weing

• Debbie Drechsler draws a broken butterfly

Online Commentary & Diversions, back after a short respite:

• Review: "Almost to a story, the bits and pieces of Mome [Vol. 18] just suck the careful reader in. Indeed, almost every contribution practically begs for critical examination, not to mention a different frame of mind. ... Some of the individual stories are just stunning. ... This is great art, good comics, and, in my opinion, odd when taken as a collection." – Jeremy Nisen, Under the Radar

• Review: "Right up front let’s admit this: Wally Gropius is a terrifying comic book and everyone reading this should buy it immediately. Tim Henlsey has crammed more horror into these 64 pages than any comic in recent memory. ... It is also a terrifying book to talk about, because its level of craft is so high, its surface so impenetrable, that it’s like trying to write about Kubrick or something: You know it’s all in there, but it’s hard to find a foothold. ... Hensley’s drawings... and are so fluid and articulate that it’s hard to believe he could or does draw or even hand write any other way. ... In his hands [the book's aesthetic] is a complete language. It’s a bracing, enervating way of making comics because there’s so much dissonance between what I want to read the lines as and what the drawings those lines form actually mean." – Dan Nadel, Comics Comics

• Review: "[Jim Woodring] has been called one of the great cartoonists of his generation and at this point, there’s little doubt of his visual storytelling prowess. But it’s the intense, visionary images and worlds that spring from his mind and on to his pages that truly separates him from his peers. ... Weathercraft, like all his Unifactor stories, is absolutely wordless. It’s a quiet, cosmic adventure that relies on Woodring’s extraordinary control of visual language and blends his understanding of Vedantic beliefs with stylized, Max Fleischer nightmares to explore ideas about the evolution of consciousness." – Paul Rios

• Review: "Read [Weathercraft] a third time, thinking about Woodring’s video commentary, and recognize how cohesive it is. There’s a real clarity to the plot and to Woodring’s character designs and panel compositions. You will think that, in some way, the key to much of this is the artist's omnipresent wavy line, but will be unsure." – Ken Parille, Blog Flume

• Review: "Kupperman’s all over the map, and manages to amuse with all the non sequiturs more often as not... If you have a soft spot for this sort of shenanigans, kinda like much of Adult Swim but smarter than the run of that mill, you could do worse than to pick [Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6] up..." – Johnny Bacardi, Popdose

• Review: "...Sand & Fury: A Scream Queen Adventure... is a romp concocted of homage to the weird horrors of filmmakers David Lynch and Dario Argento, with a shout out even to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. But it also features the signature Anderson political subtlety. ... A graphic text is, by nature, more explicit — graphic — than it can be subtle. So, Anderson’s love scenes verge on kink, while the death scenes owe much to the gore of recent vampire flicks and George Romero’s Zombie franchise. ... Sand & Fury is not classic literature, but it is fine pop art. Check it out." – George Elliott Clarke, The Chronicle Herald

• Review: "The story booms with Deitch's explosive composition techniques and the narrative recoil — somehow even the genetically modified beavers here make perfect sense — is no less compelling. The Search For Smilin’ Ed! offers perhaps not as discrete a narrative as those found in Alias the Cat (2002) and The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2007), but the joy of Deitch is that his work is almost impossible to tug apart. And who doesn't want their demons, time travelers, midgets and voyeuristic aliens in one oily melee?" – John Reed, Los Angeles Times

• Review: "Did you know the Earth is honeycombed with tunnels containing archives of the entire history of popular culture, as recorded on alien-designed microchips by a council of pygmies? Leave it to underground-comics legend Kim Deitch to make that concept simultaneously deeply attractive and deeply creepy in The Search For Smilin’ Ed... The story gets more twisted with every page, though it always makes sense in a Deitch-ian way. Deitch has trod this ground many times before... but he retains an astonishing ability to tap into the deepest desires of pop-culture junkies, and to show how the satisfaction we seek from nostalgia can lead us to some dark corners of our collective showbiz past. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "The second in the proposed Billy Hazelnuts trilogy by Tony Millionaire finds the Popeye-strong, sentient cake fed up with the 'filthy world of beasts,' made up as they are from 'disgusting blobs of meat.' The first Billy was about his origins; Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird is about the responsibilities of parenthood, and how they don’t necessarily sync up with maturity." – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Everybody dies in [It Was the War of the Trenches]. It's sad, gory, brutal, depressing, visceral, and overwhelming. It brings those poor soldiers back to life and, instead of celebrating any victories or glorifying any heroic acts, just shoots them in the gut all over again and leaves them to die in the mud and filth of no man's land. It's an impressive work of art that floods the reader with a feeling of hopelessness. How Tardi managed this feat without having participated in the first world war is really quite amazing. It is worth reading." – Sandy Bilus, I Love Rob Liefeld

• Interview: Robin McConnell, host of the Inkstuds radio program, calls up Dash Shaw to catch up on his latest projects

• Reviewer: For the Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux reviews Bret Easton Ellis's sequel to Less Than Zero

• Reviewer: At Husband vs. Wife, Kevin Huizenga eviscerates Logicomix and notes that he's read Weathercraft 3 times

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

• A Snoopy sketch accompanied by a great Sparky anecdote from Greg Hoffman (via The Comics Reporter via Bob Levin)

• More of Bob Fingerman's kid stuff

• Dash Shaw's storyboards for (presumably) a scene from The Ruined Cast

• Hey, there's another Post-it Show coming up at GRNY next month, and here's one from Steven Weissman

• Also from Steven, more sketchbook

• I'm partial to Debbie Drechsler's birds

• Noah Van Sciver keeps working on his book

• Steve Brodner's take on Sen. James Inhofe (R, Okla.)

"The Ruined Cast" / Dash Shaw - demo teaser from Howard Gertler on Vimeo.

Via indieWIRE comes this first look at the demo teaser for Dash Shaw's in-development animated feature film The Ruined Cast. Frank Santoro is helping out and I can totally see his drawing in there. indieWIRE has the full scoop on the film (which is still gathering financing and projected to be finished in Fall 2011) from Dash and producer John Cameron Mitchell.

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "In reviewing Jaime Hernandez's Penny Century, I could point to the frenetic pace of many of the stories; the cute, odd, and endearing sort of strangeness spawned in this lightly magical universe; or even the beautiful art, which is truly the mark of this master cartoonist. But, no, I am going to hype the very first story, 'Whoa Nellie,' beyond anything else in this fantastic volume. ... Such a wonderful, and grounded, story is a nice start-off point for the still compelling, yet far stranger and sexier, tales that follow. Soup to nuts, this is a great book." – Jeremy Nisen, Under the Radar

• Reviews: The new episode of Easy Rider, the radio show for "rock, punk rock, country, power pop, garage and comics" from Radio PFM out of Arras in northern France, features High Soft Lisp by Gilbert Hernandez and Penny Century by Jaime Hernandez among their Comics of the Week

• Reviews: In comics form, Every Day Is Like Wednesday's J. Caleb Mozzocco documents a friend's reactions to Dungeon Quest Book 1 by Joe Daly, High Soft Lisp by Gilbert Hernandez, and Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley

• Review: "R. Kikuo Johnson's debut graphic novel, Night Fisher, is a compelling yet unsentimental coming of age story. It’s a portrait of awkward adolescence on the cusp of adulthood illustrated with the darker, more realistic tones of teenage life. Night Fisher is filled with bold artwork, psychological intricacies, and mature depictions of immature actions. ... R. Kikuo Johnson has proven himself as a masterful storyteller in his first graphic novel." – Steve Ponzo, Multiversity Comics (via ¡Journalista!)

• Interview: The Los Angeles Times' Noelene Clark questions Tim Hensley about Wally Gropius: "I did grow up in sort of a show business family, so I was continually in an environment of going places where a lot of people were famous, and I was sort of tagging along. I had the idea of somebody who is continually mistaken for someone really famous, but actually has nothing to do with that."

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater continues his conversation with Gene Deitch: "Terr’ble Thompson was a style I adapted for that comics strip. I wanted something that looked like a comic strip, was a little ahead—something that had the UPA influence. ... Of course, if you’ve seen my other book, The Cat on a Hot Tin Groove, my jazz cartoons, that’s a completely different style. I’m used to working in all different styles. I don’t want people to say, 'this is in Gene Deitch’s style.' I want to do everything."

• Interview: At Unabashedly Bookish: The Barnes & Noble Community Blog, Jill Dearman chats with Derek Van Gieson: "I don't sit down with an idea and hack away, I need a trigger, something that sets my brain loose to just improvise and create on the spot."

• Plug: The Casual Optimist spotlights Jacob Covey's design for What Is All This? by Stephen Dixon

• Plugs: Graphic Novel Reporter names just about every one of our Summer releases as among "The Hottest Graphic Novels of Summer 2010"

• Reviewer: At Comics Comics, Dash Shaw examines The Anime Machine by Thomas Lamarre

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

• Dash Shaw reveals a page from his Spider-Man story for Marvel's Strange Tales 2

• "Cat on the News," a new lithograph by John Hankiewicz

• Dame Darcy's portraits of Pee Wee Herman & friends (above) and Clara Bow, plus a new doll and more in her latest blog update

• The new installment of Tim Lane's Belligerent Piano, plus an explanatory introduction

• New Debbie Drechsler nature sketches here, here and here

• Another Gilbert Hernandez t-shirt design for Stussy, as discovered by Love & Maggie

• "Girl in a Grey and Magenta Dress" by Mark Kalesniko

• I am once again rendered helpless by Renee French

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

• Dash Shaw made this zine to distribute at the Sundance-organized table-read of the script for his in-development animated feature The Ruined Cast (interior pages at the link)

• I like this Frank Santoro image, whatever it is

• Jim Woodring redefines "treehugger" — yikes!

• This week's Truth Serum by Jon Adams

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Operating in the territory of Rube Goldberg, Wolverton's convoluted plans for achieving his ludicrous goals [in The Culture Corner] rely less on mousetrap-like technical gewgaws than the artist's signature grotesques, which are laugh-out-loud joy. While a must-have for Wolverton completists, even newcomers will find the humor readily accessible." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "Just what is Dash Shaw on? And may I please have some? ...The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. [is] an anything-goes anthology quite attractively packaged by Fantagraphics Books, right down to the transparent, animation-cel-esque jacket. ... Yeah, [the title story] is different. Yeah, it’s awesome. ... Much of Unclothed Man is stunning..." – Rod Lott, Bookgasm

• Review: Thanks to our Twitter follower Tim Leng for the following alert: "Awesomely positive review of The Art of Jaime Hernandez (and L&R in general) on BBC 6music this afternoon!" For a limited time the show is streaming here (click on Tuesday)

• Plug: At EarlyWord, Robin Brenner singles out Weathercraft by Jim Woodring as one of "the most artful finds" at TCAF

• Profile: The University of Cincinnati, where C. Tyler teaches, presents a news release about her 2010 Eisner Award nominations for You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man

• Profile: The Chicago Tribune's Rick Kogan remembers Bill Mauldin after purchasing the Mauldin commemorative first class stamp, and calls Willie & Joe: The WWII Years an "amazing and beautiful collection" (via ¡Journalista!)

• Interview: Greek site Comicdom presents a brief Q&A, in Engish, with Peter Bagge: "Almost all my story ideas are based on people and events from real life. Truth is always stranger than fiction."

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch presents the first of a 4-part talk with Gene Deitch: "It’s really bad to look back on the communist time with nostalgia [laughs]. There was a downside. But the animation studio here was kind of a Shangri-La. First of all, nobody in the communist hierarchy had any idea what we were doing or how, but they knew it was popular and they left us alone."

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "It's a closely observed story — specific in its details but broadly recognizable from the lives of a million young men — in an expressive, inky style... Night Fisher [is] an excellent naturalistic story of these young men in this closely examined place." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Panel: Inkstuds host Robin McConnell presents an audio recording of the TCAF spotlight panel with Dash Shaw and Paul Pope which he moderated

• Birthday: Matt Thorn, editor of our upcoming manga line, wishes Moto Hagio a happy birthday