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• From Hans Rickheit, page 17 of Ectopiary and another unpublished Cochlea & Eustachia strip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

• Some lucky 5th-grader is getting this in the mail from Steven Weissman

• Richard Sala presents "Strange Question," a story dated 1985/2003, in two parts

• A nautical-themed Jim Flora piece from around 20 years ago

• OMG, Gabrielle Bell draws Stephen Colbert in her new Lucky strip

• Mark Kalesniko presents a roughed-out page from Mail Order Bride

• Woo woo! It's Paul Hornschemeier's latest WSJ illustration

• More Renee French-drawn teeth. Gaaaah. Whew!

• A quarterly alternative comics anthology with a funny-sounding four-letter name? Gee, I wonder where they got that idea? Kidding aside, Robot 6 and The Beat report on pood, a newsprint broadsheet-format comic which debuts at MoCCA this year and features Sara Edward-Corbett (above), Hans Rickheit and many others

• Speaking of Hans Rickheit, here's his Ectopiary page 16 and an album cover commission

• "Pequeño Unicornio Tamale, Detective Privado Sobrenatural" by Derek Van Gieson

• "Meteorite swarm" (above) and "moulded gravity" from Tom Kaczynski

• Two more possibly-related pieces of evidence for the greatness of Johnny Ryan

• It's a new New Character Parade strip from Johnny Ryan

• Kevin Huizenga gives us perhaps the kookiest installment of Amazing Facts and Beyond with Leon Beyond yet

• Frank Santoro's views of Pittsburgh, PA

• David Paleo presents his portrait of Rickie Lee Jones from the book Talk to Her

• Gabrielle Bell gets a haircut in her new Lucky strip

• A recent book cover illustration by Sergio Ponchione

• A peek, an escape from Renee French

• Usagi Yojimbo art by Stan Sakai for the Comix Experience 21st Anniversary CLBDF Benefit auction

• So, one of those Apple Council creeps got to Kevin Huizenga too, huh?

• Mark Kalesniko captures a woman on her cell phone

• Sayeth Hans Rickheit: "I like Page 15 [of Ectopiary] simply because it contains a stuffy old lady denigrating beatniks and artists; that is always a winning ingredient of any succsessful book, in my opinion."

• Fresh off the drawing board, new pages from Derek Van Gieson

• The "structure" drawings from Tom Kaczynski keep on a-coming: "fossilized bloom," "batholitic vessel," and "decay as propellant" (above)

• A new chunk of Jordan Crane at What Things Do

• The last word today goes to Jeremy Eaton, with this illustration for a (now out-of-date) Seattle Weekly article about that whole Amazon/Diamond foofarah. 'Nuff said!

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: For Library Journal, Tom Batten recommends a handful of recent "Classic Graphic Novels," including The Left Bank Gang by Jason: "Supporting his highly imaginative and quirky storytelling, Jason's deceptively simple cartooning carries a great deal of intensity in each line."

• Review: "Winning a coveted Jury prize at the 2010 Angouleme festival, Dungeon Quest succeeds on so many levels: the art and character design are superb, the dialogue is acerbic yet measured, the page construction has a flow to it that verges on perfection, the meter of the storytelling is spot-on, and, most importantly, it’s actually really funny. ... As the first volume in a series projected to last for a good few books yet, readers are advised to party-up with the cast of Dungeon Quest immediately." – Martin Steenton, Avoid the Future

• Review: "The series only lasted four issues, but it is among the high points of 1960s comics, and this handsome collection is one of the most welcome reprint volumes of the last few years. ... Blazing Combat showed comics readers the gritty downside of war..." – Robert Martin, The Comics Journal

• Review: "...[S]ome books just leave a reviewer pointing and jabbering, unable to coherently explain what he's just been through or to find any words that will adequately explain what he has seen. The Squirrel Machine is a book of [this] kind... Reading The Squirrel Machine is very much like watching some German Expressionist movie: it's a series of alternately wondrous and appalling scenes, clearly connected by some kind of logic, the true meaning of which resolutely remains beyond the knowledge of the viewer." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Plug: The fine folks at Librairie D&Q say "Now in store is this little jewel just published by Fantagraphics Books. On top of being a well-researched collection of underground mini-comix of the 1980's, this book compiles pages and pages of interviews and commentary on the creative, edgy, weird and free-spirited post-Crumb scene. While it may not necessarily represent the global landscape of underground comix in the 80's (one could argue it needs more wemin-ahtists, for example), Newave! is definitely a praise-worthy sampler of work most often hidden in the shadows of the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s."

• Plug: Roberto C. Madruga of Evolve Happy on Luba by Gilbert Hernandez: "The story is Hernandez at his best and the artwork is simplistically gorgeous."

• Plugs: The latest Robot 6 "What Are You Reading?" roundup includes several Fantagraphics mentions, and guest contributor Ng Suat Tong on the black & white Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-1938 from Libri Impressi, available in the U.S. exclusively from us: "The new Fantagraphics and Portugese books are the only way one should read Foster's masterwork."

• Analysis: At PopMatters, Oliver Ho compares and contrasts two stories from B. Krigstein Comics and Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1: "The strangeness comes not so much from the individual stories, but from the way each comic and artist appears to be a sort of mirror image of the other."

• Links: Love & Maggie begins their detailed, annotated breakdown of the second entry on their list of the top 10 issues of The Comics Journal, #59

• Profile: Comic Book Resources' Kelly Thompson looks at the work of Gabrielle Bell

• Interview: The Comics Journal's Kent Worcester presents an edited transcript of his on-stage interview with Tom Kaczynski from the 2009 MoCCA festival

I might have to start posting these art-blog roundups on the weekends too... these Monday updates are outa control...

• Airbrushed Zippy the Pinhead art (artist unknown)! Posting this on Facebook, Bill Griffith says "This is the 2-page spread ad for the 'Zippy Movie' from Variety magazine, 3/29/90. The ad was taken out by the Aspen Film Society (at that time they were the producers of the movie) in hopes of attracting a studio/distributor. Are we in turnaround yet?" More about it (and the likewise never-to-be Zippy TV show series) here

• Check out all the artwork from the Covered art show here on the Secret Headquarters Flickr page — I'm pretty sure I haven't featured this Johnny Ryan piece on Flog before — and organizer/curator Robert Goodin has a report and photos from the opening on his blog

• Michael Kupperman awards the Oscar for best Oscar

• John Hankiewicz does Ditko , plus another sketchbook page

• A 1994 minicomic by Frank Santoro & Jon Good

• Jewelry and accessories "made from 100% genuine doll" by Dame Darcy

• Several new pieces by Richard Sala available at Comic Art Collective or direct via Richard's blog

• Detail of a mid-1990s Jim Flora illustration

• The conclusion of Gabrielle Bell's New York story

• Mark Kalesniko is really channeling Egon Schiele in this one

• Yowie! Sergio Ponchione presents a full-color Grotesque story from the pages of the new issue of Linus

• This one from Renee French is even creepier as the follow-up to this one

• Ectopiary page 14 and a Cochlea and Eustachia one-pager from Hans Rickheit

• More from "Tales of Abstraction House" by Derek Van Gieson

• Three more structures by Tom Kaczynski: "incoherent amalgamation," "basalt garden" and, above, "The Tomb of Jack Kirby"

• More new Jordan Crane at What Things Do

Good grief, all you art bloggers sure stay busy over the weekends...

• Man, remember the awesome comics that Tower Records' Pulse magazine ran back in the 1990s, like this one from Frank Santoro?

• A piece by Richard Sala for an Oz-themed art show at Gallery Meltdown in L.A. which opened on Saturday (Steven Weissman's in it too)

• Speaking of Steven Weissman, here are some ideas he's working on

• Nautical sketches circa 1950s by Jim Flora

• Two from Jim Blanchard, who describes the commissioned drawing at top as "Definitely the high point of my art career so far"; at bottom, a record cover (click through for even more groovy lettering on the back cover)

• A series of mother-with-child sketches by Mark Kalesniko

• God damn, Renee French

• Alain Saint-Ogan fan art and "F" is for Fielder by Kevin Huizenga

• This and two more sketchbook spreads by Anders Nilsen

• Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary page 13, plus a singing monkey

• The continuation of a New York Lucky story by Gabrielle Bell

• Nate Neal sneaks a guy into this page of Derek Van Gieson's story

• More new Jordan Crane at What Things Do

• Talk about a blockhead (haw haw): I'm Learning to Share! shares a Charles M. Schulz rarity, Two-by-Fours (via Robot 6)

Have a look, have a click:

• Johnny Ryan's latest comic for Vice almost seems like it could be a Prison Pit prequel

• Of Renee French's daily drawings, this was an easy one to choose to feature after it thoroughly heebied my jeebies

• Steve Brodner illustrates some recent news items that would have Orwell spinning in his grave — and Orwell spinning in his grave for good measure

• A bit of Ted May fan art by Kevin Huizenga

• Dame Darcy is having another print sale/painting raffle (that's the painting above; the print is different), and also taking commissions for wedding invitations — all this and more on her latest blog update

• A 1946 illustration by Jim Flora

• Sunday's New York Times featured 4 illustrations by Lilli Carré (via her blog)

• Hey Mike Sterling & Nat Gertler, can we use this image in all of our advertisements forever and ever?

• Page 12 of Hans Rickheit 's Ectopiary

• Speaking of Hans, he painted a couple of murals in his old house

• More adventures with Alfred Hitchcock by Tim Hensley: Torn Curtain, Topaz, The Man Who Knew Too Much

• More cats-n-Proverbs from Steven Weissman

• Happy New Year 2009 from Gabrielle Bell

• A "Thing to hear": Tim Lane presents the first of the pseudo-"radio dramas" produced to accompany his next book, Folktales

Holy cats!

• "Purreth"?! Steven Weissman , you genius you

• Lilli Carré presents a teaser from her comic in the February issue of The Believer (above, a teaser of the teaser)

• Speaking of teasers, Michael Kupperman tweeted this panel from Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 5 minutes after the issue's completion

• At Covered, Noah Van Sciver interprets his brother Ethan

• Speaking of Covered, Laura Park does X-Men #150 for the Covered Art Show

• Another "page from the vaults" on Gabrielle Bell's Lucky blog

• Meathaus spotlights the work of Ignatz-er Marco Corona

Looky (and clicky for better lookies):

• Newave! contributor Molly Kiely poses for a self-portrait with the book

• These and more sketchbook wishbones by John Hankiewicz

• The Skittish Horse by Jim Flora

• An unpublished commissioned portrait of Johnny Cash by Jim Blanchard

• What's this, new Fight or Run art from Kevin Huizenga? (click for full image)

• Hans Rickheit 's Ectopiary, page 10 (plus more on his blog)

• Ooh, Tim Hensley does Hitchcock: Frenzy (above), Marnie, Lifeboat

• A 2009 diary strip from Gabrielle Bell

In the spirit of "show don't tell" (and making my workday ever more complicated), I've decided to break the "Things to see" category (comprising artwork and other visual goodies from the Fantagraphics roster of artists) from our Daily OCD posts out into their own posts, with images. Links will take you to original sources where full/larger images can be seen. These posts may not be daily depending on what's out there — for now they may be somewhat irregular until I figure out a good rhythm. Enough of my yammerin'...

• This blog by Tony Groutsis features illustrations by Gabrielle Bell mostly, plus Tom Kaczynski and other names the diligent comics reader might recognize

• Speaking of Gabrielle, here's her new strip "New York"

• On What Things Do, Part 2 of Chapter 2 of the story Jordan Crane started in Uptight #3 (got that?)

• Babati by Olivier Schrauwen

• File name: GirlKnifeWoods.jpg, by Josh Simmons

• Four sketchbook spreads from Anders Nilsen

• New drawings and more new drawings from Derek Van Gieson

• Mark Newgarden talks about his recent hamburger mural at Comics Comics