Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Graphic novelist Richard Sala cures the zombie apocalypse malaise with a new book that takes the basic set-up of those tales and turns it into an artsy, comical, downright weird exercise in terror that brings together several slices of the horror genre... into something modern and surprising. Equally, Sala’s art style helps the story ride high -- his dark cartoons manage to suck you into the narrative while still highlighting the meta quality of the story. This is a story about horror as much as it is a horror story, examining the themes that draw us into these stories as much as they are utilized by authors to comment on the real world. Somewhere between those two intentions lies The Hidden, a modernist horror tale that acts like the zombies it evokes, cannibalizing the genres from which it sprang and spewing out something new from those entrails." – John Seven, North Adams Transcript

• Review: "The stories [in The Frank Book] are fantastical, phantasmagorical fables full of transmogrification, mostly silent so that you can bring to them what you will and interpret them as you like, and if you were to sit down with someone else and discuss any given piece you’d find it very revealing – both of yourself and of your friend. I often describe them as 'mind-altering, yet legal.' Enlightening too, as I say.... [Jim Woodring] is a visionary, a veritable shaman with a love of Persian architecture and that rare ability to communicate wisdom — and folly (umm, yes,  mostly folly!) — with skill. As a visual craftsman he totally floors me, his wrinkled-line textures placed just-so, leaving each panel on the page a perfect composition. A beautiful, beautiful book." – Stephen L. Holland, Page 45

• Interview: Comics Bulletin's Jason Sacks talks to Gahan Wilson about his new collection of Nuts: "The thing that inspired me and put me on the kids' side, kept moving me along on it, was that the grownups -- and more grownups do it wrong than right -- that they don't understand how complicated that little rascal is. How much they're taking in. How alive they are. How much they apprehend. And how seriously they take it. They are astoundingly alive with bad things and good things."

• Interview: Hanna Brooks Olsen of Seattlest talks with Megan Kelso about her upcoming presentation at Richard Hugo House this Friday: "I'm using a series of rotating images on a loop. Unlike when you're reading a comic by yourself, where you can go back and re-read a panel or flip back a page (if someone's reading aloud), suddenly it's going by, almost like a film, and you don't control the page. And I think that that control is what people love about comics. You get to entirely control that space. A lot of the things that are magical about reading comics on a page are lost when they're performed live."

• Behind the Scenes: Ever wonder why our "Diaflogue" interviews turn out so good? Sshhh — our own Kristy Valenti is the secret ingredient

You'd be NUTS to miss this event!

Join comics legend Gahan Wilson tomorrow night, Thursday, October 20th, at the great Strand Bookstore in New York City!

He'll be signing and discussing his new book, Nuts, a collection of stories originally published in the National Lampoon’s “Funny Pages” section throughout the 1970s.

Moderating the discussion will be our pal Jesse Pearson, former editor of VICE magazine and contributor to The Comics Journal.

The fun starts at 7:00 PM, and you can either buy the book from The Strand or buy a $10 Strand Gift Card in order to attend this event. Both options admit two people. The event will be located in The Strand's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway at 12th Street.

Gahan Wilson in the Fantagraphics office last year!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Feature: At SF Weekly, Alan Scherstuhl provides you with "10 Reasons Why Prince Valiant Bests All 2011's Adventure Heroes" (starting with "He lances giant crocodiles"), saying "Sure, those glossy lips and that pageboy bob makes him look something like ye olde Ramona Quimby, but don't let that fool you. The star of what is arguably the twentieth century's best-drawn newspaper comic strip, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant is all hero, through and through, for his age and ours. The first four volumes of Fantagraphics' collected Prince Valiant reveal young Foster's creation as both the sum total of the heroic ideals that preceded his debut in 1937 as well as a source of serious inspiration for all the heroes that have followed him, in all media formats, in the decades since."

• Review: "War and disorder [in The Armed Garden and Other Stories] from the creator of the much-admired Epileptic and, more recently, Black Paths, visually styled to each story’s setting. The first was my favourite to look at: a forest of spears, a torrent of arrows and a swirling sandstorm of bleached bones and skulls against a velvety, light mushroom brown — a tremendous sense of space.... So there you have it: religion, jealousy, conflict and a great deal of transmogrification. Oh yes, death; a great deal of death too." – Stephen L. Holland, Page 45

• Review: "It helps if you can illustrate your fever dreams as well as Sala can — lavishly watercolored in brown, saturated orange and yellow, punctuated by bright blue and (especially later) red, [The Hidden] is beautiful to look at, and as usual, he gives us memorable grotesques and lovely girls in equal measure. Those who are fans of the artist’s previous work will find more of what they like here, and will be gratified by the deviation from his usual norm. Those who are new to his efforts will be entertained, I think, by the story, which is a bit of a page-turner, and will like his beautifully colored art. His best since he wrapped up Evil Eye a few years ago." – Johnny Bacardi, Popdose

• Review: "Dense, claustrophobic, intense and trenchantly funny, the self-contained [Nuts] strips ranged from satire to slapstick to agonising irony, linking up over the years to form a fascinating catalogue of growing older in the USA: a fearfully faithful alternate view of childhood and most importantly, of how we adults choose to recall those distant days." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Plug: Delivery of an advance copy of Kevin Huizenga's Ganges #4 prompts Tom Spurgeon to declare "I Love You, Comics" at The Comics Reporter

• Analysis: Robot 6's Matt Seneca performs a close analysis of a page from Al Columbia's Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days: "The genius of the page above is almost too simple: in four panels that follow the minimalist logic of the gag-strip format, it speaks to both the artificial nature of drawings and to the nature of sequence as something that breaks comics apart as much as pieces them together."

• Adieu: Mome contributor Tom Kaczynski bids a fond farewell to the anthology

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

The Cabbie Vol. 1
by Martí

80-page black & white 9" x 11.75" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-450-4

"I've seen this Marti Riera graphic novel described as Dick Tracy without a moral anchor, which sounds intriguing; the introduction's by Art Spiegelman, and I suspect it's the same as the one that appeared in the 1987 Catalan edition." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"Speaking of [Chester] Gould, The Cabbie draws deeply from the Dick Tracy well but in a way that criticizes the excesses of its underlying worldview rather than blindly celebrating its virtues. I'm really grateful Fantagraphics is doing this work, because it's not always easy to read." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Nuts
by Gahan Wilson

144-page black & white 8" x 8" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-454-2

"This is Gahan Wilson's National Lampoon strip, an extended meditation on/reaction to the sugary-sweet quality of most kids strips." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"Some nice archival stuff turned up this week, including Gahan Wilson’s Nuts! from Fantagraphics (a somewhat nostalgic/somewhat terrifying look at childhood)..." – Mike Sterling

Two-in-one comments:

"There’s a lot of great stuff out this week, so with $30 I’d have to... get one of two new books from Fantagraphics — either Gahan Wilson’s Nuts or The Cabbie by Italian cartoonist Marti. I’ve raved about Nuts before–it’s a piercingly accurate look at the pain and perils involved in growing up. Cabbie, on the other hand, is a uber-violent Dick Tracy homage by way of Taxi Driver." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: I first encountered Marti Riera’s bonkers, politicized Chester Gould parody/riff The Cabbie in the 1987 Catalan edition, now re-translated and to be followed by a never-translated sequel per editor Kim Thompson...; $19.99. And reaching even further back, Nuts collects the entirety of Gahan Wilson’s National Lampoon strips from the ’70s, with a new essay by Gary Groth; $19.99." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

PREVIEWSworld presents a 4-page sneak peek at Gahan Wilson's Nuts, in comic shops this week (plus 3 pages from Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons as a bonus)!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Sala creates stories in which brightly colored, cartoony art and characters who speak in casual idiom tell of events that aren’t so much humorous or casual as provocative and scary. In [The Hidden], he combines motifs of a postapocalyptic landscape, wanderers, some vampiric businessmen, and, ultimately, Dr. Frankenstein. The stew works perfectly: readers have no chance to engage in incredulity... Characters are introduced at a steady but manageable pace, and it is only at story’s end that the opening pages become horrifyingly clear. Sala works with a full palette of beautiful, gemlike hues held in generous panels. Even the monsters have individuated faces, which only ramps up the horror." – Francisca Goldsmith, School Library Journal

• Interview: Comic Book Resources' Shaun Manning talks to Richard Sala about The Hidden: "It's a story about consequences. It's about what happens when you set wheels in motion that maybe you can't control, that in fact spin completely out of control. What do you do? Do you take responsibility for what comes next or, or do you run away and distance yourself from what you've caused and try to pretend it doesn't matter. And it's about what happens when you finally realize that it's up to you to stop what you started. Is that vague enough?! It's not exactly a 'high concept' description, I'm afraid."

• Review: "A dark horse contender for comics creator of the year can be found in the unlikely personage of the late artist Alex Toth... Setting the Standard aims at... a conceptually sound and compelling [goal]: the publication of Toth's work between 1952 and 1954 for the long-defunct comics publisher Standard... The work is in a variety of sturdy, popular genres. The presentation of the comics themselves proves crisp and strong. The manner in which the increasingly valuable Sadowski and his publisher chose to present the supporting material is even better." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

• Review: "I think the most important thing you need to know about [Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010] is that it made me laugh out loud not once, but close to a dozen times. At one point, during an exchange with a famous cartoon strip writer, I think I laughed for a solid minute. It might have been longer, except the neighbors threatened to shoot me. And if they'd done me in, I'd never have gotten a chance to review this and tell you that this is one of the best books -- if not *the* best book -- I've read all year." – Rob McMonigal, Panel Patter

• Interview: Comic Book Resources' Alex Dueben chats with Gahan Wilson about Nuts: "On the whole, [the comic] was mostly autobiographical. It just rolled out and it was and continues to be very satisfying to me. It helped me see kids better, too. They're just wonderful. The creativity of children is kind of frightening. They all do these drawings which are just gorgeous and profound, and they'll do poetry. They're brilliant.... I think they're very encouraging because they give you a peek at what we could be if we grew up right. I think there's hope for us all, and kids are evidence of that."

• Interview: At The Comics Journal it's a Mome dude tête-à-tête as Frank Santoro quizzes Jesse Moynihan: "I did some color guides with Photoshop for a piece called Simon Magus (MOME 22). That was helpful but not usually how I do things. Since I’m using a medium that can build layers, it’s not difficult to go back in and edit the color scheme to an extent. For the most part I trust that my eye can decide what needs to happen on the fly."

• Interview (Audio): On the latest episode of the Panel Borders podcast, Alex Fitch talks to David B. about his new book Black Paths (audio in multiple formats at the link)

• Interview (Video): At SPX, Paul Hornschemeier sat down for an on-camera chat with Joe Mochove and Rusty Rowley. "We discuss all of the important topics of the day: Earnest Borgnine, mobility scooters, terrorism, and delicious orange juice," says Paul at his blog. (What is it with the Borgnine?)

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship to our mail-order customers:

Nuts
by Gahan Wilson

144-page black & white 8" x 8" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-454-2

See Previews / Order Now

In this thematically and narratively linked series of one-page stories originally published in the National Lampoon’s “Funny Pages” section throughout the 1970s, the master of the macabre eschewed his usual ghouls, vampires, and end-of-the-world scenarios for a wry, pointed look at growing up normal in the real, yet endlessly weird world.

Watch as our stoic, hunting-cap-wearing protagonist (known only as “The Kid”) copes with illness, disappointment, strange old relatives, the disappointment of Christmas, life-threatening escapades, death, school, the awfulness of camp, and much more — all delineated in Wilson’s roly-poly, sensual, delicately hatched line.

“Nuts” was (partly) collected in a now long-out-of-print volume back in 1979. This new hardcover edition reprints every single “Nuts” story from the Lampoon, rescuing over two dozen pages from oblivion.

If you don’t remember what it was like being a child, this book will bring it all back… for good or for ill!

"Gahan Wilson’s Nuts is the best, most clear-eyed explanation of and memoir about childhood I’ve ever read. Small, cramped, perfect drawings that show children as they are — explorers without a map or a book of instructions in the land of mad giants." —Neil Gaiman

We've got a gorilla-sized weekend coming up at APE: the Alternative Press Expo in beautiful San Francisco, CA! Come see us on Saturday, October 1st and Sunday, October 2nd at the Concourse Exhibition Center, and be among the first to get your mitts on these hot numbers:

 • Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks
• Pogo, Vol. 1 of the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: "Through the Wild Blue Wonder" by Walt Kelly
• Oil & Water written by Steve Duin; art by Shannon Wheeler

[ WE TOLD YOU SO!!! ]

• Nuts by Gahan Wilson
• The Frank Book [New Hardcover Ed.] by Jim Woodring
• The Cabbie: Vol. 1 by Martí

• Ganges 4 by Kevin Huizenga
• Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, Vol. 2: Trapped on Treasure Island by Floyd Gottfredson
• Prince Valiant, Vol. 4: 1943-1944 by Hal Foster

Oh, you want a comic signed by an awesome artist, do you?

Saturday, October 1st
12-1 PM            Jesse Moynihan
12-1 PM            Malachi Ward
1-3 PM              Mark Kalesniko
2-3 PM             Shannon Wheeler
3-5 PM             Leslie Stein
5-6 PM             Esther Pearl Watson
5-6 PM             John Pham

Sunday, October 2nd
12-1 PM            Mark Kalesniko
12-1 PM            Malachi Ward
1-3 PM              Leslie Stein
2-3 PM             Shannon Wheeler
3-4 PM             Esther Pearl Watson
3-4 PM             Jesse Moynihan

You can find us in our usual spot at tables 112-115. (Right by our good friends Jim Blanchard and J.R. Williams at table 116!)

[ Please note: this is a chopped-up map, just to give you an idea where you can find us!  The Concourse Exhibition Center is too wide to fit on the FLOG, so check out a PDF map here. ]

And panels! Boy, do we have panels!

Saturday, October 1st

2:00 PM //  The Comix Claptrap . . . LIVE!
Co-hosts Rina Ayuyang and Thien Pham record an episode of their enlightening, riotous, and controversial podcast, The Comix Claptrap LIVE at APE! For four seasons, Rina and Thien have interviewed comics artists in the indie comics scene about their work, creative processes, and experiences in the industry. Each show has included New Comics Wednesday beat reportage from fellow cartoonist Josh Frankel, and new favorite segment, The Comix Cranktrap, where they crank-call a well-known cartoonist listed in their Rolodex. Also featured on the panel: Mike Dawson, Scott Campbell, Levon Jihanian, and Esther Pearl Watson. This panel promises to be total mayhem!

3:00 PM // A Discussion with Daniel Clowes and Adrian Tomine
Critically acclaimed, award-winning, bestselling cartoonists -- and APE special guests -- Daniel Clowes (The Death-Ray, Ghost World, Wilson) and Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve, Shortcomings) are both professional peers and friends, having met over a decade ago when both lived in the East Bay. TheComicsJournal.com editor and PictureBox publisher Dan Nadel talks to the two artists about their work, their friendship, and the comics medium.

4:00 PM // Spotlight on Shannon Wheeler
From stapling 21,000 minicomics, to shooting comic books with a .22, to creating operas, to publishing cartoons with The New Yorker, APE special guest Shannon Wheeler must be drinking too much coffee, man. Recently, his collection of rejected cartoons I Thought You Would Be Funnier won the Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication. Wheeler and his trusty sidekick BOOM! Studios marketing director Chip Mosher talk about the best ammunition to use on a comic, Japanese bootleg shirts, and drawing dead granddads in fishnet stockings with swastika panties. Shannon Wheeler once also created Too Much Coffee Man, so they'll probably talk about that, too.

6:00 PM // Drawing Inspiration: The Secrets of Comics Creativity
Ever wonder where your favorite author or artist gets his or her inspiration? Now you can find out as moderator Charles Brownstein (executive director, CBLDF) joins APE special guests Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant!), Craig Thompson (Habibi), Matthew Thurber (1-800 MICE), and Shannon Wheeler (Oil and Water), plus Tom Neely (The Wolf) for an in-depth discussion of what gets their creative juices flowing and the secrets of what inspires them.

Sunday, October 2nd

12:00 PM // Indie Cartoonist Survival Guide: Part 3
Cartoonist Keith Knight moderates this panel (in its third appearance at APE), featuring a lineup of successful independent creators who share their stories, methods, techniques, trials, and tribulations concerning making a living as a so-called Indie Cartoonist. Shannon Wheeler (I Thought You Would Be Funnier), Dan Cooney (Dan Cooney Art), Andy Ristaino (Adventure Time), and Rebecca Sugar (Pug Davis) all chime in.

The great Eric Reynolds will be manning the table, so come by and come buy! We'll see you at APE!

Our own Ian Burns has joined me in the exclusive "Theme Sketchbook of Frank Oz Puppet Characters Club" with his own super-impressive book of Animal from The Muppet Show (my personal second-favorite member of The Electric Mayhem, after Zoot), which is giving my Yoda collection a serious run for its money. Here are some Fantagraphics-relevant entries as posted by Ian on the Versus the Moon blog (where he posts 2 new ones a week, so keep checking back):

Gahan Wilson

Gilbert Hernandez

Jim Rugg

Johnny Ryan

Peter Bagge

Jim Woodring

Megan Kelso

These two books are available at comic shops today — and to order direct from us — at new reduced prices! This is not a sale but a permanent price reduction! They're the exact same books as before — the only thing that's changed is the price tag.

We've lowered the price of Ghost World: Special Edition by Daniel Clowes from $39.99 to $25.00! This deluxe hardcover includes the original graphic novel, the Oscar-nominated screenplay of the film adaptation, and tons of bonus artwork and ephemera.

And we've slashed Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons by 40%, from $125.oo to $75.00! This hefty 3-volume set collects Wilson's complete Playboy work in full color, all wrapped up in a unique slipcase with a plexiglas window.

A few blog mentions:

"There’s also a nice $25 super-deluxe edition of Ghost World and a new $75 edition of that great Gahan Wilson Playboy collection that you really should get cause it’s totes awesome." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"...[N]ew and what one guesses is more attractive pricing for the Ghost World edition and the Gahan Wilson boxed set, both of which should be in just about any serious cartoon library." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Crush the ones you love with Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons, a three-volume slipcased set now repriced to $75.00. Also, Dan Clowes’ Ghost World: Special Edition is now $25.00. Diamond does not have the new Jacques Tardi (Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot ) listed for release, but keep an eye out!" – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal