• List: Rina Ayuyang posts her Best of the Year comics list, with Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga and Abandoned Cars by Tim Lane on it

• Review: Vice gets a 5 year old kid's verdict on Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix dolls

• Blurb: Precocious Curmudgeon looks at this week's new comics, recommends Castle Waiting Vol. II #14 by Linda Medley (which will be in stores before we have it for sale here)

• Interview: Optimum Wound gets all kinds of information out of Ho Che Anderson

• Things to see/interview: The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog posts a trove of Eldon Dedini's Playboy cartoons, along with a video interview clip

• Events: Here's a list of current and upcoming art shows where you can view work by Andrice Arp

Shocktilyoudrop.com talks to Charles Burns about Black Hole, Fear of the Dark, and more. 

Thedailycrosshatch.com continues it's interview with Bottomless Belly Button creator Dash Shaw.

This Thursday night at MIT, comics critic (and Krazy & Ignatz contributing editor) Jeet Heer will moderate a talk about "Comics & Social Conflict" between King creator Ho Che Anderson and Diana Tamblyn. 

Finally, here's a bunch of beautiful recent illustrations by Jeremy Eaton, including one particularly near and dear to my heart. Jeremy also tells the story of a rather pathetic 24 hour comics session that I was privileged enough to participate in. 

For one reason or another, every once in a while one of our books will slip under the radar and go under-appreciated, or maybe it made an initial splash but has since faded from the general consciousness. For the month of July, 2008, we're highlighting some of these "hidden gems" from our back catalog and encouraging you to discover some great but obscure books by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Click here for the full selection. (Sale ends at 11:59 PM Pacific time, July 31, 2008.)

We'll also be spotlighting these books with a daily feature here on Flog, starting right here and right now! Leading off the top of the alphabet: Canadian artist Ho Che Anderson, best known for King, his acclaimed comics biography of Martin Luther King Jr. and also creator of these lesser-known gems:

Young Hoods in Love

In this collection of original, previously unpublished stories, Anderson looks to the streets of his own modern-day Black Toronto for this group of gritty urban tales of explosive human relationships. Meet Toronto's sexiest bank robbers in "Young Hoods in Love." Join Edith in her desperate search for her son's father in "Johnny Angel." Experience the gut-wrenching surprise ending of "The Twilight of Our Years." See the unforgettable meeting of "Molly and Madeleine." And in the volume's closer, watch Cookie balance three relationships and two careers in "Doe." Funny, profane, and authoritatively real, Young Hoods in Love thrusts Ho Che Anderson into the first rank of contemporary comics creators.

80-page black & white 7" x 11" softcover
regularly $9.95 • ON SALE $7.46
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Scream Queen

A woman driving alone through the desert picks up a younger woman whose car has broken down on the side of the road. Later at the younger woman's job, the two ladies chat, revealing bits and pieces of their lives. After this meeting, the older woman leaves for an appointment with a man. She arrives at his apartment where he's having sex with a woman. The woman confronts him. Turns out she's the living dead, come to bring the man to the other side. Scream Queen marks the first book by Anderson since his landmark graphic novel, King. Scream Queen represents a marked departure from King, being a much shorter work of genre fiction, but employing a similar graphic sensibility and mastery of form to chilling effect.

(Trivia note: pages from Scream Queen decorate the room of the depressed son in the film Little Miss Sunshine.)

56-page black & white 10" x 10" softcover
regularly $12.95 • ON SALE $9.71
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An exhibit of Ho Che Anderson's original artwork from King, running through the end of this week at Sala de Exposiciones CAM de Alicante in Alicante, Spain, re-opens in Valencia, Spain on April 7 at Aula CAM de Valencia La Llotgeta. More information here (en Español).