• Review: Winsome Icarus (Katherine M. Hill) writes an appreciation of "The Ladies of Love and Rockets"

• List: The A.V. Club would like to see Daniel Clowes's Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (and Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, and Burns's Black Hole, and 21 other comics) adapted into a movie

• Blurb: Jog previews Sam's Strip: The Comic About Comics by Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas (amongst other of this week's releases)

• Events: Comic Book Resources reports from the "25 Years of Usagi Yojimbo" panel at Wondercon

• Things to see: In honor of the impending release of Boody. The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers, Pappy's Golden Age Comic Blogzine posts a couple of Sparky Watts backup stories

Fantagraphics titles scheduled to arrive at comics shops this week:

• Explainers (2nd Printing) by Jules Feiffer (good timing, too, since we just temporarily ran out of our mail-order allotment)
• Sam's Strip: The Comic About Comics by Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas 

Check out our descriptions and previews at the links above, give your local shop a jingle to make sure they ordered the books, count up your nickels and then trundle on down there tomorrow.

UPDATE: At least 2 sources are saying that Humbug is shipping this week too, although it's not on the official distributor list. We'll definitely have it at our shop for the art opening on Saturday!

I'm putting together the 15th issue of MOME (Summer 2009) right now and it features the final three chapters of Tim Hensley's spectacular "Wally Gropius, Teen Millionaire" which has appeared in MOME since our fifth issue (Fall 2006). I can't even tell you how proud I am to have published this comic. Hensley is such a singular talent. He's so good I'm almost at a loss to explain why. There's something transcendent about it. It looks like old 1950s teenage humor comics, specifically Mort Walker's proto-Beetle Bailey strip, Spider, as Adam Grano recently pointed out to me while laying out the upcoming Walker interview in The Comics Journal.

Here's a page from Wally:

I find his work beautiful to look at. It's as attractive as comics get for me. But his work is so much more than that. It's a satire of teen comics and celebrityhood and modern culture, but it's also great Art. His dialogue is witty, lyrical, sampled, dada, and elliptical. It's all in the service of a very bizarre story, a mystery of sorts. There's sex, violence, rock and roll, intrigue, betrayal -- but it's all told in Hensley's truly inimitable style. I've read each chapter many times and will be sorry to not have more coming in anymore. But not to worry, Tim's already hard at work on the Wally Gropious collection, which won't be out for over a year but will be well worth the wait!

And here's a sneak peak at the cover for MOME 15, featuring the end of Wally Gropius. This is an early treatment by Adam Grano, with art by Andrice Arp:

Oh, and read Tim's blog. 

• Review: Comic Book Resources gives Sam's Strip 4 out of 5 stars and calls it "a must for any fans of comic strips"

• Review: Comics Worth Reading takes on Supermen!

• Review: Rob Clough examines Mome Vol. 13

• Review: Parka Blogs checks out Beasts! Book 2

• Profile: Paul Gravett examines (and recommends) the work of Mark Kalesniko in an article which also appears in Comics International

• Blurb: Jared Axelrod, applying his "10 Rules of Quality Superhero Fiction," declares Jaime Hernandez's story in Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 "one of the best superhero comics of the past year"

• Blurb: John Whitlock recommends our Popeye books

• Blurb: The Geek Curmudgeon (a.k.a. Rick Klaw) previews Humbug, Boody and Supermen!

• Blurb: Books Are People, Too (a.k.a. Russ Kick) also previews Humbug

• Blurb: Rod McKie describes how comics by Daniel Clowes, Peter Bagge and the Hernandez Brothers helped him get through a health crisis

• Video: Slick Rivera visits Larry Reid at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery and finds out where the good stuff is stashed (found via Frank magazine [not to be confused with our Frank])

• Interview: Vice talks to Johnny Ryan and a couple of the other funny cartoonists who are in Kramer's Ergot #7

• Interview: If you're curious about new Mome contributor Hernán Migoya, and speak Spanish, LaNuez has a couple of video interview clips for you (via Entrecomics)

• Things to see: On his blog, Derek Van Gieson previews his work in the just-released Mome Vol. 14 (and keep exploring for a teaser of Mome Vol. 15)

• Things to see: On his blog, Dash Shaw presents a Bottomless Belly Button ex libris plate he created for French comics shop Super Heros (you may also have seen Jason Miles's photo of Dash at Super Heros here on Flog recently)

• Things to see: Boing Boing Gadgets presents a blast from future past, Frank Thorne style

• Things to see: Is an excuse needed to scan and share Seth's cover designs for The Complete Peanuts? The Comics Reporter thinks not

Sam's Strip: The Comic About Comics
By Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas

Sam’s Strip was ahead of its time when it debuted in 1961. Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas’ offbeat creation took the inside joke of breaking the “fourth wall” to a new level, playing with the basic elements of the cartoon form, experimenting with different art styles and featuring famous characters from other strips. Sam and his cartoonist assistant owned and operated the comic strip they inhabited. The Yellow Kid, Jiggs, Krazy Kat, Dagwood, and Charlie Brown were among the many familiar faces who made walk-on appearances. Sam and his assistant discussed the inner workings and hidden secrets of life within the panel borders. This type of self-referential humor, called “metacomics” by scholar Thomas Inge, had been explored previously by Al Capp, Ernie Bushmiller, and Walt Kelly and has been used on a more regular basis by such contemporary cartoonists as Garry Trudeau, Berke Breathed, and Bill Griffith. Sam’s Strip, which never appeared in more than 60 newpapers, was too esoteric for most readers, and was terminated by its creators in 1963. It is considered a cult classic among comic-strip aficionados today.

This collection features the complete 20-month run, almost 510 daily strips, of Sam’s Strip. Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas provide first-hand accounts of the creation of the strip and other rare, behind-the-scenes material, including unpublished sketches, original artwork, photographs and sales brochures. Take a trip beyond the fourth wall and rediscover this unique behind-the-scenes look at the world of comic strip humor.

208-page black & white (with some color) 10” x 8” softcover • $22.99
Add to Cart • Read More...

Our collection of Sam's Strip contains two introductory essays by the strip's creators, which we've placed online for you to read and enjoy while you're waiting for the book to be released (any day now): "How Sam's Strip Began" by Jerry Dumas and "My Time with Sam's Strip" by Mort Walker. Together they comprise a Rashomon-like tale of the strip's run.

• Review: J. Caleb Mozzocco offers "Nine not particularly insightful thoughts about Beasts! Book 2" (which are more insightful than advertised)

• Review: Ticket to Anywhere checks out Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

• Review: Weltklasse Serier reviews Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga in Swedish and says "this is a fantastic series. Read it. Now," according to the Google translation

• Review: I Love Rob Liefeld proffers a short review of Chance in Hell by Gilbert Hernandez, calls it a mind-reeling grand slam

• Blurb: Sandbox World anticipates Sam's Strip by Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas

• Blurb: Sacha Peet praises The Lagoon by Lilli Carré

• Blurb: Comix 411 hypes up our forthcoming Humbug collection and its downloadable preview

• Things to see: A tribute to Lux Interior by Zak Sally

• Things to see: More sketchbookery by Jim Woodring and Tom Kaczynski

We're pleased to present another brilliant but short-lived comic strip from the mid-20th Century, rescued from obscurity and presented in a handsome softcover volume. Sam's Strip: The Comic About Comics collects the entirety of Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas's sharp-witted feature, ahead of its time for its use of fourth-wall-breaking meta-humor. Click here if the embedded slideshow isn't visible above, and/or to view it larger in a new window.

We've been busy bees making downloadable PDF excerpts available for several new and upcoming books. Unlike previously, when PDF previews were only available to registered users, these downloads are available to everyone (and of course they're free)! Download links are available on the product listing pages for the books listed and linked below. Try before you buy with these nice juicy chunks:

• Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1959-1960 - read all the strips from January 1959!
• Unlovable Vol. 1 - preview the first 20 pages!
• Humbug - see what the Humbug hullabaloo is all about by reading the entire first issue!
• Mome Vol. 14: Spring 2009 - sample 15 pages, including almost every artist in the issue!
• Sam's Strip - read the first full month of strips!
• The Wolverton Bible - read the first 12 pages, comprising most of Genesis 1-6!

• List: Another day, another Top 10 list with Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button on it, this time Laura Hudson's "Best Graphic Novels of 2008"

• Blurb: Trendhunter™ fingers The Wolverton Bible as the next hot thing

• Blurb: ComicNews spotlights our collection of Sam's Strip by Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas