Wednesday, September 26th

• Brooklyn, NY: Come see Gary Panter kill it with his band Devin, Gary & Ross at Death by Audio! (more info)

• Los Angeles, CA: It's your last chance to see John Pham's art exhibit at Giant Robot's GR2 Gallery. (more info)

Saturday, September 29th

• Brooklyn, NY: Author Pat Thomas presents his acclaimed slideshow presentation for Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. He will also be spinning records from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. (more info)

• Bothell, WA: Nico Vassilakis & Crag Hill, editors of The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008, will perform a collaged reading of essays at the "Convergence on Poetics" conference at the University of Washington Bothell. (more info)

• Long Island City, NY: The good people of Desert Island will host a signing with Ron Regé, Jr. at the seventh annual NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1! Be one of the first to get your hands on a copy of The Cartoon Utopia! (more info)

• Asbury Park, NJ: Stephen DeStefano will be a special guest at the Asbury Park Comic Con! Yes, it is being held in a bowling alley, and yes, there will be beer! (more info)

photo credit: Joshin Yamada, Stumptown 2012

Sunday, September 30th

• Vancouver, BC: Peter Bagge will be a special guest at the Word on the Street National Book & Magazine Festival! He'll be signing at the "Authors Tent" at 1:30 PM, and at "The Word Under The Street" on 3:30 PM. (more info)

• New York City, NY: Pat Thomas will be joined by special guest, Aaron Dixon, the captain and founder of the 1960's Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party, at Kim's Video & Music for a signing of Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975! (more info) 

Due to popular demand, our author Pat Thomas is bringing Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 back to London this fall!

Join Pat on Monday, October 15th at the Institute of International Visual Arts, or INIVA, in London. Starting at 6:30 PM, he'll be giving his raved-about presentation, followed by a book signing.

INIVA is located at 1 Rivington Place. This event is sponsored by the University of East London.

He's been all over the west coast, and even took the sights and sounds of Black Power across the pond to England... and now we're thrilled to announce that Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 is making its New York City area debut this fall!

Join author Pat Thomas on Saturday, September 29th at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts [ 80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn ]. He'll be giving his acclaimed slideshow presentation, and will be spinning records from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.

And on Sunday, September 30th, Pat will be joined by special guest, Aaron Dixon, the captain and founder of the 1960's Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party, and author of the book, My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. Join them both at Kim's Video & Music [ 124 1st Avenue, New York City ] for this free event from 3:00 to 4:00 PM.

The newest, brightest bulb Online Commentaries & Diversions:

•Review: Sarah Hansen of Autostraddle looks at No Straight Lines. "I like my queer comic anthologies like I like my women. Handy AND beautiful. . .What No Straight Lines really achieves is putting all of these influential comics in one place. Together, they contextualize each other and the LGBTQ scene at the same time."

•Review: Paste's 'breeder' journalist Sean Edgar cracks open No Straight Lines and has a baller time. "The work in this book illustrates a sweeping chronology of our generation’s greatest civil conflict with all of the tears and smiles that follow. It’s a fascinating read and an essential perspective historically and socially. Even if you’re a breeder."

•Commentary: Publishers Weekly's coverage of Comic Con International in San Diego is THOROUGH. Shannon O'Leary talks up No Straight Lines. " . . .Hall focused on collecting 'literary queer comics in danger of being lost' with the focus instead on literary, self-contained works that would give the reader the experience of being 'satisfied' with each of the stories."

•Review: From the Librairie Drawn and Quarterly Bookstore, Jade reviews her six years of love for Love and Rockets, including keeping the store stocked with them."After all these years, the Hernandez Brothers continue to knock it out of the park with some of the best work in the industry."

•Commentary: Heidi MacDonald runs down the things that stuck out to her at Comic-Con in San Diego. The 30th Anniversary of Love and Rockets was a big one featured on THE BEAT. "While Los. Bros didn’t get the skywriting and theme park they deserved, they got a lot of love, and that will last longer. . . .We’ll give the final word to Jamie Hernandez, because he is the final word."

•Commentary: Eisner Award winner, Charles Hatfield, writes at Hand of Fire speaks about the Hernandez Brothers at Comic-Con International. "I love L&R, and credit it for keeping me in comics as a grownup. Great, great work."

•Plug: Longtime Love and Rockets reader, Robert Boyd, created a long and annotated list of the music found in the thirty-year series. "Each brother does his own very different stories, but both were (and presumably still are) punk rock fanatics and music lovers in general. This is reflected in their work."

•Plug: Sean T. Collins was spotted sporting the newest Love and Rockets shirts on television while discussing the tragic events of Aurora, CO.

•Review: Shelfari picked up two of our titles for the Graphic Novel Friday. Alex Carr starts with Joe Daly's Dungeon Quest Vol. 3: "if you can laugh at your obsession while still poring over weapon and armor upgrades, the Dungeon Quest series should be on your couch next to the game manual and open laptop. . .It's absurd, engrossing, very adult, and pitch perfect." On Jaime Hernandez's God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls, "It's oversized and billed as a director's cut,ť with 30 additional pages."

•Interview: Timothy Callahan over at Comic Book Resources got the shimmy on new(er) cartoonist, Chuck Forsman, who has two books out next year from Fantagraphics: Celebrated Summer and The End of the Fucking World. "While at Forsman's studio, I saw the finished pages for 'Celebrated Summer' and it's such a fully-realized work, it's no surprise [Associate Publisher Eric] Reynolds was so quick to jump on it, even after seeing only a few pages."

•Commentary: The Best-Manga-Worst Manga panel of 2012 Comic-Con International has transcribed their views a la Deb Aoki at About.com. Shimura Takako's Wandering Son falls into the BEST MANGA (series) for Kids/Teens. Shaenon Garrity said, "I picked this as best manga for kids, but it's really a great manga for everybody. . . It's done in such a beautiful, sensitive way." Meanwhile, The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio is one of the Most Anticipated. Garrity again states, "Moto Hagio is probably the greatest manga artist after Osamu Tezuka. . . It's one of the two manga stories that practically invented the boys' love genre, along with Keiko Takemiya's Song of the Wind and Trees.

•Review: Jazz-Institute covers Listen, Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Poewr 1965-1975 and via a rough translation, Wolfram Knauer says, "Pat Thomas's book is a very valuable addition to the musical history of the 1960s and 1970s, precisely because the author attempts to establish and explain the political context. The coffee-table book is generously illustrated with album covers, rare photos, newspaper articles, and ads. A thorough index and a separately available CD with examples of the music mentioned in the text complete the concept."

•Review: Forbidden Planet makes people choose their eight favorite comics should they ever end up on the dreaded desert island. Some of those books included E.C. Segar's Popeye and Daniel Clowes' Twentieth Century Eightball. Across-the-pond artist Steve Tillotson states, "The Fantagraphics collections are great, and the character of Popeye is brilliant- I like how he just punches anyone who pisses him off, but he’s also got a really strong sense of morality, and he talks funny."

•Plug: Did you know Carl Barks was unknown for the first 16 years of his work on Disney comics? He was merely known as the good Disney artist, more on THE BEAT and MetaFilter. 

Wednesday, June 13th

• Los Angeles, CA:  Listen up, 'cause author Pat Thomas will be doing a signing and presentation for Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 at Skylight Books. (more info)

Friday, June 15th

• Elmhurst, IL: Anders Nilsen debuts his new exhibit, Adam and Eve Sneaking Back Into the Garden to Steal More Apples, at the Elmhurst Art Museum at 6:30 PM. (more info)

• Chicago, IL: Kevin Huizenga will be doing a signing at Quimby's alongside Dan Zettwoch, starting at 7:00 PM. Get those Ganges comics signed! (more info)

Saturday, June 16th

•  Chicago, IL: Um... CAKE, anyone? (more info)

The latest Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Beyond the quality of the artwork, which remains amazingly detailed and perfectly perfect in its storytelling, Dungeon Quest is really funny, the humor sometimes seeming dissonant — but pleasingly so — given the seriousness with which Daly approaches, say, drawing a rock-strewn valley or depicting a slow, tiring march through a forest (It’s almost Tolkeinesque in his commitment to describing walking!) or choreographing a thrilling action scene." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Robot 6

• Review (Audio): The guys at Washington, D.C.'s Big Planet Comics discuss Angelman by Nicolas Mahler on this week's episode of their podcast, declaring "if you're sensitive about your love of superhero comics, this is probably not for you, but if you want awesomely cool cartooning art by Mahler and something really different, here you go. It's funny too."

• Interview (Audio): Pat Thomas is the guest on this episode of "The Sidebar" podcast at Soul Sides, talking about his book Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 and playing excerpts from the companion album

• Interview (Audio): The Nown podcast hosts "Melkorka and Kelli take a road trip up to Seattle for a visit with Evergreen alumni and cartoonist Megan Kelso"

The latest Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Feature: At Print magazine, Michael Dooley spotlights the new 13th issue of Squa Tront — "...Squa Tront has set itself out to explore every facet of EC's history, through stimulating, in-depth journalism, scholarly analyses, critiques, bios, interviews, and, of course, illustrations. Under the supervision of its current editor, John Benson, it has established a high standard for fanzine professionalism, in both literary content and production values." — with a generous sampling of images and an interview with Benson: "But really, as far as Squa Tront goes, what sustains my interest most is probably my love of print media and the pleasure of creating a physical package."

• Plug: "A new issue of Squa Tront is a rare and special event, not to be missed." – Bud Plant

• Review: "Oftentimes the first volume of an archival project gets greeted with a lot of ballyhoo while later volumes fail to get any ink, even though the later books represent the subject in question better than the earlier, more fumbling work. So let this serve as notice that the third volume of the Blake Bell-edited series [The Steve Ditko Archives] is the best one yet, showing Ditko in 1957, about to turn 30 and learning to deploy his distinctive faces and abstract shapes in the service of stories with real flow. ...[T]he nightmarish visions of stories like 'The Man Who Lost His Face' and 'The Last One' are classic Ditko, with off-kilter panel designs and anguished figures conveying a sense of sanity slipping away." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "...Blood of Palomar is a thrilling book... Hernández’s writing and artwork are excellent. The black-and-white pen work is perfect — there are a vividness and richness to the action, story, and scenes already that would likely be drowned in color. With 34 characters and multiple story threads, a first read can be dizzying, yet all is exquisitely kept in balance. Though certainly most characters are not given much depth, the large cast gives the sense of a real community. The main characters are complex, flawed, and fascinating.... Blood of Palomar haunted my thoughts long after I finished reading." – Michael Stock, The Capeless Crusader

• Plug: "How to best demonstrate the awesome might of Fantagraphics' new Johnny Gruelle collection, Mr. Twee Deedle?... It's more akin to flipping the pages of a wallpaper sampler than a collection of historic comics.... It dominates the largest clear surface in my house — the kitchen island — like a B-52 bomber somehow parked astride an aircraft carrier's deck. And then you open it up. ...[T]he art on the page is massive, but filled with delicate details.... Many of the strips are illustrated from eye-level of small children, and the natural world around the characters seems almost life-sized." – John Mesjak, My 3 Books

• Plug: "Comics have long been home to a variety of races, be it alien or underground or from an alternate dimension. But in the 100-plus year history of comics, one of the toughest for creators to portray accurately is that of black characters. And now Fantagraphics is putting back in print a key work examining that strained relationship, Fredrik Strömberg‘s Eisner-nominated Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History." – Chris Arrant, Robot 6

• Interview (Audio): Pat Thomas was on BBC Radio's Front Row Daily last Friday talking about his book Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 — follow the link and "it's the one that says 'Tracey Emin; news from Cannes' — I'm on for about 10 minutes at the end," instructs Pat

• Commentary: Robot 6's Chris Mautner takes you back to "Comics College" with another of his handy reader's guides, this time to the work of Charles Burns

After several years under Seattle's soggy skies, author Pat Thomas is making the move to Los Angeles, and what better way to celebrate than with a book signing for Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975!

Welcome Pat to town on Wednesday, June 13th at Skylight Books for a signing and presentation, beginning at 7:30 PM.

Skylight Books is located at 1818 N. Vermont Avenue, just 3 1/2 blocks north of the Sunset/Vermont Metro station, next to the Los Feliz 3 cinema.

Author Pat Thomas at Café OTO, London // photo credit: Dave Weller

Our author Pat Thomas is back home in Seattle after a whirlwind book tour through England for Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975, but you can still hear the sounds of his presentations and interviews online, thanks to the internets!

UK publication The Wire recorded his presentation at Café OTO, and you can listen to it here! Part one is Pat's incredible lecture, and part two is of Pat in discussion with author Paul Gilroy, filmmaker John Akomfrah, and publisher Margaret Busby.

And if you click here, you can hear an interview Pat did on Resonance 104.4 FM, a London-based non-profit community radio station. And we all know non-profit radio is the very best kind, cough. Listen up!

Editor Pat Thomas at the infamous Rough Trade record store, London // photo credit: Dave Weller

London Calling! Pat Thomas, editor of our acclaimed title Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975, spent the first weeks of May bringing those sights and sounds to the UK! 

You can read an excellent report of his presentation at Cafe OTO at whisperinandhollerin.com.

And you can click here to hear an interview Pat did on BBC London! The show is three hours long, but Pat's segment is in the last half-hour, so you can click to fast-forward. Note: this link expires in six days, so... listen, whitey! (or whatever you might be!)