Seattle is once again the center of the alternative comix universe with shows opening all over town this weekend. On Friday, January 11 at Roq la Rue from 6:00 to 9:00 PM is the post-apocalyptic group show "I'll Love You Til The End Of The World" featuring Fantagraphics favorites Camille Rose Garcia and Scott Musgrove. The same evening you'll find "Friends" at Cairo, featuring Intruder artists Max Clotfelter, Darin Shuler, Aidan Fitzgerald, Tom Van Deusen, Marc J. Palm, David Lasky, Nikki Burch, Ben Horak, Jason T. Miles, Tim Miller, James Stranton, Kazimir Strzepek and Alexa Kristine Koenings. (The future of alternative comix now.)

The comix action moves to Georgetown on Saturday evening, with a show of "Paintoons" by John Ohannesian at the One Night Stand Gallery (located directly above Fantagraphics Bookstore.) John has been busy in recent months as a Fantagraphics freelancer faithfully restoring classic strips like Nancy, Buz Sawyer, and Popeye for your reading pleasure. It'll be interesting to see how this exercise informs his cartoon paintings. Across the street at LxWxH Gallery is Bette Burgoyne's "Forest," a 30-foot narrative scroll drawing. And, of course, don't miss the Problematic reception with Jim Woodring at our bookstore. Lots of great surprises await.

The most in vogue Online Commentaries and Diversions:

•Interview (audio): Perk up your ears to the soothing interview of Angelman's creator, Nicolas Mahler, on the Inkstuds podcast. Robin McConnell covers all the bases with Mahler: "[My] main influence is American newspaper comics from the 30s, this was what I discovered when I about was 15-16. It was Krazy Kat and Windsor McCay, those were the things that were important to my drawing style. Wouldn't you have guessed from looking at my drawings?"

•Preview: JK Parkin, Robot6, talks up a preview of The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. This previously uncollected work will also have a new story! Can you spot all the references?

•Review: The sweetest review is up on Sequential Tart of The Adventures of Venus. Sheena McNeil gives the book a thumbs-up for kids: "I love that this graphic novel is full of characters from different cultures with different appearances. Venus and her sister live with their bodybuilder-like mom and no dad, Venus's rival, Gilda Gonzalez, is Hispanic and her crush, Yoshio, is Asian. It's refreshing to see all these different types of people together and getting along normally."

 •Plug: Book Patrol teases with a few pictures of Jewish Images in the Comics by Fredrik Strömberg. Michael Lieberman says, "Spanning five centuries and  featuring over 150 images the book becomes an instant essential reference. . . Who knew Golem was a super-hero?"

•Review: The Comics Bulletin sat down to a round-table review of E.C. Segar's Popeye Vol. 1: "I Yam What I Yam". Columnists Jason Sacks, Daniel Elkin, Danny Djeljosevic and Zack Davisson loved the large format (except for night-time readin' in bed). Sacks says, "There's a depth to these characters, too. They may be incredibly self-involved and aggressive, but there's this odd sort of internal integrity to them that makes them lovable."

•Plug: Glenn Perrett of Simcoe mentions The Sincerest Form of Parody, edited by John Benson, and the juicy ordering details. "You can return to the era when these magazines [Mad, Flip, Nuts, Panic, Madhouse] were popular with The Sincerest Form of Parody which features 'The Best 1950's Mad Inspired Satirical Comcs'."

•History: Reminiscing about comics created and read in the 80's, The Comics Reporter reviews Dalgoda. Created by writer Jan Strnad and art by Dennis Fujitake, Tom Spurgeon states,"It was leisurely paced, and had a genial tone; it was neither pompous nor self-loathing. The art featured that somewhat peculiar, can-still-spot-it-across-the-room Fantagraphics coloring from that era. In fact, Fujitake's art, with its blend of mainstream rendering values, meticulous environmental detail and humorous exaggeration, is what lingers on in memory." You gotta love those striking logo colors.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Awards: Congratulations to Lorenzo Mattotti for the much-deserved Max and Moritz Prize Lifetime Achievement Award and to Joe Sacco for being awarded Best International Comic Book, as announced over the weekend at the Internationaler Comic Salon at Erlanger and reported by Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter, Torsten Adair at The Beat and Joe Gordon at Forbidden Planet International

• Review: At Boing Boing, as part of their "Mind Blowing Movies" series of guest posts, Amy Crehore examines the Ghost World film: "I knew it was going to be good, but I had no idea that the movie Ghost World (2001) would bathe me in such an uncanny sense of deja vu from start to finish. The characters are so real and familiar that they could have been based on my friends and me."

• Commentary: Ashok Karra has a short but thought-provoking analysis of elements of the Ghost World graphic novel: "A ghost world could be three things. Two of them are types of haunting: either by the past (nostalgia for childhood) or the present (the glow of the television). The third possibility is that you pass through as a ghost."

• Plug: At Flavorwire, Emily Temple includes Ghost World on the list of "30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Turning 30," saying "Clowes writes some of the most essentially realistic teenagers we’ve ever come across, which is important when you are (or have ever been) a realistic teenager yourself."

• Plug/Preview: At The Beat, Jessica Lee posts a 5-page sneak peek of New York Mon Amour by Jacques Tardi et al., saying "This newest Tardi release... is slated for a July release, just in time for Independence Day, where we can all revel in the patriotic depictions of New York that Tardi has provided — oh wait. True to his new realism style, 'Manhattan' retains the same kind of gritty aesthetic as his illustrations of WWI trench warfare as well as Parisian life."

• Review: "The 11 horror stories in [The Furry Trap] showcase Simmons’s possession of a dark and capable imagination, one that has discomfort down to an exact science.... Simmons is at his best in stories like 'Mutant' and 'Demonwood,' where rash decisions and chance encounters lead to nightmarish consequences ... Simmons’s brand of deep unease permeates all of [these stories], even in the opening story, 'In a Land of Magic,' which features a scene of sexual and physical violence that could lead to sleepless nights. The book is also filled with illustrations and short comics that just add to the pile of evidence that Simmons has a wide-ranging talent, with an artistic sense that brings to life his most ghoulish creations. These stories are, hopefully, harbingers of even stronger and more sinister work in the future..." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "The action [in God and Science] ebbs and flows, but the story remains engaging and exciting. I had to read it all in one afternoon because I just couldn't put it down. I was enjoying it too much to stop reading.... [There]'s another great thing about this comic — there's some subtle philosophical questions nudged in that the characters (and reader) have to answer themselves.... I can't recommend this title enough. I can easily say that I want more Ti-Girls, or at least comic characters like them." – Sheena McNeil, Sequential Tart

• Review: "Prince Valiant Vol. 5 — As the war years draw to a close, the strip finds Valiant settling down — at least a little bit — by finally winning his true heart’s love, Aleta. There’s still enough brigands and evildoers to keep Val busy, but a lot of Vol. 5 is spent with the couple developing their relationship, and Harold Foster deepening and developing Aleta’s character in the process. ...[I]t remains a thrilling, boisterous work." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "Dungeon Quest Book Three — Joe Daly’s faithful D&D fantasy by way of Harold and Kumar proceeds apace, with lots of bloody skirmishes with fierce animals and fiercer bandits and an abundance of jokes about penises, pot, hand-jobs and the like.... His incredibly detailed forest backgrounds are really quite exquisite, and the full panel sequences of his band of adventurers simply trekking along a forest path or walking through a stream were my favorite parts of the book." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Commentary: It's been interesting seeing the evolution of the "hey, they should bring Love and Rockets to the screen" article in the age of the serialized cable drama. Arthur Smith at The Paley Center for Media is the latest to add his voice to the chorus

• Plug: "Got this beautiful Popeye compilation book (Fantagraphics) a couple of days ago. Haven't had a chance to even crack it open, but my son is now running around going 'Arf, arf.' It's a hit." – Ruben Bolling

• Tribute: At The New York Times, Tim Kreider remembers the great Ray Bradbury: "Prescience is not the measure of a science-fiction author’s success — we don’t value the work of H. G. Wells because he foresaw the atomic bomb or Arthur C. Clarke for inventing the communications satellite — but it is worth pausing, on the occasion of Ray Bradbury’s death, to notice how uncannily accurate was his vision of the numb, cruel future we now inhabit."

• Tribute: Monte Schulz (seen above with Bradbury and Gary Groth at Comic-Con 2009 — click the image for a larger version) has a lovely memorial to Bradbury currently on the main page of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference website

The latest Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Commentary: "The completion of Fantagraphics's Krazy [Kat] Sunday series also means, quite possibly, the end of Krazy Kriticism — a brand of writing that, as far as I can tell, only the Kat engenders. Critic Gilbert Seldes first articulated its credo in the 1924 article 'The Krazy Kat That Walks by Himself.' After comparing Herriman to Dickens, Cervantes, and Charlie Chaplin, Seldes threw up his hands: 'It isn't possible to retell these pictures; but that is the only way, until they are collected and published, that I can give the impression of Herriman's gentle irony, of his understanding of tragedy, of the sancta simplicitas, the innocent loveliness in the heart of a creature more like Pan than any other creation of our time.' Thus did the gates open to a flood of ecstatic, mimetic writing in which every critical impulse was mercilessly drowned in gushing praise and fervent prayers to put the comics between covers." – Sarah Boxer, Los Angeles Review of Books

• Commentary: At Print magazine, Steven Brower looks at different ways comics publishers restore and present vintage comics material, including his own compilation of Mort Meskin comics, Out of the Shadows: "For the Mort Meskin collection, we hoped that a contemporary audience would rediscover him; Fantagraphic’s fresh, newly minted approach goes a long way toward achieving that."

• Review: "I mean this in the nicest possible way but self-confessed obscurist Hans Rickheit is clearly not all there in the head. ...[Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion] is a collection of shorts from over the years, frequently featuring the same characters, in particular identical twins Cochlea & Eustachia, who inevitably get themselves into all sorts of unpleasant bother. Definitely the type of read to make you wary of opening doors when you’re not entirely sure what’s on the other side, as Hans frequently surprises his characters, and us readers, by taking you somewhere you’d never expect, nor probably want to go to." – Jonathan Rigby, Page 45

• Review: "‘Plunder Island’ is the fourth of six oversized volumes collecting all of E.C. Segar’s Popeye-era Thimble Theatre strips....  The Segar book is every bit as good as the three volumes that preceded it – brilliant cartooning and laugh-out-loud funny gags.  The only difference this time around is that the Sunday strips fill the first half of the book and the dailies fill the second half (it’s usually the other way around) but otherwise it’s business as usual.  I don’t have a single bad thing to say about Segar’s Popeye, and the whole book was thoroughly enjoyable..." – Rob Wells, Comics – On The Ration

• Profile: Andrew Dansby of the Houston Chronicle profiles Daniel Clowes: "Clowes describes an eerie but common sight in his studio. Since eyes are the last thing he draws when he's working, the room is full of characters without them. 'I've had other cartoonists come over, and they've told me it's pretty creepy to see all these faces with no eyes staring back,' he says. 'But that's where I can get the last 10 percent of the emotion on the page. If I get it just right, you can subtly influence any expression through the eyes more than any other feature. They're where the character comes to life.'"

The latest Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "This thing [The Furry Trap] is a nightmarish monster. It's pretty great. ...[W]hat Simmons does so well -- without peer, honestly -- is smash together sweetness and nightmare. Innocence and the most vile corruption imaginable. The stories are unsettling, but Simmons takes it three steps further than many other creators in this vein and then pushes the events into exceedingly horrific territory and then shows how unsettled even the characters are, when they realize the kind of world they live in.... Yeah, this stuff is really good, in surprisingly different ways from story to story. It's a reprint collection that feels like a wonderfully terrible, vibrantly new manifesto on what comics are capable of." – Tim Callahan, Comic Book Resources

• Review: "Popeye Vol. 6: Me Li’l Swee’ Pea... is the last of the real, 'classic' Popeye volumes, meaning it’s the last batch of Popeye comics E.C. Segar did before dying of leukemia in 1938. Underscoring the tragedy is the fact that Segar’s skills hadn’t dimmed at despite his illness. The final daily storyline, King Swee’ Pea, is as strong and hilarious as Segar’s best material... This volume is also special as it contains one of the saddest sequences I’ve ever read in comics, wherein Swee’ Pea is taken from a distraught Popeye. ...I think it speaks to Segar’s genius about how verklempt this sequence still makes me." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "Krazy & Ignatz 1922-24: At Last My Drim of Life Has Come True... is the final volume in Fantagraphics’ Krazy Kat collection, though for roundabout publishing reasons, it catches the strip midway through its run. Reading this latest collection, I feel like I have a deeper appreciation for Herriman’s narration, which I always kind of saw as entertaining, but secondary to the dialogue and situations. I’m not sure why, but I feel like something 'clicked' here and another piece of the Herriman puzzle has fallen into place for me. Another great thing about this book: A whole run of Herriman’s 'Us Husbands' strip as well as some really early stuff." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "[Pogo: Vol. 1 of the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips:] Through the Wild Blue Wonder is an absolute peach of a collection; it features the typically handsome deluxe binding we’re used to from Fantagraphics and a beautiful cover, and the non-strip material within is more than enough to justify the double-sawbuck price tag.... Of course, any such collection lives and dies by the quality, readability and durability of the strips inside... [Pogo's] art... is simply breathtaking; the facial expressions and body language in these strips are often deceptively simple, but they offer a master class in how to communicate emotion and expression in cartooning.... [Kelly's] backgrounds are lovely and provide a perfect balance to the detail in the character illustrations... But what puts Pogo way, way over the top in terms of sheer audacious greatness isn’t its art, great as that is. It’s Kelly’s remarkably eclectic writing and inventive use of language that makes the strip." – Leonard Pierce, A Schediastic Hootenanny

• Commentary: "...Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Coincidental... is a beautiful book, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently. There’s a certain brand of mean-spirited, petty humor that’s been pretty popular over the last few decades, in which the main point seems to be laughing at some celebrity or another who no longer has a thriving career. As if failing to maintain A-list status in as fickle and luck-dependent as Hollywood was a valid reason to be mocked. At first glance, some of Friedman’s work, with its cast of has-beens and never-weres, can seem to be another example of this kind of comedy, but it isn’t — most of these strips cut a lot deeper than that. The reader feels the sting and pain of failure and despair too strongly to feel superior. In other words, we’re all Rondo Hatton." – Tim Hodler, The Comics Journal

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Austrian cartoonist Nicholas Mahler cheerfully spoofs superheroes and modern comic-book publishing with Angelman... These kinds of jokes about the venality of superhero industry have been made many times before, but Mahler’s little squiggly characters are adorable, and his gags are genuinely funny, especially as poor little Angelman gets more and more loaded down with quirks and complications. Angelman is a satire, yes, but it also revels to some extent in the goofiness of revamps, retcons, and all the other gimmicks that keep mainstream comics afloat." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "The Matthias Wivel-edited anthology Kolor Klimax: Nordic Comics Now offers a generous sampling of recent work by new and veteran cartoonists from Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark.... Overall, it’s a fine survey of creators who are largely unknown here in the States." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "Spain Rodriguez is one of the legends of the original underground comics wave, and he tells his own origin story in Cruisin’ with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Tooté, a collection of short stories about coming of age in Buffalo in the ’50s and ’60s. ...Cruisin’ with the Hound... gives a real flavor both of Rodriguez’s work — which was so different in its point of view than the other underground comics of the late ’60s and early ’70s — and from whence it came." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "It's over. And I am so sad. Fantagraphics's breathtaking reprints of some of the greatest comic strips of all time -- E.C. Segar's fabulously wonderful Popeye -- comes to a conclusion with this amazing sixth volume, a perfect collection of comics art that brings joy literally from cover to cover. From the latest spectacular die-cut front cover to the awesomely odd letter reprinted on the inside back cover, the final volume of the adventures of the sailor man and his friends, enemies and pets is pure joy and bliss, a deliriously charming collection... There was no world quite like the insane world that E.C. Segar created in Popeye. And that world is pure magic." – Jason Sacks, Comics Bulletin

• Review: "One of the most beloved comic strips of all time, Charles Schulz's Peanuts chronicled the adventures of Charlie Brown and friends for nearly five decades. Fantagraphics has been working for a few years now on a massive reissue of the entire strip, and their latest edition, The Complete Peanuts 1983-1984, collects work from the post-'classic' Peanuts era of the '60s. While it wouldn't be unfair to expect a bit of staleness at this stage, these later comics remain consistently witty and entertaining, and reflect Schulz's continued mastery of comedic timing within a four-panel layout.... Consistently subtle yet always timely, after 30 years, Schulz still had a winning formula on his hands." – Phil Guie, Critical Mob

• Interview (Audio): Podcaster Jason Barr: "Johnny Ryan guests on this addition of A.D.D. We talk about political correctness, illustration, growing up outside Boston, religion, wanting to be a priest, childhood loves, hating Doonesbury, having a funny family, not giving a shit, confrontational art, marriage & why people are afraid of Johnny Ryan among many other topics."

• Feature: "Love and Rockets has probably been my favorite comic book series for over a decade now. Though it’s been running since the early '80s, I didn’t discover it until Penny Century #1 came out in the late 90s -- I was immediately drawn to the cover art (as seen here), and the story within wasn’t at all what I expected. Of course, I immediately started reading all the collections starting from the beginning, so I could figure out who these characters were and discover their rich backstories." – Alicia Korenman, Chapelboro

• Plug: "Available now is an exceptional collection that just might have missed your attention. I have particularly enjoyed [The Sincerest Form of Parody].... This collects the 30 best stories from all the wild comics that came out to compete with EC's original Mad Comics, in 1953-55.... Plus I enjoy every project editor John Benson writes about. He offers fascinating insights into each of these disparate titles, interesting facts about the artists and even what they were spoofing." – Bud Plant

• Plug: On YALSA's The Hub blog, Emily Calkins includes Wandering Son by Shimura Takako on their list of graphic novels featuring LGBTQ characters

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.

Cruisin' with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Tooté
by Spain Rodriguez

136-page black & white 7.5" x 10.25" softcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-461-0

"...[T]here are a lot of good books out this week, mostly from Fantagraphics. My first pick would be Cruisin’ with the Hound, a collection of autobiographical strips by the great Spain Rodriguez centering mostly on his misspent teen and young adult years. A lot of this stuff was serialized in Blab! years ago and it’s all killer material." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"Cruisin' with the Hound now in stock. A collection of my favorite comics by Spain (or anyone for that matter)." – Jason Leivian, Floating World

Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental [New Edition]
by Drew Friedman & Josh Alan Friedman

88-page black & white 9.25" x 12.25" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-521-1

"There’s also the rerelease of Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental, Drew Friedman’s very first collection of scabrous caricatures, first released way back in the heady days of the early 1980s. Ah, good times …" – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"One of the foundational books of any arts/alt comics library, and a fine printing endorsed as such by the creator. If there's a funnier five minutes to be had than reading that Andy Griffith story, please tell me about it." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion
by Hans Rickheit

144-page black & white/color 7" x 10" softcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-509-9

"There’s also Folly: Consequences of Indescretion, a collection of short pieces by Hans Rickheit, author of The Squirrel Machine." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"If you go to the comics shop to buy work from voices with which you're not entirely familiar -- and you are a fine person if this is your primary reason for heading into comics shops -- I can't imagine a better buy for more people than a Hans Rickheit book." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"Rickheit is one of the finest and most interesting illustrators putting ink to paper today. This book collects his early, self-published books." – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

Popeye Vol. 6: "Me Li'l Swee'Pea"
by E.C. Segar

188-page black & white/color 10.5" x 14.75" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-483-2

"If I were splurging, I’d pick... the sixth and final Popeye volume from Fantagraphics. Let’s face it, there’s only one place to go to get pure, wonderful, unadulterated Popeye, and that’s from its creator, E.C. Segar. I’ve made no secret about my pure and utterly devout love for Segar’s strip and that love continues into this final volume, where Segar tragically died all too soon from leukemia. ...[I]f you’re really, seriously interested in wanting to delve into Popeye, this is where you go." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"Finally, my Nerd OCD prevents me from starting with volume 6, but Chris M has convinced me that I should check out Segar’s Popeye stuff. It’s out of bounds for this list, but if I had some extra money, I’d grab the first volume of that collection." – Michael May, Robot 6

"The final year-or-so worth of E.C. Segar's run on 'Thimble Theatre' is collected in another big, punchy hardcover, wrapping up the Fantagraphics reprint series."  – Douglas Wolk, ComicsAlliance

"One of the great strips, and an archival project that's kind of been forgotten a bit. These are magnificent comics, and I read them in a semi-swoon." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: There are a lot of pretty huge Fantagraphics releases this week, including some original sailor man stuff via Popeye Vol. 6 (of 6): Me Li’l Swee’Pea, the final hardcover compilation of Segar’s content; $29.99. Then there’s Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion, a 144-page selection of short stories by Hans Rickheit from the pages of Kramers Ergot, various minicomics and other places; $18.99. Then there’s Cruisin’ with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote, a 136-page collection of ’50s period tales by Spain Rodriguez, seen in Blab! and elsewhere; $19.99. AND THEN there’s a new edition of the 1985 Drew & Josh Alan Friedman collection Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead Is Purely Coincidental, a prime volume in many home libraries; $19.99." – Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

Now in stock in our warehouse and ready to ship to our mail-order customers:

Popeye Vol. 6: "Me Li'l Swee'Pea"
by E.C. Segar

188-page black & white/color 10.5" x 14.75" hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-483-2

See Previews / Order Now

Order this book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown at left as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last.

Alas, E.C. Segar, arguably the funniest cartoonist to ever lay ink on paper, died at the age of 44, leaving less that a decade’s worth of strips featuring his immortal creation Popeye — so this sixth volume of Segar’s Popeye is in fact the final one, enabling collectors to add the last “E” to the P-O-P-E-Y-E spelled out on the spines of Fantagraphics’ smashing collection.

This final volume starts off in grand style with “Mystery Melody,” featuring the terrifying return of the shape-shifting Sea Hag. Olive Oyl, Wimpy, Poop- deck Pappy, the Jeep, the newly domesticated Goon, and Toar all appear in this four-month epic, as does Bolo, the latest in Segar’s cast of massive Popeye opponents.

Other stories include the melodramatic “A Sock for Susan’s Sake” (Popeye becomes the protector of a girl who lives on the streets), Popeye’s boxing duel with King Smacko, the return of Thimble Theatre’s original star Castor Oyl as a detective who solves the case of “Plastic Pan,” the Poopdeck Pappy yarn “Wild Oats” (culminating in a six-month prison sentence for the rambunctious oldster), “The Valley of the Goons” (in which Popeye is shocked to discover who the new leader of the Goons is), and the self-explanatory “King Swee’Pea.”

And that’s just the dailies! Popeye Volume 6 also includes 62 splendid full-page full-color Sundays, featuring further adventures of Popeye and an epically surreal six-month interplanetary voyage for Sappo, the star of Popeye’s “top strip.” The supplementary features include two historical articles by Popeye expert Rick Marschall (one on Popeye’s translation to the world of licensing and merchandising, and one on Segar’s place in comics and pop culture history), an illustrated Segar-written biography of Popeye originally serialized in newspapers of the time, and more rare art and photos.

Download and read a 15-page PDF excerpt (27.2 MB) with 10 pages of dailies and 5 pages of Sundays.

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review (Video): It's a pretty safe bet you've never seen a review quite like Héctor G. Olarte's take on the Spanish edition of Jason's Athos in America for el Mundo's el Cultural — from the text intro (in translation): "If you have not read any of Jason, I can not think of a better way to start than with Athos. Most likely not be the last work of this author that passes through your hands."

• Plug: "Fantagraphics has released the cover for Popeye Vol. 6, the final volume of their handsome reprint series of E.C. Segar’s immortal Thimble Theater strips. We’re eager to get this if only to finish selling out POPEYE on the back of the books. Great design, great strip — one of those 'must haves' for every well-stocked comics library for sure." – Heidi MacDonald, The Beat

• Commentary: At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon has some things to say about the situation with our Jack Davis art book; Robot 6's J.K. Parkin also shares the news

• Commentary: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon again, endorsing Jim Woodring's fundraising efforts for his in-progress book Fran: "Jim Woodring is one of the great cartoonists of his generation, and probably one or two generations on each side of his own. He's one of those cartoonists that raises one's estimation of the entire art form for him being [in] it." Joe at Forbidden Planet International adds "I doubt I am alone in thinking Jim creates some of the most amazing art in the medium and he’s an artist well worthy of support." Amen to both.

• Scene: On the Sequential Artists Workshop blog Tom Hart writes "Tim Kreider came to SAW to discuss with Cartoonist Majed Badra and myself the issues of expressing charged themes in single images, in addressing concerns of sensitivity, the powerful vs the powerlessness, coming to historical understandings in political situations, plus also just cramming concepts and images together to get strong visceral cartoons."

Delivered this morning: advance copies of Popeye Vol. 6: "Me Li'l Swee'Pea" — the final volume of our complete E.C. Segar Popeye collections. We're excited but also a little sad that the series is coming to an end. Stay tuned for more updates and more/better photos & previews, as always.