• Profile: Spanish site Zona Negativa takes a close look at the young career of Dash Shaw (Google translation)

• Things to see (and buy): Robert Goodin has put a bunch of recent work up for sale at Comic Art Collective, with more to come over the weekend (via Rob's blog)

"The Monster Show: New Works by Robert Goodin" opens tomorrow evening at Secret Headquarters in L.A. (More details here.) Impatient people or out-of-towners can check out the artwork in the Secret Headquarters Flickr set.

(Update: Whoops, I should read our blog before I post on it, huh?)

Secret Headquarters Presents:

THE MONSTER SHOW
New works by
ROBERT GOODIN

THIS FRIDAY the 6th at 8pm

SECRET HEADQUARTERS
3817 w. Sunset blvd
Los Angeles, California 90026

Here are some thoughts on last year's comics that I would like to share with you. I don't dare call this a "Best Of" list -- these are merely some comics that I read and that stand out to me, excluding Fantagraphics releases because it's my job to love them all equally, though you'll find some stuff from Fanta folks in here. Listed more or less alphabetically:

• Against Pain by Ron Rege Jr. (D&Q) - A nice hefty slab of Ron's unique vision. I'm always compelled by Ron's stuff and it's great to have this much of it in one place.

• Capacity by Theo Ellsworth (Secret Acres) - A warm, cleverly constructed, visually stunning tour through the artist's amazingly fertile creative imagination. Ellsworth synthesizes his mind-bogglingly detailed fantastical world-building with autobiography in a really natural and satisfying way without seeming like a crazy person, which is quite a feat.

• Dead Ringer by Jason T. Miles (La Mano) - A big, haunting slab of swampy beauty, mortality, cartoon gore, poetry and lovely chipboard. Morbid, funny, sublime, and lowbrow all at once. I get to sit next to this guy at work.

• Fight or Run: Shadow of the Chopper by Kevin Huizenga (Buenaventura) - Huizenga makes an experimental comic and the result is pure, distilled, uncut, unadulterated Comics Fun. Nifty!

• The Man Who Loved Breasts by Robert Goodin (Top Shelf) - Like a master class in expressive cartooning. Just look at George Olavatia's face from panel to panel, for Pete's sake.

• Trubble Club (online and self-published mini) - Cute, weird, gross, sad, funny jam comics from over a dozen participants (including Laura Park and Lilli Carré). Almost every panel goes in a delightfully unexpected direction.

• Welcome to the Dahl House by Ken Dahl (Microcosm) - His story in Papercutter hooked me on his acerbic worldview and crackerjack cartooning. This is mostly earlier stuff and as such a little rougher but it brings you up to where the greatness is.

• Renee French's blog - I look forward to Renee's daily drawings more than anything else in my RSS feeds. I especially love her lo-fi cameraphone (?) doodle snapshots and she occasionally flat out blows my mind.

• List: I Love Rob Liefeld loves Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw and Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga, putting them on the top-10 list of "The Best Comics of 2008" at #2 and #8, respectively

• List: A top-25 "Best Comics of 2008" list from Matthew Brady, with Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers at #19, Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories by Jason at #16, and Bottomless Belly Button at #12

• Review: Reason "briefly notes" Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell

• Review: ComicMix recommends Man of Rock: A Biography of Joe Kubert by Bill Schelly

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch starts a 3-parter with Lilli Carré

• Interview: The Comix Claptrap podcast talks to Andrice Arp and Jesse Reklaw

• Things to see: Photos from Jim Blanchard's art opening at Wall of Sound in Seattle a couple of weekends ago

• Things to see: Photos of Dame Darcy at her exhibit opening in D.C. (with news of an upcoming musical gig in Portland); the D.C. Examiner looks at the exhibit too

• Things to see: Covered blog founder Robert Goodin contributes his version of Wonder Woman #155

From his blog, an announcement from Robert Goodin:

I have a solo show at Secret Headquarters called The Monster Show that will feature 14 new paintings/drawings. Opening reception is Feb. 6, from 8 - 10 pm and the show will be up until Feb. 27th. For those not in the Los Angeles area, Secret Headquarters will have the paintings online for purchase as well.

Secret Headquarters
3817 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, Ca 90026
(323)666 2228

I've seen some of these works in person and they are wonderful.

From Robert Goodin: "I've just launched a blog called Covered that has an artist redrawing a comic cover in their own style.  Participating artists will come from the fields of comics, animation, graphic design, and galleries from all over the world and some will be well known and some not so well known." There's just a couple of entries so far, but it looks like it's gonna be great. Above: Jeffrey Brown's version of Secret Wars #10.

• More APE photos, this time from Robert Goodin

• PLAYBACK:stl looks at Tim Lane's Abandoned Cars

• In The Patriot-News: Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers prompts Chris Mautner to wonder if the comic book pamphlet format is dying

Tonight at 7:00, see Mome contributor Robert Goodin at Meltdown in LA for the release of his new comic one-shot from our pals at Top Shelf, The Man Who Loved Breasts. Momes will, of course, also be available, as well as other Goodinalia.

(I dare you not to sing the title of this post to yourself to the tune of the theme from Entertainment Tonight now that I have put the suggestion in your head.)

Mome contributor Robert Goodin has a couple of new items available in his online shop. How can you not want to buy this silkscreened-on-wood-veneer postcard of a giraffe wearing goggles riding a bike with a sissy bar? C'mon!