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A fitting Pogo sentiment on a day after elections. The original art from this strip will be on display at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery along with 15 others for "Playing Possum: The Pogo Art of Walt Kelly." The show opens on Saturday, December 10 — the centerpiece of our festive 5th anniversary gala. Pogo party, indeed!

It's official! Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery will be celebrating its 5th anniversary on Saturday, December 10 with an exhibition of Walt Kelly's original Pogo artwork. Look for a dozen dailies and several Sundays along with some appropriately swampy musical entertainment. Save the date and make your way to the bookstore where you will, indeed, be "confronted with insurmountable opportunities."

For the chilly month of October, the Center for Sex & Culture in San Francisco is heating things up with their new exhibit Dirty Comics: An Exhibition of Erotic Comic Art.

Bay area erotic artist Jon Macy has curated a show featuring 30 different comic artists, including our very own Dame Darcy!

The Center for Sex & Culture is located at 1349 Mission Street between 9th and 10th Streets, on the corner of Grace Street.

Thanks to the always-intrepid Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter for the heads-up-- uh, I mean, tip-off-- uh, I mean... never mind.

One man. One-hundred-and-one one-panel cartoons.

Our Oil & Water artist Shannon Wheeler presents just that, with an exhibition of his New Yorker artwork opening tonight at PCPA [ 1111 SW Broadway, Portland ]. How perfect is THAT street address?

This will be amazing.

Join Gary Panter as he presents his latest exhibit at Fredericks & Freiser in New York City.

Twenty paintings by Panter will be on display through November 5th, with the opening reception tomorrow night, Thursday, October 6th, from 6:00 - 8:00 PM. Prepare to have your mind blown.

Fredericks & Freiser is located at 536 West 24th Street in NYC.

After acclaimed runs in San Francisco and Toronto, the touring exhibit Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women is now showing in New York City!

The exhibit runs through April 15th at the Yeshiva University Museum in the Center for Jewish History [ 15 West 16th Street ] and features Fantagraphics artists Miss Lasko-Gross, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Trina Robbins, and Diane Noomin, alongside a ton of other amazing female artists, like Vanessa Davis, Bernice Eisenstein, Sarah Glidden, Miriam Katin, Miriam Libicki, Corinne Pearlman, Sarah Lightman, Sarah Lazarovic, Racheli Rottner, Sharon Rudahl, Laurie Sandell, Ariel Schrag, Lauren Weinstein and Ilana Zeffren.

And on Monday, October 24th, you can join Miss Lasko-Gross and Ariel Schrag, Miriam Katin, and Lauren Weinstein for the panel "Close & Personal: Jewish Women Artists & their Graphic Diaries."  Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTnews, will moderate. There will be a viewing at 6:00 PM, with the panel starting at 6:30 PM.  Admission is free, with advance reservation, so get to it!

Some original Gil Jordan (Gil Jourdan) pages by Maurice Tillieux are currently on exhibit at the Maison de la Bande Dessinée in Brussels — Wim Lockefeer has a report and more photos at the Forbidden Planet International Blog Log. These originals are impeccable and Tillieux's artwork is beautiful in black & white.

I was pretty excited to get to the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery this past Sunday and see the exhibit is now up for Drawing Power: An Exhibition of Cartoon Advertising!

Where the heck did editor Warren Bernard get all this cool stuff?! Well, we can ask him in person when he makes a special Seattle appearance on Saturday, September 24th at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery!

Make plans now to join us from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Warren will be giving a slideshow presentation and talk. 

And as an extra bonus, we'll be joined by artist Tom Neely, currently on tour for his incredible "painted novel," The Wolf.  I'll be dishing more about that on the Flog later...!

The Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival in Seattle has come and gone, and I'm still recovering from the three-day whirlwind of bands, comedians, and shishkaberries, but for those of you who weren't able to attend, I thought I'd share some snaps from the "Bumber By Number" exhibit, which ran during Bumbershoot weekend!

Curators Marlow Harris and Jo David gave vintage paint-by-number kits to local artists, who were encouraged to customize the works and "paint-outside-the-box," as it were. Here's Jim Blanchard's vibrant piece, which looks like it should be hung in a wood-paneled basement, or perhaps screened on the side of a van...

And here's Jim Woodring's morbid take on a winter scene... Damn, I love it.

You can see larger versions of these photos on the Fantagraphics Flickr page, and be sure to check out all our awesome photos and videos while you're there!

There's a fantastic exhibit opening this weekend in Chicago featuring several Fantagraphics artists, including Chris Ware, Lilli Carré, Anders Nilsen, and Jeffrey Brown! 

CartoonInk!: Emerging Comics in Context spotlights the work of students and alumni of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, all curated by SAIC faculty Christa Donner, Surabhi Ghosh, and Mome contributor Jeremy Tinder!

Bump!!!

After a few delays (hence the past date on the poster above, which was gorgeously designed by Marc Bell), CartoonInk! runs this Saturday, September 10th through October 15th at the Betty Rymer Gallery at SAIC. And on Friday, September 9th, there will be an opening reception from 4:30 – 7:00 PM!

Anders reports he'll have a full wall painting there (see pics up on his blog), and Lilli says she'll have some original pages and animation frames on display!

The Betty Rymer Gallery is located at 280 South Columbus Drive, between Jackson Dr & Monroe St. in Chicago.