Elvis Costello's new album National Ransom, featuring cover art by Tony Millionaire, is currently streaming for a limited time on the Colbert Nation website, which means that Tony's artwork appeared on the closing segment of Tuesday's episode of The Colbert Report! (Thanks to Jacob for the screen grab.) Hey Stephen, get Tony on your show — you won't be sorry! Here's a better look at the cover art:

The G4 cable network sent comedian Jonah Ray to talk to us and other indie publishers at Comic-Con in San Diego last summer for a segment on Fresh Ink Online, posted over the weekend.

Tonight at 8 PM (Eastern/Pacific) on Cartoon Network is the debut of the new series Sym-Bionic Titan — our man Stephen DeStefano worked on it and drew the above promo art! I've got my DVR set and so should you.

(UPDATE: Just to clarify a bit, Stephen is Character Designer for the show, which is created & executive-produced by Genndy Tartakovsky.)

Thanks to Dash Shaw for sending us this bit of YouTube gold: Gary Groth appearing on the Canadian TV program The Anti-Gravity Room sometime in the early 1990s! Following Gary in this clip: Peter Kuper.

We had a flurry of exciting celebrity shoppers toward the end of the day:

Above, Fire & Water author Blake Bell meets the television & movie actress of the oddly similar name Lake Bell and the world does not implode, possibly due to Lake's boyfriend, comedian Nick Kroll, executing the perfect photobomb.

Here, Nick strikes a perfect mirror-image pose with one of two Drew Friedman books he picked up while Tom Spurgeon botches his photobomb.

Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, creators of the BBC comedy series Look Around You among other things, stopped by the booth after a friendly hint from our own gutsy Janice Headley during the Q&A at the Look Around You panel shortly beforehand about Michael Kupperman's involvement in The Peter Serafinowicz Show (video link):

And finally (actually earlier in the day): Kick-Ass displays good taste in comics with his newly-purchased copy of Drinky Crow's Maakies Treasury!

Ellen Forney was featured on KING-5's Evening Magazine tonight, as they paid a visit to her comic art class. See above or the link for embedded video.

Looky what made an appearance on last night's episode of the Bravo network's latest reality competition show Work of Art: it's Daniel Clowes's cover for the Penguin Classics edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as part of a book-related challenge. I haven't watched the episode yet (shut up) so I don't know if there's more to it than this cameo appearance. Thanks to TCJ's Kristy Valenti for alerting me to this screencap from Project Rungay (episode spoilers at the link).

Steve Brodner just announced some exciting news:

"Tonight marks our first contribution to Need to Know, PBS’ new Friday night newsmagazine.  We are doing short films which combine narrative, live art and animation. This week we contemplate Hamid Karzai. 8:30 tonight in the East (check locals) and 6PM on Sunday."

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "It’s vaudevillian and it’s Old Hollywood. It’s rock n’ roll and beat poetry. It’s introspective and depressing and quite often funny, and depicts a world that exists on the fringes of society where the American Dream meets the cold, harsh reality of life as viewed through a grimy windshield. ... When you put all the pieces together, you don’t simply get a story or a group of stories, you get a book that pulls back the curtain on the collective unconscious of a nation. ... Like the myths that it is inspired by, Abandoned Cars lingers long after reading and grows in stature as you re-live and re-tell it." – Chad Derdowski, Mania

• Review: "Part of Pim & Francie’s disconcerting effect is that it confounds easy categorization, leaving the reader uncertain what exactly this book is, or how to approach it. It doesn’t contain discrete, coherent stories, but it’s also more unified and linear than a sketchbook; there are continuing characters, recurring images and situations, even a discernable arc. It’s possible to piece together narratives from the fragments here, the way you might reconstruct a crime scene from bits of evidence, or a nightmare from fading details. These stories may even be all the more potent for having to be inferred, like the phantasms we imagine when we listen to horror stories on the radio." – Tim Kreider, The Comics Journal

•Profile/Review: Thought Balloonists' Charles W. Hatfield has a doozy of a report from Robert Williams's March 10 lecture at Cal. State Northridge, with plenty of insight into the artist, the talk, and the Conceptual Realism exhibit at the CSUN gallery: "Williams and his academic audience met halfway; the bracing, not to say ass-kicking, potency of the paintings seemed to wow most of the crowd. This was a fine performance, enlivened from the start by Williams' genuine gratitude and enthusiasm for being there."

• Plug: Library Journal spotlights Jason's Werewolves of Montpellier among notable July graphic novel releases: "Having subjected zombies to the witty vagaries of his goofy, humanized animals, Eisner Award winner Jason tackles werewolves mixed up in re-creational burglary and romance. It’s the pretender vs. the professionals — who are not happy about amateur competition."

• Television: Adult Swim will start re-running The Drinky Crow Show starting March 30, so mark your calendars and set your DVRs now. Even if you caught it the first time, it merits repeat viewings

How do you know that L.A. independent bookstore Skylight Books is awesome (aside from the two magic words "independent bookstore" that is)? The fact that they feature closeups of Locas II AND kittycats in their new TV ad, that's how! (Via The Believer on Twitter.)