We thought that the image on the inside covers of the new book by Jason & Fabien Vehlmann, Isle of 100,000 Graves, might make a spiffy desktop background image... and we were right! Things are about to get real interesting for this band of bored, presumably tipsy pirates. Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." For lots more wallpaper selections, find recent ones here and older ones here.

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Here's a nifty piece of recent Daniel Clowes artwork you mightn't've seen before: the wraparound cover for the Japanese edition of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, put out by our esteemed colleagues over at Presspop! Click the image for a high-res version that would look pretty smart as a desktop background.

Free fun! Celebrate the ronin rabbit and the impending release of Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition by putting some gorgeous Stan Sakai artwork (and design elements based on Jacob Covey's stellar book design) on your desktop. Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." (We don't know what the procedure is for iPhones, but if you have one, you probably do, right?) For lots more wallpaper selections, find recent ones here and older ones here.

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To celebrate the launch of the new improved Meat Cake collection we've got some free downloadable treats for Dame Darcy fans!

First up, a smashing desktop wallpaper based on the title pages from the book. Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." More wallpapers...

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Next, download and print out four pages of "Paper Doll Fun" (1.6 MB PDF) to cut, color & assemble without breaking the spine of your book on the photocopier (or, heaven forfend, cutting up your book)!

There's a two-page spread of wallpaper designs in the forthcoming 6th issue of Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle and what kind of fun would we be if we didn't offer up a couple for your computer desktop? No kind, that's what. And they're one size fits all! If you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." Set your background to tile or repeat and voila, the pattern on your screen!

"Here's Looking at You, Kid":

"Disco Veggies":

We also thought it might be fun to take a couple of the fake ads from the issue and turn them into banner ads for the web. Put them on your website and baffle your readers! (And link them to http://www.fantagraphics.com/thrizzle6 if you don't mind.)

Wally Wednesday continues! Give your computer the lucrative look with the official Wally Gropius desktop wallpaper pattern, based on the endpapers of the book. If you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." Set your background to tile or repeat and voila, the endpaper pattern on your screen!

Abandoned Cars (Softcover Edition)
by Tim Lane

168-page black & white 7.5" x 9" softcover • $18.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-341-5

Ships in: April 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

This item is available with two different cover designs. Please indicate your preference when ordering.

THE ACCLAIMED 2008 DEBUT, BACK IN PRINT IN A 2010 SOFTCOVER!

Abandoned Cars is Tim Lane’s first collection of graphic short stories, noir-ish narratives that are united by their exploration of the great American mythological drama by way of the desperate and haunted characters that populate its pages. Lane’s characters exist on the margins of society—alienated, floating in the void between hope and despair, confused but introspective. Some of them are experiencing the aftermath of an existential car crash—those surreal moments after a car accident, when time slows down and you’re trying to determine what just happened and how badly you’re hurt. Others have gone off the deep end, or were never anywhere but the deep end. Some are ridiculous, others dignified in their efforts to struggle to make sense of, and cope with, the absurdities, outrages, ghosts, and poisons in their lives.

The writing is straightforward, the stories mainstream but told in a pulpy idiom with an existential edge, often in the first person, reminiscent of David Goodis’s or Jim Thompson’s prose or of films like Pick-Up on South Street or Out of the Past. Visually, Lane’s drawing is in a realistic mode, reminiscent of Charles Burns, that heightens the tension in stories that veer between naturalism on the one hand and the comical, nightmarish, and hallucinatory on the other. Here, American culture is a thrift store and the characters are thrift store junkies living among the clutter. It’s an America depicted as a subdued and haunted Coney Island, made up of lost characters—boozing, brawling, haplessly shooting themselves in the face, and hopping freight trains in search of Elvis.

Abandoned Cars is an impressive debut of a major young American cartoonist.

2009 Ignatz Award Nominee: Outstanding Anthology or Collection

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

FREE Desktop Wallpaper Downloads!
Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." (We don't know what the procedure is for iPhones, but if you have one, you probably do, right?) More wallpapers...

When I was taking photos for our preview of King of the Flies Vol. 1: Hallorave by Mezzo & Pirus, I observed that the endpapers might make a nifty desktop background. One request to the art department later, and presto! (Note that this image is Not Safe For Most Workplaces due to partial nudity.)

Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." (We don't know what the procedure is for iPhones, but if you have one, you probably do, right?) For lots more wallpaper selections, find recent ones here and older ones here.

Here's a late addendum to our preview/pre-order announcement for Unlovable Vol. 2 by Esther Pearl Watson: some Tammy Pierce for your computer or mobile phone screen! (Or if you prefer Tammy Vol. 1 style in hot pink, we've got that too.)

Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; if you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." (We don't know what the procedure is for iPhones, but if you have one, you probably do, right?) For lots more wallpaper selections, find recent ones here and older ones here.

We hope that in all the excitement over the 3rd Anniversary Party this Saturday at Fantagraphics Bookstore — for which we have assembled the most amazing group of cartoonists ever — you don't overlook the equally auspicious Portable Grindhouse panel discussion on Sunday, December 13 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM. It promises to be both entertaining and enlightening.

Participants include artist Lisa Petrucci of Something Weird, the world's premier purveyor of psychotronic film (and the subject of a new art book KICKASS KUTIES from Dark Horse); cartoonist Marc Palm of the exalted Scarecrow Video; Seattle Times pop culture correspondent Mark Rahner and Robert Horton, movie critic at KUOW-FM and film curator for the Frye Art Museum, who together write the acclaimed horror comic ROTTEN. The panel will be moderated by PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE editor Jacques Boyreau. The panel will be followed by a reception and book signing.

Don't you dare miss either of these events or you'll regret it to the day you die and we'll be forced to taunt you with the infantile chant "Neener, neener, neener - we told you so." Sure, it's unbecoming, but sometimes we can't help ourselves.

[Ed. note: Click on the mural image above to download a high-res version you can use as a desktop background or what-have-you!]