Fantagraphics Blog Mike Baehr

Got comics questions? Head on over to The Stranger's Questionland, where you can get your queries answered all this week by our friendly staff as well as comics luminaries Peter Bagge, Tony Millionaire, Jason Lutes and Matthew Southworth.

This Drew Friedman illustration of "middle-aged Jewish comedians" The Beastie Boys leads off the reviews section of the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

A delightful new animatic by Cathy Malkasian, who, you may recall, is a BAFTA-nominated animator in addition to being an Eisner-winning graphic novelist. The "#1" in the title makes us hopeful for more episodes!

The A Moment of Moore tumblog recently posted this scan of Gilbert Hernandez's hilariously awesome illustration of Alan Moore from a 1988 issue of Comics Interview. Love that caption.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Interview: The L.A. Times Hero Complex blog's Noelene Clark talks to Carol Tyler about her L.A. Times Book Prize-nominated You'll Never Know, Book 2: Collateral Damage: "I had to read a lot of war books and Army accounts and talk to veterans and talk to Marines and everybody about what this thing is. Because it’s kind of aside from our culture. It’s not the dominant thing in our culture, so unless you know somebody in the Army that’s been there, it’s not something you’re going to come across. It’s a very nuanced, very difficult…

R. Sikoryak presents a supercharged version of his Carousel comics performance series tomorrow at noon at Cooper Union with readings by Kate Beaton, Nick Bertozzi, Kevin Colden, Mike Dawson, Ludovic Debeurme, Dean Haspiel, Michael Kupperman, Benjamin Marra, R. Sikoryak, Jeff Newelt, and Harvey Pekar (RIP) as part of the PEN World Voices literary festival in NYC — details and discount code here, tickets here.

Our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web: — Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size): — And elsewhere: Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane: Ectiopiary by Hans Rickheit: Maakies by Tony Millionaire: Mugwhump the Great by Roger Langridge (at Act-i-vate): Smashing Crayons by Steve Brodner at SlateV: Truth Serum by Jon Adams:

I've watched it a few times now, and I can still scarcely fathom it. Legendary music interviewer Nardwuar presents rap superstar Lil Wayne with some gifts of the Northwest, including Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind. Quoth an appreciative Mr. Carter: "I collect these type of things, so this is a good thing right here." The whole thing's worth watching, but jump ahead to 2:20 for the Taking Punk stuff. (YouTube link.)

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Interview: The L.A. Times Hero Complex blog's Noelene Clark talks to Jim Woodring about his L.A. Times Book Prize-nominated Weathercraft: "Art is always so reductive, and what I have going on in my comics is so simple and relatively easy to understand compared to real life, which is infinitely complex. So it might relate to real life in the same way that a chessboard would relate to a chessboard with an infinite number of squares on it. It’s sort of similar in some ways, but it’s much, much, much, much, much simpler and reductive…