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The first* glass of spiked eggnog of Online Commentaries & Diversions:   • Review: Metroland's Simcoe reviews Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks and The Complete Peanuts: 1985 to 1986 by Charles M. Schulz. Glenn Perrett states, "Reading Carl Bark's "Donald Duck" stories from 60 years ago was entertaining. The animation and colours are excellent and sections such as "Story Notes" [etc.] . . . complement the wonderful comics making this book a nice addition to any library." And "The Complete Peanuts: 1985 to 1986 are sure to make the holidays more entertaining and makes…

Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 2 by Michael Kupperman 176-page full-color 7.25" x 10" hardcover • $24.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-615-7 Ships in: January 2013 (subject to change) – Pre-Order Now   BARGAIN COMBO: Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vols. 1 + 2 Gift Set Price: $49.98 $39.98 Hot on the heels of his acclaimed Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010 comes Michael Kupperman’s second all-comics collection of surreal slapstick and crazy non-sequitur goofiness, all from the pages of his beloved comic book series Tales Designed to Thrizzle. Tales Designed to Thrizzle Volume Two features two of Kupperman’s recurring duos: America’s favorite mustachioed physicist/writer double team of Twain and…

The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is proud to present a homecoming event with artist Nathan Bulmer, former-Seattleite now-Brooklynite, on Sunday, December 30th, signing from 2:00 to 4:00 PM! Bulmer has had work published in MAD Magazine, Time Out New York, Seattle Magazine, and The Comics Journal, and has a brand-new collection out now titled Eat More Bikes, from our dear friends at Koyama Press! Much like his web-comic of the same name, the all-new cartoons contained inside traffic in the same absurdist humour. You can buy more comics like Eat More Bikes at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, located at…

Behold, the new issue of The Comics Journal, an edition so awesome we made it a flip-book with TWO cover features: Gary Groth's newsmaking interview with the late Maurice Sendak on one side, and Kim Thompson's interview with Jacques Tardi on the other side. (To clarify, there aren't two separate covers; every copy has both covers and which one's the "front" depends on which way you turn it.) And there's a whooole lotta stuff in between. Look for excerpts to be posted on TCJ.com as the release date nears (early February being our current best guess). TCJ sets the agenda for intelligent comics conversation, so pre-order…

Arriving in mailboxes imminently: the 2013 edition (we've lost count of how many of these things we've put out) of the Fantagraphics Ultimate Catalog of Comics! It's jam-packed with our 2012 releases, a few upcoming 2013 releases, and a bunch of backlist stuff. It also has an update on our FBI•MINI mail-order bonus program and some surprise exclusive money-saving offers! And, of course, there's a handy order form for ordering everything. If you're not already on our mailing list, contact us to request your free copy, and if you just can't wait and/or want to have it on your computer or mobile…

Never mind that it's winter — things are gonna be heatin' up this Saturday, December 15th as Fantagraphics celebrates the, uh, release of Sexytime: The Post-Porn Rise of the Pornoisseur!  Editor Jacques Boyreau will be bringing the naughty and nice to the Northwest Film Forum at 9:00 PM. Boyreau kicks off the evening with a hilarious and tasteless compilation of outstanding 35/16mm porn trailers.   The night concludes with a screening of Candy Von Dewd, where valiant, stoic astronauts of the Rocketship Leroy crash on a dune planet and encounter telepathic Amazons. Drugs, gladiators, robots, boobs and alien sex blow…

Portland's already a bit of a cartoon utopia, so it's only right to bring the lovely Ron Rege, Jr. to town for a celebration of his magnum opus, The Cartoon Utopia! Join him this Friday, December 14th at Floating World Comics for this very special signing from 5:00 to 7:00 PM. In The Cartoon Utopia, “Utopians” of the future world are attempting to send messages through consciousness, outside of the constricts of time as we understand it. These messages appear in the form of art, music and storytelling, three of the very things that Ron will be bringing to the…

The comics world lost a great cartoonist this month as Spain Rodriguez drove his wild hog one last time. As an influential members of underground comics, his reach was large. The New York Times wrote an excellent obituary on Spain and Bruce Weber profiled him as "part of a wave of artists — including R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson and Bill Griffith, who created the character Zippy the Pinhead — who established the irreverent, profane, highly sexed, antiwar, anti-capitalist spirit of underground comics (often, in this context, spelled comix)." Below is a sketch Spain made for Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds….

The cutest Carré animation of Online Commentaries & Diversions*: • Review: Chris Sims on Comics Alliance looks at the first story (and title story) of the latest Carl Barks collection: Walt Disney's Donald Duck "A Christmas for Shacktown." Sims says, "At 32 pages, it's a sprawling epic (By Barks' standards, anyway) that hits those beautiful Holiday themes of altruism and the spirit of giving. Although to be fair, it does get a little closer to cannibalism than most other Christmas comics. • Review: Speaking of Christmas comics, John Seven of the North Adams Transcript reads Charlie Brown's Christmas Stocking by…

R.C. Harvey, who seemingly knows everything about everything, once again shared the expanse of his knowledge in his annotations for our latest collection of Walt Kelly's Pogo strips and once again we had to bleed the red pen dry and carve Harv's original text down considerably from the original 10,000 (or so) words to print it in the allotted space in Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 2 – Bona Fide Balderdash. But again, since the internet knows no such space limitations, we are pleased to present the unadulterated, unedited Harv here on our website. (And if you've just picked…