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 The most recent ramblin' Online Commentaries & Diversions: •Commentary: ABC News and Amy Bingham picked up a few quotes by a partial interview online by Gary Groth with Maurice Sendak. The full interview will be published in The Comics Journal #302 in December: “Bush was president, I thought, ‘Be brave. Tie a bomb to your shirt. Insist on going to the White House. And I want to  have a big hug with the vice president, definitely." •Commenary: MSNBC's Kurt Schlosser also writes on Maurice Sendak's TCJ #302 interview. In the article, associate publisher Eric Reynolds is also quoted, "[Sendak] was…

One of the reasons I came to work at Fantagraphics in 1991 was the presence of late art director Dale Yarger. We'd worked together at The Rocket, where he designed Bruce Pavitt's monthly Sub Pop column and refined the logo of the future record label. He later designed the catalog for the landmark Misfit Lit comix exhibition when I was curator at CoCA. He left Fantagraphics to join the fledgeling alternative newspaper The Stranger, creating a look that remains largely intact today. I've always been fond of Dale's graphic sensibility – contemporary, yet absent fleeting trends of the moment. Timeless,…

The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez 96-page 7.75" x 7.75" black & white hardcover • $9.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-540-2 Ships in: July 2012 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Order this or any other Love and Rockets book and receive this FBI•MINI comic shown at left as a FREE bonus! Click here for details. Limit one per customer while supplies last. A rare foray into all-ages work, “The Adventures of Venus” was Gilbert Hernandez’s contribution to the kids’ anthology Measles which he edited in 1999 and 2000. This super-affordable little hardcover collects all the previously uncollected “Venus” stories from Measles in…

Crime doesn't pay… but for $8 you can pay to see crime being stopped by our own Michael Kupperman on Tuesday, July 10th! Yes, his monthly comedy series The Crime Stoppers Club is back, with special guests Julia Wertz, James Adomian, Matthew Thurber, Annie Lederman, and special guest Adam Warrock! Join them at Littlefield [ 622 Degraw Street, Brooklyn ]; doors open at 7:30 PM, and show is at 8:00 PM.  Show is 21+, so leave the vigilante youngsters at home. Seating is limited, so get there early. And don't miss out on future editions of The Crime Stoppers Club —…

The most in vogue Online Commentaries and Diversions: •Interview (audio): Perk up your ears to the soothing interview of Angelman's creator, Nicolas Mahler, on the Inkstuds podcast. Robin McConnell covers all the bases with Mahler: "[My] main influence is American newspaper comics from the 30s, this was what I discovered when I about was 15-16. It was Krazy Kat and Windsor McCay, those were the things that were important to my drawing style. Wouldn't you have guessed from looking at my drawings?" •Preview: JK Parkin, Robot6, talks up a preview of The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. This previously…

Love and Rockets' Jaime Hernandez snapped this quick picture while at HeroesCon this week. You never can get enough of Hopey or Maggie.

[In in the return of our Editors Notes series, Kim Thompson interviews himself (in a format he's dubbed "AutoChat") about New York Mon Amour by Jacques Tardi , now available to order from us and at a comics shop near you. – Ed.] This is going to be a particularly discursive and rambling one, so reader, be forewarned. I don’t want to see any complainin’ in the comments section about how self-indulgent this is; you’re being told that going in. That said… Okay, so… New York Mon Amour. This is what, your eighth? Ninth Tardi book? I’ve reached the point…

I'm pleased to report that thanks to a few tips, we've got 103 of the 104 Sunday POGO pages we need for the next book (three of them include black and white panels from book reprints that we've colored to match the surrounding strips, but that's just between you and us). The August 19, 1951 strip remains the problem child — or "chile," as one of Kelly's characters might say. We have a 1/3 Sunday page tearsheet, and have been able to track down two of the three panels from the missing top strip as this sequence appears in a book,…

 The up-to-the-minute Online Commentaries & Diversion:   •Plug: Our newest Jacques Tardi release, New York Mon Amour is out and available at your favorite comic shops. One of our such shop, Forbidden Planet, is very excited to have it in stock. Joe says, "I’m so glad the Fanta crew has been making these titles available again to English language readers." •Interview: WMFU host of Too Much Information, Benjamin Walker, questions Michael Kupperman about comics as a serious form of literature at his MIT Center for Civic Media conference talk. Kupperman: "You see high points. You have to build to that…

Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man by Carl Barks 248-page full-color 7.5" x 10.25" hardcover • $28.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-535-8 Ships in: Any day now to our North American mail-order customers! Pre-Order Now Since Fantagraphics’ first release in this series focused on Donald Duck, it is only right that the second focus on Carl Barks’s other great protagonist, and his greatest creation: The miserly, excessively wealthy Scrooge McDuck, whose giant money bin, lucky dime, and constant wrangles with his nemeses the Beagle Boys are well-known to, and beloved by, young and old. This volume starts off with “Only a…