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Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review/Interview: Vice's Nick Gazin looks at The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 — "I expected that the quality of the Peanuts comics would be waning by now, but I’m still laughing at the jokes and recognizing the personalities of characters I know in the gang…. It’s a beautifully designed, thick, brickish volume with lots of memorable storylines…. All in all it’s a beautiful two years worth of Charles Schulz’s creative output. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you think." — and talks to Monte Schulz about his dad's work on the strip — "The early 80s…

  One of the great pleasures of working at Fantagraphics Bookstore in Georgetown is the amazing people I meet. Like Pam, from Classic Helicopters at the south end of Boeing Field. She treated me, John and my daughter Bella to a 45-minute chopper tour of the region on Tuesday morning. Highlights included a breathtaking look down Snoqualmie Falls, a bird's eye view of the Space Needle, and a spectacular look at the Seattle skyline from above the stadiums. Here we are hovering near Lake Washington with hella Bella at the controls. Look out below!

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982 (and the 1979-1982 box set) is scheduled to hit comic shops next week and PREVIEWSworld presents a 5-page preview with strips from February-April 1981!

From designer Alexa Koenings here's the striking final cover design for Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler's Oil and Water, coming in late Fall/early Winter. It's similar to the preliminary design we've already shown you, with some small but important differences. We're hoping to have the bottom half of "OIL" printed with iridescent metallic stamping for that authentic oil-spill sheen, which should look pretty fantastic if it works out. We're also excited to share this advance praise we received from Jeff Lemire, creator of Essex County and Sweet Tooth: "Oil and Water is smart, informative and completely engaging. We experience the…

The Hidden by Richard Sala 136-page full-color 8.25" x 8.25" hardcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-386-6 Ships in: August 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Is this the end of the world? How did it happen? Why did it happen? There is one man who knows… Take a walk with the dazed survivors of a mysterious worldwide catastrophe. They are bound for a place, somewhere in the desert, where a terrible truth awaits them. Richard Sala's books are "deliriously entertaining" (Rue Morgue Magazine), "cinematic and cheerfully over-the-top" (The New York Times Book Review), containing "brilliantly atmospheric art, full of shadows and…

Continuing to add new Mome contributors to the Flog fold, today we look at the work of Jesse Moynihan. Jesse's new book Forming Vol. 1, the first collection of his awesome webcomic, hits comic shops today (published by Nobrow Press out of the UK and distributed in the US by AdHouse): The latest page of Forming: Jesse also does storyboards for one of my 2 current favorite TV shows, Adventure Time! (Click the image to see the whole crazy pan down into the underworld.) There's a bunch more artwork you can see on his website: Here's a peek at Jesse's…

Wandering Son creator Shimura Takako posted a few doodles on Twitter today, starting (much to my delight) with Kyle, Stan, Cartman and Kenny from South Park… …followed by this reclining nude… …and finally this cute character, "Yukinko" (I must confess my ignorance as to whether this is a character from one of her stories):

This is a pretty cool look at the original art for the cover and the breathtaking aerial panorama on pages 58-59 of Wilfred Santiago's 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente.

The PREVIEWSworld website presents an assortment of 7 pages from Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954, which is scheduled to hit comic shops next week! The preview shows a nice mix of Toth's horror, war and romance work. Elsewhere on their site PREVIEWSworld also shares our promotional "BLAD" brochure for Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, previously seen here on our website.

Our summer tour continues for Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind! After a sell-out show in Olympia [note: it was free], editor and Senior Curator of the EMP museum, Jacob McMurray, is now heading over the water to bad-ass Bellevue, WA!  Charles Burns's iconic artwork for Sub Pop 200, from Taking Punk to the Masses Sub Pop friends like Modest Mouse and Sunny Day Real Estate both formed on that side of the lake, and the East Side used to boast some legendary all-ages venues like Ground Zero and the Fire House. You can join Jacob this…