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This Friday, August 12th, the fabulous Roq la Rue gallery debuts The Blab! Show, curated by noneother than Monte Beauchamp!   Beauchamp returns to the theme of "Krampus," which you may remember from back issues of Blab! and the collection of vintage Krampus postcards The Devil in Design, and the show features interpretations by artists like Shag, Andy Kehoe, and Ryan Heshka. If you don't recall, Krampus is a sinister holiday devil, so appropriately enough, Roq la Rue promise they'll be "throwing one hell of an opening party!" The Blab! Show runs until September 3rd. For anyone outside the Seattle…

Director Seth Craven has taken the tender, lovely Jordan Crane comic The Last Lonely Saturday and has turned it into a film! I have not seen it yet, but just the still above is getting me choked up, so that's probably for the best. Like our tiny 4" X 6" book, the film, too, is a tiny eight minutes. Like the (nearly) wordless panels of Crane's novella, Craven's movie has no dialogue. And, like Crane's comic creation… this film will probably make me cry! The Last Lonely Saturday makes its film debut this Friday, August 12th as part of the…

photo credit: Lynn Christoffers Check out the Paul Karasik exhibit at the West Tisbury Public Library! [ GET IT?! ] This Eisner Award-winning artist and scholar debuted an exhibit last Friday at his hometown library, and fortunately for those of you in Massachusetts, it will run until the end of August! Plus, Paul will be donating half of the proceeds from the sale of his work to the library's expansion fund. The West Tisbury Public Library is located at 1042 State Road in Vineyard Haven, MA. And be sure to check out [ heh, heh… okay, I'll stop ] this…

Even More Old Jewish Comedians by Drew Friedman 36-page full-color 10" x 10" hardcover • $16.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-489-4 Ships in: August 2011 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Master caricaturist/portraitist Drew Friedman’s spectacular visual tribute to, well, old Jewish comedians returns with a third and concluding installment that throws its net a bit wider to include a few women (Olive Oyl voice Mae Questel, Ed Sullivan show regular Jean Carroll, and The Rise of the Goldbergs creator Gertrude Goldberg); a handful of more contemporary figures (Richard Belzer, whose Law & Order: SVU gig has eclipsed his stand-up comedy, and Welcome Back,…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Twentieth Century Eightball (3rd Printing) by Daniel Clowes 100-page 6.75" x 10.25" black & white/color softcover • $19.00ISBN: 978-1-56097-436-9 See Previews / Order Now Twentieth Century Eightball collects the very best humor strips from Eightball, written and drawn between 1988 and 1996. Included within are such seminal strips/rants as "I Hate You Deeply," "Sexual Frustration," "Ugly Girls," "Why I Hate Christians," "Message to the People of the Future," "Paranoid," "My Suicide," "Chicago," and over three dozen more. Other favorites include "Art School Confidential," one of Clowes' most popular strips of all…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: The Pin-Up Art of Humorama by various artists; edited by Alex Chun; designed by Jacob Covey 216-page duotone 5.75" x 7.75" softcover • $19.99ISBN: 978-1-56097-959-3 See Previews / Order Now During the 1950s, Abe Goodman — brother of Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman — was the largest buyer of cartoons in the world. Publishing out of New York City under the Humorama banner, Goodman churned out scores of cheap digest-sized magazines boasting inventive titles like Romp, Stare and Joker that featured hackneyed jokes, cheesecake photos and the publications’ bread and butter,…

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Esperanza: A Love and Rockets Book(Love and Rockets Library: "Locas" Book 5) by Jaime Hernandez 248-page black & white 7.5" x 9.25" softcover • $18.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-449-8 See Previews / Order Now Esperanza, the fifth volume of “Locas” stories by Jaime Hernandez, collects the remainder of the stories from the acclaimed Love and Rockets Volume II, picking up where 2010’s Penny Century collection left off. Taking its title from Hopey Glass's birth name, Esperanza follows the somewhat settled-down ex-punkette in her new life as a schoolteacher's assistant — which doesn't mean that…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: To the surprise of few, The Hooded Utilitarian's International Best Comics Poll tops out with Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts in the #1 spot. HU editor Noah Berlatsky writes, "If you like charming, Peanuts is charming, and if you like dark, it’s dark, but it isn’t just charming, or just dark, or even just charming and dark. There are countless ways to like Peanuts, which is no doubt why it — deservedly, inevitably — tops this poll."  • Review: "The squeaky-voiced character from the animated shorts was especially bold in his daily newspaper comic…

Ian Burns has his fortune told by Dame Darcy, July 10, 2010 Ian Burns is the second-most recent staff acquisition here at Fantagraphics (designer Tony Ong holds current "new guy" status) — you may know him as one of the voices who answers our phone and takes your orders, or as the friendly bearded fellow at our Emerald City Comicon booth this year, or perhaps you've read his "Diaflogue" interviews with Leslie Stein and Kim Deitch. If the latter, you know that Ian is a pretty thoughtful guy about comics, and I'm happy to learn that he's been contributing essays…

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: Amazing Facts… and Beyond! with Leon Beyond by Kevin Huizenga: Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane: Cochlea & Eustachia by Hans Rickheit: Humblug by Arnold Roth (3 new udpates!): Lucky by Gabrielle Bell (the conclusion of July's daily diary strips — they come down August 15 so catch them while you can): Maakies by Tony Millionaire (compare to last week's drunk version):…