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Hats off to Seattle's Phinney Neighborhood Association for their clever appropriation of Jacob Covey's Taking Punk to the Masses design for their annual Summer Beer Taste.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…[F]eisty art-comics publisher Fantagraphics, for its new multivolume hardcover series devoted to Gottfredson’s rarely seen comic-strip work [Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse ], has gone back to the beginning, lavishing upon the cartoonist’s marvelously fluid, thrillingly kinetic serial adventures the same loving attention the company has brought to its benchmark Complete Peanuts library. Given that Fantagraphics is an adult-oriented press, production and restoration values are superlative, as are the more than 60 pages of historical essays and archival features that accompany these peerless black-and-white strips…. Anyone who ventures into this gorgeous 288-page tome will…

Tim Lane's illustration for the cover story in this week's issue of the Seattle Weekly is another true-crime masterpiece.

(Click for larger version) Chris Ware just turned in his 13th and final cover for our 13th and final (3rd in the chronology of the strip) collection of George Herriman's Krazy Kat Sundays, Krazy & Ignatz 1922-1924: At Last My Drim of Love Has Come True, coming in November. A lovely and appropriate image as we put the series to bed. Yes, there will be a big hardcover collection of 1916-1924 released at the same time! Chris is finishing up the covers for that. And yes, we will be collecting the dailies next!

Thanks to Fabiano Teles for sending us a link to this loving video tribute to the work of Johnny Ryan he produced for Cultura da Açao, a weekly alt-culture TV program out of Rio de Janeiro. Johnny tells us that Fabiano also plays in a Brazilian death metal band and is currently penning a Prison Pit ballad. Awesome! How does "Cannibal Fuckface" translate into Portuguese, anyway?

Newly-rechristened Vancouver-based culture website The Snipe (formerly Guttersnipe) is celebrating their new name by giving away a copy of Dave McKean's new graphic novel Celluloid to one lucky reader! See here for contest rules and more info.

Publishers Weekly presents an exclusive 7-page excerpt from The Armed Garden and Other Stories by David B., in which the creator of the acclaimed Epileptic gives full rein to his fascination with history, magic and gods, not to mention grand battles, in a literate, witty, and absorbing collection of stories.

Just arrived in our warehouse & ready to ship: The Raven by Lou Reed and Lorenzo Mattotti 166-page full-color 9" x 9" hardcover • $22.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-444-3 See Previews / Order Now In 2000, veteran rock 'n' roller Lou Reed, legendary director Robert Wilson, and a cast of singers and actors premiered Reed's musical POEtry in Hamburg's Thalia Theater. An ambitious combination of Edgar Allen Poe's poems and stories and Reeds reinterpretations of same (with a few classic Reed songs such as "Perfect Day" and "The Bed" integrated for good measure, POEtry bridged the centuries to provide a unique vision of…

Ran out of time to finish yesterday's Online Commentary & Diversions so here's a two-fer: • Review: "With skill, restraint and a deep sensitivity to the roiling emotions involved, Shimura relates the tale of fifth-grade boy Shuichi, who wants to be a girl, and his classmate Yoshino, a girl who wants to be a boy. This is the first volume of the Japanese saga [Wandering Son] to be published in English, and translator Thorn does great work parsing the complex gender honorifics of the Japanese language. We only just begin to get to know our two leads, but Shimura's approach…

At Forbes magazine's Booked blog, Vanna Le shares a slideshow of images from Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons, our collection of the great writer's early graphic work coming in December, saying "The entire collection has just the right amount of charm you would expect from a young and witty O’Connor. But it’s more than just a book for laughs — it offers some insight into O’Connor’s personal life as well as her mockery towards the pretensions of her social environment."