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Catching up on our Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…Fantagraphics Books’ new Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: “Race to Death Valley” contains all you need to know to revel in the very different, deeply pleasurable work of [Floyd] Gottfredson. Working with one of the most famous — and most anodyne — cartoon characters in the world, Gottfredson turned the grinning, goody-goody Mouse into a plucky, even reckless adventurer, his smile transformed from a people-pleasing smirk into a challenge to the world…. Gottfredson drew Mickey with a nosy snout and the bright eyes of an adrenalin junkie. The mouse’s diminutive size…

Anime News Network reports that Moto Hagio (shown above at Comic-Con International last year) has received the 2011 Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award from the Japan Cartoonists Association of manga creators as part of their 40th annual Japan Cartoonist Awards. The honor is in recognition of her entire body of work, praised in the announcement as "revolutionary" and "of high quality." Congratulations!

  Join us in Georgetown this weekend for non-stop action. Friday is the boisterous Honk Fest West festival featuring dozens of eccentric marching bands from all over the country. Chaotic cacophony throughout the entire neighborhood. Note: South Vale Street will close Friday evening in front of Fantagraphics Bookstore for the festivities, but drop in for a sneak preview of Charles Peterson's Taking Punk to the Masses show and visit Martin, Tina and Russ while they transform Georgetown Records into a mom and pop punk rock emporium circa 1988 in preparation for the next night's blowout! Saturday is the fabulous Georgetown Art Attack. Among all the amazing mayhem, don't miss…

Hey collectors! We just got a few returns of the previously sold-out Tales Designed to Thrizzle #1 by Michael Kupperman. If you need this issue, hop on it — there's not many of them and they won't last long.

Hey, we just found out that the "sometimes Y" Hernandez brother, Mario, is a special guest at the first annual Latino Comics Expo this weekend at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco! The first day is already over but Mario will be there for the full day tomorrow too, 11AM – 5PM, so it's not too late to meet an L&R OG! The museum also drops word of the Love and Rockets 30th Anniversary exhibit coming next year — stay tuned for further announcements about that!

Our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman; I'm afraid our usual links to other strips from around the web will be postponed, as your humble editor is reporting from the road in full-on TCAF mode: — Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size):

Everybody's getting excited for Free Comic Book Day tomorrow and to stoke your ardor even more we're pleased to present this loving real-life look at our Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse FCBD preview comic. Check out more previews and find participating comic shops at the FCBD website! (One place you're guaranteed to find it: Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle!)

You have hopefully read the first 3 issues of Zak Sally's astounding Ignatz Series comic Sammy the Mouse. Or maybe you've been "trade-waiting." Either way, you'll want to get in on the Kickstarter campaign for Zak's self-published, self-printed collection of those 3 issues. Yeah, we'd also like it if you buy the 3 issues from us. But this is the beauty of creators' rights and the DIY spirit! And you know that since the collection is coming straight from Zak it's going to be a beautiful product made with love. A twelve buck pledge gets you the book — jeez…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "This book in particular reprints a run where Mickey Mouse enters Pluto in a dog race and ends up getting mixed up with a banker who wants to foreclose on a friendly old couple, snooty society types, high-stakes gamblers and the mob. The mob, people. It's really great stuff, with a ton of adventure and action balanced out with the humor I was expecting, which really holds up even here in the next century, right down to the fun Vaudeville-style wordplay. I would've devoured this thing if I was a kid, and while…

This 42" x 36" Jim Woodring drawing, created with his giant pen at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, is being auctioned (along with other artworks) to benefit SKYDIVE, a local artist run center. (Via Marc Bell.)