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Words cannot describe how much I love this Harry Potter drawing by Steven Weissman. What makes it even better is that it was drawn for a postcard correspondence with a 5th-grade pen pal, who led off with this fantastic opening round:

Dept. of "Whoa": Robot 6 reports on this auction for a piece of never-before-seen artwork by Charles M. Schulz, a "try-out" strip thought to have been done during the transition from Li'l Folks to Peanuts, circa 1949-1950. Click our image above to see it a bit larger (if it looks strangely patched together, that's an artifact of the Flash-based image viewer on the auction page, from which we took screen-grabs). (Our post title is a reference to Unseen Peanuts, our 2007 Free Comic Book Day offering which we are currently sending out free with orders, with some restrictions, while supplies…

The Georgetown Art Attack has become one of the region's most provocative cultural outings, as adventurous residents explore the delightfully rustic industrial arts corridor and discover aesthetic treasures at every turn. Among the many highlights of the May 14 Art Attack installment: Taking Punk to the Masses, seminal Seattle grunge photography by Charles Peterson, joined by cartoonist Peter Bagge signing copies of his new Yeah! collection and Hate Annual #9 at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery; a companion installation of vintage Seattle punk posters, records and ephemera at Georgetown Records followed by a concert with Bagge's combo Can You Imagine? featuring Steve Fisk, with the…

Working my way through the Joost Swarte book, I stumbled across this panel (I'm showing the French version because the Dutch one I have only in black and white, and it needs to be shown in color for the full effect), in which a woman Joost's hero Jopo is trying to pick up leaves him a kiss-off message written in lipstick on a mirror. And I thought, uh-oh. This Swarte book is being printed in a "co-production," which means that two or more publishers simultaneously go to press on the same book in different languages. In order to achieve this,…

This previously unpublished Jim Flora drawing from the 1970s has just been released as a limited-edition print from Jim Flora Art — see it in all its delightful detail and place your order here.

Now available: Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge 32-page full-color comic book • $4.95 — Order Now! Buddy & Lisa — back to Seattle! In the first full-length Buddy story in ten years (and it's a doozy), just when things are starting to look idyllic for our heroes, a family crisis forces Lisa to re-unite with her Seattle-based parents and brings Buddy and their young son Harold along with her — and Buddy quickly learns why she's been avoiding them for 20-odd years! And Lisa has some other unwelcome surprises in her family tree as well… Plus, Pete gets political…

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. See more about each book at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability. Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge 32-page full-color comic book • $4.95 "It really has been almost exactly a year since #8! Fancy that. Previous Hate Annuals have been a catchall for whatever Peter Bagge's been drawing lately, plus a short check-in with Buddy Bradley as he ages in real time; this time, the Buddy-and-Lisa story is longer than usual. There's something I really admire about Bagge's sticktoitiveness." – Douglas Wolk,…

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery — due out this November from Fantagraphic Books — is an absolutely riveting and (I think) important read. …I'm only halfway through the book at the moment, but I can tell you that Avery has done an absolutely smashing job of research and that there's a lot to chew on here about all sorts of issues… I'll have more to say about it later in the year, when it's actually in print, but rest assured that this would be…

Concerning the progress of Dash's Kickstarter campaign for his film The Ruined Cast.

Thomas Rehhoff passes along another fun piece from his collection of original Hernandez Bros. art: this 1994 New Yorker illustration by Jaime illustrating the good ol' Kirk vs. Picard debate, presumably for the magazine's review of Star Trek: Generations — whatta stinker that movie was.