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It's not as though you need any additional convincing to pick up our 2010 Free Comic Book Day offering Weathercraft and Other Unusual Tales by Jim Woodring at your participating comic shop tomorrow (right?), but here are a few glimpses of the finished product to whet your appetite. (Click here if the embedded slideshow player below isn't displaying, or to view it larger in a new window.) Don't forget, Northwesterners and visitors to Seattle can get their copy direct from the hands of Jim himself at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery tomorrow from 12-1 PM! At the store we'll also have…

Mark your calendars! Desert Island in Brooklyn welcomes Kim Deitch for a signing and celebration of his new collection of The Search for Smilin' Ed! on Friday, May 14, 2010. Then, on Saturday, June 19, Jim Woodring will be in the house to meet fans and sign his new graphic novel Weathercraft. As usual with Desert Island, exclusive silkscreen show prints will be available at the events — that's a process picture of one of the screens for Kim's print above, and you can see the others on the Desert Island blog. We'll let you know more details as they…

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Daily clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources: • A heck of a Seattle Weekly illustration by Jeremy Eaton • Here's a color test for that series of School Spirits Stinckers that Steven Weissman's been working on (and here's another one — I like the green one better) • Dame Darcy has info on framed original art, a bunch of new handmade dolls (we saw them at Stumptown; they're gorge), new purses and more on her blog • Some great-looking digital prints of illustrations by Newave! artist Wayno are now available from Rockpop Gallery • It's…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • Reviews: At Comics Alliance, Jason Michelitch examines Our Gang Vol. 4 by Walt Kelly and Blazing Combat in the context of the "golden age of reprints," saying "Both are excellent books that reward both casual readers out for cheap thrills and stodgier folks who want some textual and contextual analysis to roll around in like a pig in a pen." He describes Blazing Combat as "an anti-war comic made up not of didactic preaching but of rough, unsentimentalized views of war with graphic violence and moral ambiguity front and center, produced at a time when…

There's a two-page spread of wallpaper designs in the forthcoming 6th issue of Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle and what kind of fun would we be if we didn't offer up a couple for your computer desktop? No kind, that's what. And they're one size fits all! If you're on a PC, right-click the image and select "Set As Background"; if you're on a Mac, control+click and select "Set As Desktop Background." Set your background to tile or repeat and voila, the pattern on your screen! "Here's Looking at You, Kid": "Disco Veggies": We also thought it might be…

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6 by Michael Kupperman 32-page full-color 6.75" x 9.5" comic book • $4.95ISBN: 978-1-60699-422-1 Ships in: June 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Now in FULL COLOR! This issue includes Jungle Princess battling rhino traders, a story of Broadway theatrics in “All About Drainage,” more of America’s favorite physicist/writer duo, Twain & Einstein, plus slightly cursed merchandise, Cockney grave robbers, and Cowboy Oscar Wilde. Download an EXCLUSIVE 4-page PDF excerpt (4.7 MB) starring Jungle Princess! Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window): Bonus Savings: Order the Thoroughly Thrizzled Pack containing Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol….

    Dear Terry, We have never met in person, but, if I can base anything on the books you publish, you are a decent fellow, and, in the wee hours of my 9-month anniversary with my lovely girlfriend, I'd like to make a public appeal to you to allow me to design NBM's upcoming SMURFS books. If I'm too late with this appeal, then … bummer, but I just heard about your project yesterday (at which time, I made a pseudo-public appeal to you on the COMICS COMICS blog. If it helps, I would happily work for a pittance — this is…

Daily clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources: • At What Things Do, the concluding half of Jaime Hernandez's amazing "The Ghoul Man" • Newave! editor Michael Dowers has been working on a Tarot deck — here's the 6 of Wands, as posted on Facebook • Matthias Lehmann emerges to reveal some recent illustration and comics work • Looks like Frank Santoro's working out some Cold Heat layouts • Paul Hornschemeier Kroffts it up at Covered (and comments on his blog) • Anders Nilsen gets biblical on us • "The Rite of Spring" by Jim Flora…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "There’s a certain exuberance in this book, a zaniness that Schulz follows with fewer excursions into pure melancholia. … Each new volume [of The Complete Peanuts] adds a new layer of complexity to the work as a whole, and certainly puts the lie to the notion that Schulz had run out of ideas by this point. Indeed, Schulz had nothing left to prove and allowed himself to follow every flight of fancy that struck him, while never completely abandoning the core emotions of his characters." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal