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Screen Thrills Illustrated to… Dan Clowes to… Frank Miller to…

Drew Friedman pays tribute to the late J.D. Salinger by presenting his classic strip (co-written with K. Bidus) "Guilty Pleasures of Literary Greats" (which we've previously featured for its documentation of the Vladimir Nabokov/Hank Ketcham connection). Even if you've seen this strip before, it's worth a re-visit, and Drew outlines some of Salinger's other pop-culture obsessions to boot.

Robert Goodin gives us a lovely two-page glimpse of "The Spiritual Crisis of Carl Jung," a 24-page story to appear in Mome Vol. 19 or 20, later this year.

All the proofs have been approved and on press right now is our latest collection of Basil Wolverton's work. Archiving every "Culture Corner" strip ever printed alongside every extant original sketch for each of those strips, this book is a fascinating document of the artist's process. It also inlcudes a large number of rejected or otherwise-never-printed sketches for the strip, as well as Wolverton's hand-written log of these things. In short, it's all very incredible. Culture Corner was a lot of fun to work on and I'm once again grateful to Monte Wolverton for trusting me so fully with the…

Everybody's doing mash-ups of one kind or another these days but nobody does a character mash-up like Jeremy Eaton's inspired cartoon jumbles. So when he started taking custom orders I jumped on it with "Original TMNT" vs "Archie TMNT." It's absolutely the best Christmas present I ever bought myself. Jeremy does these with a beautiful combo of tones, from the tint of the paper to the hues of the wash. You can order your own Spider-Bat or whatever you like in the sidebar of his blog.

A variety of Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: The Comics Journal's R.C. Harvey names Sam's Strip ("because its spoof of comic strip cartooning is a joy to behold and because it has been so long awaited") and Humbug ("because, like Sam’s Strip, we’ve waited so long for a reappearance and because of the exquisite care Fantagraphics took in making the copies of the magazine’s pages as exact as possible") as two of the Best Reprints of 2009 • Review: "…[T]he handful of short stories [in The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.] represent great leaps in, or at…

  First day of Angouleme, and Crumb covers the French paper, Libération.   

During our recent inventory count at our storied and labyrinthine warehouse, we discovered additional copies of several items thought to be sold out and unavailable for weeks, months — or years! Grab these gems while you can before they run out again — quantities are limited! The Bill Sienkiewicz Sketchbook Introduction by Alan Moore! The Comics Journal Special Edition – Summer 2002 The premiere second issue of the "supersized" Comics Journals, with a great Woodring interview and cover. The Complete E.C. Segar Popeye Vol. 9: 1934-1935 (Hardcover) Our original Popeye reprint series from the 1980s. Handsome clothbound volume. Dead End…

  Marc Maron is an absolutely brilliant comic talent who hosted the morning show on the ill-fated Air America radio network, and I guess he enjoyed that gig so much he's created the WTF podcast to continue to scratch that itch. His latest episode features the always-funny Peter Bagge, taped while Marc was recently doing a set of comedy gigs in Seattle. For some reason, Marc thought it would also be a good reason to have me on, too. The show was recorded at the Fantagraphics Bookstore, and we had a good time doing it. Thanks, Marc! Check out Marc's archives, too, the show is…

When I was taking photos for our preview of King of the Flies Vol. 1: Hallorave by Mezzo & Pirus, I observed that the endpapers might make a nifty desktop background. One request to the art department later, and presto! (Note that this image is Not Safe For Most Workplaces due to partial nudity.) Just click on the size that matches your monitor resolution and the image will open in a new window; 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." (We don't…