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Popeye creator and cartooning all-time great E.C. Segar would have been 115 today. Even Google is getting in on the celebration on their homepage today! I'm going to celebrate by reading Popeye Vol. 4: "Plunder Island". (The "Google doodle" is uncredited, but I wonder if it's by Stephen DeStefano, who's done Popeye work in the past…)

Dash Shaw's animated web series for IFC.com, The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. (to which the book of the same name is the companion), is now online for your viewing pleasure! (Don't be thrown off by the preceding "sponsor messages.") There are 4 episodes plus a "making-of" segment with interviews with Dash, animator Jane Samborski, and soundtrack artist James Lucido. And as a bonus, IFC has put Dash's story "Look Forward, First Son of Terra Two," along with some exclusive wallpapers and “buddy icons,” under "Extras."

How rad is this: the folks down the street at Seattle's rightly venerated Scarecrow Video have gone through Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box and put together a special rental section of titles found in the book. (Take a close look at the image above.) Scarecrow's Marc Palm, who will appear on Sunday's Portable Grindhouse panel at Fantagraphics Bookstore, explains on the Scarecrow blog.

The talented and lovely Femke Hiemstra visits Seattle from Amsterdam showing new paintings on Friday at Roq la Rue and as a guest at the wild 3rd anniversary party at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on Saturday. Roq la Rue proprietor and lowbrow culture maven Kirsten Anderson observes, "Drawing on a range of influences from firework wrappers to Japanese woodblock prints, Femke's use of both pop culture detritus and child-like fantasy create a vibrant playground for the imagination, with each piece looking like a portal for a fantastic adventure. It is left to the viewer to imagine the story that lies…

Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Your Official Selection nominees at the 37th Festival International de la Bande Desinée d'Angoulême include the French editions of Dungeon Quest Book 1 by Joe Daly (coming in May from Fantagraphics), Eightball by Daniel Clowes (a collection with no English analogue), and Misery Loves Comedy by Ivan Brunetti • Lists: The Comics Reporter asked its readers to "Name Five Comics You Enjoyed This Year" — spot the Fantagraphics releases in the results • Gift Guide/List/Plug: At Comic Book Resources, Kelly Thompson's "Awesome Women in Comics Holiday Gift List 2009" includes Ghost World by Daniel…

Speaking of Kevin Huizenga, his conversation with Art Spiegelman (moderated by Gary Groth) from The Comics Journal #300 is now available to read on the new TCJ.com website (about which more later).

Kevin Huizenga presents the first part of a presumably new Glenn Ganges strip on his blog.

You want to make art with a medium that restricts your ability to make said art? Try an Etch-A-Sketch instead of glorified finger-painting. Knock yourself out with an iPhone for studies and sketches — just please don't present it to me as finished art.* Thanks! * Exceptions may apply, but I haven't seen any yet. (Spider-man by Keith Drake from Wanderline.com.)

Tomorrow at 6:30 PM at the Multnomah County Central Library in Portland OR, T. Edward Bak gives a presentation about his in-progress story "Wild Man," about naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, currently being serialized in our quarterly anthology Mome. More info here. If I lived there I would totally go!

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship: Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box By Jacques Boyreau Harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the advent of rental videos astonished the movie-going consumer who could only feed his addiction by going to the theater or watching chopped up movies in between commercials on TV. Like vinyl, here is the revenge of another analog cast-off: the VHS is once again insinuating itself into American culture, and this book celebrates the anarchic design art of those early VHS boxes. Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the…