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Charles Burns, interviewed live on stage in Philadelphia for The Sound of Young America radio show/podcast. Audio embedded below; link to download here. The Sound of Young America

What? Jim Woodring just completed Weathercraft (due Spring '10) and he's already started work on a new Frank story? Truly our cups runneth over.

Scheduled to arrive in comics shops across the country this week: Like a Dog by Zak Sally. This hardcover one-man anthology (not entirely accurate: there are two collaborative pieces in there) collects the first two issues of Sally's Eisner-nominated self-published series Recidivist along with short stories from Mome and elsewhere. Our usual battery of previews & reviews can be found here; check with your local shop to confirm availability because your time is valuable and gas is still pretty expensive.

Carl (with cigar) at Skylight Books in LA in 2008 with Drew Friedman. Photo by Pam Noles. Mark Evanier has a remembrance.

Congratulations to Sergio Ponchione, whose Fantagraphics/Coconino "Ignatz" series Grotesque won the Gran Guinigi prize for Best Series at the 2009 Lucca Comics & Games festival! See photos of the ceremony and read Sergio's reaction to the award at his blog (translated). And further congratulations to Daniel Clowes, winner of Best Long Story for the Italian edition of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, and Robert Crumb, acknowledged as Maestro del Fumetto!

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Reproducing unfinished roughs, penciled-in and scribbled-out dialogue, half-inked panels, torn-up and taped-together pages, even cropping what look like finished comics so that you can't see the whole thing, Columbia and his partners in the production of this book, Paul Baresh and Adam Grano, have produced a fractured masterpiece, a glimpse of the forbidden, an objet d'art noir. … The horror of Columbia's sickly-cute Pim & Francie vignettes–a zombie story, a serial-killer story, a witch-in-the-woods story, a haunted-forest story, a trio of chase sequences–is extraordinarily effective. … [T]hese scary stories and disturbing images are…

  The landscape for literature in Seattle took a major turn for the uglier yesterday when news leaked that the venerable indie bookstore Bailey/Coy, a mainstay on Seattle's Capitol Hill for 26 years, would be closing at the end of the month. This might be the single most alarming sign I've seen yet in regard to the future of independent bookstores and publishers. If the most literate neighborhood in the most literate city in the country can't support a great store like Bailey/Coy, it makes me think we're all doomed. We will greatly miss B/C, a longtime supporter of Fantagraphics and home to numerous Fanta…

To promote their blockbuster show "Michelangelo Public & Private" the Seattle Art Museum dug up this miniature Michelangelo and dropped it off at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery last week. We took him on a little tour of Georgetown on Halloween day, where he enjoyed a spooky threesome with GHOST WORLD beauties Enid and Rebecca. Check out his continuing adventures at "Little David's Travelogue."

Jim Flora Art now has the super-popular, iconic Flora Mambo for Cats LP cover image in a new smaller (7" x 7"), affordable ($25) open edition giclee print. (The 20" x 20" limited edition silkscreen version is almost sold out.) Don't you just love their little mustaches? Makes a great combo gift along with any of our 3 Jim Flora art books.

Kristy Valenti recently purged duplicate copies of coveted back issues from The Comics Journal archive, now available in limited quantities at Fantagraphics Bookstore. Among the many gems on sale at cover price: The endearingly fannish #37 from December 1977 featuring the breathless headline Star Wars: The Movie! The Comic! The Photos! Issue #53's infamous interview with sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison, and a revealing interview with mid-career Daniel Clowes in issue #235. This treasure trove of news, reviews, and essential interviews includes everything from Lynda Barry, Berke Breathed, Carl Barks, and the Bros to Crumb, Kirby, Kurtzman, Miller, Moore and more!…