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  UpcomingAnders NilsenPictures of Dirt and GrassOpening Saturday, April 18, 20096:00 – 9:00 pm Closing brunch Sunday, May 3, 200912:00 – 3:00 pm RAFTCurated Installation by Laura Shaeffer + Rachel Tredon Finestra Art Space Friday, February 13, 20095:00pm – 9:00pm410 S. Michigan AvenueSuite 516Chicago, Illinois 60605-1456 The Home Gallery in Hyde Park has been invited to do a show at Finestra Gallery in downtown Chicago. Artists include: Conrad Freiburg, Katrin Asbury and Shawn Greene, Casey Roberts and DeeDee Davis, Rose DiSalvo, Doug Shaeffer, Anders Nilsen, Nora Mapp, Jesus Mejia, Dax Tran-Caffee, and Andrew Nord.

Now available for preview and pre-order: Connective Tissue, the new boldly bizarre illustrated prose novel from Bob Fingerman. Some meat-flavored candy takes video store clerk Darla Vogel on a trip to a weird, throbbing, monstrous other world! This book is scheduled to be in stock this month and in stores approximately 4 weeks later. View a photo & video slideshow preview embedded here. Click here if it is not visible, and/or to view it larger in a new window (recommended). And at our product info page, read the entire first chapter as a 15-page downloadable PDF!

• Review: The Star Clipper Blog on Boody. The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers: "To say Boody Rogers was ahead of his time is an understatement. Boody was underground before there was an underground. His comics were surreal and sexy before the Comics Code was even around to censor such outrageousness. Think of every bizarre and trippy moment from 40's Disney features, the overt sexuality of Fleischer Studios Betty Boop, and a Freak Show and Superman in a blender, and that's not even half as odd as Boody Rogers' comics. Will you have seen anything like it before? No, and…

Starting today and for the next two weeks we'll be bringing you a sneak peek at our Fall 2009 – Winter 2010 schedule of releases! We'll be slipping you a few pages at a time from our latest book distributor's catalog, which our fine friends at W.W. Norton uses to sell our books to the bookstore market. This first batch includes 4 upcoming issues of The Comics Journal, Paul Hornschemeier's All and Sundry: Uncollected Work 2004-2009, The Complete Peanuts 1972-1973, and Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1. (Note that all the info in this catalog is subject to…

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS AND THE STRAND PRESENT: AN EVENING OF HUMBUG In 1957, five artists – HARVEY KURTZMAN, WILL ELDER, ARNOLD ROTH, AL JAFFEE and JACK DAVIS — hot on the heels of creating MAD magazine, pooled their money and their talent and entered into the creative, exuberant folly of a lifetime by creating the greatest satirical magazine of their careers. Join HUMBUG co-founders Arnold Roth and Al Jaffee in a book signing and discussion about this historic publication with Fantagraphics Publisher and editor of the collected HUMBUG, Gary Groth. Attendees will also enjoy an exclusive screening of a documentary short film about the late Will Elder. LISTING INFORMATION: An Evening…

  Leah Hayes and her band, Scary Mansion, are headed to France later this month for a short music tour (including a gig opening for Bonnie "Prince" Billy!). She'll even have copies of her two books, Funeral of the Heart and Holy Moly, for sale at the merch table. Go see Leah restore dignity to America.   22/04 : PARIS* / La Maroquinerie 23/04 : GRENOBLE* / Le Ciel 24/04 : AJACCIO* / l'Aghja 25/04 : PRINTEMPS DE BOURGES / L'Auditorium (avec Bonnie Prince Billy) 27/04 : CLERMONT FD / Le rat Pacl 28/04 : BORDEAUX / Le Saint Ex 29/04 :…

Finally getting around to Flogging photos from Emerald City Comicon and our Jaime Hernandez/Stan Sakai exhibit opening last weekend. Lots more photos, plus a couple of short videos, can be seen in our Flickr sets linked above. Jaime: Dame Darcy (checking out Mother, Come Home) & Paul Hornschemeier: Bill Schelly: Green Lantern & friends flip through Ellen Forney's Lust: Stan & Jaime post-show Saturday chatting: Xaime & Sakai art (head to Flickr for closer looks at each individual piece): Men of the hour:

• Review: PLAYBACK:stl analyzes Comics Are for Idiots! by Johnny Ryan: "Ryan's loathing of the precious, the celebrity-obsessed, the hypocritical, and so on bleeds thru the best of these sorts of cartoons… Ryan's yen for out-offending every book he's done before is really just more righteous anger dressed up as sick comedy." • Review: The Comics Reporter on Blazing Combat: "Like many of the best reprint projects… this republication of the four-issue Warren war magazine into spiffy hardcover form features work that you can't easily buy anywhere else, is historically significant and offers its buyers a lot of very good…

Mome readers take note: a page from Dash Shaw's story in Vol. 14 was accidentally printed out of sequence. Our apologies. Dash explains on his blog.

Your weekly dose of new webcomics awaits… More awesome parenting from Aunt Jiggles in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan… It's horror time in this week's installment of Steven Weissman's in-progress pages from "Blue Jay," an epic 50-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures…. And Rocky gets into some issues of varying degrees of seriousness (from Islam to "gwifstrexes") in our current 5-day chunk of Martin Kellerman's hilarious Swedish smash-hit Rocky, updated Monday-Friday!