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An email sent officewide today from our warehouse manager, Nico Vassilakis:  

The new issue of the The New Yorker is out, and sports a beautiful cover by Ivan Brunetti:  And if that looks attractive to you, don't miss Ivan's new book, HO!, which you can preorder now and hits stores in a few weeks.     

Now available for preview and pre-order: Drinky Crow's Maakies Treasury, the latest compilation of Maakies strips by Tony Millionaire. This volume, designed as a sequel to Premillennial Maakies (and to introduce fans of TV's The Drinky Crow Show to the source material), collects the second 5 years of the strip (previously reprinted in the volumes When We Were Very Maakies, The House at Maakies Corner and Der Struwwelmaakies) in a single thick volume splendidly designed by Chip Kidd. This book is scheduled to be in stock in early March and in stores approximately 4 weeks later. View a photo &…

Friday is new webcomics day! First up, such language in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan! Chubby's plan turns out to be surprisingly sensible in this week's installment of Steven Weissman's in-progress pages from "Blue Jay," an epic 32-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures. (Have you been counting how many pages we've posted?) The time-honored rituals of Rocky and his pals pervade our current 5-day chunk of Martin Kellerman's hilarious Swedish smash-hit Rocky, updated Monday-Friday!

• Review: French-Canadian site L'Autblog says Ripple by Dave Cooper is "a fascinating little book" according to the Google translation • Blurb: Richard Cowdry is the latest blogger excited about Humbug • Interview: The Pulse talks to future Mome-inista Noah Van Sciver • Interview: The link for this Newsarama interview with C. Tyler isn't working at the moment; hopefully it'll be back up later

We hope you've been enjoying our downloadable PDF excerpts of recent releases! Last year we posted a group of these previews that were available only to folks who are registered and logged in to the website. We've decided to make all of these previous excerpts available to the general public as well (just as we did with our webcomics a few weeks ago)! Gorge yourself on juicy chunks from over 20 of our 2008 releases, including some of our most lauded and talked-about titles like Bottomless Belly Button, The Education of Hopey Glass, Explainers, and Strange and Stranger: The World…

There are many photos I didn't take at Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême! I missed snapping pics of Moebius, Jason, JC Menu, Killoffer and Joe Dog. I missed taking the photo of all the little kids with red hats reading CF's 2-pager in Kramers Ergot #7 and I missed the guy dressed up as Tintin just after I sassed Alex about how there was no one in costume. I missed taking a picture of Souther's raw meat salad… Souther and I were crashing together in a château about 40 minutes outside of Angoulême. Every morning we'd get picked…

The Tijuana Bibles Hardcover Vol. 1 By various anonymous artists; edited by Michael Dowers In all its many guises, sex has been around for a long time. Back in the 1930s it was these little eight-page sex comics that became the talk of men's clubs, bars and some of the rougher workplaces. Famous Sunday-funnies cartoon characters were the earliest, and most popular, targets of these XXX-rated parodies; a parade of Hollywood actors and actresses madly copulating in a wide variety of positions soon followed. These "Tijuana Bibles" were so popular in their day that fans anxiously awaited new releases; men…

I was out sick yesterday, so here's a double dose: • Review: The Fort Worth Business Press takes a loving look at Humbug • Review: The Daily Cross Hatch finds "a lot to love" in the pages of Boody. The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers • Review: The Lighthouse Keeper's Cat says that The Magic Bottle by Camille Rose Garcia is "a great graphic novel" • Review: Jog takes you story-by-story through Supermen! • Blurb: The Comics Reporter is somewhat overcome by the arrival of Humbug • Blurb: Scamp: An Irish Illustration Blog previews Humbug • Profile: USA Today Pop…