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The comics blogosphere does not rest for Super Bowl weekend: • List: Brick Weekly has 4 "Top 10 Comics of 2008" lists on which Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw and The Portable Frank by Jim Woodring appear multiple times • List: The Comics Reporter asked readers to "Name Five Favorite Single-Issue Alternative/Independent Comic Books" and lots of folks chose Fantagraphics stuff • Review: Fictions looks at Maggie the Mechanic by Jaime Hernandez • Review: Rob Clough says Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes is "a stunning retrospective that seems remarkably fresh today" • Blurb: USA…

Tomorrow, February 3rd, Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré will get to use the lobby at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art as a studio for 8 hours, from 11am till 7pm! They will have a multi-plane animation stand set up, and will be doing stop-motion animation for a new film as well as working on other things. They will also have a bunch of drawings and animation artifacts to look at. If you are in Chicago, stop on by! Museum of Contemporary Art 220 East Chicago Avenue,Chicago, IL 60611 While there, check out Carré's new graphic novel, The Lagoon, at the MCA Store.

"In my opinion, Walt Kelly had only two peers in the pantheon department, Winsor McKay and George Herriman." – Garry Trudeau Walt Kelly's PogoOriginal Strips 1948-1972 Friday, February 6, 5-8pmExhibition reception in conjunction with White River Junction's First Friday CCS is proud to exhibit work by one of the greatest cartoonists of the 20th century. With Pogo, Walt Kelly (1913-1973) combined unparalleled brushwork, honed from years as a Disney animator, with superb storytelling acted out by an endearing cast of characters. Borrowing from various dialectical sources and his own fertile imagination, Kelly invented a unique and charming backwoods-patois to fit his…

NPR Music has the story: Harvey Pekar Makes His Opera Debut. Scroll down on the left to hear a must-hear interview with Harv by R. Crumb…

Zippy's Pittsburgh and More: The Art of Bill GriffithAt The ToonSeum, February 7 to March 31, 2009 PITTSBURGH — The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh's museum of cartoon art, presents Zippy's Pittsburgh and More: The Art of Bill Griffith, February 7 through March 31, 2009. Zippy's Pittsburgh and More is an exhibit of Griffith's original comic art, with several strips featuring Pittsburgh landmarks as settings. "Our location at the Children's Museum has a certain surreal quality that lends itself well to Zippy," said ToonSeum Executive Director, Joe Wos. "Giant inflatable ice cream dinosaurs, twenty-foot cranes made of old gas station signs, and of course…

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presentsAn Evening With Jules FeifferTuesday, February 03, 2009 BUY TICKETS HERE.  Comics and the Jewish American Dream Length: 1 hr 30 mins Intermission: NoneSeating: General AdmissionYou choose your seats when you get to the theater. Comic books were invented by American Jews in the 1930's and 1940's. Did this come about, as some maintain, because anti-Semitism kept Jewish artists, writers and entrepreneurs out of more "reputable" areas of publishing? And did comics in any way reflect the Jewish background of its original exponents? In this series JULES FEIFFER joins moderator Danny Fingeroth to discuss his career and…

Esther Pearl WatsonGallery Talk Visions of the Future View the exhibit LECTUREDATE: Tuesday, February 3, 2009TIME: 7:45pm LOCATION: Billy Shire Fine Arts5790 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA Admission is free! Exhibition continues through February 10, 2009.

We'll be there for the first time ever… will you?  

• Interview: On the Comicon.com message boards, Jennifer M. Contino gets all the Usagi Yojimbo scoop from Stan Sakai • Things to see: The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog re-runs a great article on Walt Kelly • Things to see: A hilarious doodle by Steven Weissman • Things to see: A page from Doug Wolk's con sketchbook by Jordan Crane • Things to see: On the Covered blog, Richard Sala takes on Batman #197

Mark your calendars: An exciting offering of diverse exhibitions, performances and signings are on tap in the coming months at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle. These and other lively events will keep the space jumpin' into the summer. Esther Pearl WatsonUNLOVABLEOpening reception and book signing Saturday, February 7, 6:00 to 9:00 PMExhibition continues through March 4, 2009(more event info) HUMBUGOriginal art, artifacts and ephemera from Harvey Kurtzman's classic humor magazine.Public preview Saturday, March 7, 11:30 to 8:00 PMExhibition continues through April Fools Day, 2009 (more about Humbug) Dame DarcyMusic performance and book signingSaturday, March 14, 6:00 to 9:00 PM…