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August 30, 2008, New York, NY – Forum Gallery presents American Presidents & Selected Paintings: 1966 – 2008, including nearly 50 paintings and drawings by David Levine, America's acclaimed observer of humanity and politics. For over four decades Levine has entertained readers of The New York Review of Books with his often-satirical portraiture of public figures. The current exhibition brings together these caricatures and Levine's intimate painted portraits of the diverse characters that populate New York City. The exhibition features a selection of more than 40 political figures from the caricatures the artist has created since he began working for…

Greg Zura, sales manager for a decade here at Fantagraphics, you forgot some of your stuff when you quit to pursue writing*. We found this Tijuana Bible portrait of Osama Bin Luba behind your desk.   *Sort of.

Subterranean Books has some great pics up from Tim Lane's art show and book release party last Friday night.  Here's one of the author with a life-size cut out that I want for my living room:

I have a feeling I've already mentioned this but… The Popeye cartoons have been getting a reissue lately and we put together this little "Plunder Island" full-color comic book as a teaser to next year's Volume Four of our Complete Popeye comic strip. It's available only in the DVD package.

Our pal Jenn Chan sent us these awesome photos of a weekend baking jag inspired by Krazy Kat (and perhaps even Chris Ware's design). Her husband was "feeling really bummed about the Mets so I made these to cheer him up." Lucky man. Well, aside from those Mets, anyway. At least he's not a Mariners fan. Back to the Kupkakes. Mmmmmm:    

Left: Rock Bottom, Michael Shilling (2009) Right: Misery Loves Comedy, Ivan Brunetti (2007) I don't mean to necessarily suggest the above is a swipe — I think it could be entirely coincidental. But I was just struck by not only the design similarities (down to the sans serif fonts), but the similarly nihilistic titles the designs serve. Did the tone of each title drive the design to similar, bleak places independent of the other, or did the designer of Rock Bottom look to Misery for similarly bleak inspiration? And what was Ivan riffing on when he designed his book? I have no answers, I…

SHOCK AND AWE AT GEORGETOWN SECOND SATURDAY ART ATTACK ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11 Adventurous arts enthusiasts are again invited to invade Georgetown on Saturday, October 11 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM for the Georgetown Second Saturday Art Attack. This lively celebration of creative diversity features provocative programming in visual, performing, and applied arts at over 30 locations throughout the historic Georgetown industrial arts district. Among the many highlights: Georgetown artist Tina Randolph's cement and encaustic paintings on steel panels at Revival Home & Garden; a Day of the Dead group show, "Día de los Muertos," including Chris Lefebvre, Amaranta Ibarra,…

Today we're bringing you an advance look at Bill Schelly's upcoming biography of all-time comics great Joe Kubert, Man of Rock (coming next month). Click here if the slideshow doesn't appear above.

Flog!'s North Carolina Bureau Chief Rob Clough attended the opening of the Dash Shaw show at Duke this past Friday night and was kind enough to provide us with this exclusive report: 

Dash Shaw's show BOTTOMLESS at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University debuted on Thursday, September 25th. The well-attended opening was a multi-media affair that was as much about process as it was about a final product. The way that curator Diego Cortez designed the show gave a unique glimpse into Shaw's method. By juxtaposing Shaw's original pencils against his color sheets on the walls of the exhibit, the viewer could see the way Shaw composes color for his pages is unusual. On display were pencils and color pages from his webcomic BodyWorld and MOME short stories "Train" and the upcoming "Satellite CMYK". That latter story may well be his best effort yet.

There were also some other unusual entries, like a drawing Shaw made of himself and Barack Obama as surfers.