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Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Today's installment features a recent book from South African cartoonist Joe Daly which didn't quite escape notice, having garnered a 2007 Eisner Award nomination for "Best Graphic Album – New," but we're turning the spotlight on it again anyway: Scrublands This debut collection is the first book Fantagraphics has published by a South African cartoonist. Daly's earlier work has been described as…

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Today's installment features the Xeric Grant-winning debut from artist and animator Santiago Cohen: The Fifth Name Based on a 1920s Austrian novella by Stefan Zweig, this story is a reaction to the politics of the time. A personal story of a man searching for a sense of justice and responsibility towards the others, it takes place in India before Buddha when people…

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Today's installment features the accomplished 1997 debut by Brian Biggs: Frederick & Eloise: A Love Story Brian Biggs is a talented illustrator whose first comic is a strange and hypnotic love story that maneuvers around Paris and Frederick's dreams with a light touch that belies its grisly subject matter. Told in a strict format of two panels per page, it features Biggs's…

Have a great holiday weekend, America. Remember: light fuse, get away. • The blogger known as Polinees on Pocket Full of Rain and Other Stories by Jason • Winnipeg's Uptown Magazine says Jason's The Last Musketeer is "great fun" • The North Adams Transcript on Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco • Kevin Church posts his favorite page from The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez • Writer Reading looks at R. Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz's Kafka • Cool Aggregator recommends Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button, and Panels and Pixels includes it in a graphic-novel roundup post •…

From me, to Irwin Chusid, back to me, to you… I had the luck to find this great, seldom-seen Jim Flora illustration in a copy of the June, 1964 issue of Venture: The Travelers World that I stumbled upon at a thrift store last weekend. Our Paul Baresh scanned it up real pretty and I sent it to Irwin, who posted it on the Jim Flora art blog, where you can see a larger version.

While Stevie Weissman's kid is away at camp he's asking people like you and Johnny Ryan (above) to "do battle" with li'l Charles' Shark Team drawing. Check Weissman's blog for updates– so far there are three contributions. Here is the template so you can be a part of the action!

Every day in July we're spotlighting books from our month-long Hidden Gems Sale, wherein we're featuring some of our under-the-radar backlist titles and encouraging you to try them by offering them at a nice discount of 25% off! Today's installment features a great collection of classic '50s romance comics compiled and edited by John Benson: Romance Without Tears A first-time collection of the best romance comics of the 1950s. These bright, naturalistic tales (originally published by Archer St. John and written by unrecognized comics master Dana Dutch) are about high school girls who may be inexperienced but definitely have minds…

Where "The Spirit" failed, "The Dark Knight" dominates. THAT is a great teaser poster. You could bother with posting three separate images to make one weak image for a teaser campaign or you could do THAT. (Maybe without the bogus Photoshopping– I've never graff'ed a day in my life but those lines would be more upset by the mortar than what's happening here.) If you're anywhere near an Imax theatre then you should consider seeing the movie there: complete with a simulated fight and some drinks in Seattle.

Yesterday I found out one of my previous Flog posts about a dollhouse ended up linked to at least one honest-to-god porn site. Who are these people looking for childhood memories thrown in with their porn? Today it's Google. I work in comics so, from time to time, I may look for an image of "manga porn" in a search engine in order to send an obnoxious joke email to a coworker. On the very first page of results this is what I got:   That would be Chris Ware in the bottom row, which was surprising. At least until…

The Comics Journal #291 Edited by Michael Dean & Kristy Valenti; Gary Groth, executive editor This issue’s cover interview is with comics artist Tim Sale, the house artist for the television series Heroes. Sale’s artwork has also graced prestigious mainstream projects such as Batman: the Long Halloween, Spider-Man Blue and Superman Confidential. The Eisner winner chats about his stylized takes on characters such as Spider-Man, Batman, Daredevil, Catwoman and Superman, as well as his earlier work on comics such as Grendel, and elaborates on the dynamics of collaborating with writers such as Jeph Loeb and Darwyn Cooke. The Journal queries…