Happy birskday

David Lasky, whose birthday is today, points out that it is also the birthday of Popeye creator E.C. Segar. Yet another reason to celebrate with us at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 1st Anniversary party, starting in less than half an hour… (My Google image search for "Popeye birthday" bore no amusing fruit.)

CULT FICTION

Long ago I posted about the book Cult Fiction put out by the folks at the Hayward Gallery in the UK. It became available in the U.S. this fall and the response has been great– Read about it HERE and, with more interior scans at Book-by-Its-Cover. Featured artists: Laylah Ali, Glen Baxter, Stéphane Blanquet, Daniel Clowes, Liz Craft, R. Crumb, Adam Dant, Julie Doucet, Debbie Drechsler, Marcel Dzama, Melinda Gebbie, Kerstin Kartscher, Mark Kalesniko, Killoffer, Chad McCail, Paul McDevitt, Kerry James Marshall, Travis Millard, Yosh*tomo Nara, Kim L. Pace, Harvey Pekar, Raymond Pettibon, Olivia Plender, Jon Pylypchuk, James Pyman, Joe…

First look: The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott

Here's a sneak peek at Thomas Ott's forthcoming, much-anticipated graphic novel The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8. The book is nearly complete and currently scheduled for release in Spring 2008. Clicking the image above will take you to Flickr, where you can view larger sizes and soak in all the amazing scratchboard detail.

All bow to Snoopy-san.

You fellow PEANUTS lovers out there have to check out Chris Butcher's photos of the totally awesome-looking Peanuts store in Tokyo (not to mention the equally cool Moomin and Tintin stuff).

Building your financial future…

… one copyright infringement at a time. A friend just sent me this cellphone pic, and writes, "We had a meeting today going over 401K stuff, and the slideshow from Principal Financial Group included the attached slide. I asked the guy if he knew who put this together but he didn't know." Talk about random. What does this picture signify? Is the guy in the photo supposed to be Chris Ware? (He isn't.) If so, are we to think that Chris Ware likes to bring giant xeroxes of his work to his financial advisor's office and participate in photo shoots?…

Crumb & Schulz: expensive

Via Spurge come some record-breaking auction results: Charles Schulz's original art for the Sunday, April 10, 1955 Peanuts strip recently sold for $113,525, and Robert Crumb's original cover of Mr. Natural #1 sold in the same auction for $101,575, the first time either artist has cleared 6 figures. For about 0.025% of its sale price, that same Schulz strip can be had, along with 730 others, in The Complete Peanuts 1955-1956. Just saying.

Forney talks Lust

Newsarama has a very informative interview with Ellen Forney about her upcoming book Lust, with discussions of pegging (dirty) and kerning (not dirty), among other things.