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I hope this doesn’t mean that Fantagraphics is having trouble selling their absolutely amazing E.C. Segar Popeye collection (because I really need them to finish publishing the entire strip), but the book is currently selling for an unbelievably low $5.99 on Amazon right now. If you haven’t read this book, you are missing out on something truly wonderful.

(via The Forager Blog)

UPDATE: As Aaron White points out in the comments, Kim Thompson at Fantagraphics says that everything is fine, and that this sale “does NOT mean that we’re remaindering copies, or that the book is doing badly — in fact, POPEYE VOLUME 1 was our third best-seller for 2006, behind that year’s two PEANUTS books.” Jacob Covey confirms.

UPDATE II: And apparently, the big promotion is already over, and it’s back up to around $20. Still a bargain, though, really.

UPDATE III: I’m sure these sales won’t last much longer either, but two other near-essential volumes are 80% off right now: Carol Tyler’s Late Bloomer, and Gene Deitch’s Terr’ble Thompson.

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Our friend and contributor Mark Newgarden has a fantastic new children’s book coming out in collaboration with our friend and hero, Megan Montague Cash:

Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug.

I highly recommend it for kids ages 2 to 82!

And so here is the blurb:

Cartoonist Mark Newgarden and Illustrator Megan Montague Cash will be signing their new wordless picture story at ROCKETSHIP in Brooklyn. 8 pm, Saturday June 2!

“What an odd, sweet, surreal, and hilarious adventure from Newgarden and Cash. It’s what Crockett Johnson, Ernie Bushmiller, and Rod Serling might have come up with if they shared a bench at the doggie park. I love it!”–Lane Smith

ROCKETSHIP
208 Smith Street
Brooklyn NY 11201
718.797.1348

www.bowwowbooks.com

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I haven’t read any comics by Frédéric Boilet, but CC editor-at-large Frank Santoro has, and he doesn’t like them.

He and Derik Badman got into an interesting conversation about Boilet’s Yukiko’s Spinach in the thread following Badman’s equally interesting review, and since Frank has decided not to write about the book for CC, I thought I’d link to it here.

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Douglas Wolk profiles Dan and PictureBox in PWCW, and Dan doesn’t forget to plump for CC:

PictureBox is still publishing Comics Comics, which Nadel calls “our retarded attempt at a magazine about comics”—the third issue, due imminently, includes an interview with Guy Davis by Sammy Harkham.

Now that’s marketing genius in action. They come for the “retarded”, and they stay for the … well, I guess we have to work on the second part.

There’s a lot more in there about Dan’s other PictureBox stuff, but whatever.

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He’s on a roll!

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Frank just e-mailed me this. Maybe we have another Love & Rockets kind of situation in the making. Which would be exciting.

They do look a little like Castle and Joel Cannon, if you squint hard enough.

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Courtesy of Paul Di Filippo, two interesting avant-garde short films from the legendary Ed Emshwiller:

Sunstone (1979)

Thanatopsis (1962)

Emshwiller didn’t do too much work with actual comics (as far as I know), and was better known for his magazine illustrations and film-making, but he was a strong early influence on the great Bill Griffith:

Griffith took solace in his developing friendship with one Levittown neighbor, the illustrator Ed Emshwiller, who designed covers for many science-fiction and mystery books and magazines. “He didn’t point me to cartooning, but he pointed me into art in general and showed me a way of understanding how within one artist, there could exist this pop culture impulse and a fine art impulse,” Griffith told Gary Groth. Emshwiller recruited Griffith’s parents as models on several occasions, but Griffith was most proud when he himself appeared on the cover of the September 1957 issue of Original Science Fiction. Emshwiller depicted the 13-year-old Griffith riding a rocket ship to the moon as his father yelled at him from a video screen.

There’s more from Griffith on Emsh (who inspired his 1978 strip, “Is There Life After Levittown?”) here.

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Most of you’ve probably already heard the news elsewhere, but for those of you who haven’t, the serialized version of Cold Heat has been discontinued.

See the details here.

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I want to quickly apologize for linking to that incredibly lame video last night. (I’ve since deleted the post, but here‘s what I linked to, if you’re really curious.) When I found the video, I kind of muttered “ha ha” to myself in a monotone, and posted it without even thinking. Then I forgot all about it.

But at 4:30 this morning, I dreamed that I received an e-mail with the opening line (heard by me in a God-like voiceover), “Don’t start posting that kind of crap.” I woke up with a start, and couldn’t get back to sleep until I’d pulled down the post. Because the voice was right, and I don’t know why I ever linked to the video in the first place, other than a misguided attempt to put new content up here at least semi-regularly. I wasn’t even amused by it myself, and barely made it through watching the whole thing. I sometimes think bloggers do little besides trading links to things that don’t really interest anybody, including themselves, and everyone just kind of agrees to pretend that they’re half-way entertained, in a vain attempt to keep away the realization that we’re all slowly wasting our lives. I don’t want to contribute to that any more than I have to, so I’ll try to be a little more selective in the future.

The only aspect of that video of any real interest is the banal and obvious point that many in the comics community are able to fixate on particular characters, themes, and tropes to a possibly unhealthy degree. (Did you see that site Abhay Khosla found the other day? [Via Deppey.] That’s it to a tee.) I sometimes don’t know whether to pity or envy people who can do that. It must be kind of comforting to wake up and know, This is what matters to me. This is why I am here. I need to collect Wonder Woman merchandise. Or, I like looking at pictures of superheroes holding women in their arms. Of course, the downside is that you might alienate yourself from ninety-five percent of your fellow humans, but maybe it’s worth it, just to have that sense of purpose.

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The new designer for Comics Comics, Mike Reddy, has started a very bookmarkable new blog where he’s posting mostly illustrations of various movies he’s recently seen.

Here’s one he did for Planet Terror (from Grindhouse):

And here’s one for The Grudge 2:

Mike also did one of the illustrations for the Peter Bagge essay on Spider-Man for Comics Comics 2, and he’s posted a couple of the alternate illos that didn’t end up getting used. I like them.