The library board heard speakers — limited to two minutes each — on both sides of the case, which involves two library workers who felt that LOEG: BLACK DOSSIER should not fall into the hands of an 11-year-old girl and took it upon themselves to remove the book from circulation, thereby violating library policy and getting themselves fired. Although the traveling evangelist, a homeschooling mother and over 200 kids who signed a petition begging for books to be censored all seemed to think that others should decide what they can read, the other half of the speakers felt, as Bobbi Stout, herself the daughter of a preacher, that “It’s dangerous to democracy when an interest group imposes its views on another,” she said. “Stand up for the Constitution.”

Lucy Knisley's comic "Downloading Optimism: Pessimism Detected" is a thoughtful response to a panel where great indie comix creators (Linda Barry, Jules Feiffer, Matt Groening, Chris Ware) decried online comics and online reading. Click through for the whole thing.

Downloading Optimism

(Thanks, Ape Lad!)

When I found out that a graphic novel about the life of Bertrand Russell was in the works, I imagined it would be interesting, but I never thought it would be as spellbinding as it turned out to be. Logicomix, created by a team of Greek artists and writers is full color graphic novel about Bertrand Russell and his ardent quest for the logical foundation of mathematics. The creators of the graphic novel put themselves into the story, between chapters of Russell's life, to discuss their thoughts on key moments. It's a clever and useful way to add additional context to the story.

The book is 352 pages long -- 10 pages less than what it took Russell and Whitehead to prove that 1+1 = 2 in their book Principia Mathematica, but I was tearing through it to find out what happened. Afterwards, I went back to admire the artwork, which is masterfully composed and filled with terrific architecture and other detials. All-in-all, this was a surprisingly terrific book.

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Cartoonist Peter Bagge did a funny one-pager about Ayn Rand for the December issue of Reason.

Peter Bagge on Ayn Rand

In Peter & Max: A Fables Novel, writer Bill Willingham tells a key piece of the story in prose form, and proves that he's every bit as wonderful a prose-writer as he is a comics-writer. Peter and Max is the story of two brothers, Peter (Piper, also Pumpkin Eater) and Max (the Pied Piper), who grow estranged from one another on the eve of the Adversary's invasion of their homeworld, and lose themselves in a blood-soaked Black Forest, where they are both fired by the crucible of war and magic into men whose innocence will never be recovered.

Max is the villain here, jealous of Peter's inheritance of Frost, the magic flute of their father. Max acquires Fire, another powerful magic flute, from Frau Totenkinder, the evil witch of the Black Forest, and he and Fire warp each other into something monstrous.

Peter, meanwhile, is orphaned in Hamelin, where he becomes an accomplished thief, escaping from the worst circumstances with the help of Frost, and forever pining for his lost love, Bo Peep, disappeared into the evil woods.

The action moves from this mythic backstory to a contemporary tale in which Max has come at last to contemporary Fabletown, and Peter must hunt him, even though it means his certain doom.

As with the Fables comics, Willingham manages to merge the gentle, meandering feel of fairy tales with a breakneck, contemporary pacing -- a very clever trick indeed. The characters and stories are very engaging, the tension real, the mythos powerful. There's everything to like about Peter & Max, even if you've never cracked a Fables comic (though you probably will, once you've finished reading the book).

Peter & Max: A Fables Novel

Howard's original story is a much-loved gothic bayou horror classic, about a haunted house where the blood of slaves and the cruelty of their masters wreak a curse on a huge, rotting mansion. Lansdale's update of the story -- the new protagonists are a pair of sisters descended from the slaves who inherited the house from their masters; they go to take possession with their friends in a kind of Scooby Doo pack -- only lightly changes the material, leaving the scare intact.

But best of all is Fox's art and Stewart's coloring, which are blood-soaked, entrail-laden, and painted in an eerie palette.

If you like a good scare -- and creepy, gothic art -- then this is your thing. Many thanks to Dark Horse for supplying a review copy.

Pigeons From Hell

Together, the three of them form The Secret Science Alliance, complete with an underground lair chock full of marvellous inventions, and they set out to create the most wonderful things they can imagine.

But then the sour old R&D chief from down the block begins to steal their inventions, and the three find themselves embroiled in a caper that requires all of their skills.

Funny, inspiring, and wicked-nerdy, The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook is filled with hyper-detailed drawings of secret lairs and scientific inventions, and handles the idea of multiple intelligences with a good deal of grace and compassion. The author says the book is enjoyable by kids 8 and up -- and as a 38 year old, I can affirm the "and up" part! I'm grateful to Ms Davis for sending me a review copy.

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook

Patrick Rosenkranz, author of a great history of underground comics called Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution, sent me this trailer for his Rand Holmes Retrospective film.

"Unfurling" by Isabel Rucker (Thanks, Rudy!)

The video of Robert Crumb's dialogue with Francoise Mouly at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square filmed on 10/23 is now available on Fora.tv. The 47-minute video features Crumb discussing his childhood, early life, married/family life, and his new book THE BOOK OF GENESIS ILLUSTRATED.

R. Crumb in Conversation with Francoise Mouly

Hayley and Rachel went out this Hallowe'en dressed, respectively, as Cory Doctorow (as depicted in the XKCD webcomic) and a floppy disk. GREAT costumes, folks!

Look, it's Michael Geist! (Thanks, Rachel!)

There's been an accident. The young scientist--or, perhaps, his lab assistant or friends--stands stunned. He knows he's been washed in a massive dose of radiation. He knows his life will never be the same.

In the real-world, the victims of criticality accidents spend time in the hospital. Some die. In fiction, they wake up with powers beyond the imagination of normal humans.

Researching the history of criticality accidents made me wonder how accidental exposure to massive levels of radiation became the de rigueur method of achieving superhero-dom. And, while I suppose comic book writers would have a well-formed opinion or two on this, I decided to ask a group of people whose point of view I'd never seen--actual nuclear scientists.

Horst Rosenthal: Mickey Mouse in Gurs (Thanks, Avi!)

Dark Horse just sent me a review copy of The Life And Times Of Martha Washington In The Twenty-First Century, a gigantic, slipcased hardcover containing the full run of the Give Me Liberty comics and associated titles.

I have Frank Miller's Give Me Liberty graphic novels to thank for getting me interested in graphic novels as a literary form. I read the first Give Me Liberty collection when I was seventeen, after having it thrust insistently into my hands by my roommate Erik Stewart. Erik judged -- correctly -- that I'd find in Miller's groundbreaking tale the same satisfaction I got from reading the best sf novels. He was so right.

Give Me Liberty is the story of Martha Washington, a kid from a futuristic version of Chicago's notorious Cabrini Green projects, simply called "The Green," who joins the US Army in order to escape from poverty. Martha finds herself serving in the army of a country locked in a death-spiral, plagued by political assassination, partisan division, secessionists, cynical corporatism... Her military education becomes a political education and on the way, Miller and Gibbons impart a raging, angry story about corruption and injustice, paced so relentlessly that I found myself buying the single issues between the collections and re-reading them looking for clues as to what might come next.

Miller created Give Me Liberty for Dark Horse after he jumped ship from DC, for whom he had made a fortune with his noir Batman: Dark Knight books, which changed the field forever. DC loved what Miller had done, but they wanted to impose restrictions on his creativity intended to assuage blue-noses who were worried that comics might corrupt the kiddees. Miller told them to pound sand and went to Dark Horse and created this remarkable story, which prefigures some of the best sf comics written since, including Ellis's brilliant Transmetropolitan and Brian Wood's fantastic DMZ.

The Life And Times Of Martha Washington In The Twenty-First Century is the perfect way to revisit that remarkable story or to discover it for the first time. A giant, heavy, high-quality book, it is made for a lazy afternoon on the sofa or the carpet, devouring the whole Martha Washington canon (along with sketches, notes and other assorted nice bits). It'd be a fine (and potentially life-changing -- see above) gift, and makes for a very satisfying indulgence, too.

The Life And Times Of Martha Washington In The Twenty-First Century

COMIC TITLE: Nachos (Thanks, T!)

One of the most fun of these is the Jack books, which feature a set of parallel adventures of Jack -- as in "Spratt" and "and the Beanstalk" and many other tales. Jack is handsome, womanizing, preternaturally lucky and cheerfully amoral doofus of a fable who is forever incurring the wrath of the Fable establishment by violating their rules by, say, pursuing a career as a Hollywood executive (he fits right in in Tinseltown, naturally).

In Jack of Fables Vol. 6: The Big Book of War , Jack finds himself heading the Fable/Librarian army against the vicious Bookburner, who would destroy all of fabledom for his own reasons. Jack takes this command with the help of his sidekick and pal The Pathetic Fallacy (AKA "Gary"), an immortal "Literal" who changes the world to suit his moods.

Jack is a terrible commander, but a very funny one, and he doesn't distinguish himself much as a general, but he does an admirable job of evincing yuks from the reader; and Willingham uses the story to make some really thought-provoking points about the dark and primal nature of stories and the danger and blood that lurks in their hearts.

The Big Book of War would probably stand alone reasonably well, but if you just read this volume, you're really missing out. The whole Fables canon deserves your attention (and will reward it handsomely). It is both gripping and thought-provoking; philosophically substantial and sparklingly funny. Jack of Fables Vol. 6: The Big Book of War

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Noam sez, "There are so many things to love in this world, so just to point a few of them I've animated the xkcd comic xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel. Singing by the amazing Olga Nunes."

I Love xkcd (Thanks, Noam!)

Ape Lad sez, "Dresden Codak, a very funny webcomic, has this handy chart of '42 Essential Third-Act Twists' for writers."

42 Essential 3rd Act Twists (Thanks, Ape Lad!)

Bag Check

Nikal sez, "I wanted to draw your attention to a short webcomic history of the ongoing crisis in Honduras. The comic puts the current situation in historical context and offers an interpretation of how the current de facto government has its roots in the US-Honduras relationship. We believe our comic is artfully drawn, informative, and innovative in its treatment and explanation of the crisis. The authors are Dan Archer, a comix journalist and instructor at Stanford University, and Nikil Saval, a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University and an assistant editor at n+1 magazine."

The interface for this slideshow is diabolical (a "next" button would be useful!), but it's still a great and informative read.

Striking Graphic Novel Tells Story of Honduras Coup and Unrest

Comics artist Frank Brunner has done a series of Frazetta-esque Alice in Wonderland nudes that are sexy, retro, and lovely.

Nudes (via MeFi)

Today's XKCD webcomic examines the limits of protection offered by the talismanic anti-static wrist strap that RAM companies send you with your purchase.

Static

Alexa Kitchen's good taste in cartoonists shines in Grown-Ups are Dumb! (No Offense), an anthology of light-hearted comic strips that will appeal to kids in elementary and junior high school. The great thing about her work is that it really is the product of a kid. Her sense of humor and perspective on school, friends, siblings, and families is very much like my own two daughters'. I know they'll enjoy her book (she has one previous book: Drawing Comics is Easy! (Except When It's Hard))

Grown-Ups are Dumb! (No Offense)

Back in July, Dark Horse Comics relaunched the classic horror title Creepy, one of those titles that caused straight America to recoil in terror. Creepy's short stories veered between morality plays in which some awful person did some terrible deed and received his comeuppance to unabashed, straight-ahead horror in which terrible people did terrible things -- often to other terrible people -- and got away with it. I rather think it was this latter that got the censors' bowels in an uproar.

The relaunched Creepy, a 48-page black and white monthly, is true to the original spirit, and each story is introduced by Uncle Creepy, a Crypt-Keeper-like ghoul with a penchant for grisly puns.

I love the art in this book -- each story is done by a different artist, but all hanker back to the golden age of horror comics, funny and ghastly lines that can be straight-ahead cartoons or stippled impressionism as the story dictates.

Creepy Comics 1

Creepyuniverse.com

And in case your tastes run to the original Creepy: Dark Horse's handsome archival collections of classic Creepy

Breadpig Publishing were kind enough to send me a review copy of xkcd: volume 0, the first-ever collection of strips from Randall Munroe's fantastic, unrepentantly geeky webcomic XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

I've been a fan of XKCD since I happened upon his Help! I'm Trapped in a Universe Factory strip, and Randall was kind enough to write a fictionalized version of me into later toons. We got to meet last summer at a science fiction convention in Springfield, Mass, and hit it off like a house on fire.

So I was delighted to find myself holding an actual book -- cover price $18, portion of profits goes to building schools in Laos through the Room to Read charity -- and turning the pages. Randall once told me that he'd rejected earlier book offers because his older strips were only available at a very low resolution, and it seems like many of these were included on the basis that they're funny and interesting enough to overlook the lower-quality reproductions. The tool-tips -- hidden punchlines that show up if you hover your mouse over the XKCD strips -- are included as small-caps print tucked among the frames, and this is nearly as good as the screen experience.

The book is full of eastereggs; the pages appear to be numbered in ternary. There is a cryptographic puzzle hidden in the margins, along with many small, Sergio-Argones-like doodles and gags. More than anything, xkcd: volume 0 feels like it is a part of the XKCD continuum, a mix of blog, webcomic, doodle and tweet, handsomely presented and long overdue.

xkcd: volume 0

When I was asked to join on with BoingBoing as a contributing editor, my first thought was, "OMG, I'm a Boinger!"

And that immediately triggered a flashback to my childhood, specifically the part I spent rifling through my father's comic collection. If you're familiar with old, classic Bloom County, then you may recall Billy and the Boingers (née Deathtongue), a heavy metal band made up of Bill the Cat, Opus the Penguin, Hodgepodge the Rabbit and Steve Dallas the Formerly Sensitive Male. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and purchase yourself a copy of Billy and the Boingers Bootleg, which contains all the associated strips, as well as an LP of the ostensibly hit songs "You Stink, But I Love You" and (yes) "I'm a Boinger." Perhaps, with luck, your 8-year-old will get a hold of it and the circle of dorky life will continue.

With that, ladies and gentlemen, may I present "I'm a Boinger" as performed by the Harry Pitts Band.

(Thanks, David!)

Dave, the main character in this graphic novel, The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book (Fantagraphics), is an illustrator living in Cape Town, South Africa. He often gets frustrated by the freelance assignments he must accept to make a living (like drawing bricks for a catalog that the client insists must be "curious," "unique," "tasteful," and "reliable). He also has feet like a monkeys, which enable him to easily climb trees and buildings.

His best friend is Paul, who seems to have been permanently altered by ingesting too many psychedelics. Dave and Paul have good hearts, but they end up getting themselves into odd and dangerous predicaments that are never quite what they seem to be on the surface.

Joe Daly, the creator of of the characters, is a terrifically gifted artist with an ability to depict an environment that rivals Herge's. I loved studying the scenery when Paul and Dave drive through the city and hills of Cape Town, while they are engaged in long, funny conversations.

The two well-crafted mysteries contain twists that tricked me until the end. The first story involves a menacing Mexican man who lives in Dave apartment and wants to kill him. The second story starts with a hunt for an escaped capybara that leads to the discovery of a plot to destroy some wetlands to make room for a housing development. Daly's fondness for absurd situations might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you liked The Big Lebowski or Pulp Fiction, you'll have no problem with Daly's brand of storytelling.

Interestingly, the artwork (especially the coloring) is tighter and more polished in the second story, as if Daly gained technical chops between drawing the first story and the second. But no matter, both stories are a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to more from Daly, who was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2007 for his other book, Scrublands.

The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (Thanks, Drew!)

Melvin Monster was the creation of John Stanley, one of the principal writers on Little Lulu, Nancy and Sluggo, and others. Melvin is firmly in the Addams Family/St Trinnian's vein, a macabre and sweet kids' comic about a monster-boy whose parents (Baddy, a Frankenstein's monster, and Mummy, a mummy) urge him to do a bad deed every day, make him play with the family's vicious pet alligator, and demand that he follow in the family tradition of dropping out of school in kindergarten.

There's plenty of two-edged humor in Melvin Monster, stuff that parents will appreciate that might go over the heads of kids who are enjoying the slapstick. The art is fantastic, in a Marc Davis/Haunted Mansion vein, and the reproduced pages have been cleaned up just enough to make them neat without being sterile, some of the newsprint texture remaining in the scans.

Seth's book design, with wonderful tessellated Melvin endpapers and an embossed cover, make for a great package, perfect for a gift or for long-term love on your shelves.

Melvin Monster: Volume One (John Stanley Library)

The mere fact that the Great Bearded Wizard of Albion, Mr Alan Moore, is behind a new journal, Dodgem Logic, should be enough to get a lot of us interested. But add in talents like the Josie Long, Graham Linehan, Kev O'Neill, Melinda Gebbie, Steve Aylett and others and I'm pretty much sold and I'd imagine so are most of us.

But it gets even better - this is a new underground journal that seems to be part entertainment, part grassroots activism/advice on all sorts of subjects dear to many boingers' hearts, from guerilla gardening to making your own clothes, living on no cash (something most of us will find essential these days!), steampunk guides to rebuilding collapsed civilisation...

Alan's daughter Leah and hubby John Reppion (themselves excellent comics writers) have the official release describing the first edition (which will come with a segment designed to take local content so it can be reworked for different areas - a great idea), which comes from Tony Bennet's great Indy comics press Knockabout (home to Hunt Emerson & Gilbert Shelton as well as UK publishers of the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Is it just me or is this the perfect sounding journal for BBers?

Doctor Popular says,

Today is 24hour Comic Book Day. Cartoonists all over the world will be taking part in the challenge of creating an entire 24 page comic book in just one day. Robots Don't Know Anything About Twitter, which was featured on BB a few weeks ago, was created as part of last years 24HCBDay!

Here are some links: Nationwide, in SF, in Minneapolis, in Albuquerque

Zombies Calling fits nicely into the Scott Pilgrim mode: rich with pop-culture reference, snappy dialog, and a delightful disregard for the boundary between reality and fantasy.

Hicks has got lots going for her -- great illustration and writing style, funny dialog and likeable characters -- but what I was most impressed by was her cinematic talent for making a zombie chase-scene come alive with real tension through clever panel-layout and illustrations. I didn't expect to have my heart thumping over a funnybook about zombies, but thump it did.

Zombies Calling

The pamphlet depicts (in the style of an airplane emergency card) office workers snapping, destroying their workplace and turning into carnal, hunter-gatherer communards.

Business Reply Mail

Love this -- it's like one of those Sharpie pen murals crossed with the back of my Junior High notebook.

Our awesome meeting room (Thanks, Roel!)

xkcd Surgery

Trotsky was an amazing figure: brilliant and fiery, an impassioned rhetorician and propagandist, who fought fiercely with Lenin on ideological grounds -- but eventually reconciled -- and was purged (and then assassinated) by Stalin after Lenin's death. The unlikely story of how Trotsky -- the son of a wealthy landowner -- became a revolutionary fighter and general is improbable, exciting, and thought-provoking, and Geary's comic-book retelling does it great justice.

From his theory of "permanent revolution" (the idea that the Soviet Union could only sustain its revolution by bringing on revolutions in every other country) to his doomed affair with Frida Kahlo, Trotsky's genius, hubris, frailty and strength are well covered in this volume.

(Actually, my dad takes some issue with this, "Geary's facile description (which, by the way, echoes the Stalinist perception of Trotsky's theory) really misses the point: Yes, the theory did have something to do with the extension of the revolution abroad, but that was merely an aspect of it. Trotsky's theory, influenced by Parvus, was that the historically distinct stages of social evolution (barbarism, feudalism, mercantile capitalism, capitalism) was not so distinct any more. In the age of capitalist expansion (primitive accumulation), capitalism was penetrating social systems of previous historical stages and combining with them. Russia, characterized as a form of feudalism, had by the time of the rolling in of the 20th century been penetrated by some very large scale capitalist enterprises by foreign investors. So, here was a society in which serfdom had only been recently abolished, still with an absolute monarch, overwhelmingly peasant and illiterate, but also experiencing the growth of a nascent industrial proletariat as a result of foreign capital. Trotsky's view was that the historical tasks normally assigned to the bourgeois forces emerging within the bosom of feudalism could not be accomplished by the Russian bourgeoisie. They were too weak, already bypassed by foreign capitalists, and therefore unwilling to carry out the democratic reforms appropriate to the normal development of capitalism. So, Trotsky said, the new revolutionary forces would have to do double duty, carry out a bourgeois revolution and a socialist one.")

(That said, Dad adds, "I did enjoy reading his graphic bio")

The only thing really missing from this is Trotsky's own words. He was an incredible and inspiring writer, and his autobiography, My Life (written while exiled in Turkey) is an excellent companion to this introductory text.

Trotsky: A Graphic Biography

When I was a kid I was often reprimanded and sometimes even kicked out of class for drawing comics in school. Now, research has shown that comics are a great way to turbo-charge literacy in reluctant readers (especially in boys), and comics are suddenly being welcomed into classrooms all over the world.

With this in mind, my partners at Bitstrips and I have developed Bitstrips for Schools, an educational comic-making service. We piloted it last spring in a handful of Ontario classrooms, and the kids went crazy for it, creating almost 3000 comic strips in six weeks time (see video). Their creativity has astounded me, as have the incredibly cool and dedicated teachers I've had the chance to work with (link).

Bitstrips for Schools has since been licensed by the Ontario Ministry of Education, which means that 2 million kids now have at their fingertips the tools to make their own comics.

We also just introduced a "self-serve" option that lets teachers outside of Ontario buy cheap one-classroom licenses.

So yes, in interests of full disclosure, this is a plug for a website I have an interest in. But it's also a website I'm super proud to be a part of!

Bitstrips for Schools.

Schizophrenia (Thanks, Nelson!)

Moserware: A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (via Links)

My guess is that the Kirbys will end up with the economic right to the characters -- a share of the profits -- but not the moral right -- the right to veto various uses and licenses.

The legal notices expressed an intent to regain copyrights to some creations as early as 2014, according to a statement from Toberoff & Associates, a Los Angeles firm that helped win a court ruling last year returning a share of the copyright in Superman to heirs of the character's co-creator, Jerome Siegel.

Reached by telephone on Sunday, Mr. Toberoff declined to elaborate on the statement. A spokeswoman for Marvel had no immediate comment. Disney said in a statement, "The notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights seven to 10 years from now, and involve claims that were fully considered in the acquisition." Fox, Sony, Paramount and Universal had no comment...

Sony has the film rights to Spider-Man in perpetuity, for instance, while Fox has the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Paramount has a distribution agreement for Marvel's next few self-produced movies, including a second "Iron Man" film. Meanwhile, Hasbro has certain toy rights and Universal holds the Florida theme park rights to Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, among other characters.

The publisher of R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated kindly gave permission to share Chapter 19 with our readers. Click on the thumbnails for an enlargement. Enjoy!

I understand the book will start shipping as soon as September 23rd.

From Genesis: Translation and Commentary, translated by Robert Alter. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Alter. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Crumb

Covered is a blog that posts comic book covers redrawn by different cartoonists. The results are fascinating. Covered

I've been enjoying cartoonist Peter Bagge's contributions to Reason Magazine for years now, which I've always read on their website. But now Fantagraphics has collected them into a great-looking trade paperback! Here's a PDF of a free chapter (link).

Fans of Bagge's from his HATE days are sometimes turned off by the politics of his Reason comics. I'm not. I think Bagge has been doing really interesting work, mixing field journalism with humor and opinion in an entirely novel way.

As an essayist Bagge is never preachy, and he often points out the shortcomings of his fellow libertarians (his account of meeting Ron Paul is particularly funny). He explores more than he rants, and when he does let loose, he's got a healthy sense of self-satire.

These comics will piss you off, and that's good. (Amazon link)

It's been fun putting it all together. It was neat to go back through various huge stacks of old drawings, some on the back of school assignments, and scan them at print resolution. I also had fun with the marginal notes. I'm really excited to finally have it in print, and I'm looking forward to seeing people and signing copies at the release events this weekend. I'm also excited about getting back to work on some other projects which have been on hold for a bit, at least one of which will involve lakes and a recently-acquired Arduino.

Top Shelf's MASSIVE $3 SALE kicks off today to celebrate the release of the SURROGATES on September 25th.

For the next twelve days -- thru Friday September 25th (the opening day of the film!) -- Top Shelf is having a giant $3 graphic novel web sale. When you visit the site, you'll find over 100 graphic novels and comics on sale -- with 55+ titles marked down to just $3 (!) and 45 other titles slashed! All we ask is that you hit a $30 minimum on sale and/or non-sale items (before shipping). It's a great opportunity to load up on all those graphic novels you've wanted to try, but just never got around to picking up. Get 'em while supplies last!

Please note that this sale is GOOD for retailers as well, and shops will get their wholesale discount on top of these sale prices. Certain minimums apply, so retailers please email us for details.

Monday, September 21st will be the second Geek Reading event to benefit EFF, at 111 Minna in downtown San Francisco. This time, the author in question is Randall Munroe, otherwise known as the writer and cartoonist behind the brilliant webcomic xkcd...

Reddit and Breadpig founder Alexis Ohanian will be emceeing the event, which will include a visual presentation as well as an interview portion, with questions culled from the top-voted comments on Reddit. Randall's new book "xkcd: Volume 0" we be available for purchase and signings as well.

The main event starts at 7 and tickets are $30. But you can also join the VIP reception ($100 donation) a bit earlier, at 6, for some extra face time with the man behind the most complex stick figures ever drawn. Numbers are limited, so get your tickets now!

Geek Reading: xkcd creator Randall Munroe
Monday, September 21, 2009
VIP Reception: 6:00
Reading: 7:00
111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, San Francisco

The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, a massive anthology of old comic book stories for kids, is a big hit around my house. My six-year-old loves it so much she reads it to herself. The oversize format and 350 pages make for a delightful reading experience.

Art Spiegelman (creator of Maus) and his partner Francoise Mouly (art editor of The New Yorker) selected 60 terrific stories from comic books published between the 1930s and the 1960s. Characters include Sugar and Spike, Dennis the Menace, Little Archie, Little Lulu, Pogo, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Melvin Monster, Gerald McBoing Boing, and a bunch of others who are new to me. Spiegelman and Mouly picked stories that are smart, funny, and warm. Thankfully they didn't concern themselves with finding stories that are overly simple -- the have engaging plots and I enjoy the stories as much as my kids do.

In his introduction to the book, Jon Scieszka writes, "Wow, 'Treasury' is right. You have just entered the bank, the mint, the Ali Baba cave full of gold, silver, ruby, emerald, and diamond toons." I couldn't agree more.

The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly

Wondermark » Archive » #550; In which Salvation is summoned (Thanks, Dave!