Comics Alliance has a smashing look at a sketchbook featuring Tintin by Dozens of Comics Artists and as fearsomely sweet as Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Tintin is, we think you will agree — Kate Beaton was born to draw Captain Haddock. Please click the link to check them all out!

With a new house to pay for, for the first time EVER, David Lapham is selling original art from STRAY BULLETS. If only we had a spare $500 lying around.

While linking to this site, we became aware of the fact that you can read the first four issues of STRAY BULLETS online for free. If you have not read this ’90s masterpiece of pain, trauma, violence, and degradation, this first four issues are, to fall back on an overused term, as good as it gets. (Above page not for sale; top page is.)

I was also not aware that a new STRAY BULLETS story had been published in Dark Horse’s recently released NOIR anthology. Now you know as much as we do.

Dash Shaw suggests art schools “Teach House Styles”:

The more outdated and inapplicable the house style is, the better. They only have the understanding; they’re not being bred for a specific job that currently exists.

Comments are a must read, as always.

See his current show at the Corey Helford Gallery.

This is not comics, too, but we’re all big Pixar fans here, right??? Plus one detects perhaps a bit of influence from some of our favorite Pixar-based cartoonists here, as well.

UPDATE: Artist Paul Conrad writes to give credits —

Eric Tan did the “Journey into the Wild” (with the dogs).

Craig Foster did the SAA South American Air (with the Lama).

Erik Evans did the “Paradise Falls” (with the bird).

I did the rest.

There’s more on the posters at Conrad’s blog.

Also, we’re trying to find out if they are for sale, but apparently they were just sent out as files to websites as promo. If we find out any more, we’ll let ya know!

Anyway to celebrate the release of UP on DVD and Blu-Ray, Pixar has released a series of retro posters. Click for larger images.

This link has been making the rounds and it’s Not Comics, but it’s so worth a look: Soviet War Paintings. To the horrors of war, you can add cold, bleak, brutal images rendered in rigid, propagandistic art styles.

The Invisible Man

Does anything signify contemporary terror in comics more than this series? Cover by Charles Adlard.

More here

The great Jim Woodring is always available for some chills. Wish this one was larger. Here’s a bonus image.

Cartoonist/teacher Nick Bertozzi illustrates an article about a haunted house.

John Rozum, writer of such spooky things as MIDNIGHT, MASS., SCOOBY DOO and XOMBI, has been doing his OWN 31 Days of Halloween. Here’s one of his collage illustrations.

BONUS! The great underground/alternative artist is interviewed by Bill Baker about his Haunt of Horror project for Marvel, which adapts Poe and Lovecraft.

I feel that much of Poe’s works deals directly with that most basic of all human feelings, fear, and its more extreme state, horror. He speaks directly to me because I am a very fearful guy. And he expresses these feelings in an artful way, which to me makes them more palatable. Lovecraft also deals with fear and horror but in a very different way. Poe gets close to his characters, even inside them. The fears that Lovecraft deals with are usually strange, alien, even cosmic, definitely from the outside.

Joel Priddy has been posting monsters all month at his blog.

In other holiday news, Priddy’s adpatation of The Gift of the Magi will be out from HarperCollins next week.

Artist T.D. Ward contributed this piece entitled HOWL-o-ween.

Day Prize nominee Tom Williams of Draw Robot shared this piece with us.

Steve Emond, creator of EMO BOY and the upcoming HAPPYFACE, shared his seasonal drawing of the classic NEWS game Maniac Mansion with us.

Artist Jude Beers, who goes by the name Grimbro, shared his own Halloween countdown: a tribute to horror illustration great Basil Gogos. You can see more of his art here.

Newcomer Jean Arrow writes to introduce herself:
I am an up and coming comic book artist, currently working on my first comic book that I am going to debut at the Phoenix Comic Con in 2010. I am also currently mentoring under Steve Rude. You can see more of my art work at jeanarrow.deviantart.com.

Check out his Flickr set: Creatures, Creepies and Crazies.

Here’s a nice Halloween exclusive, courtesy of The Pekar Project

Pekar Project artist Rick Parker, fresh off drawing Tales from the Crypt: Diary of a Stinky Dead Kid, series “Deaditor” Jeff Newelt and Dr. Harvey Pekar concocted this Halloween treat featuring the Pekar Project artists and other frequent Pekar collaborators and subjects.

Click for larger version.

BTW, we have a ton more Halloween art to post so it’s just going to go up all day and night! Celebrate the season!

The NY Times teams up Lizzy Ratner and Seth for some haunting views:

Even in this cheek-by-jowl town, the realm of other people’s apartments remains resolutely mysterious. Sure, New Yorkers share walls, overhear fights, inhale the sweet-spiced victories (and, all too often, failures) of sundry kitchen experiments. But the odd, unholy secrets of our neighbors’ homes remain hidden — and some of these secrets are very odd indeed. Voices whisper, spirits hover, stereos scream and stuffed animals rearrange themselves on beds. While we enjoy cozy, sleep-filled nights in our shoebox-sized sanctuaries, our neighbors toss and turn in the Gotham equivalent of Whaley House or Bly. And why not? New York is a city built on the dead, on mass graves and potter’s fields, old battlefields and spiffed-up shooting galleries. Surely some spirits are hanging around.

Via Peggy Burns

Or at least her Twitter stream.