Colin Panetta self-publishes the comic DEAD MAN HOLIDAY, which is up to issue #3. His Halloween illo was produced for a video game news blog, and he has some background here. Click for a larger version.

Jah Furry shares a preview of the new issue of Royal Flush Magazine, which contains much of comics-related interest:

• Exclusive cover story / interview with Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, including a first-time-ever-printed 60-year-old autobiographical comic strip written and drawn by Hef. In homage, Royal Flush Book 6 features two foldout posters: centerfold by comics rock star Paul Pope and calendar by poster legend Brian Ewing. Plus, a Joan Jett flip cover with 3-D “smoke eyes” spot gloss varnish.

• Interviews with Joan Jett, Leslie Nielsen, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Brian Posehn, Jeffrey Ross, Jim Gaffigan, Ahmet Zappa, Jenna Jameson, Dethklok, Basil Gogos, Danny Trejo and more.

• Art and comics by Harvey Pekar, Rick Veitch, Peter Kuper, John Pound, Basil Gogos, Danny Hellman, Sean Pryor, Cojo, Aaron Augenblick, Scrojo, Robin Eley, Steve Chanks, Erik Rodriguez, Seldon Hunt, Ryan Dunlavey and many more.

Above, Frank Zappa as a Jack Kirby character, as drawn by Rick Veitch.

In addition, this week will see the launch of the Royal Flush Festival, Oct. 15 – 19, 2009 in NYC. Details of the music/film/art fest are in the link, but we’ll be appearing at a panel on Saturday at 4 PM at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center, 107 Suffolk Street. The topic: BLOGGING. The participants:
Michael K – Founder/Editor, Dlisted.com
Brandon Harris – Hammer to Nail, Filmmaker Magazine, Spout Blog, Cinema Echo Chamber
Heidi MacDonald – Editor, Publisher Weekly’s The Beat
Brandon Kim – IFC.com’s Indie Ear
The panel will be moderated by John Holmstrom.

Up first, in our celebration of all things Halloween, a zombie by John Totleben, submitted by M.D.

Dark Horse has put up a preview of the upcoming Charles Vess art book Drawing Down The Moon: The Art of Charles Vess. Not 10 pages, not 20 pages…the whole damn thing.

And you know what? It’s going to sell more books.

Is there any way you can look at a few images of this lyrical, imaginative art and NOT want to look at it full size in a form you can savor?

When we ran the Wimpy Kid press release yesterday about the fourth book in the series having a 4 million copy lay down, someone pointed out to us that Wimpy Kid has been — and still is — a free webcomic, available to all. Hasn’t hurt sales.

As for the Vess art book, it contains:

Verdant fairy forests. Whispering mountains. The fallen towers of ancient kings. Spirit-filled lakes. The distant strains of elven bards. For over thirty years, the fantasy art of Charles Vess has been acclaimed worldwide, his rich palette, striking compositions, and lavish detail second to none in the field. Vess has been the illustrator of choice for countless publishers and writers, including Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clark, and George R. R. Martin. Embodying the timeless approach of the golden age of illustration, Vess’s work is both breathtakingly singular and yet recalls an era when paint and brush were the vessels that carried readers of all ages to distant lands, bygone ages, and realms of the imagination

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Drawing Down the Moon goes on sale in December and sells for $39.99.

Pekar, one of comics’ true originals, one of its most important writers, and an icon of the small press, reaches his 70th year this day. To celebrate, his new webcomic, The Pekar Project, is running 70+ portraits of the master by a diverse array of artists. Click on the link for the whole show, but here are a few as an appetizer:

Jeff Smith

Renee French

Ben Templesmith

Happy birthday, Harvey! You are one of a kind and a national treasure!

We’ll be doing “21 Days of Halloween” starting on the 11th, and we’re looking for some seasonal art — you know, black cats, pumpkins, Robert Pattinson, Samhain…all the good stuff! Links and jpegs gratefully accepted. We have some great stuff in already, thanks to everyone for playing along.

To get you into the mood, here’s one from last year and the great, great Richard Thompson.

ALSO, Van Jensen’s Pinocchio puppet, which he’ll be bringing to this weekeneds Baltimore Comicon. Details here. Jensen’s PINOCCHIO VAMPIRE SLAYER is coming out from SLG this month.

To make up for totally flubbing coverage of 24 Hour Comics Book Day one of the two holidays on the comics calendar, (the other being Free Comic Book Day), we’ll link to some of the results, starting with Lea Hernandez. Plus: Process here.

Jaime Hernandez draws Nikki Finke for The New Yorker. Shades of Dot Winks!

But Nikki didn’t like the profile. =(

An interview via the Character Design Blog.

Holy Frak! Paul Pope does DUNE Wednesday Comics style. YOU CRAZY KID YOU. We loves it. Colors by Lovern Kindzierski. See the whole page in the link.

I find that with the format of Wednesday Comics (which is really the traditional Sunday Comics page), one must condense the plot and action to the briefest yet most vivd bursts of information available– there is a lot of space on the page for the illustrations to really overwhelm the reader/viewer, but there isn’t a lot of space for story development in the sense of how we’d develop a plot or work up dialogue for a typical comic book page. In a comic book, one page may be well drawn or well written, but it is still just a single facet of a larger whole. One page can be preceded or followed by another, but no one page carries the entire weight of the sustained narrative. The Wednesday Comics single page format forces the artist to create a story unit which may well be part of a larger storyline, however it still must be able to stand alone.

Don’t get too excited…it’s just an experiment but…zoinks.

Artist Noah Van Sciver is one of many cartoonists on a road trip right now, and he did this strip about his SPX adventures on the road with John Porcellino exclusively for The Beat. Thanks, Noah! (Click for larger version.)

We’re just stealing this from Tim Hodler at Comics Comics, via a Village Voice interview with French director Alain Resnais because it is three-way cool.

“We decided that the light should be emotional rather than realistic,” says [Alain] Resnais, citing a source of inspiration in one of his beloved comic-strip illustrators, Terry and the Pirates creator Milton Caniff. “At a time when comic strips were very disparaged as an art form, I was very happy to learn that Orson Welles and Milton Caniff had a correspondence in which they said that each was influenced by the other. And Orson Welles was not an imbecile!”

Seth — yes, THAT Seth — has designed a parade float of the Wine King for the Niagara Arts Centre. Can we somehow get this into the Tournament of Roses parade? The petition begins NOW.

Via D&Q.

We received an email from Denis Vural of Adidas Global Sports Marketing in Amsterdam alerting us to three new promotional comics featuring some of soccer/football’s greatest stars portrayed by three ace cartoonists. Here’s the links:

Adebayor by Jae Lee
Stevie Gerrard by JG Jones
Kaka by Ryan Benjamin

We’ve attached some screenshots below, and these are definitely a step up from Rick Barry and Dr. J and Joe Namath’s Dingo Boots. The heroic/mythological angle really works for “the beautiful game.” What’s next Ronaldo by Alex Ross?

Technorati Tags: Sports

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Edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics is perhaps the most seminal historical comics anthology since A Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics, and a powerfully persuasive document arguing for a more linear, storytelling-based tradition of comics. It’s also full of comics by Harvey Kurtzman, Walt Kelly, Jules Feiffer, Carl Barks, Andre LeBlanc, Sheldon Mayer, and more that is so mouth-wateringly gorgeous that you will just sit and stare at it for hours on end. To wit, a few sample pages, provided by Abrams. Click for full sized versions.

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He’s pretty good.

You can see more of Rivera’s art and some process posts, at his blog.

Legendary illustrator Bernie Fuchs, who mixed modern art abstraction with the powerful imagery of illustration to create one of the most influential styles in 20th century commercial art, died last week. David Apatoff wrote about him several years ago:

At the same time, another painter– Bernie Fuchs– dealt with the exact same aesthetic problems in a different forum. Like Motherwell, Rauschenberg and Kline, Fuchs rejected the realistic painting of his predecessors (such as Norman Rockwell) and focused on broader qualities of abstract design and composition.

If we compare Fuchs’ art with the work of the other three painters, applying the same standards, it is difficult to tell which painter is superior. Fuchs’ compositions were equally bold and lovely. The colors and shapes were comparable. In fact, the only consistent difference between Fuchs and the three “fine” artists was the purpose for which the art was created. Motherwell, Rauschenberg and Kline created art for art’s sake. Fuchs’ art had a commercial function. He created art for a client’s sake, for he is an illustrator.

Boing Boing has an exclusive excerpt of Crumb’s GENESIS, out this week, and you know they chose Chapter 19, the one where Lot has unexpected houseguests. Good times.

Cartoonist/painter/sculptor Souther Salazar <a href=”http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=8067484″>has opened a store on Etsy and there you can buy all manner of adorable, lovely things, including mini-comics. Prices are from $3 up. So. Cute.

Here’s two more preview pages from the LIBERTY COMICS #2 anthology coming next month from Image.

Paul Pope

Chynna Clugston-Flores

In addition, Image has just released the Jim Lee Variant cover.

LEE and his story with NEIL GAIMAN, ‘100 Words’, lead off an all-star ensemble of industry greats in the all-new second volume of LIBERTY COMICS. Passionate comic book storytelling, all in service to an important cause, the incredible contributions list includes a Painkiller Jane story by JIMMY PALMIOTTI and JIM RUGG; a new Mr. Gum adventure from MIKE ALLRED, DAVE JOHNSON and JAMIE S. RICH; The Apocalypstix by RAY FAWKES and CAMERON STEWART, a return to Channel Zero by BRIAN WOOD; a preview of Choker by BEN MCCOOL and BEN TEMPLESMITH; and a special Martha Washington piece by DAVE GIBBONS, alongside exclusive material by PAUL POPE; KATHRYN & STUART IMMONEN; CHYNNA CLUGSTON; PAUL GRIST; and JASON AARON & MORITAT. LIBERTY COMICS already features two covers, one by Batman: The Long Halloween’s TIM SALE and a new Kick Ass image by creator JOHN ROMITA JR.

Archaia has provided us with the first look at a swell MOUSE GUARD print by David Petersen that will be sold only at the Long Beach Comic Con. The print is limited to 75 copies which will be on sale at the Atomic Apple booth (run by Atomic Comics and Golden Apple). 25 copies will be sold each day at the booth starting at 3 p.m., and Petersen will be on hand to sign each one. The prints will run $20 each. Click for a larger image.

Another awesome Penguin Classics cover, this one by Michael Cho, who explains how he did it here.

Liberty Comics #2 is an upcoming benefit anthology, proceeds from which benefit the CBLDF.

CBLDF Defenders of Liberty NEIL GAIMAN & JIM LEE lead off an all-star ensemble of industry greats in an all-new second volume of LIBERTY COMICS! Passionate comic book storytelling, all in service to an important cause, the incredible contributions list includes a Painkiller Jane story by JIMMY PALMIOTTI and JIM RUGG; a new Mr. Gum adventure from MIKE ALLRED and JAMIE S. RICH; The Apocalipstix by RAY FAWKES and CAMERON STEWART; a return to Channel Zero by BRIAN WOOD; a preview of Choker by BEN McCOOL and BEN TEMPLESMITH; and a special Martha Washington piece by DAVE GIBBONS, alongside exclusive material by PAUL POPE; GAIL SIMONE and JÖELLE JONES; KATHRYN & STUART IMMONEN; CHYNNA CLUGSTON; PAUL GRIST; and JASON AARON & MORITAT.

Alternate covers feature a new Kick-Ass illustration by JOHN ROMITA, JR. and a special noir image from TIM SALE.

All proceeds from LIBERTY COMICS will benefit the First Amendment legal work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund!

The book comes out on October 14th, published by Image, and we’ve been given a few EXCLUSIVE pages to preview here. Thanks to Joe Keatinge for arranging this. First up: The first NEW Channel Zero story by Brian Wood in several years. Click for a larger version.

§ Gabrielle Bell has a blog in which she shares her mysterious, haunting comics. (Link via Claire Bennett)

§ Debbie Drechsler (DADDY’S GIRL) has a new site with her portfolio and a blog where she posts her nature sketches. Fantastic. (Link via Mike Baehr.)

§ Alan David Doane has organized a new blog called Trouble with Comics, which features Christopher Allen, Johnny Bacardi, Alan David Doane, d. emerson eddy, Mick Martin, Alex Ness, Marc Sobel, Matt Springer, Diana Tamblyn, and David Wynne. With a lineup like that, you will want to bookmark this now.

We know that you are all tired of Disney Marvel mash-ups, but Is Animator Jeffrey Thomas’s Twisted Princess portfolio close to how Marvel might handle classic princess characters?

NOTE: We really screwed up when we first posted this. We picked it up from another blog that called it how Marvel would handle Disney Princesses, but it’s a completely independent project from earlier this year. It is kinda funnier with the attribution, though. Anyway, very nice concept designs!