Schmader's meeping post reminded me that the final issue in Roger Langridge's current Muppet Show series, "The Treasure of Peg Leg Wilson," hit comic book stores on Wednesday. I cannot overstate how totally delightful Langridge's Muppet comics are. He writes and draws them, and they are note perfect. He's been doing miniseries so far, but according to a recent Newsarama interview, he'll be doing a regular monthly series from here on out, which is excellent news. Seriously: Go to a comic book store. Look for comics with Langridge's name on the cover. Purchase them. (And while you're there, pick up issue #2 of Beasts of Burden, Dark Horse's creepy series about ghost-busting pets. It's written by Evan Dorkin and illustrated by Jill Thompson, whose art is some of the prettiest I've seen in a while. The issue stands alone, as the premise is pretty simple: Dogs and cats fight evil. Spookily.)

I guess I should also mention that the Portland Comic Book show is this Sunday. Duly mentioned.

Hot damn! Look at these!

• Via Comics Alliance.

Those are gorgeous—and it's a good bet that the stuff inside won't be too shabby, either. I've only read the first trade of Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man so far, but if that arc is a fair representation of the series' quality—and reports indicate that it is—then it's likely one of the best superhero books on the shelves right now. My favorite thing about what Fraction's done with Tony Stark is that he's kept the mai—sorry, I can't even stay on topic. Look at those covers!

In less aesthetically pleasing comics news, Comic-Con 2010 is already starting to sell out. Fellow comic book geeks, feel free to commence your gnashing of teeth, your cursing of Twilighters, etc.

Sure you do. It's a fancy hardcover and everything. We've got a couple extra copies courtesy of the all-around nice guys at Oni Press—email me by 2 pm tomorrow with "Colbert" in the subject line, and one could be yours. I might even throw in a bonus book, call it "cleaning my desk."

[It's the MusicFest NW edition of On the Road with Floating World, in which Floating World Comics proprietor Jason Leivian handpicks a few comics recommendations for musicians playing in town. Reminder: Swing by Floating World (20 NW 5th) during the week of the show, get 10% off recommended titles. Now here's Jason with tonight's recommendations....]

• Lisa Hanawalt

Musicfest NW: Mt. Eerie, Karl Blau, Tara Jane O'Neil, No Kids
When: Fri, Sept. 18, 8pm
Where: Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave

I know Mt. Eerie's Phil Elverum has wonderful taste in comics art because he collaborates with Genevieve Castree, who makes very precious and beautiful comics illustrations and now makes music under the names Woelv and O PAON. See if you can find her limited edition LPs, the accompanying illustration books are gorgeous. Tell her to stop making music so she can make more comics. Just kidding.

Thanks for all the great music Phil, these are for you! Four of the best comics to come out in the past month are not even available from the major distributor that handles all the superhero books. You gotta contact the artists directly—or come by a shop like Floating World, we specialize in this stuff!

LOSE #1 by Michael Deforge. This is Michael's first comic book! Beautifully printed by Koyama Press, this issue collects a few short stories and gag strips like "Dogs in College" and "Young Green Lantern." The main story takes the reader on an incredible journey through cartoon hell. Imagine Dante's Inferno meets Toontown from Roger Rabbit. Michael has an incredible sense of design and composition that you will describe as "original" and "bad ass". Looky here.

STAY AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE by Lisa Hanawalt. Nominated for an Ignatz for best mini-comic! Lots of clean ink illustrations of people wearing all manner of fashions, except they have animal heads, bug heads, bird heads. It's a goddam zoo. Mixed with really funny diary-style comics with a lot of nasty and trippy humor. "Wednesday: Our neighbor at work gave me some fruit. His gift did not seem innocent. Close up of cherry [the stem looks like a boner plunging in between some cheeks]. Other things he has given me: compliments, strawberry milkshakes, 'the creeps.'" She's an incredible illustrator. You'll see when Buenaventura Press releases her new book later this year. Or you can see now.

1-800-MICE #3 by Matthew Thurber. I loved the first two issues published by Picturebox. I think Matthew is one of the funniest artists they publish, right up there with Paper Rad. But like I said, the major comics distributor isn't carrying cool stuff like this anymore so issue #3 is self published and they did a great job. Awesome cover, slightly oversized, paper feels nice. I'm only on page 3 and I'm already cracking up out loud. This skywriter is trying to spell out letters in the sky, following complicated directions, sweating, trying not to black out. A space imp or something winks at him and terrifies him out of the cockpit. Oh shit, he's falling to his death. In the background you see the plane falling away, failing to complete the sentence he was writing with smoke. That's just the prelude. More here.

PINK TOMBS OF YOUTH by Pete Toms. Did you see the awesome illustrations Pete did for that Phish article in last week's Mercury? You loved it! I think Pete should be Editor In Chief at Marvel Comics, but that's just my stupid opinion. This was originally an online comic that I curated for Arthur Magazine on their blog. It's about a comics artist who's having trouble distinguishing between his comics and reality. Sort of like a Charlie Kaufman movie starring Chris Ware. It received a really great response and Pete was awesome enough to print up some actual books to hold and love and enjoy. This livejournal interview explains his reasoning.

And if you're too poor to buy even things that are discounted, it just so happens I've got an extra copy of the collected Essex County, Jeff Lemire's beautifully, critically lauded l trilogy about a tiny, hockey-loving Canadian town. Lemire will be in town in October, doing signings both at Wordstock and at Floating World—he's also writing a new comic through Vertigo, Sweet Tooth, the first issue of which is intriguingly creepy. Would you like to win a copy of The Collected Essex County? Why yes, you would. Email me with "Queequeg" in the subject line (and do it right, 'cause I'm gonna set up a mailbox for that shit) and I'll pick a winner at random* by Thursday at noon. I might even throw in a bonus book.

*flattery does NOT help. Turns out it just makes me feel weird.

Hey, fellow people-who-think-comics-are-relevant. Remember the Great Marvel Tentacle Rape Dust-Up of Aught-Aught-Seven? You'd think maybe a lesson would have been learned after that point, right? Well... nope! This just happened, courtesy of Dark Horse*:

I think what we can all take from this is that if you're going to spotlight tentacle-on-lady art, at least make sure she's enjoying it. (And not, uh, getting raped.)

*Disappointed in you, BTW.

From Slate:

As the end time for printed books draws near, Fahrenheit 451, the 1953 novel that envisioned it all, has just been published, again. And this time it reads like a joke—an extended, ironic, illustrated joke. Because this time, Ray Bradbury's novel about firemen who burn books instead of putting out fires is—oof!—a comic book.

Think back to the original novel. Comic books are the only books shallow enough to go unburned, the only ones people are still allowed to read. Beatty, the fire chief, who seems to have loved books once and whom Bradbury has called "a darker side of me," explains it all to the hero, Guy Montag, the reluctant fireman. When photography, movies, radio, and television came into their own, he says, books started to be "leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm." Burning them isn't so tragic, he suggests, because they are already so degraded.

"Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. … Classics cut … to fill a two-minute book column. … Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, Digest-digest-digests! Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes!" (Sounds like the Internet, doesn't it? News articles become blogs, blogs become tweets.) "School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored." (Texting, anyone?) "More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less."

Fast forward 56 years to a condensed, comic-book version of the very novel in which comic books and condensations are presented as pap. Surely this is black humor, a resigned joke about the imminent eclipse of books on paper by images, both digital and analog. Except that it isn't. The graphic novel of Fahrenheit 451, with pictures by Tim Hamilton and a condensed text authorized by Bradbury himself, seems quite earnest.

Oof indeed. Speaking of the "imminent eclipse of books on paper by images," Boom Studios is currently issuing Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in comics form—it's only on issue 2 of 24, so it's not too late to get on board with that one (Cosmic Monkey had both issues last time I was there). And in this case, the entire text of the novel is included, which may meet the approval of even critics with the temerity to ignore the pot-kettle-black implications of railing against the internet-driven degradation of language in an online magazine article.

Tonight, Marvel Comics is partnering with comics retailers across the country to celebrate 70 years of peddling funnybooks. Cosmic Monkey Comics (AKA one of the best bookstores in Portland) is hosting a party—there will be cake, and a 50% discount on all Marvel titles save this week's. Writer Jeff Parker and local comics power couple Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin will also be on hand. And so will Spider-man.

Cosmic Monkey Comics, 5335 NE Sandy, 9-11 pm

*and at the Barnes & Noble in Clackamas, but fuck that.

You're probably already familiar with MDHP—yeah, yeah, it was recently nominated for an Eisner for best comics anthology or whatever, but far more importantly, the Mercury's own Ann Romano wrote a comic that was published in MDHP's previous volume. While Volume 3 doesn't contain any Romano goodness (BOO!), it is loaded with all sorts of other great stuff—including a Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog story, "Moist," by Zack Whedon and Farel Dalrymple; not one but TWO Buffy stories (one about Harmony, by Jane Espenson and Karl Moline, and another about Vampy Cat, by Steven S. DeKnight and Camilla d'Errico); an Achewood story by Chris Onstad, a Usagi Yojimbo story by Stan Sakai; a Serenity story by Jim Krueger and Will Conrad; and TONS more, including work by brilliant creators like Mike Mignola and Becky Cloonan. In other words: There's tons of killer stuff in here.

We have two copies to give away, and here's how you can score one of 'em: Email me no later than 4 pm on Monday, August 10, and make sure your subject line is "Moist." At 4 pm on Monday, I'll pick two winners at random* and email them back to let 'em know how to get their free funnybooks.

What're you waiting for? FREE COMICS. Get on this shit already!

*Flattery helps.

While preparing for an interview with Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones, co-creators of the just-released graphic novel You Have Killed Me, I ran across some of Joelle's sketches for Dark Horse's upcoming Dr. Horrible one-shot:

The comic, drawn by Joelle and written by Zack Whedon, is scheduled for release in November. More sketches here.

I'm usually pretty lazy about following monthly comics, but lately I've really been enjoying The Unwritten, now on its third issue from DC's Vertigo imprint. The comics follow a young man, Tommy Taylor, who as a child served as the model for a wildly successful book series written by his father—Tommy Taylor and the Golden Trumpet, that sort of thing. After his father's mysterious disappearance, Tom makes a living working the festival circuit, signing books for fans who have a hard time understanding the difference between the real Tommy and the fictional Tommy—until it's discovered that Tommy's entire identity appears to have been falsified, and that his father may not have been his father after all. And then a vampire from the books shows up and tries to fight him, and the line starts to blur between real Tommy and fictional Tommy... It's really good, smart and entertaining in a way that evokes Brian K Vaughan's Y: The Last Man (shameless blurber that he is, Vaughan's quoted on the cover of the first issue), while also paying charming tribute to the Harry Potter franchise. The first issue might be tough to come by—it's sold out right now at Bridge City, so don't bother looking for it when you're there for Mr. Henriksen's comics-writer coming-out party tonight—but it's worth tracking down.

Via the New York Post:

Superman, aka Maksim Katsnelson, 23, of The Bronx, was arrested and charged with assault and resisting arrested [sic], police said, accusing him of punching a female officer in the face while she was trying to subdue him.

And:

If that wasn't weird enough, McCormick turned and saw the Dark Knight handcuffed to a chair like a common villain.

"As this was happening, someone is like, 'It's Batman!' I turn around and there's Batman in handcuffs," he said.

That is all.