Earlier this year, I drew a cover for the Penguin Classics edi­tion of James and the Giant Peach.  It came out well, and I’m happy to say that this, the 50^th anniver­sary edi­tion, is now in stores. I am par­tic­u­larly happy about the fact that there isn’t a peach any­where on the cover!  Or the back cover!  Please see IFC and IBC for draw­ings of peaches.

Today, Saturday the 24^th of September, 5pm, at Book Soup in Hollywood, I’ll be sign­ing these books along­side Aimee Bender, who wrote the intro­duc­tion, and Roald Dahl’s ghost.

I sure would like to sign some books, so, if you can, please come by.

About a month back, I read that Dylan Williams was sick again with can­cer, and the med­ical bills were pil­ing up.  There was a gen­eral move to buy comics from Sparkplug in order to help off­set the bills a bit.  Then last week, Jason Leivian at Floating World started a fundraiser that involved get­ting artists to draw Philip K. Dick book cov­ers, and then auc­tion­ing giclee prints of them, and the orig­i­nal art too.

Then, this Monday night, I fin­ished up my own con­tri­bu­tion,  Eye in the Sky, and was get­ting ready to send it to Jason when I read that Dylan had died.  And that was a sur­prise.  I hadn’t even con­sid­ered that he might die. Marathon can­cer treat­ment, huge med­ical bills, crush­ing debt, bank­ruptcy, poverty — these things were there, but death wasn’t even on the table.   But there it is.  And, it’s always there, sit­ting right on the table.  The bills and debt are still there on the table, now they belong to Dylan’s wife.  And so I urge every­one to buy some art, and help her out.

Dylan, I’m sorry this was late, I wish you could have seen it.  I think you would have liked it.  I’m going to keep finger-walking my way through long boxes.  I hope ghosts are real, and I hope you just met all the dead cartoonists.

Can you keep a secret? Color chang­ing ink? Books made of boards? Okay then… Shhh… don’t tell anyone!

Sammy Harkham has got a web­site.  There’s a col­lec­tion of the many and var­ied projects that he gets him­self up to.  Have a look.

At this year’s APE, Dan Clowes talked comics, at length, with Dan Nadel, who, for­tu­nately for those of us not there, recorded the whole thing. Each on their own have an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of comics and car­toon­ists, but put together, their dis­cus­sion has such breadth, speci­ficity, and casual heft­ing of the arcane, that, in places, it can fairly take your breath away. You must now set aside some time, and go to school.

There is cur­rently a Highwater Books ret­ro­spec­tive going on in Boston at the Fourth Wall. This post should have gone up ear­lier, but in true Highwater fash­ion, it’s late and I will not bother you with excuses.

The ret­ro­spec­tive started on October 1^st, will run through the 24^th, and was arranged by TD Sidell, Brooke Corey, Emily Arkin, Jef Czekaj and Greg Cook. It’s a great look at the ratty begin­nings of wher­ever the hell we’re at now, and what­ever you think of what actu­ally got pub­lished, Tom Devlin’s Highwater Books had an awfully big effect on comics as we know them today. So it’s worth a look.

Dan Nadel over at Comics Comics has posted some pretty great excerpts from the cat­a­log: part one and then part two.

This just in! Over at USS Catastrophe, you can pick up the brand spank­ing new col­lec­tion of amaz­ing facts with Leon Beyond, Back that Fact Up. This is the third book in the Leon Beyond series, and con­tains strips by both by Dan Zettwoch and Kevin Huizenga, sam­ples of which you can see here.

Every October, in obser­vance of Halloween, the Cinefamily does an entire month of hor­ror movies. Corresponding with this, the September/October issue of their news­pa­per has car­ried an illus­tra­tion of one of the hor­ror movies, which I have, for the past three years, had the plea­sure of draw­ing. So, here’s the one for this year.

Deep Red is play­ing October 7^th at 8pm.

The new issue of McSweeney’s is in stores. It’s got a wrap-around cover by Jordan Crane, with an appli­ca­tion of black dis­ap­pear­ing ink over the bot­tom. If your local book­store doesn’t carry it, pick it up here.

Over at Picturebox, Brian Chippendale is run­ning a weekly comic called Puke Force. Remember, as with all of his work, to read it snake-wise, back and forth, rather than just left to right.

Kate Beaton has some new strips, where she starts with a Nancy Drew cover, and goes from there. Have a view over at Hark! A Vagrant! If you’re new to her, you should have a look at her Edward Gorey cover strips too, right here, here, and here.

Opening tonight, Tuesday, August 24, in Chicago, at Lula Café, is The Car Engine Invitational, where 23 artists draw the engine of a car. Here we show a sec­tion of Gabrielle Bell’s piece. For more of the images from the show, see here. The show will be run­ning for a month or so, so if you miss going tonight, you can still see it.

Featured in the show are: Marc Bell, Dan Zettwoch, Jeffrey Brown, Chi-Hoi Lee, Jay Ryan, Gabrielle Bell, Esther Pearl Watson, Andrea Bruno, Marijpol, Tommi Musturi, Jordan Crane, Sammy Harkham, Mark Todd, Anders Nilsen, Peter Thompson, Luke Ramsey, Doublenaut, Michelangelo Setola, Sonnenzimmer, Justin B Williams, Nick Petersen, Doug Shaeffer and Ron Rege.

Lula Café is located at 2541 N Kedzie Blvd, Chicago, Illinois 60618.

This is just a good look­ing flyer. Those heads! SO car­toony! I love it. Sammy Harkham drew it. That’s all. There’s not much to this other than that I really really like the flyer. here’s a link to a largeish image of it.