[Above, D&Q staff evidently spend A LOT of time discussing hottie cartoonists up in their office. Below, Cross Hatch staff spend an awful lot of time talking about how nice you all are. Really!]

1. Tumblr, Sarah Becan and Britt Sabo deliver a very important message about taking credit for your images online before they go viral.
2. MIX may have space available for more exhibitors than expected this fall. Why don’t you join the wait list?
3. DO NOT MISS YOUR CHANCE TO BUY A LIMITED EDITION DEATH RAY DOLL. Sales begin tomorrow evening. Seriously. What are you doing that’s so important with your money you can’t buy a $105 doll? Trying to feed yourself? Please!
4. You can also buy lovely Adrian Tomine tshirts if you live in Japan.  I know.  It’s not fair.
5. Maybe when Lars Martinson returns to the JET program in July he’ll be happy to send you one.
6. You should ask him nicely about it at his talk this Friday in Chicago sponsored by the Japan American Society of Chicago and the JETAA Chicago Chapter.  Registration is limited for this event.
7. Comics & Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness is a conference in its second year that’s kicking off tomorrow in Chicago. Just generally fascinated that this is a thing that exists.
8. Feeling slightly nervous and excited for this upcoming comic book reality TV show. Try not to make us look like a bunch of fidgety, fact-checking dorks, arright, cast? Some of us are out breaking the mold over here, being very cool and forgetful.
9. Jim Woodring performed with his legendary pen for a live audience at the Walker Art Center last weekend as part of the night-long art event called Northern Spark. IT WAS WONDERFUL. Woodring will be touring all month, so if you’re in Portland, Seattle or Bellingham please check him out!
10. Shannon Wheeler is up for an Eisner for Best Humor Publication his book I Thought You Would Be Funnier.  Read it online and vote!

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- Sarah Morean

It would have been a hard sell at nearly any other publisher, a coffee table art book devoted to the much maligned pseudo-science of cryptozoology—let alone a sequel to such a thing. And, had someone actually bit and jumped at the opportunity, the results would likely have been an unmitigated disaster.

In the loving hands of Fantagraphics, however, Beasts: Book 2 is a thing of beauty, from the fittingly classical packaging, presented with shades of Chris Ware and a metallic ink on the edges of the pages that unintentionally shed onto the hands of all who pick it up, to the impressive roster of artists—a sort of coming together of indie comic’s new and old guards, from Kim Deitch and Peter Bagge to Kazimir Strzepek and Jillian Tamaki.

It’s hard to say exactly who the target audience is with a book like Beasts, but surely there’s a fair-sized overlap between lovers of the paranormal and connoisseurs of fine alternative art. The bulk of the second Beasts is devoted to 96 plates. Each features a brief description of a fantastic creature from the world of cryptozoology, accompanied by a one or two page artistic representation of said animal. The beauty of the pieces is not only in the skill of the artists on display, but also the diversity of a stable that includes both cartoonists and artists from other worlds like children’s books, fine art, poster design, and skate graphics.

Many of the standout works, not surprisingly, come from names that will likely be familiar to anyone immersed in the world of underground comics. Jaime Hernandez’s “Peg Powler” is a piece of drably-colored terror that might have sat unnoticed amongst storyboards for Pan’s Labyrinth. Jim Woodring, not surprisingly, is right at home amongst the pages of mythical terror, with his stunning two-page charcoal tribute to Scolopendra and Hippocamp. Dash Shaw’s “Wivre,” meanwhile, unfolds like a colorful tribute to the skewed perspectives of MC Escher.

The pieces are supplemented with interviews and essays aimed at shedding more light on the field, including an introduction by Loren Coleman, the editor of the massively popular cryptozoology blog, Cryptomundo.

If there’s a complaint to be had here, it’s the book’s relatively lofty $34 cover price. Holding the book in one’s hands however, it’s difficult to deny that Beasts: Book 2 is a downright stunning little book.

–Brian Heater

The Portable Frank
By Jim Woodring
Fantagraphics

Seeing Things, the title of Jim Woodring’s 2005 collection of charcoal drawings was intended as more than a simple descriptor of the artist’s surrealist mode of expression. For most of his life, Woodring has suffered from hallucinations, a fact that he’s discussed openly and often in interviews, over the years. For better or worse, the condition has, of course, played a rather prominent role in the artist’s work.

One of the most beneficial side effects is the remarkable sense of consistency with which Woodring has imbued his art. For all of its predominantly fantastic qualities, the world inhabited by his most beloved character, Frank, possesses a sense of internal reality rarely achieved by even the most stringently autobiographical works that the medium has to offer. It’s a sense of other-worldliness hinted at—but rarely, if ever, fully-realized by the psychedelic musings of underground comics’ early pioneers.

Frank’s greatest achievement, however, is quite probably the universality of its alien subject matter. Woodring presents his character in a family format—the clear, if indirect, descendent of artists like Carl Barks and George Herriman. With a buck-toothed, four-fingered gloved, fuzzy protagonist at its center, Woodring is more than happy to offer up an entrance into his world, a largely wordless place, defined by thick, unforgiving cartoon lines that marry Walt Kelly with Salvador Dali.

At $16.99, The Portable Frank is Fantagraphics’ attempt to further extend that accessibility, offering up 14 cherry-picked black-and-white strips in roughly the same paperback dimensions with which the company has fairly recently reissued the best-loved works of artists like Peter Bagge and the Hernandez brothers. And of course, there’s not a misfire in the lot, the strips beckoning the reader further and further into Frank’s ever deepening universe, until, at page 198, the journey is over much too soon.

However, two criticism of the book are immediately forthcoming. First, it’s truly unfortunate that the budgetary constraints of such a volume couldn’t afford the publisher the opportunity to reprint any of Woodring’s color Frank strips, which offer up yet another fascinating level to the work. Second, is the constant reminder one has, while reading the book, that Woodring’s current output, while stunning in its own right, just can’t duplicate the sense of wonder of his greatest creation.

–Brian Heater