* David Mazzuchelli, Seth, Jerry Moriarty, and Tom Gauld are going to be at MoCCA this year. My Bowie sketchbook just had a mild heart attack.
* Thomas Lennon says The State DVD box set is finally coming out on July 14th. Again, I’ll believe it when I see it. And I’m still disappointed by the music clearance situation–as good as Craig Wedren is as spoofing music, it was the use of the real thing to which the original series owed so much of its satirical power. But still, it’s The State DVD box set.
* Chris Mautner talks to Drawn & Quarterly’s Peggy Burns about the new Diamond minimums and how they’ve affected the company’s titles like Or Else and Crickets. I think this is the first time I’ve heard that Gabrielle Bell’s Lucky has also been canceled. I also think it’s the first time I’ve heard an unimpeachable alternative-comics big like Peggy push back quite this forcefully against the notion that there’s something uniquely terrible about the death of the alternative comic book given the inevitable print-publishing apocalypse generally.
* Tom Spurgeon reviews Jeffrey Brown’s Funny Misshapen Body, a sentence which will sound funny each and every time I write or read a variation on it. I got this book in the mail yesterday and put it down on the couch, and the next thing I knew the Missus was three quarters of the way through it. She said it’s very, very personal, even for Jeff, which is saying something.
* I enjoyed Curt Purcell’s post on how genre fans come to appreciate even the crappy parts of their favorite genres because they associate them with the good parts, as well as CRwM’s down-comment response that the problem is subsequent artists appropriating good and crappy parts indiscriminately as fanservice.
* Sin City 2 is still with the Weinstein Company. ADDTF sincerely regrets the bullshit rumor. (Via Arrow in the Head.)
* Tales Designed to Thrizzle #5 now in stock!
* Bart Beaty reviews Laurent Cilluffo’s New Wanted. It looks very good.
* Josh Simmons does creepy paintings, too.
* Apparently when Au Revoir Simone’s Heather D’Angelo isn’t playing keyboards and pursuing an astrophysics degree at Columbia (for real), she’s drawing the bejesus out of David and Goliath.
* Anders Nilsen Sure Can Draw update: Anders Nilsen sure can draw.
* Sexy Velma? Sure, I’ll eat it. (Via Heidi MacDonald.)
Re: Jeffrey Brown’s Funny Misshapen Body, I’ve made a lot of hay out of “so-and-so examines/delves into Dash Shaw’s Bottomless Belly Button.”