A papergirl bicycling down a suburban street, flinging a newspaper toward an off-panel destination. Caption 1: Being a substitute papergirl is rarely worth the bother. Caption 2: Sure, I get movie money a few times a year but it's tough, learning a route for just a week or so.

About Comics is saddened to hear of the passing this month
of Jim Wheelock, a good friend of comics and a man whose health and circumstances had caused him too much undo suffering.

This is the opening panel of the only story he drew for us, from the final issue of The Factor.

Cover to Keith LAumer's Retief!, a graphic adaptation by Dennis Fujitake & Jan Strnad, features two fierce alien training their funs on a calm central figure holding a flowering potato. Art by Dennis Fujitake.

Sample Retief! page features Jame Retief about to get into a fight with a giant bird-like alien who has chums sheering him on.

Now out: Keith Laumer's Retief! -- after completing Dalgoda, Dennis Fujitake and Jan Strnad turned their efforts to adapting these popular humorous science fiction diplomacy tales. All six issues in this one volume, available through your favorite bookshop!
www.amazon.com/dp/1949996913

The mighty Diane Duane has been writing the good stuff for a long time... and has done some fine and fun comics work. I was glad not only to get to reprint her Misadventures of Prince Ivan series, but to get her and Sherlock to provide a new story!

Full list: Kate Carew, Colleen Doran, George Evans, Crockett Johnson, Peter Kuper, George McManus, Kevin Nowlan, Mimi Pond, Posy Simmonds, Jeff Smith, Paul Smith, Leonard Starr, Akira Toriyama, Mark Waid, Chris Ware, and S. Clay Wilson.

Of the 16 nominees going before voters this year for a place in the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, About Comics has published original comics work by Paul Smith, scripts for published material by Jeff Smith and Mark Waid, and reprint comics material by Kevin Nowlan, all under license from those creators.

About Comics' Offbeat Comic Shelf: Our Interview With Nat Gertler YouTube video by Panels & Prose

If you want to know the how and especially the why of About Comics, this is the interview. I even announce a couple upcoming projects (something I rarely do)... although one's been pushed back to next year.

Page 25 of the Cuddles collection has three strips on a continuity about an upcoming joust. Our lithe protagonist is in all kinds of poses. In the final strip, she's riding a horse in a cute li'l bowler hat and suit outfit. I mean, Cuddles is in the outfit, not the horse.

This 11" wide paperback with over 300 strips is now available -- cover price is $25, but introductory price is $20. NOT at Amazon, only at Lulu at this point. That's Cuddles: An American Flapper At King Arthur's Court! www.lulu.com/shop/charles...

Forbell had worked separately on a previous flapper strip and on single-panel cartoons about Dayes of Olde... but it took a Mark Twain twist to bring them together.
He also did lots of art for clothing ads. Much time is spent in this strip on Cuddles modeling various clothes.

The cover to Cuddles: An American Flapper At King Arthur's Court features a lithe blonde toying with a crown, as a knight and a jester get freaked out. By Charles. H. Forbell.

In 1929, Charles Forbell launched a comic strip in which a flapper (a Roaring '20s party girl) travels in time back to Camelot.
Almost no one noticed this thing, but the art is cool, and it's the first Camelot in serial American comics.

Floppy disk copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for Commodore 64 and Plus 4.

I’m probably reaching the point where I give up and get rid of all my old software.

Covers to the Will Eisner books Bringing Up Your Parents and Dating & Hanging Out.

While others will be looking to buy The Spirit rights for millions, About Comics will be looking for bargains.

Two black boys in natty school uniforms with attache cases and five US soldiers are parachuting. Caption: "No, I ain't scared, but you gotta admit this is one heck of a way to get an education!"

Bootsie lays sprawled in the street, broken beer bottles spilling out their contents. Three black boys on bicycles, each wearing some sort of space helmet, are looking down at him. "Aw, stop bellyachin', mister. Ain't you got better sense than to get in the way of a flight of space ships?"

(I'll quickly note that About Comics likely had nothing to do with the Hall of Fame decision. While there are things I can reasonably claim to have rediscovered, Harrington was getting attention like an OSU exhibit while the books were in works. I'm just the guy who said "there should be books!")

In a desolate wood, Bootsie and another black man are up a tree, staring down at the large bear who is staring up at them menacingly. Caption: :"I'm darn sure gonna contact the NAACP if we get out'a this, Bootsie. I know some of those folks down south has engineered this whole thing!"

Whoops, alt-texting this one here.

Bootsie's Big '50s: a Dark Laughter collection Amazon.com: Bootsie's Big '50s: a Dark Laughter collection: 9781949996357: Harrington, Ollie: Books

Bootsie's Big '50s captures a run of Ollie Harrington's Dark Laughter cartoons when it was designed to run big, on the front cover of a newspaper's magazine section.

Bootsie's War Years: a Dark Laughter collection Amazon.com: Bootsie's War Years: a Dark Laughter collection: 9781949996333: Harrington, Ollie: Books

The centerpiece of Oliver Harrington's work was Dark Laughter, a single-panel gag series often focused on the ne'er-do-well Bootsie. This book sees Bootsie at first avoiding the draft, then getting conscripted, serving overseas in WWII, and returning to a nation with its own racial strife.

Ollie Harrington in 1972.

Ollie Harrington has been selected for this year's inductions in the Eisner Hall of Fame! Well deserved! The comic strips and cartoons he did for Black weekly papers shone and (as the publisher of the only in-print books of his work, licensed from his widow) it's good to see the word spread.

I'm not sure what's going on with Little Folks -- for some reasons, Amazon is not shipping it, and it has disappeared from other bookstores. So I've set up with the printer so that you can order right from there, at a bit of a discount on the price to make up for the inconvenience.

Comic strip, three girls. Girl 1: My birthday is in april, and my birthstone is a diamond. Girl 2: I guess you're lucky all right but I'd just as soon have a pearl! I was born in June! Girl 1: My mother's birthstone is an opal, for October! Smallest girl: Papa says his is a grindstone! What month is that?

I consider this a minor release, the result of my curiosity (the daily series has an interesting place for the Peanuts fan: it's four even panels and no adults, and without it Peanuts wouldn't be named Peanuts). Its a competently done jokey kid strip of its day.

Cover to Little FolksL Dailies 1930 by Tack Knight shows a quintet of kids and a pair of puppies running down a hill.

JUST RELEASED: Little Folks: Dailies 1930, the first-ever collection of Tack Knight's kid strip, is now available through your favorite online US bookstore or as a special order at your local US shop.
www.amazon.com/dp/1949996921/
bookshop.org/p/books/litt...

Bottle marked Triple X Pep Juice.

A jester, knocked for a loop.

The sound effect "Bif!"

Here are samples from three books coming from About Comics early in 2026 -- one of them should be available this week! Diverse things are loosely planned and in negotiations. Gonna be something for you this year.

An array of covers: The Dalgoda Omnibus, Party Line Comics, Teddy Roosevelt: His Career in Cartoons, Kickin' Around with Hildegard and Olivia, Drift Marlo, and Cross Word Craze.

2025 was a fairly light publishing year for About Comics, but there's some books in there that I'm quite proud of, and even a fairly good seller in there! (And, ummm, others)

As for 2026....

Check this out for Coffee and Comics this A.M. Drift Marlo: The Space Race Comic Strip. Reprints this first four adventures in this spiffy little collection.

#comicssky

Panel One: Comic Book Scripts By Top Writers|Paperback Contains annotations, plots, interviews, and scripts by many of comics' hottest writers, including Kurt Busiek, Neil Gaiman, Greg Rucka, Kevin Smith, Jeff Smith, Marv Wolfman, and more.

Put out this book over 20 years ago. Priced it an $19.95, a fair solid price. Put it through multiple printings, switched to POD, still sells in the three figures a year.
But printing prices have gone up. With inflation, it should be over $35.
So buy it now. I will be upping it (but not to $35.)

Top reads of 2025 chronologically (1/3): The Dalgoda Omnibus (🐶👨‍🚀🚀), ElfQuest- Siege at Blue Mountain (cover to #3 is 👌), The Usagi Yojimbo Saga Book 1 (can't believe it took me this long), Into The Unbeing Part Two (out? 🚫 through? ✅️) @aboutcomics.com @elfquest.bsky.social @zacthompson.bsky.social

I was tempted to put out a press release with my hostile bid of $10,000 for Warner Bros. (getting the gov't to back me by offering Trump 10% control), but honestly, I don't want all of WB. I don't even want all of DC Comics. I just want the rights to the out-of-print Big Book series.

The great news is that most About Comics books sell far fewer than the bigger brands, so you'll be giving a gift that the getter ain't got.

Alas, because of the way these are distributed, you can't order last minute. Orders now will get to you for Hanukah, but order now for Xmas as well.

Trippy cover to Brainstorm! has skimply dressed barbarian woman, manic pop, science fiction thing, and... oh, too uch to explain.

Cover to Scott Shaw!s Comix & Stories had a bunch of wacky characters bounding out of Scott's skull.

For the underground buff:

BRAINSTORM! - an anthology of Bryan Talbot's early work. www.amazon.com/dp/1949996689

SCOTT SHAW!s COMIX & STORIES - a thick collection of Scott's creator-owned work. www.amazon.com/dp/1949996581

Cover to Bootsie's Big '50s shows Bootsie and a cat hanging with a waitress at a diner.

Cover to The Negro Motorist Green Book Compendium says it has four volumes of the guide: 1938, 1947, 1954, and 1963.

For those with an interest in Black history:

BOOTSIE'S BIG '50s: The best cartoon series from the Black papers of the 1950s. www.amazon.com/dp/1949996352

THE NEGRO MOTORIST GREEN BOOK COMPENDIUM collects 4 of the classic Black travel guide from across its run. www.amazon.com/dp/1949996069

For the American literature fan:

GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES: THE COMIC STRIP -- yes, this is real. From the 1920s, with cool flapper art. www.lulu.com/shop/anita-l...

Co er to Dayenu Dayenu has a temple that looks like a giant sattelite.

Cover to Loxfinger has a silhouette of a man with a gun and a tallis.

For the Hanukah celebrant:

DAYENU DAYENU, a thick collection of Jewish cartoons from the 1950s-'60s. www.amazon.com/dp/1949996492

LOXFINGER: The first of four classic Israel Bond Oy-Oy 7 parody novels. www.amazon.com/dp/1936404109