I can't wait to get finally rest my peepers on copies of Jeff Lemire's brilliant Essex County omnibus collections, both in softcover and hardcover!!

• Gregory Benton sent me the links-of-the-year. Part of a group show at GRNY called Dime Bag 3, Gregory writes, "Each artist was given a 3x3 inch baggie to do art in. I wanted to give a nod to the original notion of the bag's meaning, so I filled the bags with nice green rocks found at the beach & made labels for the flavors."

• So-many-cool-new-books/minis/comics/etc-no-time-for-lengthy-reviews Episode #69

If it appears here, it has my absolute stamp of approval. And i do recommend at least checking this stuff out.

- Comics retailer and convention organizer Dustin Harbin can now officially add "kick-ass cartoonists" to his resume. I just read issue #2 of his mini-comic Dharbin, and Zounds!, this guy has the goods. Kind of like a hillbilly Ivan Brunetti / Steven (Ribs!) Weissman / Charles Schultz love child. His comics can be purchased at DHARBIN.

- One year later, i finally pulled volume 3 of You Ain't No Dancer out of my massive to-read pile. Snuggled inside a righteous wraparound cover by Kazimir Strzepek, this choice anthology took a literal giant leap forward since the first two volumes, quadrupling in size and girth. It's got some misses, but plenty of hits, including standouts by the aforementioned Kazimir, Lucy Knisley, Ken Dahl, Phil McAndrew, Patrick Murphy, Dalton Webb, and Grant Reynolds.

- Zinester and scenester Esther Pearl Watson just blew my mind with Hero Land #4. Yet another indy cartoonist playing with super-heroes... i just can't get enough!

• If you're not reading Emi Town, you should be.

• So i'm reading last weeks Entertainment Weekly, they're talking tv with the Television Must List, and asking celebs what's on their "must list"... Stephen Meyer (Bill on True Blood) called out my awesome friend and writer Willy Vlautin and his novel The Motel Life. That's pretty cool. (And BTW... The Motel Life is fucking outstanding literature, with cover art and illustrations by Nate Beaty. Very highly recommended.)

• Feast on this spiffy trailer for Rich Koslowski's Três Dedos: Um Escândalo Animado. That is, his Spanish translation of Three Fingers, by the publisher Gal Editora.