Nevin Martell’s Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Strip has piqued my interest. The author wasn’t able to score an interview with the notoriously reclusive Watterson, but he’s pieced together his life by interviewing Watterson’s friends and family members including his mother and editor at Universal Press Syndicate. Comic Book Resources has an interview with Martell in which he talks about the challenges of writing the book and how he didn’t want to end up with an overwrought biography like the Charles Schulz volume by David Michaelis.

A little creative treat for Halloween: Ivan Guerrero has been taking crappy Marvel TV cartoons from the Sixties and re-editing them into Marvel Zombies, based on the limited-run comic series from a few years back. He told me that Arthur Suydam’s covers for that series inspired his approach to the animated tribute. See also his zombiefication of Thor and The Fantastic Four.

(Thanks, Uncle Wayne)

Animation writer Tom Gammill (The Simpsons, Futurama) visits with cartoonist Mell Lazarus (Miss Peach), and they check out his illustrated piano:

I don’t know where Patrick McDonnell is going with this week’s continuity in his Mutts comic strip - but I like it.

(Thanks, Uncle Wayne)

Today’s Dennis The Menace panel. Is this a swipe at prime time and cable cartoon shows?

My caption would’ve been: “I remember when Cartoon Network ran Cartoons!“

The annual Treehouse of Horror issue is out today. It’s guest edited by Sammy Harkam, the creator of the Kramers Ergot anthology. If you can’t find it at a comic store, it’s available for purchase online at the PictureBox website. Here’s the eclectic line-up:

Among Halloween-inspired short strips by such visionary cartoonists as C.F. (Powr Mastrs), Will Sweeney (Tales from Greenfuzz), Jordan Crane (Uptight), Tim Hensley (MOME), and John Kerschbaum (Petey & Pussy), are four featured tales of inspired Simpsons lunacy: heralded artists Kevin Huizenga (Ganges, Or Else) and Matthew Thurber (1-800 Mice, Kramers Ergot) collaborate on a weird and wild story equal parts Lovecraftian eco-horror and Philip K. Dick identity comedy. Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change- Bots, Clumsy) does a creepy and suitably pathetic story featuring Milhouse in a “Bad Ronald”-inspired tale of murder and crawl space living. Harkham and Ted May (INJURY) pull out all the stops for a tragic monster tale of unrequited love, bad karaoke, and body snatching at Moe’s Bar. Ben Jones (Paper Rad) does the comic of his life with an epic tale of how bootleg candy being sold at the Kwik-E-Mart rapidly spirals out of control into an Invasion of The Body Snatchers-like nightmare of a Springfield filled with cheap bootleg versions of familiar characters. And nobody does squishy, sweaty, and gross like up and coming cartoonist Jon Vermilyea (MOME), who outdoes himself with “C.H.U.M.M.,” a C.H.U.D.-inspired parody featuring everybody’s favorite senior citizen, Hans Moleman!

Mike Peters takes a few shots in our direction this week: