Throughout his 25-year career, alternative cartoonist/screenwriter DANIEL CLOWES has always been ahead of artistic and cultural movements. In the late 1980s his groundbreaking comic book series Eightball defined indie culture with wit, venom, and even a little sympathy. With each successive graphic novel (Ghost World, David Boring, Ice Haven, Wilson, Mister Wonderful ), Clowes has been praised for his emotionally compelling narratives that reimagine the ways that stories can be told in comics. The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist is the first monograph on this award-winning, New York Times-bestselling creator, compiled with his complete cooperation. It includes all of Clowes' best-known illustrations as well as rare and previously unpublished work, all reproduced from the original art, and also includes essays by noted contributors such as designer Chip Kidd and cartoonist Chris Ware.

Please be sure to watch this fun mini-documentary video created by Meltdown Comics in LA:

OK, check out this totally hilarious Rap Music Video performed by La Shea Delaney & Annabelle Quezada. It’s called “B*tches in Bookshops” and it was created for every Serious Book Lover out there! “I read so hard Librarians tryin’ ta FINE me , I read so hard Librarians tryin’ ta FINE me !”

UNTERZAKHN is a mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th-century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for ‘Underthings’) tells the story of sisters Esther and Fanya: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world; and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the ‘golden land,’ where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.

Please listen to Author Leela Corman as she explains it all in her new Knopf Doubleday Book Trailer:

OK, We have to admit that we’re pretty proud of Neil Gaiman. Why? In this Recent Video you can hear Neil as he addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 and it has to be one of the very best commencement speeches to any class in the World, ever! It’s a “must watch” for every Artist and anyone who hopes to be creative and successful. So, please give it a listen. We promise you will be truly inspired! Thanks Neil, good job. “Make Good Art.”

On a funny side note:

This video has become so popular that now there is an info-graphic floating around the Internet that has become a new mantra, check it out.