Tom and Pen went out to a bar to celebrate Tom’s birthday and jam out on some 24 hour comics (which is of course the practice of creating a 24 page comic within the confines of one 24 hour chunk). So they drew on bar napkins, and Tom scanned his here. It’s like a new issue of Gongwanadon came out.

The new Treehouse of Horror comic book (available from Picturebox here) is edited by Sammy Harkham who corralled many of his Kramers Ergot favorites into the book including C.F., Jeffrey Brown, Will Sweeney, Jordan Crane and Tim Hensley. The book is good straight through with only two stories falling flat for me personally which is as good as you can hope for in any anthology. The highlights were the two longest pieces, one by Kevin Huizenga and Matthew Thurber, and the other by Ben Jones of Paper Rad fame.

As I recall, just a few years ago, Ben Jones/ Paper Rad painted hand-made unofficial Simpsons inspired t-shirts (among others) with a stoned looking Homer on them. Compounding the layered radness, he now creates an official Simpsons comic involving bootleg Simpsons merchandise, including the famous “Black Bart” design. And it’s really funny because Ben Jones writes really funny comics.

It’s a great book and a real curiosity. Seeing a glossy ad for a Playstation game across the spread from an incomprehensible dreamy C.F. comic featuring the vomiting heads of Bart and Lisa on stakes is something you wont see juxtaposed often. It is good to see Bongo and Matt Groening staying connected to independent cartoonists, and doing so fearlessly.