W’art mag is a nice webzine talking mainly about french BDs. Issue #03 is available at www.wartmag.com (pdf file) There are some lines about Flight as a good christmas present (which is true) and a nice full page pic announcing Flight 3. Unfortunately for most of you, it’s in French, but don’t hesitate to look at it, it is worth it.

Over on the Oni Press website, there’s a sizeable preview of Hope Larson‘s second graphic novel, Gray Horses, which is due out in February 2006 (Diamond order code DEC05 3139).

Click here to read the entire preview and press release.

As a follow-up to my previous post about the latest issue of Yeti, it is now available to be purchased through Insound’s online store. Get your copy now!

Sort of as a follow-up to Kazu’s last post: if you’re looking for some last minute Christmas cards, Nucleus has some really nice cards that have been designed by people like James Jean and Yoko Tanaka. You can check them out in the Nucleus store.

And it’s almost criminal that we forgot to mention the Nucleus Christmas Card show! You can view all the pieces online, which includes art by some of the Flight crew: Kazu, Catia Chien, Chris Appelhans, Yoko Tanaka, and Ben Zhu (who had done that small comic in the back of Flight 2).

As I was doing some Christmas shopping on Amazon, I realized I didn’t have any prominent links to the Flight books available for sale, so here are links to Flight 1 and to Flight 2. They’ll make great gifts or stocking stuffers, and they make for excellent casual bathroom reading.

Andy Runton‘s third Owly book, “Flying Lessons,” will be released next month, and it is definitely his best story yet. One of the saddest and bravest owls around, Owly is without a doubt one of the very best all-ages comics out there right now, and I would heartily recommend this to anyone, adults and children (especially children) alike.

Read more about Owly or order Owly: Flying Lessons online from the Top Shelf website.

Thanks to my friend Shadi, the Flight Forums have been moved to its new location on this server. The new link is: www.flightcomics.com/forum, so please change your bookmarks. We lost a couple of days’ posts, but we have everything prior to that intact. A big thanks to Shadi for helping us out!

Following along with some more music- related art, Jesse LeDoux (who has designed album art for musicians like The Shins, Elliott Smith, Pedro The Lion and many more) has posted his flipbook project on the web – a series of 80 silkscreened prints, each with hand-drawn foregrounds that can be compiled together to create a quirky little 15-second cartoon. View the cartoon here.

The original signed and numbered prints can be purchased through the LeDouxville shop.

It looks as though Yeti #3 is now available in select stores on the West Coast, and it sounds like it’s pretty amazing. A 244 page 6″ by 9″ matte gloss journal, it features comics and illustrations by Jeffrey Brown, Carson Ellis, Sammy Harkham, Jordan Crane and many other talented artists. Also packaged with the book is a CD containing rare and unreleased music by Devendra Banhart, the Postal Service, Iron & Wine, Jolie Holland, Colin Meloy and a host of other musicians.

Being a fan of both the artists and musicians involved with this project, I’m obviously more than a little excited about this. I understand that a website will be up and running soon for online orders, but in the meantime get the full scoop on Yeti #3 here.

Ah, the Flight Forums are down again. I just set up a new account (this page is sitting on it now) with another webhost, so my friend Shadi will be helping us get things situated on our new server. Sorry for the inconvenience, everyone. This comes as an especially bad time because Flight 3 is nearing its final several days of production.

The long-awaited “Demo” trade paperback is finally available today! You can grab it at Amazon or at your local comic retailer. “Demo” and “Street Angel” were the only two comics I picked up on a regular basis last year. They were good enough to get me to buy pamphlet comics again! (Not that there’s anything wrong with pamphlet comics, heheh.) In any case, it’s good to see both these books finally published in a collected form.

Hmm, after Kean’s flurry of posts about the artists we love, I feel a bit guilty posting a link to my own comic. Sheesh. Anyway, the new Copper comic is up.

So it looks as though Kazu, Hope and myself have made The Webcomics Examiner’s “The Best Webcomics of 2005″ year-end list, joining such other great webcomics like Raina Telgemeier’s Smile, Jason Little’s new Bee serial, Ursula Vernon’s Digger, Chris Baldwin’s Little Dee, and so many other worthy selections that I’ve clearly neglected to mention here (like the power-quintet of A Lesson is Learned but the Damage is Irreversible, A Softer World, Dinosaur Comics, The Perry Bible Fellowship and Whispered Apologies).

View The Webcomics Examiner’s full list.

Drew Weing is known in these parts of the Internets as the artist who illustrates Pup and the retired Journal Comic. Now it seems as though he’s getting back to more regular updates to his beautifully rendered serial, Set To Sea, a story about a large fellow who seems to like poetry and sleeping quite a bit.

Begin reading Set To Sea here.

(and a side note: I’m off travelling this week, so I apologize if the blog updates become a little more sporadic for the next little while.)

Okay, it’s no secret that my absolutest, favouritest comic published this year was Jordan Crane’s The Clouds Above, a story about a boy named Simon and his talking cat Jack who find a staircase that leads up into the clouds. I’ve been raving and gushing over this book to anyone and everyone within earshot, but imagine my surprise when I went back to look at the reddingk website to find the original version of the story still available on the web (then titled Cloud Country, and written under an anagrammed pseudonym, Jane d’Rancor)!

Much of the second half of the story survived the transition to the print version of The Clouds Above, but it’s absolutely fascinating to read Jordan Crane’s initial story as he updated it on the web, which documents an alternate introduction (including an explanation of Jack’s curious tail length), scrapped cloud sequences, and even the change in the story’s title.

Click here to begin reading Cloud Country / The Clouds Above. The comic switches to black and white after several months of updates, and the updates end before the story’s conclusion, but think of that as an incentive to go out and buy the book. It’s in full colour, gorgeously produced, and worth every last penny. The reddingk website has the Extra Fancy Edition of The Clouds Above (in addition to “The Shortcut,” an early Simon and Jack adventure) for sale, but you can also order the Regular, Just Fine Edition from places like Fantagraphic Books or amazon.com.