Jumbo Deluxe by Portland-based Adrian J. Wallace features some lively stories and engaging characters. It’s a hard strip not to like.

It’s also drawn in an attractive clear-line style. I’m surprised I don’t see more comics sporting this look on the Web since it works well on the screen (Les McClaine’s Johnny Crossbones is the only other one that comes to mind at the moment).

[Update: Other clear-line comics online, pointed out in comments, include Rainbow Orchid and Tozo]

Wallace’s work also falls into the growing roster of kid-friendly strips that might catch on outside of nerd-dom with the right approach.

He’s only posting once a week right now. Maybe, with luck, he’ll find reasons to update more often. Fingers crossed.

[link via David Chelsea's cool perspective blog]

Hats off to the tireless Jessica Abel who has a great report on last month’s teaching comics seminar in Helsinki. She’s much better than me at recording what’s going on around her and I’m grateful for the record.

Also online are some of the excellent Webstock talks from February’s trip to Wellington, New Zealand. As usual, I had to decline to have my talk filmed (see Monday’s comments), but there’s lots of other great stuff up.

Spring is always a busy time for travel. Check out some of my recently-posted upcoming engagements in the travel sidebar at right.

This article by Austin Kleon offers some good solid advice. I don’t agree with everything, but it’s an inspiring list he offers, and almost anyone with creative aspirations will find something useful. [link via Cat Garza]

Meanwhile, thanks to writer Matt Cohen for an unexpected shoutout in HuffPost Business earlier this week (and hey, while we’re at it, thanks to another Huffington Post Writer, Kate Kelly, for another shoutout at the beginning of the month). Comics readers are everywhere!

Some of you may have seen the Newsarama report that I helped design the six variant covers for Marvel’s limited series X-Men: First Class adaptation this fall. That was obviously a typo. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I hardly needed help.

And finally, THESE KIDS are clearly ten kinds of wonderful, as are their teacher and her very cool site. Consider swinging by their Kickstarter page and lending your support to make their dream of a printed collection a reality.

Off to Maryland in a couple of days (check out the travel sidebar at right for the updated list of my busy spring schedule). Enjoy the weekend!

Here’s site curator Daniel Leonard’s note from the 3eanuts site:

“Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics often conceal the existential despair of their world with a closing joke at the characters’ expense. With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all.”

A lot of people are comparing 3eanuts to Garfield minus Garfield, but this one has its own charms.

Its own bleak, fatalistic, existential charms.

[via Tom Hart]

Connor Willumsen is coming from a strange place, but there’s method to his madness.

His experimental webcomic Everett includes some very solid drawing—somewhere between early Moebius, and a young Chester Brown—and his layouts and storytelling are really interesting.

Regarding yesterday’s discussion, Willumsen’s story might fall less into the what-happens-next category and more into the what-just-happened category, but it’s still compelling stuff.

Everett also features some interesting expanded canvas pacing, something I’ve been seeing more of lately, which, predictably enough, makes me happy.

Image from Willumsen’s Blackhold. Thanks to Zach H for the pointer.

The Lay of the Lacrymer by Molly Hayden does a very simple thing that I’m surprised (and a little sad) that more comics don’t do.

It makes me wonder, on nearly every page, what’s going to happen next.

Simple as that. A little thing, really. And yet, in the end, it’s everything.

[Thanks to @geminica]

Hit full screen on your browsers. BLUE by Australian cartoonist Pat Grant is an impressive debut with rich designs and an intriguing narrative style.

Just a few installments online so far, but each one is its own little world and worth setting aside a few minutes to let it all soak in. Grant plans to print the final result, but I think it looks great on the screen as well.

Thanks to Melbourne-based Rebecca Clements of KinokoFry fame for the link. Grant’s guest strip for KinokoFry is up this week.

Terry Laban has begun online serialization of Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-Boiled Shaman (gotta love that name).

It’s a funny and smart strip so far, but that’s no surprise. Laban is a terrific writer and cartoonist and I’m sure he’ll have many great surprises up his sleeve in the coming weeks.

Definitely bookmark this one.

If any of you still “bookmark” things.

[link first seen on CR, I think]

***

Meanwhile, Shaman on YOU, anyone who’s stealing t-shirt designs from Jess Fink (or anyone else for that matter). There are some sick people out there!

One of the things I like the most about this pitch, apart from the fact that The Wormworld Saga looks really nice on the iPad, is that it wouldn’t have made any sense just a few short years ago.

This scene is moving fast, People.

Following on last Thursday’s post, here’s another cool comic we got a sneak peek of in an old blog post that’s finally hitting the stands: Nate Simpson’s Nonplayer.

Simpson says on his blog that now’s the time (and by “now” I actually mean today, since I didn’t link to this sooner) to tell your local shops to order Nonplayer.

Looks amazing, no?