Howard Chaykin and Steve Leialoha

In the ever-expanding supernova of subsidiary content in the Star Wars universe (action figures, Lego sets, video games, novels, TV movies, cartoons, and theme park rides), comic books hold a special place. One reason is because the first of Marvel's six-issue comic adaptation of the original film hit stands just a month after the movie was released.

Marvel made a good bet on Star Wars. The 107-issue series continued for nearly 10 years. Despite pauses to adapt the stories of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, most issues contained original stories -- the first body of derivative Star Wars story material ever released.

Two key contributors to the early days of this run, penciller Howard Chaykin and inker Steve Leialoha, appear tonight at the Cartoon Art Museum for the event Celebrating 35 Years of Star Wars Comic Books to mark the 35th anniversary of the first issue's release.

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Jon Solo

Turns out cancer DNA is decidedly swastika-shaped.

Kaylin Marie Andres was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma (a rare bone cancer) and thyroid cancer at age 23, and she took a path that not everyone would take in response to that. She now lives by the motto, "Cancer is not funny ... cancer is hilarious!"

She collaborates with artist friend Jon Solo on Terminally Illin', a punk comic dedicated to kicking cancer in the nuts. It renders Andres a fierce superheroine fighting the dreaded disease alongside an equally fierce feline, her battle kitty Iceman.

Last Gasp published a 28-page black and white preview issue of Terminally Illin' in October that is still available to order. Now Andres and Solo aim to raise enough money via a second Kickstarter campaign to finish a 180-page, full color graphic novel, which Last Gasp has also committed to publish. This project would contain a lot of writing from Kaylin's Cancer Is Not Funny blog that she kept during treatment.

Their idea is a polarizing one for sure. Not everyone enjoys the humor of a syringe-laden chemochair or cancer DNA that looks suspiciously like a swastika.

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When it launched in 1952, there had been nothing like MAD -- a comics magazine dedicated to humor and satire aimed at a broad range of targets. In particular, MAD exposed the cultural fakery behind familiar and beloved images that originated on television, in the movies, and in sports and politics. Led by creators Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, MAD's cartoonists peeled back these images to expose calculated manipulation of the American populace by newly powerful postwar corporations. A retrospective exhibit on MAD opens this weekend at the Cartoon Art Museum.

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A hapless mouse is our everyman figure, and an antagonistic duck prone to bouts of rage shows up at inopportune moments to make demands and empty threats. There's also a dog -- a sweet-natured, loyal friend to the mouse. But despite the way it sounds, you can't expect anything cozy or familiar from Zak Sally's Sammy the Mouse.

Unlike the Disney-based templates upon which writer-artist Sally grafts his story, the world of Sammy the Mouse is far from a sunny or nostalgic daydream. It's a nightmarish, unpredictable horror show where a persistent but gentle God-like voice commands Sammy to his destiny while everyone else seems to harbor dangerous, unspeakable secrets.

Sammy the Mouse, Book 1, is a self-published collection of three issues put out in magazine form by Fantagraphics beginning in 2007. The book, personally printed by Sally and released by his La Mano outfit in Minneapolis, has a distinctive, inviting hand-crafted look and feel. The back flap disclaims that the author printed each copy on an AB Dick 9810 two-color offset press. The book's production and release was made possible by a Kickstarter campaign.

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Terry Lorant

Daniel Clowes

"Up until four or five years ago, I still thought of myself as a Midwesterner," says Daniel Clowes, who has called Oakland home for two decades. "I'd close my eyes and see water towers and Chicago at night. And then one day I was closing my eyes and seeing palm trees and the Paramount Theater."

With deadpan delivery he continues, "I'm a regional artist now. That's my goal, is in my obituary it'll say, 'Noted regionalist.'"

Noted regionalist Clowes is making a lot of noise for "The Town" in the way that only a quiet but incredible illustrator can. He is currently developing a feature film adaptation of his most recent graphic novel Wilson, which is set in Oakland. Fox Searchlight plans to shoot the movie there.

Tamara Palmer

Clowes previews "Modern Cartoonist" at the Oakland Museum of California.

Clowes also now has his first-ever exhibition in any part of the country: "Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes," on view starting Saturday (April 14) at the Oakland Museum of California.

His full body of work is on display, including his best-known comic series Eightball and the graphic novel Ghost World, the film adaptation of which launched the film career of Scarlett Johansson. Clowes calls himself a "hoarder" because he has kept his original drawings; he sure never envisioned they'd go up on the walls of a museum one day.

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An original ink drawing by John Severn from The Rawhide Kid

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

In December, the curator of the Cartoon Art Museum received a call from an elderly woman in Colorado on behalf of her 90-year-old-husband. "Are you familiar with John Severin's work?" Michelina Severin politely inquired, referring to one of the all-time greatest comic book artists in American history. Severin, a longtime Marvel comic book artist, had worked on Cracked and Mad since the 1950s, in addition to other well-known titles, including The Incredible Hulk. "He drew a comic about 10 years ago called The Rawhide Kid," Mrs. Severin continued, "and it got some press attention at the time."

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There's nothing adorable about Fritz the Cat. Although to some he is the mascot of the underground comix movement that began in the 1960s, Fritz isn't likable. Fantagraphics is giving us another opportunity to revisit R. Crumb's iconic character in a hardcover edition of his collected adventures, called The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat. Perhaps what will be most striking to readers who have not already perused the chronological totality of Fritz's fictional existence (which runs only 92 pages) is his centerless moral corruption, and Crumb's larger attribution of that quality to the prevailing counterculture of the late '60s.

Most of the Fritz stories were drawn and published while Crumb was a San Franciscan (he moved here in 1967), and Crumb's well-known discomfort with the counterculture has always seemed incredible when contrasted with the timing of his move to the city. The last two Fritz tales are set in San Francisco, and they are laden with local references and images.

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Pop-culture emcee Adam WarRock

​​Adam WarRock, dubbed the Internet's foremost comic book rapper, rolled through Berkeley's 924 Gilman on Sunday to promote his second full-length album You Dare Call That Thing Human?!?, which released the week prior. Co-headlining with indie nerd rockers Kirby Krackle and local openers who sang acoustic ditties about Pokemon and life post-zombie apocalypse, WarRock's set was surprisingly intimate for a hip hop performance -- due to Gilman's sparse surroundings and a Sunday evening show which started in broad daylight -- yet undeniably spirited. More >>

Transient is like a batshit guy on the street telling you exactly why and how rain is seeded with pore-burrowing nanobots -- one of the craziest things I've seen in a while. It's the debut of Justin "Coro" Kaufman, a monster of a book -- an oblong, full-color graphic novel bound in heavy covers. And, just like the homeless person, you really can't be sure what it'll do next.

The "homeless guy" motif here is not a random one, because Transient's protagonist is just that. Bob has been forced to abandon his wife and family at the behest of slimy betentacled monsters only he can see. They've told him that he has to live on the streets, that he has a special role to play in helping them prevent the universe from being destroyed. What follows is a grotesque picaresque -- Bob and his small band of homeless brethren track down and attempt to thwart a band of multidimensional terrorists bent on destroying time and space as we know it.

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Trina Robbins returns to San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum this week to discuss another comic book heroine -- not a fictional character, mind you, but a woman who was crucial in comics in the early 20th century. Robbins' previous book is on Tarpé Mills and her comic Miss Fury. Her new volume is a graphic novel about Lily Renée.

Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, Renée had her first work displayed in a gallery at age 6. Following up on this success, her mother submitted a photograph by the gifted child to a contest where the first prize was a showbiz contract, which her father forbade her from accepting. In 1938, at age 13, Renée's life took a dramatic turn: Austria was annexed by Germany, and her family sent her to England to live with a pen pal to escape the persecution.

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