ITEM #1: Last-minute holiday shopping for the comics enthusiast in your life? Not to worry, there are lots of perfect ready-made gifts out there at your local book store.

If the person is interested at all in the vast history of newspaper comic strips, there are a plethora of wonderful archival collections with lavish volumes covering everything from Dick Track and Terry and the Pirates to Dennis the Menace and BloomCounty. The two companies most responsible for the current renaissance in comic strip archival publishing are Fantagraphics and IDW, and their books are never anything less than a sheer joy to read and own.

But if I had to pick my top three comic strips to buy in collected form, one of them is available in its entirety in an extraordinary slipcase edition, one of them will be in a few years’ time when all the beautiful hardcover volumes are released, and one is still appearing in newspapers today even as it segues into ongoing collections. So, in order that would be:

Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes was published in multiple book collections and treasuries, but what you really want is the handsome slipcase hardcover edition, The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, that covers the ten-year history of this sublime ode to childhood. As much a time capsule of the 1990s as it is a timeless testament to being a kid, this strip is pure magic.

At the moment Fantagraphics is still putting out their superb hardcover Peanuts archival collections – they’re into the 1960s now – and in the years to come these volumes will stand as the definitive collection of a fifty-year comic masterpiece by Charles Schulz that added so much to our collective pop culture lexicon, from security blankets to kite-eating trees. Good grief, it’s great reading.

Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine has the potential to become a classic. The precise, spare line work; the incisive wit with an often cruel edge; the incomparable Rat (my comic strip spiritual brother); the innocent Pig; and of course the incredibly stupid, inexplicably accented “crocydiles” – Pearls Before Swine is a joy to read every day and it’s also available in a series of book collections. I would start with one of the treasuries like Sgt. Piggy’s Lonely Hearts Club Comic, which features a lot of fun and enlightening notes from Pastis.

Shopping days are few, so hurry now!

ITEM #2: In addition to our current Special Edition exhibit, Yellow Bricks & Emerald Cities (more on that later in this column), we have a pair of Sleepy Sensations in our third floor gallery space. First, see the original artwork from Bo Hampton’s 1993 graphic novel adaptation of the classic literary chiller, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The exhibit also features background artwork from Disney’s family favorite, Sleeping Beauty. But please be sure that you stay awake and get to GEM in order to see it all!

ITEM #3: Yellow Bricks & Emerald Cities – Our Special Edition Exhibit
In 1900, children of all ages were first introduced to a wonderful land of imagination and adventure known as Oz. Written by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz told the tale of farm girl Dorothy Gale and her magical journey to another world populated by fanciful friends and foes like the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Geppi’s EntertainmentMuseum celebrates the legacy of Baum’s work and its incredible impact on generations of children through a special exhibition that showcases first editions of the first 40 Oz books on loan to the museum from local collector Fred Trust, as well as other memorabilia. The original art wall graphics and cutout figures for the exhibit were produced by the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Oz Project Team: Crisanto Cimatu, Michael Clayton, Maggie Cerveny, Tiffany Nguyen, Elly Kim and Cody Griffith, all seniors in the Illustration Program at MICA. The Team was lead by MICA’s Chair of Illustration, Whitney Sherman, who acted as creative consultant and art director.

Yellow Bricks & Emerald Cities is open through January 2010.

Don’t forget to visit Geppi’s EntertainmentMuseum online at www.geppismuseum.com or in person at 301 W. Camden Street, Baltimore, MD 21201. Our phone is (410) 625-7060.