The Comics Journal has been, for almost 35 years, the standard bearer of critical inquiry, discrimination, debate, and serious discussion of comics as art, and the object of love and devotion among the comics cognescenti -- and hate and scorn among the philistines, natch. We published our 300th issue over a year ago and spent that time re-conceptualizing the institution as an annual book-length "magazine" -- over 600 pages long, chock full of the kinds of criticism, interviews, commentary, and history that has made it the most award-winning and critically lauded magazine in the history of comics.This volume features a focus on R. Crumb's most commercially successful project of his career, his comics adaptation of Genesis, including the most extensive interview he's given on the subject as well as a long critical roundtable among six comics critics reviewing the book and debating each other over its merits; plus: - An interview with Joe Sacco about his recent journalistic masterpiece, Footnotes in Gaza; - A peek into the private sketchbooks of (and accompanying interviews with) Jim Woodring, Tim Hensley, and the novelist Stephen Dixon; - A conversation between Mad Fold-Out creator Al Jaffee and Thrizzle auteur Michael Kupperman; - A complete full-color reprinting of the 1950s Gerald McBoing Boing comic; - The first significant biographical essay charting the turn-of-the-century cartoonist and illustrator John T. McCutcheon;and essays and reviews by R. Fiore, R.C. Harvey, Chris Lanier, Rob Clough, and others.Gorgeously re-formatted and completely re-designed, The Comics Journal #301 is no mere magazine but a gigantic compendium covering comics past and present that will shock and delight every truly curious comics reader.