Aside from all the other reasons I have to attend the San Diego Comic Con – connecting with old friends, making new ones, eating in the Gaslamp District – one of my favorites is: finding new stuff.

On Sunday, I was having a fairly leisurely stroll through the comic aisles (where one vendor was having a clearance sale of 10 comics for a buck and I stopped to wave money around) when I ended up back at the small press area. I went from booth-to-booth just to see if I’d missed anything and that’s when I saw it.

Finding Frank And His Friend.

It’s a gorgeous hardcover book published by Curio & Company, and as beautiful as Dean Mullaney’s Library of American Comics titles.

The writer and artist came up with a dynamite idea – a retrospective history of a comic strip that never existed. And it’s so well done – and so charming – that if you didn’t know better, you’d swear it was “real.” I can’t wait for people to get caught up in the story of a precocious child and the toy named Frank.

The strips, artwork and text in the book are by Clarence “Otis” Dooley (really Cesare Asaro working in a loose style that recalls, to me at least, Percy Crosby) and Melvin Goodge (really writer Kirstie Shepherd).

Shepherd was working the booth as I stumbled across this treasure and she was eager to talk about the project. It had been a good con for them (a success by their measure), lots of people coming by and loving the book, and yes, the showbiz industry (presumably not as a unit) had stopped by to pay tribute during the weekend.

I’m not the only one charmed by this project.

Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool found it to his liking as well. And veteran blogger Sean Kleefeld writes about the book in a way that gives me nostalgic feelings for a strip that never existed.

The book has my vote for next year’s Eisners.

[Artwork: a panel from Finding Frank And His Friend, © Curio & Company]