Lots of review love from The Stranger this week:

• Review: "Blazing Combat... [is] packed with gloriously miserable... war stories covering everything from the battle of Thermopylae to Vietnam... all beautifully captured by comics legends like Archie Goodwin, Alex Toth, Joe Orlando, and Gene Colan in appropriately murky grays... Fantagraphics has slapped together a nice, hefty... hardbound collection that's worth a read, whether you're a comic nerd, war buff, one-legged veteran, or one of those snooty I-only-read-graphic-novels types. Bombs away." - Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, The Stranger

• Review: "Miss Lasko-Gross's autobiographical comics are the best in the field since [Lynda] Barry and Phoebe Gloeckner put pen to paper. A Mess of Everything is a collection of short (mostly two to three pages) cartoons about high school. All of Lasko-Gross's cartoons are told mostly in shades of gray and brown, and they're brief, unsentimental anecdotes about shoplifting, pointless rebellion, and boys who fall in love too easily." - Paul Constant, The Stranger

• Review: "[Mome] Volume 14 is the best issue yet. About half of the contributors are new to the anthology, and their work — especially 'The Carnival,' Lilli Carré's bizarre, wistful story of damaged love at a state fair, and Spanish cartoonists Hernán Miyoga and Juaco Vizuete's noir about corruption and fame, 'The New Servant' — is skillful, funny, and possessed of a confident literary quality that many cartoonists, try as they might, can never achieve." - Paul Constant, The Stranger

• Review: "...[T]he Luba stories interweave into a panoramic soap opera that are as much about her friends and extended family as about her, a vast, chaotic superstory of a kind most comics creators can only fantasize about creating... [R]ead individually the stories are good, but read as a unit they really take on a surrealistic yet concrete life, infused throughout with a random coherence that nonetheless unifies into a real experience. It's an impressive act." - Steven Grant, Comic Book Resources

• Review: "If [Fletcher] Hanks’s stories were fascinating for their anger, lunacy, and wild urgency, then these rediscovered gems [in Boody. The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers] are a revelation for being every bit as strange, but seemingly on purpose. It’s akin to David Bowie coming along and taking the unstoppable id of The Ramones and The Stooges and crafting something much more complex and layered... Get it together, America.  Check out this strange book and dare to dream, one last time, because dark days are ahead, and when the bullets start flying you’ll wish you spent more time laughing." - Tom Batten, Brick Weekly

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch talks to Noah Van Sciver, who contributes cartoon interviews to The Comics Journal and makes his Mome debut in the next issue

• Profile: Drawn spotlights the work of Dash Shaw

• Bookmark: Roasted Peanuts analyzes and annotates one Peanuts strip per day, from the beginning (via Mike Sterling)

• Things to see: This New York Times Magazine profile of Margaret Cho features the stained glass windows that Dame Darcy designed for her house

"Neither of us is proud of it," says New Yorker cartoonist Zachary Kanin about his comics jam with Dash Shaw, as posted on the New Yorker "Cartoon Lounge" blog.

"Poison River, a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez, gave me a master lesson in real writing. It was beautiful beyond words and violent and tender and heartbreaking. From that moment on, I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be. It's the great unknown novel of the 20th Century." - Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), "Life-Changing Art," Baltimore Magazine

We're very grateful to Diaz for his public love of Love and Rockets, and Oscar Wao is definitely recommended for L&R fans.

(Crass commercialism: Poison River is available in its own volume as well as in Beyond Palomar, part of the affordable Love and Rockets Library reprint series.)

Friend of Fantagraphics and local jazz composer Andrew Boscardin has a new CD inspired by his favorite comic book artists, Four-Color Heroes. He has a gig this Friday (UPDATE: SATURDAY NIGHT!) night in Georgetown, neighborhood home of the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery. As Andrew points out to Seattlest, stop by the gallery before the show and catch our current Jaime Hernandez / Stan Sakai exhibit and then go catch Andrew's Nickel and Brass Septet at the Mix.

Drawger has the full monte.

Seattle, strong women, short skirts, Mercury Cougars. 

ROCKETSHIP

208 SMITH STREET, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11201 

Mike mentioned Jim Blanchard's new limited-edition Trucker Fags In Denial print earlier this week, but did you know Jim will be at Stumptown this weekend, selling them? 

We'll be at Stumptown, too. Come on down and say hi and stimulate our economy, won't you? 

Michael Kupperman's Snake'N'Bacon the TV show pilot is going to be broadcast as part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block of programming, on May 10th at 12:45 AM. Based on his comic book, Tales Designed to Thrizzle, the cast includes Kristin Schaal, Dan Bakkedahl, Bill Hader, Peter Serafinowicz, James Urbaniak, Brian Stack, and David Rakoff, in live-action and animated segments. We've seen the pilot and guarantee you will not regret setting your DVR so you can watch it over and over. Meanwhile, look for Thrizzle #5 later this month, and the first collection of the series (including issues 1 thru 4, plus more, all in full-color for the first time!) this summer. 

All this week and next week we're bringing you a sneak peek at our Fall 2009 - Winter 2010 schedule of releases! Today's excerpt from our latest book distributor's catalog includes The Squirrel Machine by Hans Rickheit; the Fall and Winter volumes of Mome; Chocolate Cheeks by Steven Weissman; and Pim & Francie: "In the Golden Bear Days" from Al Columbia. (Note that all the info in this catalog is subject to change along the way to the books' release, including release dates, prices, cover art, book specs, etc.) Click here to download the PDF!