Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Clemente blazed trails and provided a role model to millions who needed one. Santiago's work here manages to capture the magic and mystery of that position by putting Clemente on something of a pedestal, but it all hangs together very well. It's exciting and incredibly easy to read. Santiago's art is fantastic. [...] Santiago's 21 is a treat. Its 200 pages fly by, the visuals are great, and the dialogue dead-on. The last few pages are heartbreaking and effective." – David Brothers, Comics Alliance

• Review: "Unlovable by Esther Pearl Watson has to be the best contemporary comic strip. [...] One would think the story of some suburban high school girl in the eighties has been done before. And, yes, it has been done before time and time again. Yet, what Watson does is somehow find a strange world that has yet to be traversed, regardless of time period: it crosses the lines Ghost World drew and that Freaks & Geeks clarified, but it views it through the eyes of a more confident Anaïs from Fat Girl. The result is a brilliant and 'Ain’t Too Proud To Beg' account from a high school wannabe who thought she was — and wanted to be — it all. It’s brilliant: the comic anthology is the best piece of literature that I have read since the last time I read any sort of book in its entirety..." – Kyle Fitzpatrick, The Fox Is Black

• Follow-up: "Well, I just finished that biography of legendary rock critic Paul Nelson [1936 -- 2006] that I raved about in medias res yesterday and it's actually an even better book than I let on." – Steve Simels, PowerPop

• Interview: The subject of Richard Gehr's latest "Know Your New Yorker Cartoonists" column for The Comics Journal is Gahan Wilson: "But the outfit I fit in with instantly, was National Lampoon. That was a remarkable assemblage of brilliant sons of bitches. Its spirit was insidious. It was like being part of a pirate crew. We were like some kind of religious sect. We were out to show the bastards, by God, and we did, very effectively. I just wish something like that would happen again. But there’s no sign of it whatsoever, even though things are much worse now than they were then."

Yow indeed! Who better embodies "lust for life" than Zippy the Pinhead? Image (and post title) provided by our warehouse manager Nico Vassilakis. This photo is worth a million in prizes! Are we having Fun House yet? Etcetera!

Words cannot describe how much I love this Harry Potter drawing by Steven Weissman. What makes it even better is that it was drawn for a postcard correspondence with a 5th-grade pen pal, who led off with this fantastic opening round:

Dept. of "Whoa": Robot 6 reports on this auction for a piece of never-before-seen artwork by Charles M. Schulz, a "try-out" strip thought to have been done during the transition from Li'l Folks to Peanuts, circa 1949-1950. Click our image above to see it a bit larger (if it looks strangely patched together, that's an artifact of the Flash-based image viewer on the auction page, from which we took screen-grabs).

(Our post title is a reference to Unseen Peanuts, our 2007 Free Comic Book Day offering which we are currently sending out free with orders, with some restrictions, while supplies last — see here for details.)

This previously unpublished Jim Flora drawing from the 1970s has just been released as a limited-edition print from Jim Flora Art — see it in all its delightful detail and place your order here.

Now available:

Hate Annual #9
by Peter Bagge

32-page full-color comic book • $4.95 — Order Now!

Buddy & Lisa — back to Seattle! In the first full-length Buddy story in ten years (and it's a doozy), just when things are starting to look idyllic for our heroes, a family crisis forces Lisa to re-unite with her Seattle-based parents and brings Buddy and their young son Harold along with her — and Buddy quickly learns why she's been avoiding them for 20-odd years! And Lisa has some other unwelcome surprises in her family tree as well...

Plus, Pete gets political in cartoons from El Rios, High Times and Seattle Weekly. And a couple of ads!

Here's a peek at a few pages. Ooh, indicia:

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. See more about each book at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

Hate Annual #9
by Peter Bagge

32-page full-color comic book • $4.95

"It really has been almost exactly a year since #8! Fancy that. Previous Hate Annuals have been a catchall for whatever Peter Bagge's been drawing lately, plus a short check-in with Buddy Bradley as he ages in real time; this time, the Buddy-and-Lisa story is longer than usual. There's something I really admire about Bagge's sticktoitiveness." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"...I’m most looking forward to reading the Hate Annual, if only cause we get new Buddy Bradley adventures so infrequently these days." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"Pete Bagge’s Hate Annual is on fairly regular scheduling now, by which I mean I think it’s roughly a year since we saw the last one. Top marks, Mr Bagge. Hate Annual #9 includes the first full-length Buddy story in a decade..." – Gosh! Comics

"Each Hate annual is like a weekend visit from a best friend you haven't seen in years. This issue is the first full-length Buddy Bradley story in a decade. Buddy goes along with Lisa as she reunites with her family for the first time in twenty years, and it quickly becomes apparent why she's been avoiding them." – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

"I like how loopy and ridiculous the Buddy Bradley narrative has become in the Hate Annuals." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

Love from the Shadows
by Gilbert Hernandez

120-page black & white 5.75" x 8.5" hardcover • $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-406-1

"The newest installment of Gilbert Hernandez's series of standalone "adaptations" of nonexistent exploitation movies, and the most screwed-up by far. (That's a good thing.) There are lots of comics that try for a "cinematic" tone, but Gilbert H. is the only cartoonist I can think of who's tried to approximate the weird narrative power of the kinds of flaws you only really find in movies--dodgy special effects and awkward editing become deliberate, controlled dramatic devices here." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"Gilbert Hernandez’s latest graphic novel is yet another delightfully loopy and hauntingly surreal entry in his ongoing, loosely-related 'Fritz' series and would be my pick of the week, certainly for any self-respecting Love and Rockets fan." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

"Love from the Shadows is Gilbert Hernandez’s third original hardcover graphic novel (after Chance in Hell and The Troublemakers) about Love & Rockets’ Fritz as a Z-movie actress. 'Erotic, harrowing, graphically violent, and astonishingly grim, Love from the Shadows sees Hernandez plunging ever further into his own heart of darkness,' writes one reviewer over at TCJ, adding 'Christ, what a f*cking book.'" – Gosh! Comics

"B-movie actress Fritz, from Love & Rockets, stars in this thriller of odd sexual obsession, suicide and more." – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

"Can’t resist splashing some Los Bros art on here for all to enjoy because, well, because it is Gilbert Hernandez and because we can never get enough of Los Bros, they just make our days better..." – Forbidden Planet International

And at TCJ.com it's Joe McCulloch's... "CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Some shops seem to have gotten it in last Wednesday — I’ve personally seen it sitting around — but Diamond has designated this week as the official release of Hate Annual #9, in which Peter Bagge again visits with Buddy Bradley and family, this time for most of the 32-page issue’s space; $4.95. Also, Gilbert Hernandez brings Love from the Shadows, the latest in his Fritz 'movie' series (this time the character plays various male and female roles), which has already inspired diverse reactions on this very site; $19.99."

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "...Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery — due out this November from Fantagraphic Books — is an absolutely riveting and (I think) important read. ...I'm only halfway through the book at the moment, but I can tell you that Avery has done an absolutely smashing job of research and that there's a lot to chew on here about all sorts of issues... I'll have more to say about it later in the year, when it's actually in print, but rest assured that this would be an important book if Avery had done nothing more than get some of Nelson's brilliant essays and reviews between hardcovers, where they clearly belong, at last." – Steve Simels, PowerPop

• Review: "Ott’s psychobilly sensibilities litter his narrative world with pimps, thugs and geeks; desperate chancers, deadly beloveds and down and outs on the edge of reality as well as society, so if jaded comics fans might feel they’ve been here before, the wider world are still only curious first-timers into a dismal dimension of vice, spice and bad advice. Graphic, violent funny and unforgettable [R.I.P.: Best of 1985-2004] is a special treat for thrill-starved adults in search of something a little beyond the norm." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Commentary: "It's fascinating to see the history of comics play out in real time by reading these 30-year-old 'fanzines' (which is what The Comics Journal was called by pretty much everyone who refers to the magazine within its pages, even though it was already much more than that within the first few years of its existence) and reflect on how much the industry has changed and yet how the same questions and concerns from 1980 still pop up in conversations around the comic book water cooler today." – Timothy Callahan, Comic Book Resources

Concerning the progress of Dash's Kickstarter campaign for his film The Ruined Cast.

Thomas Rehhoff passes along another fun piece from his collection of original Hernandez Bros. art: this 1994 New Yorker illustration by Jaime illustrating the good ol' Kirk vs. Picard debate, presumably for the magazine's review of Star Trek: Generations — whatta stinker that movie was.