Comics writer Alan David Doane, oft-linked in our "Daily OCD" posts, has a new E-book compiling a decade's worth of his interviews with comics notables such as Peter Bagge, Charles Burns, Colleen Coover, Renee French, Roberta Gregory, Paul Hornschemeier, Johnny Ryan, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Dirk Deppey (not to mention a slew of non-Fantagraphics folks too). You can download the book, aptly titled Conversations with ADD, for free at the Comic Book Galaxy website.

Our final Online Commentary & Diversions for August '09 brings a rich cornucopia of links:

• List: Alan David Doane of Comic Book Galaxy is, I believe, the first out of the gate with a definitive "Best Comics of the Decade" list, which includes Mome, our two B. Krigstein books, The Complete Peanuts, the Love and Rockets omnibuses, Maakies, Zippy the Pinhead, and a complete Fanta sweep of the "Works on the Subject of Comics" category

• List: An old link that just popped up in my search feed: ComicCritique.com's Adam McGovern gives out some best-of-2008 awards, with The Lagoon by Lilli Carré tied for Graphic Novel of the Year ("Carré’s artisanal eccentricity carves intricate patterns and masklike faces into pages that stand like the folk-art furnishings of vanished but vivid earlier societies") and Carré tied with Grant Morrison for the M.C. Escher Prize for Non-Sequential Art ("Morrison and Carré are two creators at the cutting edge of both storytelling craft and conversational physics who make us uncommonly aware of the presence of time.")

• Review: "Love and Rockets: New Stories #2. The Hernandez Brothers have been producing such consistently good comics for such a long time that I often feel they get taken for granted. But their recent comics [don't] just maintain their high level of previous achievement, they also have a freshness and liveliness that any young artist would envy." - Jeet Heer, Robot 6

• Review: "More than anything, [Peter] Bagge's work does what it always does with perfection, which is capture people doing exactly what people really do, and how they often think when they think that nobody else thinks that they are thinking it (sorry). His art is constantly moving, perpetually fluid, and instantly recognizable to a 21st century American culture raised on Tex Avery and Bob Clampett cartoons. Whether you agree with his politics or not, Everybody Is Stupid [Except for Me] is thought-provoking and, most importantly, hilarious." - Monster on a Rope

• Plug: "Supermen! The First Wave Of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 edited by Greg Sadowski (2009) – I’ve always gotten a kick out of early comics. They’re anti-art in action. Irrational, crude and daffily violent. Kinda like early punk rock." - M. Ace, Irregular Orbit

• Analysis: For The Hooded Utilitarian, Ng Suat Tong examines the current state of comics criticism by surveying reviews of Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch posts the second of three parts of Brian Heater's interview with Jordan Crane: "The art—those are the tools I use to transfer the story. Pictures, words—those are the conveyance of the story. The important thing is the story, so once I get my tools there, I convey the story in a way I want to."

• Profile: Amy Stewart visited Ellen Forney in her studio: "There are only certain kinds of comics that interest me: I prefer the true-to-life ones that are well-drawn, have stories I can relate to, and make me laugh, cry, or think. Ellen does all three, in spades."

• Events: Chicagoans, catch Ivan Brunetti as a panelist on the next "Show 'n Tell Show," a live talk show devoted to design, next Saturday Sept. 6 at 9 PM

• Things to see: Bob Fingerman shares some preliminary thumbnail sketches for Connective Tissue

Another fall book tour to announce: Hans Rickheit starts at SPX and works his way north and then west, signing copies of The Squirrel Machine all along the way. Dates from the Squirrel Machine blog; more info TBA:

September 26th & 27th

SPX
The North Bethesda Marriott Convention Center
5701 Marinelli Road
Bethesda, MD‎
(301) 822-9200‎

September 29th (6-7pm)

Brickbat Books
709 S 4th Street
Philadelphia PA
(215) 592 1207

October 1st (6-7pm)

Forbidden Planet
840 Broadway
NY, NY
(212) 473 1576

October 3rd (2-4pm)

Million Year Picnic
99 Mount Auburn
Cambridge MA
(617) 492 6763

October 5th (4-6pm)

That's Entertainment
244 Park Ave
Worcester, MA
(508) 755 4207

October 6th (7-8pm)

Rabbit Hole
805 Main Street
Fitchburg MA
(978) 345 0040

October 7th (4-7pm)

Casablanca Comics
151 Middle Street #2
Portland ME
(207) 780 1676

October 10th (7pm)

Quimby's
1854 W North Ave
Chicago, IL
(773) 342-0910‎

October 11th (2pm)

Vault of Midnight
219 S Main St
Ann Arbor, MI‎
(734) 998-1413‎

To celebrate the release of their respective new books, Paul Hornschemeier and Jay Ryan will be hitting the road together this November:

wed nov 11 - chicago - quimby's
fri nov 13 - columbus - wholly crafts
sun nov 15 - brooklyn - rocketship
mon nov 16 - new york - giant robot
wed nov 18 - baltimore - atomic
fri nov 20 - louisville - carmichaels books

More info is on Paul's blog, with more dates and details TBA.

I was happy to learn from this interview with Ape on the Moon that Joseph Lambert has taken us up on our invitation to appear in our quarterly anthology Mome and is starting work on some stories for inclusion. I've been hoping for this ever since I first picked up his minicomic Turtle, Keep It Steady at the Stumptown fest lo those many moons ago.

This Side of Jordan
By Monte Schulz

Monte Schulz's prose novel opens in the spring of 1929, as the 19-year-old consumptive farm boy Alvin Pendergast attends an ill-fated dance marathon he's too sickly to participate in. After a year of his life has been stolen by a sanitarium, Alvin knows he's relapsing, and dreads not only the drudgery of his family's homestead, but a return to the hospital. In this state of mind, an invitation for a late-night slice of pie is too seductive to pass up and before he knows it, Alvin crosses the Mississippi River and finds himself working for a slick con artist named Chester Burke.

Alvin is no match for Chester, who's not merely a con man, but a gangster from Chicago, following the bootleg liquor trade through the small towns of America's middle border. With Alvin in tow, Chester's insouciant disregard for life serves him well as he embarks upon a series of bank robberies and senseless murders. All summer long, Chester assumes the role of a dark angel on Judgment day, cleansing the scrolls of those whose sad fortune had drawn them across his path. Too ill to flee, too morally weak to object, Alvin resigns himself to what seems like certain doom somewhere down the road. Fortunately, Alvin finds another companion on his journey, a lonely, eccentric, and grandiloquent dwarf named Rascal, whose own infirmity binds his and the farm boy's destiny together. Drawn deeper and deeper into Chester's murderous frolic, they come across a curious assortment of characters, from small town businessmen and religious kooks to wayward girls and dance contestants, spiritualists and sideshow freaks. Caught between Chester's villainy and Alvin's own physical deterioration, the young farm boy must make a decision: stick with Chester, who would surely kill him at the slightest hint of betrayal, or muster the courage to stake his life on faith in Rascal's clever plan to save them both. Tired of being afraid, Alvin finally grasps the need not only to outwit the gangster but to find another road to travel. What he discovers about the meaning of home offers a solution to escape and freedom.

This Side of Jordan is a thoroughly American novel told in the voice of a lost generation hurtling toward the Great Depression, and evokes a long ago America of crowded Main Streets and tourist camps, miles of cornfields, rural churches, and musty parlors. It ends on the fairgrounds of a traveling wagon circus that beckons gangster, farm boy, and dwarf toward a startling resolution, and a hard-fought absolution for the two young, frightened collaborators. The narrative of this novel has the momentum of a freight train, but told in the seductive, rhythmic tradition of Southern lyricism reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor and Truman Capote, and filled with vivid, outsized literary characters. If Jim Thompson and Carson McCullers went on a collaborative bender by kidnapping Holden Caulfield, Perry Smith, and Ignatius J. Reilly, they'd have come up with something like This Side of Jordan.

320-page 6.5" x 9.25" hardcover • $22.99
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

All and Sundry: Uncollected Work 2004-2009
By Paul Hornschemeier

All and Sundry corrals critically-acclaimed author and artist Paul Hornschemeier’s work from the last five years — work previously ungathered, and in many cases never before seen in print.

These works span the globe, from periodicals to museums, including: conceptual drawings and comics of Ulysses S. Grant created for an exhibit in Paris; an award-winning cover exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the seventeen-part serialized tale of divine intervention, non-linearity, and social webs “Huge Suit Visits the People” created for the celebrated German newspaper Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung; and comic strips for The Wall Street Journal and CNN featuring the unlikely cartoon protagonists of Michael Jackson, Sylvester Stallone as Rambo, and the “gray fox,” Anderson Cooper. In addition to these oddities, All and Sundry collects covers and designs from multiple foreign editions of Paul’s books, ranging from Holland to Korea; recent album art for David Byrne's Luaka Bop record label; a collaboration with celebrated comics humorist Michael Kupperman (Tales Designed to Thrizzle); as well as short, illustrated prose (thus far seen only in the pages of the anthology Mome).

The collection concludes with extensive selections from sketches and sketchbooks, providing an unusual glimpse at the chaotic world of Hornschemeier’s work, before the polishing of lines and colors of the printed page. Here we see how works have developed and what the future holds for still gestating projects.

All and Sundry, perhaps more than any previous collection of Hornschemeier’s work, demonstrates the variety and depth of the artist’s interests and pursuits, and invites an examination of the entirety of his process, from first fevered scrawl to final, pristine brush line.

208-page full-color 7.5" x 10" hardcover • $29.99
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

It's a fresh batch of strips for your Friday evening enjoyment!

The brain-eating baby is just the setup in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan...

Things have gotten about as dark as they can get in this week's installment of Steven Weissman's in-progress pages from "Blue Jay," an epic 51-page story from Chocolate Cheeks, the next collection of the Yikes! gang's adventures....

And there's not one but two oversized Sunday-style strips in our Monday-Friday Rocky strips by Martin Kellerman. Enjoy!

Here's more info on the "46 Million" art auction benefitting health care reform we mentioned yesterday, from the instigator of the whole shebang, Anders Nilsen. Above, Dan Clowes's contribution (no bids yet?!). Spread the word.

Wrapping up yet another week's worth of Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Tunes: Inkstuds presents the Gilbert Hernandez mixtape: from Rundgren to RUN-DMC, from Devo to Deep Purple, from Bret & Jemaine to Ike & Tina, plus 10 more choice cuts selected by Beto. (Previously: Jaime's mixtape)

• Review: "From Wonderland with Love collects some of the last decade's best Danish comics in one big beautiful book.… You'll happily leave the book 'accidentally' lying around on your coffee table, as it is exquisitely designed and invites being leafed through and studied.… From Wonderland with Love at times is very avant-garde and goes where we are talking less comics and more comics-inspired art. But if you are ready to be challenged, it is hard not to be seduced by this work.… From Wonderland with Love might be a bit of an advertisement, but this exposure certainly is deserved, because why should the rest of the world be cheated out of such an assured demonstration of comic's many forms of expression and artistic potential?" - Christian Rasmussen, Litteraturnu (translated from Danish)

• Things to see: Abstract Comics contributor Mike Getsiv gets some inter-anthology mojo going by doing a guest strip for Jesse Reklaw's Ten Thousand Things to Do recounting time spent with Jesse and Mome contributor Andrice Arp