Esther Pearl Watson appears on KERA's Think to talk to Art&Seek host Jerome Weeks about her "hilarious and poignant" graphic novel Unlovable. Click here for the streaming video (screen capture above).

Online Commentary & Diversions

• Analysis: "For me, Tom [Kaczynski]'s work is an oasis in the desert... Tom K builds comics that could be likened to a brick house. These are solid comics." - Frank Santoro, Comics Comics

• List: I haven't heard of pop group 3OH!3 before, but their frontman Sean Foreman has pretty good taste in comics going by this Top 10 list he gave to The AOL Radio Blog: Black Hole, Bottomless Belly Button, Monster Parade, Epileptic, Jimmy Corrigan...

• Review: "For my money, [Joe] Daly is hilarious, with an ear for great dialog, a nice feel for the way characters and convertibles glide across the landscape of the comic page, and a zest for uniquely convoluted plots [in The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book]."- Steve Duin, The Oregonian

• Review: "Previous assemblages of [Prince] Valiant being out of print, Fantagraphics, a leader in the field, has stepped forward with gloriously restored art reproduced in generous dimensions and abetted by the essays of experts. This initial volume... demonstrates just why Valiant continues to burn so brightly... Simultaneously nostalgic and eternal, Hal Foster's populist masterwork deserves this accessible enshrinement." - Paul DiFilippo, The Barnes & Noble Review

• Review: "I dont think I’ve ever read anything like Low Moon by Jason and I mean that in a good way... Low Moon has a brilliant almost tightrope deadpan mix of sad and funny... Jason is capable of stories with heart like no other; particularly stories with an aura of heartrending and heartbreak. Low Moon might be the second most melancholy book that I’ve read over the past year... Low Moon by Jason continues to push the medium forward and confound readers expectations with brilliant stories that defy categorization." - Brian Lindenmuth, BSCreview

• Profile: La Perse looks at the "disturbing... beautiful" comics of Dave Cooper (Google translation)

• Plug: Cartoon Brew recommends The Comics Journal #299 for the reprint of Myron Waldman's Eve, "a rare treat for Fleischer Studio fans - or anyone interested in clever, cartoon story-telling."

• Plug: "[Abstract Comics is] more proof that comics are truly an art form. They can be just as weird, surreal, absurd, artistic, expressive and transcendent as any other medium." - Corey Blake

• Plug: At Arts Journal, Regina Hackett blurbs the "Comics Savants" exhibit at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery: "Some of these people are the best of the best."

• Things to see: Ray Fenwick attends Dweebo's School of Art (a day-long collaborative drawing performance); plus further adventures of Dweebo & Pupil

The second entry in our project to bring the works of French great Jacques Tardi to American audiences, You Are There is a landmark book that pairs Tardi with Barbarella creator Jean-Claude Forest. This satirical masterpiece ushered in the graphic novel era to European comics with an unexpected combination of dark cynicism and playful fantasy. This hardcover edition is now available for pre-order in our online shop, and we've made the entire 19-page first chapter available as a free PDF download. This book is scheduled be in stock and shipping in mid-September, and in stores approximately 4 weeks later (subject to change).

It brings us great joy to welcome four of our favorite comic artists to the Mome fold in this Fall's Volume 16: Renée French (who graces the cover), Nicholas Mahler, Archer Prewitt and Ted Stearn. Of course, our returning artists are also nothing to sneeze at: T. Edward Bak, Dash Shaw, Lilli Carré, Conor O'Keefe, Laura Park, Nate Neal, Sara Edward-Corbett, and the "Cold Heat" crew of Ben Jones, Frank Santoro and Jon Vermilyea. This issue is now available for pre-order in our online shop. Download our free 12-page PDF excerpt for a sample page from each contributing artist. This book is scheduled be in stock and shipping in mid-September, and in stores approximately 4 weeks later (subject to change).

Friday webcomics fun!

Blecky is almost a genius in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan...

Aw man, I can barely watch 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 it's a week of cigars, hot pants and sunbathing as Rocky takes a vacation in Cuba in our Monday-Friday Rocky strips by Martin Kellerman. Enjoy!

A nice batch of reviews in today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Starstudded. The comics medium merges with pictorial art into a groundbreaking narrative form in a new gorgeous anthology [From Wonderland with Love] with the Danish highlights of the last ten years.… jam-packed with cherry-picked quality material which is guaranteed to find happy readers far beyond the circle who consider themselves comics fans." - Nikolaj M. Lassen, Weekendavisen (translated from Danish)

• Review: "..[T]his brilliant, anarchic collection of errant dips into the cultural gestalt is laugh-out-loud hilarious. Like stuff that's fearless, brilliant and non-linear? Thrizzle is for shizzle." - Richard Pachter, The Miami Herald

• Review: "Fantagraphics continues on its quest to reprint and repackage history’s greatest and most influential comics in glorious, high-quality collections. This first collection of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant strips has to be seen to be believed – it’s a lovingly crafted, tabloid-sized book with the highest production values. The artwork has been recreated from Foster’s own engraver’s proofs, providing better quality than even the original newspaper run would have got. Prince Valiant is widely regarded as one of the best adventure comics ever created, and there’s two years worth of material here – a real treat for fans of the original or new readers looking for some classic medieval adventure." - Grovel

• Review: "I certainly prefer Norwegian cartoonist Jason to Hemingway. For one thing, Jason doesn't hate women, as far as I can tell. And for another, his new book of short graphic stories, Low Moon, has a bunch of clever touches that made me chuckle out loud." - Noah Berlatsky, comiXology

• Review: "...[E]ven if the very mention of the word 'abstract' makes you poke your fingers in your ears and go 'La la la la,' I’d strongly recommend the book, as it contains a number of strikingly beautiful images and sequences... I found Abstract Comics to be a revealing, thought-provoking and genuinely lovely book that I’ll be sure to be rereading in the months to come." - Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "MILFs on Mars, by the artist known as Rebecca... is a collection of black and white pin-up drawings of naked (or mostly naked) women posing in spacey science fiction Martian environments... The drawings are well done and almost tame enough to not be called hard core. However, that cannot be said (or written) because some of the poses consist of inquisitive homosexual women physically probing other people. Need I say more?" - Bernard C. Cormier, Brunswick News

• Things to see: Not enough artists exploit the animated GIF as a medium; Lilli Carré has done it twice recently, to wondeful effect

For an exclusive 6-page excerpt from Jacques Tardi & Jean-Patrick Manchette's West Coast Blues, in which two hired killers tail our protagonist as he takes his family to the seaside (tense!), head on over to ICv2.com. T-minus about 2 weeks until the book arrives for direct orders.

"Deep Space" Episode 2, page 10, from the forthcoming 2nd volume of John Pham's Sublife, posted by John on Facebook. Wowie zowie.

Acclaimed cartoonist and musician Zak Sally navigates the messy and murky waters of human experience with unflinching veracity in Like a Dog, a hardcover volume compiling the first two issues of his Eisner Award-nominated series Recidivist along with numerous other stories from the past 15 years, along with "liner notes" and other ephemera. This book is now available for pre-order in our online shop. Take an advance sniff at the book by downloading our free 10-page PDF excerpt. This book is scheduled be in stock and shipping in mid-September, and in stores approximately 4 weeks later (subject to change).

Coming next year: The Sanctuary by Nate Neal (compiling the 3 issues of his self-published comic plus 75+ pages more). More details TBA. This promotional video is pretty darn great -- Raymond Scott ahoy:

The Sanctuary Promo #1 from Andrew Perrine on Vimeo.

Bookmark Nate's The Sanctuary blog for future updates and previews!