Friday webcomics — ain't we lucky we got 'em?

A real classic New Yorker-style joke in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson...

...Blecky's reaction is, surprisingly, completely appropriate in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan....

...and, well, this week's Barack Hussein Obama bt Steven Weissman pretty much leaves me speechless.

Some excellent Online Commentary & Diversions to round out the week thanks to Omnivoracious and The A.V. Club:

• List: Amazon's Omnivoracious blog names Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw a top-10 Comic of the Decade, and also names The Complete Peanuts, Love and Rockets Library, and Mome as Comics Archives and Anthologies of the Decade

• List: On Meltdown Comics' Meltcast podcast, Chris Rosa declares Low Moon by Jason his Absolute Best of 2009 "without a doubt," with additional commentary from his cohosts (begins around 2:26:21)

• List: And on the Meltcast Best of the Decade episode, Hey, Wait... by Jason (begins around 48:36)

• Review: "Since 1957, [Gahan] Wilson’s work has provided a grim counterpoint to the skin and pleasure-seeking of Playboy. Twisting pop-culture icons to dark-witted ends, Wilson places his characters in a world of terror and understatement. ... [T]he incidental commentary here about human selfishness and shortsightedness squeezed between the B-movie monsters and little green men feels timeless, as does the remarkably high level of quality Wilson has maintained over the years. ... [Grade] A" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Strange Suspense offers page after lurid four-color page of Ditko’s weird monsters, rubber-faced crooks, and abstracted landscapes... The book is a white-knuckle trip through Ditko’s fevered imagination. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club (same link as above)

• Review: "[Al] Columbia’s book Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days strings together 200-odd (very odd) pages of sketches, strips, panels, and spot illustrations, assembled into one long nightmare-narrative about two loose-limbed tots wandering through a village of lusty killers and bleeding trees. There are no explanations here, and few conventional payoffs — just images designed to remind readers what it was like to be a panicked, paranoid child, convinced that every nighttime shadow contained a beast more menacing and repulsive than any grown-up could conceive. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club (same link as above)

• Review: "Like A Dog — a collection of [Zak] Sally’s self-published Recidivist comics, plus odds and ends — drips warped fantasy, bleak humor, and experimentation. Dynamically, the book also veers from being text-heavy to eerily wordless, even as it maintains the integrity of Sally’s stunning, stark-yet-lush linework. ...Like A Dog is a compelling slab of graphic narrative. As a warts-and-then-some chronicle of one man’s navigation through the world of underground comics (not to mention his own self-sabotaging psyche), it’s downright mesmerizing. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club (same link as above)

• Review: "Packaged in an ingenious VHS-like format, [Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box] comes complete with lofty intro... But the fun is paging through these lurid examples of videos you kind of forget you remember, like Streets of Fire or The Legend of Hell House." – Kristi Turnquist, The Oregonian

• Review: "[Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons is] a monster production, a slipcased behemoth, nearly 1000 pages in three volumes, with deliciously wicked humor on every page. ... Open the box, free the three volumes, and dive in anywhere. You will not be disappointed." – John Mesjak, my3books

Now available for preview and pre-order: Unlovable Vol. 2 by Esther Pearl Watson, the second and concluding installment in the hilarious saga of hapless high school underdog Tammy Pierce and her seemingly never-ending series of humiliations and heartbreaks. Watson nails the story's 1980s middle-America milieu with affection and devastating accuracy. Download an exclusive 20-page PDF excerpt right here (3 MB). This book is scheduled to be in stock and ready to ship in roughly 4-5 weeks and in stores roughly the same time (subject to change).

View a photo & video slideshow preview of the book embedded here. Click here if it is not visible, and/or to view it larger in a new window (recommended).

Featuring: David Sandlin, Michael Kupperman, Chadwick Whitehead, Jayr Pulga, Sam Henderson, Glenn Head, Danny Hellman, Karl Wills, and R Sikoryak!

This looks like a great show: 

FUNNY (not funny)
Recent Comic Art Exhibiting Signs of Black Humor
Curated by Ryan Standfest

January 22 - February 26, 2010
Reception: Friday, January 22 6-9pm

The University of Michigan Work : Detroit Gallery
3663 Woodward / Suite 150
Detroit, MI 48230

Participating Artists:
Ivan Brunetti
Chris Cilla
Sue Coe
Lisa Hanawalt
Glenn Head
Tim Hensley
Ian Huebert
Ben Katchor
Michael Kupperman
Mats!?
Daniel Maw
Taylor McKimens
Travis Millard
Tom Neely
Mark Newgarden
David Paleo
Jonathon Rosen
David Sandlin
Rob Sato
Jon Vermilyea

The "FUNNY (not funny)" exhibition seeks to elicit uncomfortable laughter in the realm of black humor-a place where the serious and the taboo are fodder for comic provocation. Artists in numerous media have long sought to overturn convention and challenge what is funny with what is not as a means of producing humor out of the unlikeliest of situations. Work by the twenty artists on view in "FUNNY (not funny)" demonstrates that cartooning is keeping the tradition of black humor alive and flourishing. The very form of the comics page itself is as relevant a vehicle as ever, freed from so many of the commercial restrictions placed on other art forms, to effectively deliver potent images and narratives that carry with them a very immediate and accurate measure of the absurdity of our age.

Our own multifarious Jason T. Miles appeared on the Inkstuds radio programme today to discuss his comics, his new Seattle-centric zine distro venture Profanity Hill (Seattle-area zine makers: Jason wants you! Everyone else: go buy some stuff already), and toiling in the Fantagraphics salt mines — listen here.

Is this it for Online Commentary & Diversions today? I guess so:

• Review: "Jacques Boyreau’s book [Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box] pays tribute to... imperfection. Not only is its cover — well, the cover of the book’s slipcase, at least, designed to look like a videocassette — but the photos inside showcase boxes in far from mint condition... All of this helped take me back to my VHS days, but it’s mostly the garish art that did it — lurid snatches of visual salesmanship, many of which have been burned in the back of my mind for 25 years. ... If you own only one art book featuring a back-cover illustration of Don 'The Dragon' Wilson, make it this one. And be sure to rewind, or I’ll have to charge a dollar to your account." – Rod Lott, Bookgasm

• List: Looking at where we stand on Sandy Bilus's Best Comics of 2009 Meta-List (compiling all the year-end best-of lists) at I Love Rob Liefeld, we've got 2 in the top 20, 6 in the top 50, and 12 in the top 100 — not too shabby

• Plug: Prestigious design blog The Book Cover Archive features Jacob Covey's cover design for What Is All This? by Stephen Dixon

• Things to see: Kevin Huizenga's "Postcard from Fielder" part 7

• Things to see: Richard Sala digs up some art from the vault

• Reviewer: For The Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux looks at the novel The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

Paul Hornschemeier spills the beans on the first volume of the new book-format iteration of his one-man anthology series Forlorn Funnies, comprising serialized and standalone comics and prose stories. Head to Paul's blog for details on what's in the first volume, coming out from Fantagraphics this fall, as well as a look at the original art for the cover (the final version of which is seen above). He also posted a separate teaser showing a test panel from one of the stories. Exciting!

This is the original art for a 1985 J.R. Williams comic reprinted in Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s; J.R. seized the opportunity to offer it for sale on Comic Art Collective — it's already sold, but still worth a look! This is the sort of thing you can expect to see at our yet-to-be-officially-announced Newave art show opening Jan. 30 at Fantagraphics Bookstore...

Peter Bagge sent us a link to this song inspired by his immortal Hate character, by Adam Green (perhaps best known by oldsters like me as half of The Moldy Peaches with Kimya Dawson), from his new album Minor Love.