Good evening. Time to present our weekly batch of new online strips...

...starting with a visit to ancient Troy in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson...

...continuing with spooky times in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan....

...and it's international relations with Barack H. Obama in this week's strip from Steven Weissman!

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

• Bookmark: Presenting the newly redesigned BobFingerman.com

• Feature: At the Washington Post blog Double X, Sasha Watson recounts the emergence of female underground and alternative cartoonists, talking to Trina Robbins, Carol Tyler, and others, with an accompanying slideshow featuring Tyler, Jessica Abel, Lilli Carré and 10 more

• Review: "I really love comics. Reading a collection like Joe Daly's Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, I'm reminded of just why. ... It's drawn like a combination of Tintin, Dilbert, and King of the Hill. It's hilarious, both in terms of the plot and the one-liners. So, like so many other great comics, it's sui generis. ... Daly's plots move at a breezy pace, but his art is sharply detailed, and drawn expertly from a variety of perspective points. The palette is vibrant and fun. ...[T]his is some seriously funny shit." – Byron Kerman, PLAYBACK:stl

• Review: "Rickheit’s artwork [in The Squirrel Machine] is stunning, from the beautifully disgusting instruments to the ornate architecture. It’s like steampunk crossed with the animal-appropriating art of Damien Hirst or Ebony Andrews, with complicated machines adorned with the heads and torsos of unfortunate livestock." – Garrett Martin, The Boston Herald

• Review: "It's like a great adaptation of an old 1990s straight-to-video erotic thriller made unpredictable with a touch of magical realism. Hernandez's strength remains his depictions of women; like Love and Rockets, the female leads of The Troublemakers are both strong and believable, no matter how atypical their situations and dimensions may seem. – Garrett Martin, The Boston Herald (same link as above)

• Review...?: "Prison Pit is un-reviewable; it is what it is... [Johnny] Ryan is one crazy motherfucker, man — and I mean that in the nicest possible way." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Plug: Cartoonist Mike Lynch ogles the photos of Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons and shares a delightful Wilson anecdote

• Interview: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan talks to Greg Sadowski, editor of Supermen! and our upcoming series of Golden Age reprints: "Any comic I want to read I can borrow from one of the collectors I know. I don’t need to own them. As you get older, you realize the folly of having too many possessions."

• Interview: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning author and well-known Love and Rockets fan Junot Díaz about his favorite comics; of course, L&R comes up

• Things to buy: The new Robert Pollard DVD, The Devil Went Home and Puked (a compilation of Guided by Voices and Pollard solo footage) is now available for pre-order

• Things to see: Tim Lane's "complete classic five Temptations" cut-outs

• Things to see: Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty by Kevin Huizenga

Now available for preview and pre-order following its best-selling debut at APE: Sublife Vol. 2 by John Pham. Continuing the serials "221 Sycamore St." and "Deep Space" from the previous issue, this new installment of the one-man anthology also includes the post-apocalyptic action-adventure tale "The Kid" and a few other one-off short strips. Download an exclusive PDF excerpt of the first 5 pages of "The Kid" right here. This book is scheduled to be in stock and ready to ship sometime later this month and in stores approximately 4 weeks after that (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).

Online Commentary & Diversions, now with more Tonya Harding than ever:

• Review: "Occasionally, there are works of art or literature that defy simple classification. The brain breaks upon them like waves and they give up different secrets with each tide but never all the secrets and never all at once. These creations challenge as much as they entertain and ask for obsession as toll on the road to understanding. The Squirrel Machine by Hans Rickheit is just such an enigma. ... Surreal, gorgeous, and both satisfying and confounding, The Squirrel Machine is a hypnotic, occasionally repulsive, always entertaining, and wildly creative graphic novel. It does not invite rereading so much as demands it, and each encounter reveals new and different details and interpretations. This book is a wonderful mystery, a basket of questions, a wealth of enigmas, and it looks utterly arresting every step of the way." – Christian Zabriskie, Graphic Novel Reporter

• Opinion: At Comics Comics, Dash Shaw has an interesting proposal for colleges that teach comics: "Instead of hiring teachers based on their achievements (and many of the current teachers are geniuses, no doubt about it), hire people who previously worked for many years in a now-defunct house style. Someone who drew Archie for years and is now selling their originals at Comic Con? Hire them."

• Interview: ParentDish's Brett Singer talks to Jill Schulz about her famous dad and the Peanuts legacy (via Robot 6)

• Panel: Robot 6 posts a transcript and MP3 of the Critics Roundtable panel from this year's SPX, featuring our own Gary Groth and several other names who will be very familiar to Daily OCD readers

• Plug: The folks at Meltdown Comics in LA are almost as excited for Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit Book 2 as we are

• Plug: The folks at Tiny Showcase take note of the release of Al Columbia's Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days

• Things to see: Dame Darcy illustrates Nancy Kerrigan & Tonya Harding and teaches spells & potions for Vice — this and more in the latest Dame Darcy blog update

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1
Edited by Blake Bell

Before the Amazing Spider-Man, before the mysterious Dr. Strange, before the black-and-white world of the Ayn Rand-inspired Mr. A, the legendary comic book artist Steve Ditko was conjuring all manners of horrors at his drawing table. In his first two years in the industry (1953 and 1954), Ditko drew tales of macabre suspense that were not yet hobbled by the imminent Comics Code Authority (adopted in Oct. 1954). These stories featured graphic bloodshed, dismemberment and blood-curdling acid baths as the ugly end to the lives of the dark and twisted inhabitants of Steve Ditko’s imagination.

Following up on Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, Blake Bell’s 2008 best-selling critical retrospective of Ditko’s career, Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1 features, for the first time, spectacular full-color reprints of every story from those first two years of his career. Beginning with Ditko’s very first story to Ditko’s short stint in the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby studio, to Ditko’s eventual encampment at the Charlton Comics operation in 1954, readers will see the initial works of an artist already at a level of craftsmanship that exceeded most of his peers. The book also features editor Bell’s insightful introduction, providing historical background and speaking to Ditko's influence and his unique craft.

Download an EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF excerpt (5.9 MB) containing two terrifying tales!

240-page full-color 7.25" x 10" hardcover • $39.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-289-0
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days
By Al Columbia

This gorgeous grimoire is part alchemy, part art book, part storybook, part comic book, and part conceptual art from the pen of Al Columbia, a longtime fan favorite contributor to comics anthologies like Zero Zero, Blab!, and more recently, Mome. Collecting over a decade’s worth of ‘artifacts,’ excavations, comic strips, animation stills, storybook covers, and much more, this broken jigsaw puzzle of a book tells the story of Pim & Francie, a pair of childlike, male and female imps whose irresponsible antics get them into horrific, fantastic trouble. Their loosely defined relationship only contributes to the existential fear that lingers underneath the various perils they are subjected to. Columbia’s brilliant, fairytale-like backdrops hint at further layers of reality lurking under every gingerbread house or behind every sunny afternoon. Never have such colorful, imaginative vistas instilled such an atmosphere of dread, and with such a wicked sense of humor.

This is a comprehensive collection of Columbia’s Pim & Francie work, including paintings, comics, character designs, and much more, all woven into something greater than the sum of its parts, with Pim & Francie careening from danger to danger, threaded together through text and notes by the artist.

This is the first book collection by Columbia, a well-regarded talent amongst longtime fans of the alternative comic book scene, and one who will thrill an entirely new audience with the singular, inspired, fully-realized fantasies within Pim & Francie.

"The comics definition of gestalt, Pim & Francie may appear to be a book of random jottings, but don't let that fool you. Treat this barbed landmine like a book and you will be richly rewarded. Treat it like a sketchbook and end up with your hands lopped off and your mind empty. You have been warned." – Paul Karasik

Download an EXCLUSIVE 24-page PDF excerpt (10.7 MB).

240-page full-color 8.25" x 8.25" hardcover • $28.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-304-0
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

(NOTE: The special limited Collectors Edition of this book, which will include an original sketch by Al Columbia, is still available for pre-order. Al will sign copies of the book on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2009 at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle: more info here.)

Ken Meyer Jr. at ComicAttack.net, as part of his "Ink Stains" series looking back at fanzines from the '60s-'80s (previously: Gary Groth's Fantastic Fanzine), takes a look at the vintage sci fi/fantasy fanzine No Sex. Among the contributors he talks to is Jaime Hernandez, and he offers a free download of issue 14 from 1980, which contains a 4-page story by Gilbert Hernandez back when he used to sign his work "'Bert."

Your Online Commentary & Diversions-style goodies for today:

• Review: "...[F]or fans of off-beat crime..., I give you Jacques Tardi’s no-shit brilliant adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s West Coast Blues. ... [W]hat starts out as something straight out of a Hitchcock classic like North by Northwest soon escalates into something more savage, more profound, and utterly wonderful... It succeeds brilliantly in good old-fashioned crime thrills, for sure. The violence is brutal, the story exciting and surprising, and the characters are brilliantly rendered. But then there’s that extra little layer, those subtle themes, those strange details, the lyrical narration passages — let’s just stop and cut to the fucking chase: you should just pick this shit up and be floored. This is about as good as comics get, dear readers." – BSCreview

• Review: "The rape of the innocent. The callousness of the machine. The girth of the profiteers. The threat of the bomb. The hollowness of the victories. [Craig] Yoe has collected more than 220 of those anti-war cartoons in [The Great Anti-War Cartoons,] a book of indelible images that remind us those confrontations aren't what they used to be." – Steve Duin, The Oregonian  

• Review: At Comics Comics, Tim Hodler posts scans of Eddie Campbell's review of A.B. Frost's Stuff and Nonsense from The Comics Journal #260

• Plug: "[Zak] Sally's one of those artists who can convey a sense of dread or horror out of seeming thin air, and he's really been on the periphery for far too long now. Hopefully [Like a Dog] will thrust him into the limelight." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Interview: At Marvel.com, Sean T. Collins talks to Paul Hornschemeier about his Strange Tales contribution: "I think this story is far more cerebral than the typical mainstream comics, for better or worse. But it will be brightly colored, so hopefully that will get everyone though the awful philosophical ranting I'm about to unleash. Get ready for more shots from my boredom gun." (Paul offers a couple of corrections at his blog)

• Interview: Lauren McKinley of [^]LAND talks to Fantagraphics art director Jacob Covey: "I'd say my style is heavily influenced by where I first learned how to design — making photocopied black and white flyers for rock shows. I feel like that, far more than anything else, taught me most of what I've learned about how to make type and image work."

• Analysis: More commentary on the future of The Comics Journal, this time from CBR's Augie De Blieck Jr.

• Things to see: Ellen Forney tackles the "pictureless comics" challenge with her usual aplomb

• Things to see: Leon Beyond and the temples of doom, by Kevin Huizenga

• Things to see: Amazing Peanuts shelf porn at Robot 6 — but no Complete Peanuts to be seen??

Paul Karasik brings The Fletcher Hanks Experience to Comix Revolution tomorrow at 6 PM!

If you like Noah Van Sciver's work in Mome and his hilarious cartoon interviews in The Comics Journal you should know that the 5th issue of his self-published comics series Blammo is out now!