The best looping GIF of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: Publishers Weekly gives a Starred Review to Messages in a Bottle by B. Krigstein. "Krigstein’s stories are sometimes epic and sprawling, sometimes compressed and confined…His mastery of chiaroscuro, and his dramatic composition and layout, applied across a very wide range of subject matter, are what make this gorgeous collection so essential."

• Review: The AV Club also shows extreme love for the comics of B. Krigstein in his new collection Messages in a Bottle. Noel Murray writes, "Krigstein treated each assignment as a chance to put theory into practice, and even among EC’s formidable roster of stylists, Krigstein stands out as one for whom the words around the pictures almost don’t matter, because the art’s so mesmerizing that it’s hard to pay attention to anything else…"

 

The wait is finally over! Fantagraphics and comiXology are bringing you JASON comics starting with his 2008 Eisner Award-winner I Killed Adolf Hitler. A hitman is hired to travel back in time to kill Hitler in 1939… but things go very wrong. Hitler escapes to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past. This surprising thriller unfolds with Jason's wickedly dry humor.

 For 50 pages, this $9.99 new classic is rendered in Jason's crisp deadpan neo-clear-line style, one again augmented by lovely understated coloring.

"...I'm reading Jason's I Killed Adolf Hitler, and I'm doing this thing that I do whenever I read new stuff from Jason which is just freaking out because he's so good at what he does." – Comic Book Resources

 

James Romberger, artist of 7 Miles a Second, will be giving a slide show presentation tonight TONIGHT at the NY Comics and Picture-story Symposium on his collaboration with David Wojnarowicz and Marguerite Van Cook in addition to his new book Post York, out from Uncivilized Books. 7pm, 7 Miles a Second pretty easy to remember. Music accompaniment by Crosby. The thirty-fourth meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Monday, February 25, 2013 at 7:00 pm at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street in The Bark Room (off lobby). See you there!

The half-day of school in Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: Nick Gazin of VICE reads God and Science by Jaime Hernandez. "I think it's cool that Jaime will make a comic with no sci-fi or fantasy elements for decades and suddenly remind us that the world his comic is set in is capable of housing superheroes. I own all of Jaime's stuff."

• Plug: Bob Temuka tries to make you break down into tears at your desk but DAMMIT you didn't let him, didja? Tearoom of Despair lives up to its name by remembering the 'Death of Speedy' story available in The Girl From H.O.P.P.E.R.S. by Jaime Hernandez.

• Plug: Speaking of Jaime, that man is a special guest at new comic show Autoptic August 18th, 2013 in Minneapolis, MN.

• Plug: Opening March 8th is a must-see show of Harvey Kurtzman artwork at the Society of Illustrators in New York. The preview is on Boing Boing and Mark Frauenfelder included the cover page from the story Corpse on the Imjin! (as the title of our current Kurtzman EC collection). "Kurtzman's thoughtful, more realistic and human depictions of war were in stark contrast with the competing gung-ho war comics of the day that glorified war."

The best cover band made of dogs of Online Commentaries & Diversions: 

• Review: Unshelved reads Delphine by Richard Sala. Shivering with delicious fear, Gene Ambaum says "I’m a huge fan of Sala’s graphic novels, like Cat Burglar Black. And the dust jacket-less cover, with its graphics and the inset color image of a girl walking through a dark forest, looked exquisite." 

• Review: Rob Clough of High-Low looks at Beta Testing the Apocalypse by Tom Kaczynski. "His stories address aspects of modern civilization and the ways in which they break down.…Kaczynski really has his finger on the collective neuroses of the new millennium.  A recurring theme in this book is how Kaczynski taps into how various of our senses have been warped through modern living."

• Review: Rob Clough runs a review from 2007 on his site, High-Low, on Peanuts 1967-68 and 1969-70 by Charles Schulz. "In terms of the visuals, Schulz is years into his mature style. He's exactly what I mean when I talk about an artist needing to find the ideal style with which to express themselves with clarity. For Schulz, though his line is spare, it's full of life and liveliness."

Spain Rodriguez is on the list of finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize award in Graphic Novel. A winner will be chosen this April at a public ceremony at the University of Southern California's Bovard Auditorium. Spain's book Cruisin' with the Hound is listed along with works by Alison Bechdel, Leela Corman, Chris Ware and Sammy Harkham.

The press release has more information: "The event is the prelude to the 18^th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the largest public literary festival in the nation, to be held on USC’s campus on April 20^th and 21^st." Fingers crossed.

The newest office of Online Commentaries & Diversions: 

• Review: Glen Weldon from NPR Books pontificates on the wondrous LGBT-centric graphic novels and reviewed Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas "…whenever the emotions roiling just under her narrative's surface threaten to overtake her characters, Hagio's otherwise exacting and detailed art goes expressively feathery at the edges, like a ghost vanishing softly into the ether."

• Review: Fantasy Book Review reviews The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. "This is not an uplifting tale until at the end, but it is a very well drawn period manga that gives glimpses of what boys that age would have felt being in such an enclosed place. There is a sense of Oscar Wilde about the whole school, but that depends on your impression of the piece," writes Sandra Scholes.

• Review: Glen Weldon from NPR Books pontificates on the wondrous LGBT-centric graphic novels and reviewed Wandering Son Vol. 1 by Shimura Takako. "Takako presents their stories with admirable sensitivity and restraint.…"

• Review: Glen Weldon from NPR Books pontificates on the wondrous LGBT-centric graphic novels and reviewed No Straight Lines edited by Justin Hall. "From Stonewall and the AIDS crisis to the terrifying specter of domesticity, this clear-eyed, unsentimental collection demonstrates the extent to which, for LGBT people, the personal and the political have always bled together."

• Review: Comics Bulletin looks at The Cartoon Utopia by Ron Regé Jr. "With this book, Ron Regé has emerged as comics' answer to Walt Whitman.…Thankfully, Regé's overarching concept -- that a vivid and transcendent comic book experience is within our grasp, if we're willing -- is not a hard one to understand at all." says R.J. Ryan. 

• Review: Grovel and Andy Shaw look at The Cavalier Mr. Thompson by Rich Tommaso. "The story is wonderfully told. It has the feel of a classic movie, something from a bygone era…complete with the usual cast of chancers, crooks and have-a-go heroes.…It’s a thoroughly enjoyable book, with a stunning backdrop and a deeply believable and interesting cast."

• Plug: Alan Wood asks R. Crumb about Bill Griffith. Crumb stated, "He's about the only guy in America who's doing a readable, interesting daily comic strip for daily newspapers. He' s the only one left, as far as I know. I don't know of any others."

• Review: Dutch magazine Knack Focus recently ran a review of George Herriman 's work. Kim Thompson read it, translated it in his synapse-heavy polyglottal mind and said this: "Here's a nice five-star review (in Dutch) of the gorgeous new French edition of KRAZY KAT, created from the Fantagraphics edition. The article is mostly a pocket summary of KRAZY, although it does point out that Herriman's unique approach to language have made the strip virtually untranslatable (forcing European readers to fall back on the English language versions)... until, at least for francophones, now."

Urban Dictionary, CNN and others may have you believe that the Harlem Shake starts out with a masked person dancing while everyone goes about their business but at Fantagraphics, we believe it starts with a beagle. Charles Schulz, cartoonist and possible inventor of the world's first Harlem Shake. Looking for more action? Then check out our shelves and shelves of Peanuts comics. 

Digital Release Wednesday brings you a hot title that is finally seeing the light of day with proper coloring. Fantagraphics and comiXology bring you 7 Miles a Second by David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger, and Marguerite Van Cook, now a NY Times Best Seller in hardcover.

7 Miles a Second is the story of legendary artist David Wojnarowicz, written during the last years before his AIDS-related death in 1992. Artists Romberger and Van Cook unsentimentally depict Wojnarowicz's childhood of hustling on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood living with AIDS, and his anger at the indifference of government and health agencies. A primal scream of a graphic novel, 7 Miles a Second blends the stark reality of Lower East Side street life with a psychedelic delirium that artfully conveys Wojnarowicz's sense of rage, urgency, mortality and a refusal to be silent.

"The author’s prose is poetic, arriving with a light touch while delivering a heavy, dark, and understandably angry message." – Publishers Weekly

  "Part of the power of Wojnarowicz’s work is that he dealt with such concepts accessibly; he didn’t have time to waste. It was the source of his restless imagination, his willingness to experiment with unexpected forms." – David L. Ulin, LA Times

"Romberger painfully captures the frailty of forms and tenderness of touch, but equally the delirium of David’s mad fucking visions and dreams. Marguerite Van Cook’s colours are virtually toxic…This is not a beautiful book; it’s an ugly book, a brilliant book, a Last Will & Testament which I hope you will hear." – Stephen L. Holland, Page 45

Fantagraphics and comiXology have heard your desperate pleas for more digital Love and Rockets, we know you have precious bookshelf space and move every year. In the fifth Love and Rockets book from Jaime Hernandez's Locas series, Esperanza features mores stories to thrill you. 

Picking up where Book 4 Penny Century collection left off: An older and wiser Maggie faces down her demons while Ray tussles with the volatile bombshell Vivian. Taking its title from Hopey Glass's birth name, Esperanza follows the somewhat settled-down ex-punkette in her new life as a schoolteacher's assistant — which doesn't mean that her romantic travails have gotten any simpler.

Plus, Jaime on baseball comics. Not sure there's much else to tell you here. $14.99. Go get it!

 "…if there’s one thing Jaime’s Locas stories in general, and this volume in particular, tell us, it’s that sometimes you have to be a grown-up for a long time before you grow up. It’s worth the work, and the wait." – Sean T. Collins, The Comics Journal

"This indie comics mainstay has been going for nearly 30 years, making Love and Rockets as intimidating to some new readers as even the densest superhero mythologies. Luckily, Fantagraphics has made the Los Bros Hernandez saga about a massive cast of startlingly lifelike characters digestible in the form of affordable reprint volumes published in chronological order." –Andy Khouri, Comics Alliance