• Review: The Chicago Tribune on Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes by Anders Nilsen: "The loneliness comes off the page in waves, trailed by dark humor... Nilsen's work may have a minimalist look, but he's exploring the biggest issues around. And you can't stop turning the pages."

• Review: Brix Picks' Book of the Week is The Chuckling Whatsit by Richard Sala, which they say "is one of those books that I revisit regularly because it's just so fun to read."

• Review: Bookopolis gives Unlovable Vol. 1 by Esther Pearl Watson 4.5 stars: "This book is so much fun - it kept me laughing for hours. Not only is the dialogue hilarious but the drawings themselves are really hysterical."

• Review: The Walrus, running down all of this year's Doug Wright Awards nominees, looks at Hall of Best Knowledge by Ray Fenwick: "...Fenwick’s skill with design renders the handwritten words adaptable and full of stubborn character, turning them into a cocky little world of their own."

• List: Cartoon Flophouse names "My Holy Trinity of Humor Comics," including E.C. Segar's Popeye ("brilliant... I love the rhythms of Segar's strips, the repetition from strip to strip, and the way Popeye evolved into a lead character") and Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper ("in his 'Powerhouse Pepper' strips, Wolverton demonstrated some of the best character designs in comics. And the whole rhyme-scheme dialogue is insane. There's a really good Fantagraphics book that collects all the Powerhouse strips" -- and it's half off, we might add)

• List: The Examiner's "essential comic book geek's guide to women and dating and sharing the love" shares the following advice: "If you've got a girlfriend or potential love interest, show her why comics are wonderful. Show her... Ghost World by Daniel Clowes, Black Hole by Charles Burns..."

• Preview: Dave's Comics looks at the recent flurry of Paul Hornschemeier material

• Preview: Holy Heroes on our solicitation for The Wolverton Bible: "Now this is exciting... as someone who's a fan of the weird, the religious, and the weird religious, [this book] is more than welcome news."

• Reportage: Paul Karasik goes to Italy, hangs out with Paul Auster, writes a hilarious blog post about it

• Things to see: I think this might be an outtake (in rough form) from Steven Weissman's "Blue Jay"

• Review: Comics Waiting Room on Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti: "...[I]f the material printed Ho! had been created in, say, Soviet Russia, Ivan would be the biggest star in the gulag. As it is, he’s one of the most twisted and funny motherfuckers putting pen to paper right in the U.S. of A. And I’m damned proud he’s one of us... Brunetti’s latest work is as strong as ever, and maybe even sicker. He’s an amazing cartoonist, and I respect his work immensely, even when some of it makes me queasy… especially if it makes me laugh then feel queasy."

• Review: Make It So Marketing's Comics And Pop Culture Blog finds A Mess of Everything by Miss Lasko-Gross to be "an interesting read, and the art style that Miss Lasko-Gross uses is one that actually grabs me the more I read into the graphic novel... I look forward to the third volume being published..."

• Reviews: The "What Are You Reading?" column at Robot 6 includes Tom Bondurant on Gilbert Hernandez's Heartbreak Soup ("At first I was afraid that Beto was introducing so many characters I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them, but the deeper I go into the book the better he manages everyone. The writing reminds me of Will Eisner’s slice-of-life stuff from his later career..."), Tim O'Shea on The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970 ("The intro by Mo Willems is great insight into what appealed to many about the series..."), Chris Mautner on A Mess of Everything by Miss Lasko-Gross ("[It] shows a good deal of progression [from Escape from "Special"], both in terms of storytelling and artistry"), and Jeff Lester on The Comics Journal Library Vol. 6: The Writers ("for which a more accurate title might have been 'Gary Groth Browbeats Bewildered Comics Writers'")

• Preview: Urban Aesthete looks at the forthcoming Abstract Comics anthology

• Profile: The Stranger says some nice stuff about Jaime Hernandez, Stan Sakai and Paul Hornschemeier in advance of their visit here this past weekend

• Profile: The Seattle Weekly, previewing Jaime's visit to Seattle, nicely describes Love and Rockets: "It’s a mutable universe that skips between characters at older and younger stages of life, where buxom pro wrestling queens, spaceship mechanics, and touring hardcore bands buoyantly intersect. No one stays lost for long; no grievance goes unforgotten; and deep-fried jungle slugs forever remain a delicacy."

• Interview: Bookslut has a great Q&A with Jules Feiffer. I didn't know that Tarantino had cribbed some dialogue from Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch concludes their 3-part chat with Arnold Roth. Great anecdotes ahoy!

• Things to see: A semi-animated gag cartoon by Kurt Wolfgang

• Things to see: new sketchbook pages from Anders Nilsen. Also: Anders Nilsen exhibit in Chicago April 18-May 3 and new minicomic

• Review: For Robot 6's "What Are You Reading?" column, guest contributor Kevin Church says of Sam's Strip, "It was either going to be the biggest success in the world or end within two years. Since it’s all collected in one volume now, you can likely work out how it went down."

• Review: Las Vegas Weekly gives Sam's Strip 4 stars: "How on earth did Sam's Strip... fail to set the funny pages on fire back in 1961...? The answer -- provided through this complete collection of 500 strips -- is that the time just wasn't right. Well, it's certainly right now."

• Review: Thought Balloonist Charles W. Hatfield examines Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw: "Shaw is very good and getting better... With Bottomless Belly Button he has pulled off something remarkable: a 700-plus page book that doesn't feel like a stunt but rather is perfectly proportioned, intimate, and subtle, a privileged entryway into a private world that nonetheless feels universal in its emotive resonance and applicability... Bottomless Belly Button has depths. It evokes the power of memory and the phenomenal richness of ordinary experience with the sort of Proustian precision of observation and recall that alternative comics have been chasing since Spiegelman."

• Review: The title of The Washington Post's Express Night Out review of The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972 makes what is surely the first reference to Spin¨al Tap in a Peanuts review. From the review: "[These] volumes... are a spectacular tribute to Schulz's work... References to Bob Dylan's age aside (one strip mentions his 30th birthday — yikes!), Peanuts remains surprisingly fresh and timeless. Although Charles Schulz wrote these strips over 20 years ago, the ongoing popularity of the made-for-TV holiday specials... means that the Peanuts gang continue to remain relevant in popular culture. It would be a pity, however, to relegate Peanuts to special occasions only — Schulz's work should and can be enjoyed all year round."

• Review: Sacha Peet says "I finally read Unlovable by Esther Pearl Watson the other day. I love it. The drawings are great, and the life of Tammy Pierce is enthralling."

• Preview: Rick Klaw got Blazing Combat in his mailbag; we suspect he'll have a review up soon

• History: Carnal Nation continues their look at the history of the Tijuana Bibles

• Events: See original pages from Ben Catmull's Monster Parade at the Heroes and Villains art show at Rock Paper Scissors in Oakland, opening this Friday April 3rd, 6-9 pm (via Ben's blog)

• Things to see: The most recent batch of sketchbook drawings & comics from Anders Nilsen

This is a meaty one:

• Review: For The Savage Critics, Sean T. Collins says The Last Lonely Saturday by Jordan Crane is "pretty much the best love story in comics form I've ever come across... It's an intelligent, moving, beautiful, terrific little comic."

• Review: Rob Clough says that Beasts! Book 2 "mingles myths, warnings, fairy tales, correctives, and genuinely unexplained phenomena and allows its artists to run with them. The end result is a consistently beautiful, lovingly assembled book that forms a kind of metacommentary on the entire notion of the fantastic."

• Review: For the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the wonderfully-named Burl Burlingame reviews Man of Rock: A Biography of Joe Kubert by Bill Schelly

• Review: For Robot 6's "What Are You Reading?" column, Tucker Stone encounters Duplex Planet Illustrated #2

• Review: The SF Site's "Nexus Graphica" says R. Crumb & David Zane Mairowitz's Kafka is "a terrific guide to Kafka's life and work — Mairowitz deftly sums up Franz' family/Jewish/pre-Holocaust European experiences and influences, and Crumb's heavy inkings lend the exact tones of darkness to recreations of both Kafka's life — and work." (See sidebar)

• Blurb: Gear Live's "Comix 411" "vote[s] yes" on Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti

• List: Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter weighs in with his Best of 2008 lists. In the top 10 "Archival Editions" there's Where Demented Wented by Rory Hayes at #7, Popeye Vol. 3 at #6, The Complete Peanuts Vols. 9-10 at #3, Explainers by Jules Feiffer at #2, and Willie & Joe: The WWII Years by Bill Mauldin at #1; Most Outrageous: The Trials and Trespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester by Bob Levin is named "Best Book on the Subject of Comics"; the top 25 "Best Comics (First Run, First Translated, Definitively Collected) of 2008" includes Fuzz & Pluck: Splitsville by Ted Stearn at #19, Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw at #15, Sammy the Mouse #2 by Zak Sally at #12, and Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga at #4 

• Interview: Robot 6 talks to Anders Nilsen about his most recent book, Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes

• Interview: The final installment of The Daily Cross Hatch's interview with the great Al Jaffee finally gets around to Humbug

• Transcript: The Daily Cross Hatch presents our own Eric Reynolds's talk at MCAD at the opening of the MOMEntum exhibit

• Preview: The First Post presents a slideshow of images from Humbug, saying "the short-lived Humbug [was] an exquisite satirical work that, over its 11 issues, routinely equalled MAD in its displays of creative genius... providing a level of trenchant satire that was almost unheard of at the time."

• Preview: Notions & Potions excerpts a page from Ray Fenwick's Hall of Best Knowledge

• Preview: Bryan Munn, in "hyping" The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972, states "Now that two whole decades of Peanuts have been reprinted in the deluxe hardcover format published by Fantagraphics and designed by Seth, we can really get a sense of what a huge achievement this project is and will continue to be for a generation."

• Preview: SFScope covers our Tardi announcement

• Bookmark: Quotes on Comics gives you what's in the name, presented randomly for your diversion

• Things to see: Animated Gary Panter unaired commercial (via Comics Comics)

• Things to see: This month's Vice cartoons by Johnny Ryan

• Review: Bookforum says of the two volumes of Beasts!: "Covey’s brave band of 180 artists... put these mythological and folkloric beings on vivid display. The distinct and varied styles of the cartoonists, illustrators, and graphic artists give further evidence of each creature’s unique characteristics... The enthusiastically detailed evocations in these books give us all reason to believe."

• Review: Dear Stranger reads The End #1 by Anders Nilsen and declaims "It’s sad. In that way that things are only ever sad when they’re really honest, so it’s beautiful, but you feel a bit guilty for thinking so -- because under the beauty, it’s still sad, honestly so."

• Review: The Star Clipper Blog says "[Esther Pearl Watson's] Unlovable spares no degrading detail, but still remains an ironically loving tribute to the awkward protagonist... these monstrous depictions of early puberty could be found in just about anyone's high school yearbook... perhaps the perfect teenage girl experience."

• Preview: Publishers Weekly Comics Week covers our announcement of our new Jacques Tardi publishing project

• Profile: For Bookforum, Ben Schwartz examines the career of Harvey Kurtzman, with a look at Humbug, natch

• Review/profile: The Oregonian says that Most Outrageous by Bob Levin is "The most challenging and thought-provoking book I read last year... unforgettable... among the great essays on human frailty," and discusses how the commercial success of The Complete Peanuts enables us to publish more challenging work

• Review: Brick Weekly says of The Lagoon by Lilli Carré, "Carré’s cartooning is purely excellent, evolving nicely from her earlier work and pulling you into a world of vividly drawn characters and lush environments" (scroll past the video game review)

• Previews: Whateves looks at The Wolverton Bible

• Interviews: Robot 6 talks to our own Eric Reynolds about the current state of the indie-comics market (Diamond, economy, etc.)

• Things to see: A new batch of sketchbook drawings from Anders Nilsen

• Things to see: A fantastic splash page from Tim Lane's next book

Oops, I put yesterday's update together but forgot to click "publish." Here's a two-fer, then:

• Review: Rain Taxi says Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw is one of the best graphic novels of 2008

• Event: Chapman University in Orange, CA has an exhibit of original comic art by Tony Millionaire, Jeffrey Brown and Adrian Tomine currently showing through March 13

• News: On her blog, Ellen Forney celebrates the news that I Love Led Zeppelin is to be published in a Czech edition

• Things to see: New sketchbook drawings and comics by Anders Nilsen

• Things to see (and buy): Prints by John Hankiewicz

• Review: Anthem says Anders Nilsen's Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes "is definitely one of the more rewarding reading experiences of this very young year"

• Things to see: The Cold Heat Comics guys (Ben Jones & Frank Santoro) post a glimpse at the original art from their story in Mome Vol. 14

Just one today:

• Excerpt/things to see: On his blog Anders Nilsen posts a sequence from his new book Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes, along with a couple of other pieces

Buckle in: 

• Review: The Beat says "You should be reading Rocky"

• Profile: Shameless looks at the collaborative comics of Ellen Forney

• Analysis: Vibrational Match finds Jack Kirby parallels in Gilbert Hernandez's XXX comic Birdland

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch posts the second of their three-part chat with Lilli Carré

• Blurbs: At Robot 6, Chris Mautner and Richard Thompson (Cul de Sac) both declare that they're currently reading recent volumes of The Complete Peanuts

• Birthday: On the Jim Flora blog, Irwin Chusid commemorates the 95th anniversary of Flora's birth yesterday

• Birthday: Relatedly, The Comics Reporter notes Jules Feiffer's 80th birthday today

• Things to see: It appears that Michael Kupperman has a new blog under construction; the Internet might be about to get measurably funnier 

• Things to see: This slideshow of photos by Lou Siroy at FOTO8 is accompanied by an introductory essay by Alexander Theroux

• Things to see: More sketchbook pages (a.k.a. "Doodle Dump") from Tom Kaczynski

• Things to see: More Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu-themed desktop wallpaper from Ellen Forney

• Things to see: Rare vintage animation by Hank Ketcham (via The Daily Cartoonist)

• Things to see: A new book cover illustration by Anders Nilsen