Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "I enjoyed Tardi’s art, which made me feel as though I was visiting 1911 Paris. [...] The stories are dense and packed with outrageous events, providing a sense of adventure. The recaps, as characters explain what’s going on to each other, were both a help... and a satire, reinforcing just how much Tardi is playing with the conventions of the genre and layering event upon event, a kitchen-sink approach to plotting that keeps the reader interested in a world that seems so sedate but where anything can happen. [... The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec Vol. 1] is fun, but with the knowing remove of self-awareness and satire." – Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading

• Review: "Some of the conversations are amusing and the awkward silences of real life relationships are nicely portrayed by silent panels and the characters body language. The eight panel grids are the same on every page but that's not a bad thing. [Werewolves of Montpellier] is not the kind of tale that calls for spectacular graphics." – Eamonn Murphy, SF Crowsnest

• Review: "Set to Sea by Drew Weing... is about 150 pages long, but only has one illustration per page. It is always a good illustration, and this story of a would-be writer who’s shanghaied into being a pirate is great fun. Weing’s art is cartoony, but that helps lessen the violence of ship to ship battles with boarding parties hacking at each other with cutlasses. Weing is a young cartoonist to watch." – Mike Rhode, Washington City Paper

• Review: "...[T]he most recent installment in the annual [Love and Rockets] series features a couple of moments that are as technically brilliant and as profoundly moving as anything the series has seen in the past. It’s not easy to get to that level of emotion without collapsing under the weight of your own portentousness, but the Hernandez brothers have managed it." – Bob Temuka, The Tearoom of Despair [Spoiler warning!]

• Review: "As soon as I finished reading the new Love and Rockets, I could only think about how much I want to read further. Definitely it will be some time before the next issue and possibly when it is released I'll admit that it is worth waiting every day, but fortunately for the moment I can always go back to previous work by the brothers Hernandez, and read their latest project again and again." – Aristedes Kotsis, Comicdom (translated from Greek)

• Review: "I know I just got finished explaining that biology is destiny in the Palomar stories. But what struck me upon rereading the material collected in this volume, dominated by the titular story of a serial killer’s stay in the town, is the power of ideas. Not emotional or sexual drives, even, like the web of lust and unrequited love surround Luba’s mother Maria in the suite of stories that forms the second half of the collection, but actual honest-to-god ideas. [...] If Heartbreak Soup showed us Gilbert the literary comics stylist, Human Diastrophism shows us Gilbert the mindfucker — the Gilbert who’s still with us today." – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly (a continuation of the "Love and Rocktober" series)

• Interview (audio): Guest co-host Dan Zettwoch gets in on the Carol Tyler interview action in the new episode of The Comix Claptrap podcast — two of my faves together!

• Commentary: "'Frank in the Ruse Garden,' like all the Frank stories, like most of Jim Woodring’s work, is one hundred percent unadulterated Uncanny. Like Jim Woodring saw fever dreams we’d forgotten ages ago, and put them down on paper to remind us. [...] The Unifactor is an animistic world of spirits and strange forces. Time and again, Frank comes in contact with numinous wonders, and fail to rise to the occasion. Frank comes upon a field of floating souls, and grabs one to use as a flying horse. Frank dives into a well ringed with eyes, and emerges mutated and warped. Frank wanders into the House of the Dead wearing a party hat, and it’s, like, awkward." – Wesley Osam, Super Doomed Planet

• Plug: "How could it be Halloween without some horror comics? I’ve been enjoying Four Color Fear, ed. Greg Sadowski, an anthology of ‘50s horror comics from publishers other than EC. I’m only a couple of stories in and, while none have actually scared me, the oversized, full-color book looks to be a wonderful primer on horror-comics history." – guest columnist Sam Costello, Robot 6

Oh nuts, I'm about to start today's Online Commentary & Diversions and noticed I never published yesterday's in my APE prep frenzy. Here it is:

• Review: "Rip M.D. is near perfect. ...[T]he art is fantastic; with original and distinct designs that border realistic and cartoony, with the best qualities of both carrying a jovial wit, which never balking on making the subject matter truly scary. And the story by Mitch Schauer is told in a clear and concise manner, taking on a sort of fairy tale tone in the beginning that sort of fades by the end. The book on the whole is kid-like in tone, but told with sophistication that one used to see in old Loony Tunes." – Mark L. Miller, Ain't It Cool News

• Review: "Rip M.D. is very sweet all-ages graphic novel... For those... looking for something to share with the family, Rip is an excellent choice. The writer, Mitch Schauer, is clearly a fan of classic monsters and has really had some fun with these characters. The real gem in Rip M.D. is the artwork. Beautiful, beautiful panels that you may want to tear out of the book and put up on your walls. [...] And the colors in this book are just stunning. This is a book that warrants some extra time to just enjoy each page. [...] Ultimately, this is a book that anyone can read and enjoy that would also make an excellent gift to a young reader as a Halloween treat. Score: ★★★★★" – Stephanie Shamblin G, Comic Monsters

• Review: "Most of [The Best American Comics Criticism] is enjoyable and smart, with pieces suitable for the relative comics neophyte, graphic novel enthusiast or fan of old strips from the heyday of newspapers." – Christopher Allen, Trouble With Comics

• Interview: Squee! talks to Carol Tyler about You'll Never Know in an interview which will run in edited form in the new issue of Ghettoblaster Magazine: "Hardest thing I've ever taken on. So much to juggle: the storyline, the art. The mechanics of making a comic page/book. Oy! I've been at this for four years and I'm still not done! I love it, though. I've had to wrap my life around getting pages done. [...] It's an epic struggle, although worth it a thousand times over."

• Interview (audio): Inkstuds host Robin McConnell chatted with fellow Canadian Dave Cooper while Dave was in Vancouver on his West Coast book tour

• Interview (audio): Guest host Lark Pien talks to Megan Kelso on the new episode of The Comix Claptrap podcast; also, Josh Frankel talks about Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 (hope he's nice; we haven't had time to listen yet)

• Coming Attractions: MTV Geek's David Paggi previews Jason's Isle of 100,000 Graves, coming next Spring

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Emotionally uncompromising and graphically challenging, You’ll Never Know v.2: Collateral Damage stands out as one of the best comics of the year. Tyler reaches deep into herself, showing the unending dominoes of influence that compose a family. Do yourself a favor and check it out." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• Review: "But as powerful as this strain of valorization has been, there have been powerful statements of dissent along the way. The Americanization of Emily, for example, or Catch-22. Lucky in Love: Book 1 (by George Cheiffet, with art by Stephen DeStefano) follows their path, though it takes a much more personal, less grandiose tone than those two examples. It’s drawn in a style reminiscent of Disney WWII propaganda cartoons, though DeStefano arranges the backgrounds and perspectives with far greater sophistication." – Joshua Malbin

• Review: "Ryan takes puerile humor to unimagined heights (or depths)... Prison Pit Book Two isn't as much about punchlines and shock tactics. Here, the humor comes via ridiculously long and surreal battles between intergalactic monsters (think bizarre mutations and mass bloodshed). It's sort of a spoof on sci-fi comics, He-Man cartoons, and the over the top male bravado of WWE Wrestling...Prison Pit contains Ryan's signature WTF flourishes, like ass licking creatures, thorny alien vaginas, ghetto slang and Nazi insignia emblazoned 'death hösen' trousers. See you on the playground." – Wilfred Brandt, TwoThousand

• Review: "But the way you're just dropped into Maggie & Hopey, Already In Progress, is pretty much why I continue to recommend this volume [Maggie the Mechanic], rather than its relatively sci-fi-free successors, as the place to start if you're interested in Jaime's work. I understand why that doesn't work for everyone — and it's true, the earliest comics are relatively talky and old-fashioned-looking as befits their influences. But if you start late in the game, you're not just missing dinosaurs and rocketships and robots and superheroes and such — you're missing what really feels like a couple years in the life. Even by page one, we've already missed so much!" – Sean T. Collins, Attentiondeficitdisorderly

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater talked to Drew Weing at SPX. Part 1 gets into the creation of Set to Sea: "The intention was to draw a panel every day and post it. It was supposed to be fun, quick side project, 'it’s the end of the day. I just draw this one, quick, small panel.' And every day it got more and more detailed and complex. By panel two it was too complex to knock off in an hour or two."

• Plug: "Four-Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s... [is a] collection of pre-Code, non-EC horror comics that are every bit as good as the famed EC comics themselves. Here in all its shocking, creepy and gory glory you can see work from Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, Wally Wood, and more! This one is a must!" – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

• Coming Attractions: Bleeding Cool 's Rich Johnston continues noticing our 2011 Eurocomics reprints, now reporting on our June edition of R. Macherot's Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus: "Am I the only one that’s seeing a bit of a trend? The trade dress appears similar… is Fantagraphics on a major spreee to translate and publish as many quality French comics as they can? [Yes. – Ed.] In a new imprint or line perhaps? [I'm not sure whether we're considering this a "line" or not, but it's not an imprint. – Ed.]"

Online Commentary & Diversions, back from a short vacation:

• Review: "In the first volume of Tyler's planned trilogy of graphic memoirs [You'll Never Know], she dug into the eruptive, violent memories of her father's WWII experiences while simultaneously dealing with a husband who decided to go find himself and leave her with a daughter to raise. This second volume is no less rich and overwhelming. [...] While the language of Chicago-raised and Cincinnati-based Tyler has a winningly self-deprecating Midwestern spareness to it, her art is a lavishly prepared kaleidoscope of watercolors and finely etched drawings, all composed to look like the greatest family photo album of all time. The story's honest self-revelations and humane evocations of family dramas are tremendously moving." – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

• Review: "Friedman's hyper-realistic pen-and-ink and water-color portraits of show business and political luminaries have made their way into the likes of Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone over the years, and a stunning new collection has just been published by Fantagraphics Books — Too Soon?: Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010. [...] To say that Friedman's drawings are unsentimental or unsparing is just to scratch the surface. Known for depicting every last liver spot, burst capillary and wrinkle, his work is truly a Warts and All procedure. [...] You might say the super-realistic portraits are loving ones, but only in the sense that you love your own family members, whose soft spots and selfishness one is forced to forgive. Drew Friedman's heart is as big as his capacious eye for the telling detail. Seek him out or forever hold your peace." – David Weiss, Life Goes Strong

• Review: "...Four Color Fear offers some of the finest pre-code comic book horror tales ever produced. Extensively researched, complete with story notes, editor Sadowski compiled a superior collection of non-EC tales, many of which rarely reprinted in color. A 30-page cover art section and a fascinating article by historian John Benson, who also supplied the book's intro, about the little remembered, but prolific Ruth Roche, round out this sensational historical tour of the Golden Age of Horror Comics. Highly recommended!" – Rick Klaw, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica

• Review: "The wait [for Love and Rockets: New Stories #3] has been long, no doubt, but I dare say that it was not only worthwhile, but it has proved an inspiration to continue to have faith in mankind, because with artists like these, it is worth living. For the third annual issue..., Beto gets really wild and Xaime creates a stunning tapestry of memories and narrative levels." – Mauricio Matamoros, Iconoctlán (translated from Spanish)

• Interview: As part of his ongoing "Love and Rocktoberfest," Sean T. Collins posts his 2007 Wizard interview with Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez at Attentiondeficitdisorderly: "I liked drawing rockets and robots, as well as girls. [Laughs] It really was no big game plan. It was almost like, 'Okay, I'll give you rockets and robots, but I'll show you how it's done. I'm gonna do it, and this is how it's supposed to be done!' I went in with that kind of attitude." (Jaime)

• Review: "Like much of Hernandez’s work, there’s light amongst all this darkness, particularly later in this section of Fritz’s story. But [High Soft Lisp] remains a bleak book, with Fritz’s own cheerful optimism one of the few beacons of hope amongst a cast of incidental characters whose main purpose seems only to exploit her. Hernandez rarely performs below his best and this is no exception..." – Andy Shaw, Grovel

• Review: "Vast swaths of Wally Gropius appear — at least to my eye — to be visual homages to images that Hensley particularly loves. (The alternative is that he lays his panels out in his static, staccato rhythm just for that feeling, which is close to the same impulse.) It's all very loud and manic and bright and bizarre, veering towards and away from coherence often within the same panel. [...] The end result has that go-go energy and restless heat of the authentic products of the era Hensley sets his story in..." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Review: "...[T]his Complete Peanuts series might be the ultimate thing for Peanuts fans! [...] I think the book [Vol. 14] is just wonderful, and I give it and all of the volumes my highest recommendation!" – Catgirl Critics' Media Mewsings

• Interview: Illustration Friday talks to Jim Woodring: "Names and labels don’t matter much. Besides, there are things that cannot be said in words. So if you say them in pictures, are they not things being said? If I draw a hill that looks like a woman, it works differently that if i write 'there’s a hill that looks like a woman.' Also there are clues that one doesn’t want discovered too quickly, or not at all. Because one wants the emanations to proceed from an unknown source."

• Plug: "Nate Neal's first graphic novel [The Sanctuary] is dumbfoundingly ambitious: it takes as its subject nothing less than the invention of comics, in the sense of narrative-in-pictures, meaning that its cast is a bunch of cave-people. Cave-people who speak a cave-person language that Neal has invented himself (he offers the translation of a few key words on its jacket copy, but that's it). The working title of the book was a drawing of a bison. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

• Coming Attractions: Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston did a little Amazon digging and noticed that we're publishing Gil Jourdan by Maurice Tillieux and Jacques Tardi’s Le Démon Des Glaces (The Arctic Marauder) next year

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review/Roundtable: TIME/Techland's "Comic Book Club" roundtable of critics (Douglas Wolk, Graeme McMillan, Evan Narcisse and Mike Williams) discusses You'll Never Know Book 2: Collateral Damage by C. Tyler. Wolk leads off: "The first volume of You'll Never Know, Carol Tyler's projected three-volume series about her father's experiences in World War II — and all the family history connected to it — was my favorite graphic novel of last year. The new volume, Collateral Damage, is even stronger in a lot of ways."

• Photo of the Week: That's a funny one of Stuart Immonen at Robot 6

• Breaking News/Quote of the Week: "I think I was more opposed to the show moving to Los Angeles/Anaheim than I was in favor of it staying in SD or going anywhere else. I'm not even sure why I was opposed to it, because I love visiting L.A. But it would just feel like we let the terrorists win at that point." – our own Eric Reynolds, quoted at The Comics Reporter

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators are saying about our releases this week, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

Rip M.D.
by Mitch Schauer & Michael Vosburg et al.

88-page full-color 7.5" x 9.25" softcover • $12.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-369-9

"[Rip M.D.] seems to be a comic more geared to a juvenile public, but should be pretty cool because there are a lot of monsters, really violent werewolves, zombies, and best of all, vampires that do not sparkle!" – Submundo Mamão (translated from Portuguese)

"Rip M.D. is a creepy, fun-filled all-ages adventure saga... [Mitch] Schauer told ICv2 that the inspiration for Rip M.D. was all those horror and monster movies he saw as a child — movies that made him care more about the fate of the colorful monsters and fiends than the B movies' human characters who always seemed to triumph in the end. Rip M.D. is the logical emotional outgrowth of those accumulated cinematic disappointments, the story of a boy who is able to help the horror and monster movie characters that he loves the most." – ICv2

"A 'full-color, all-ages adventure' with an animated cartoon series in development, a promising bet for reluctant readers." – Martha Cornog, Library Journal

The Sanctuary
by Nate Neal

208-page black & white 8" x 10" softcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-388-0

"It’s probably insultingly reductive to refer to Nate Neal’s debut graphic novel as 'caveman comics,' but that’s generally the sort of two-word phrase that tends to get me excited to read something. The subject matter is indeed a 'Paleolithic cave-dwelling tribe,' but the way Neal handles the verbal aspects of a pre-linguistic, vocal communication seem to be a big part of the work as well." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

"Nate Neal's first graphic novel is dumbfoundingly ambitious: it takes as its subject nothing less than the invention of comics, in the sense of narrative-in-pictures, meaning that its cast is a bunch of cave-people. Cave-people who speak a cave-person language that Neal has invented himself (he offers the translation of a few key words on its jacket copy, but that's it). The working title of the book was a drawing of a bison. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

You'll Never Know, Book 2: Collateral Damage
by C. Tyler

104-page full-color 12" x 10.25" hardcover • $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-418-4

"Cartoonist C. Tyler continues her comics biography of her Greatest Generation father, wrapped in around a memoir of her own life at the time she was learning his story for herself. If it’s as good as the first book, I imagine it will be one of, if not the, best comics available this week." – J. Caleb Mozzocco, Newsarama

"Being the follow-up to one of the most widely appreciated comics of 2009, Carol Tyler’s expansive portrait of life rippling from the submerged stone of her father’s WWII experiences. I understand this volume will incorporate an expanded presentation of Tyler’s also-widely-appreciated 1994 short The Hannah Story directly into the larger work. [True. – Ed.]" – Joe McCulloch, Comics Comics

"The best book of the week: a way to have your heart torn out while your eyes feast. The second volume of C. Tyler's project about discovering what her father did in World War II expands its scope to other painful parts of her family dynamics, and incorporates Tyler's extraordinary 1995 short story 'The Hannah Story.' If I started going off about how much I love Tyler's artwork and design and storytelling, we'd be here all afternoon--there's really nobody else doing what she does in comics..." – Douglas Wolk, Comics Alliance

"Your book of the week. I still think this is something that will read 10X better in one volume as opposed to these three serialized books, but wanting to get a book out when its subjects can still read and enjoy it is of course an admirable thing. Plus I'm disenfranchised when it comes to that particular vote. The scary thing is, these books are already stupendous. This new Carol Tyler supposedly has within its pages one of the 100 best comics of the 20th Century, and I practically guarantee you it won't be out of place." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"I liked the first volume of Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know, the story of her father’s experiences in the war, but it left me wanting more, so I definitely want to read the second volume, Collateral Damage." – Brigid Alverson, Robot 6

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: Carol Tyler, one of the coolest people in the U.S.A., is officially acknowledged as "Cool Illustrator" on the "Cool Cincinnati" list by CityBeat, whose Jason Gargano says You'll Never Know is "an unforgettable search for truth about what happened to her father during the war, simply yet expressively drawn. In many ways the You’ll Never Know series is the project Tyler has been building to her whole career, which has included autobiographically informed cartoons for a number of publications... and a well-received 2005 book, Late Bloomer. Let’s hope she keeps blooming, keeps giving us unique, heartfelt stories that are rare in any form, let alone the graphic kind."

• Roundtable: At The Factual Opinion, Tucker Stone and Michel Fiffe have a long (and spoiler-filled) discussion about Love and Rockets: New Stories #3, predicated on their "shared belief... that the most recent issue of Love and Rockets contains the greatest work of Jaime Hernandez' already legendary career."

• Interview: Is there a better name for a website to run a Q&A with Johnny Ryan than Fecal Face? "M: If you weren't drawing/making comics for a living, what would you be doing? J.R.: I’d probably be in jail."

Here's a few photos from Carol Tyler's exhibit opening and book signing at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery last weekend. (See many more in our Flickr set.) Unfortunately your photographer was not able to capture moments like Carol boogie-ing to surf rock and Carol and Peter Bagge exchanging gang signs during a discussion about lettering. Just goes to show you: you have to be there!

A lively crowd, with Carol tucked away at far right.

Ellen Forney & friend, left, with Jim Woodring, right.

Detail of Carol's amazing original art — see the photo set for views of the entire exhibit.

Carol shows off her hand-appliquéd Army jacket liner as depicted in You'll Never Know, Book 2: Collateral Damage.

Carol, left, with Peter Bagge, right, and smilin' John Ohannesian of Georgetown Records, center. (This wasn't the gang-sign conversation.)

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

You'll Never Know, Book 2: Collateral Damage
by C. Tyler

104-page full-color 12" x 10.25" hardcover • $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-418-4

Ordering Info & Previews

This book is available with a signed bookplate as a FREE premium! The bookplate has been uniquely designed for this book, and each bookplate is printed on acid-free cardstock and hand-signed by the author. (Click here for more books available with signed bookplates.) Please select your preference above before adding the item to your shopping cart. Note: Signature plates are VERY limited in quantity and available only WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.

The first volume of You’ll Never Know showed Carol’s initial, sometimes difficult attempts at grappling with her father Chuck’s traumatic World War II experiences by bringing them to light. As Book 2 begins, she is startled to discover that Chuck’s decision to suddenly, after 60 years, open up to her on the subject has motivations that go far beyond his desire to reveal his past — putting even more pressure on an already explosive relationship. In any event, Carol finally begins to delve into, and re-tell, Chuck’s horrific wartime experiences in Italy (which are worse than even she had imagined).

But back in the present, the cycle of family dysfunction continues as Carol’s own daughter runs into her own trouble, leading Carol into further exploration of her family’s buried traumas and sorrows — with an expanded reprinting of the out-of-print “The Hannah Story,” Tyler’s superb chronicle of the short life and accidental death of her older sister, a heart-rending story (named one of the “100 Best Comics of the 20th Century” in a Comics Journal survey) that in turn sheds light on her parents’ subsequent lives and patterns of behavior. Everything is connected, and the past is never just the past...

Bonus Savings: Order You'll Never Know, Books 1 & 2 together and save 20% off the combined cover price!

The nominations for this year's Lulu Awards have been announced and Miss Lasko-Gross & Carol Tyler are both in the field of candidates for Lulu of the Year, "For the creator, book or other entity whose work best exemplifies Friends of Lulu’s mission statement." Congratulations to both! The online ballot is here.