Your daily dose of Online Commentary & Diversions:
• Profile: The Oklahoma Gazette dedicates a cover feature (pictured above) to native son Boody Rogers, talking to Yoe, Nadel and Spiegelman about his work. Of our collection of his comics they say "Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers reprints 13 of Boody Rogers' comic-book stories between 1948 and 1950. Although they have fallen into the public domain, publisher Fantagraphics has restored the color and images to its typical standards of quality ... not to mention standards of unapologetic weirdness."
• Review: "...Terr'ble Thompson is... playful fun... [Gene] Deitch’s upbeat mangling of the English language and silly twists will keep readers of many ages entertained." - Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama
• Things to see: Bookforum commissions illustrations from such notables as Paul Hornschemeier, Tony Millionaire, Dash Shaw, Chris Ware and others for their "Fiction Forward" feature (there's a bunch of fiction excerpts to read, too)
Due to the somewhat obsessive nature of my link gathering, I had the idea to start calling these posts "Daily OCD: Online Commentary & Diversions." What do you think, readers? Too cutesy-poo? Offensive to sufferers of real OCD?
• List: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon names "The Ten All-Time Best Long-Running Comics Series," with Love and Rockets Vol. I at #2 ("The best long-running and organic artistic achievement in serial comic book form... The Hernandez Brothers inspired and outworked a greatest generation of comics auteurs. Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez are each among that handful of artists who must be given serious consideration when talking about the best cartoonists working. In Love & Rockets each created fictional worlds for the ages and used them as a vehicle for enormous artistic development, lapping the majority of their peer group. One so inclined could argue with seriousness a top 25 of American graphic novels where 1/3 of the titles listed came from this series") and Acme Novelty Library at #8 ("...a mind-bending achievement... ACME punched right in the scrotum the notion that every issue of a single comic book series had to look like the others... Its primary value is that it presented [Chris] Ware's giant talent to enough of an audience to bring him thousands of hardcore fans... Ware can dream up a single-page that if it were the only thing he ever published people might still know his name")
• List: The A.V. Club's Noel Murray offers commentary on Spurge's list ("There’s no one definitive L&R storyline; it’s just story after amazing story, accumulating over the past three decades like personal correspondence. [...] Ware... turn[ed] comic books into a kind of readable sculpture...") and lobbies for the inclusion of Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix
• Review: "Miss Lasko-Gross' self-caricature in her autobio stories [in A Mess of Everything] is an interesting mash-up of a typical teen with low self-esteem and that of an indignant outsider determined to make her increasingly confident voice heard -- and loudly. [...] Lasko-Gross' greatest strengths as an artist are her character design, gesture and use of body language. It's the way she stages her characters that makes looking at each page interesting... I love the touch of the exaggerated and the grotesque that she injects into her drawings, distorting faces and bodies to reflect emotional tumult." - Rob Clough
• Review: "I read Leah [Hayes]’s whole book, Funeral of the Heart [in one sitting]; I couldn’t stop reading. It’s a beautiful, engrossing book... Amazing." - Anika in London
• Review: "Formerly-suppressed, entirely classic, these stories [in Blazing Combat] are all solid examples of comic storytelling and craftsmanship... [T]he teams here make things look too easy. Not surprising since we’re talking about master artists like Toth, Frazetta, Severin, Crandall and others. The stories have all aged surprisingly well... Highly recommended..." - Matt Maxwell, Robot 6
• Reviewer: At that same Robot 6 link, Miss Lasko-Gross reviews books by Osamu Tezuka and Gabrielle Bell
• Events: Portland, your Free Comic Book Day cup runneth over, as Andrice Arp and the other contributors to the excellent free anthology comic Bird Hurdler will be appearing at various locations throughout town -- Andrice has the full itinerary and details on her blog
• Things to see: Ragged Claws Network presents a few of Jeffrey Jones's Jones Touch strips which can be found in the out-of-print collection of the same name from our Eros Comix imprint (NSFW)
I'm not usually prone to the doom-y flight of fancy, but my first thought upon seeing the photo above was: thank goodness a flaming meteor didn't hit that spot at that moment. L to R: Crumb, Ware, Clowes, Tomine, Buenaventura. Sauve, France, Jan. 27, 2009. Alvin Buenaventura has uploaded many more incredible photos such as above and below, from Sauve and Angoulême, to Flickr. Look for a guest appearance by our very own Jason T. Miles, who promises to post his own Angoulême pics soon.
• Interview: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon found a video file of Jonathan Lethem interviewing Daniel Clowes at the 2005 MoCCA Festival; he can't remember where it came from but he's posted it anyway
• Bram Meehan puts this year's two major Bill Mauldin releases, our collection Willie & Joe: The WWII Years and Todd DePastino's biography A Life Up Front, in a shared #10 position on his "Top Ten Comics of 2008" (via TCR)
A recent sweep of our warehouse has revealed copies of the following titles which had been thought to be sold out. Quantities are limited so get them before they're gone again!
• We haven't had a chance to listen to this ourselves yet, but we are told that British comedy genius and known Fantagraphics fan Graham Linehan (Big Train, The IT Crowd, Father Ted) sings our praises in this interview with The Sound of Young America
Mike Baehr, Janice Headley and I are headed down Friday for this weekend's Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco, and we will be bringing along about 150 comics and books for you to browse and get signed all weekend long by our amazing line-up of attending authors:
Saturday:
11AM Johnny Ryan 12PM Kevin Huizenga & Bob Levin 1PM John Pham & Johnny Ryan 2PM Daniel Clowes & Ted Stearn 3PM Jaime Hernandez & Megan Kelso 4PM Jaime Hernandez & Dame Darcy 5PM From MOME: Jonathan Bennett & Tim Hensley
Sunday:
11AM Megan Kelso & Kevin Huizenga 12PM Jaime Hernandez & John Pham 1PM Daniel Clowes & Ted Stearn 2PM Dame Darcy 3PM Dame Darcy 4PM Jaime Hernandez & Johnny Ryan
Meanwhile, Jordan Crane, Esther Pearl Watson, Chris Ware (yes, Chris Ware!), and others will also be appearing at the show. How can you miss it? It runs 11 to 7 Saturday and 11 to 6 Sunday.
