Given the 30 Anniversary celebration of Love and Rockets this week, our article and fact-making robot decided we should have a separate post on all the goings-on. If we missed your 30th Anniversary coverage, please This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it know. Commentaries and fun memories below:

•Interview: Heidi MacDonald interviews Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds on going digital with comiXology starting with Love and Rockets: New Stories. On THE BEAT Reynolds notes, "When the notion of 'digital comics' first became a reality, I’ll admit that many of our authors and many of us in the office actively resisted the idea and pretended to tell ourselves we’d never embrace it. But I think we’re all pragmatic enough to understand the realities of where the future is headed."

•Commentary: CNET noticed a lot of comiXology announcements at San Diego Comic Con International but put a spotlight on Love and Rockets: New Stories. Seth Rosenblatt continues, ". . . few people read the "Love and Rockets" comic when it was first published, but it inspired every single one of the people who did to make comics. Of course, that probably didn't happen on a one-to-one basis, but "Love and Rockets" is nevertheless a massively influential comic that probably has stronger sales now than it ever did when it first hit the stands."

•Commentary: Marc Frauenfelder of BoingBoing says little about Fantagraphics going digital but it packs a punch: "Fantagraphics, the world's greatest comic book publisher. . ."

•Commentary: Tom Spurgeon of the Comics Reporter made a call out for all press people to cover Love and Rockets' 30th Anniversary while at Comic Con, in addition to a digital comics distribution announcement. "I also think it's wholly appropriate that Fantagraphics is kicking this off with the Hernandez Brothers and Love And Rockets, certainly the first major project they published there at the company (although not the official first project they published) and obviously a mighty contribution to American popular art." This was followed by a con report stating, "My hunch from reading these things on the faces of people and talking to those around them is that Los Bros Hernandez had a very good show."

•Interview: Geoff Boucher from the LA Times asked Jaime Hernandez for his 30 best Comic-Con memories. "7. I remember when those “Turtle” guys started. . .20. I remember the days before comics were called “graphic novels."

Pam, one of the many fantastic Comic-Con International organizers

•Commentary: Sean T. Collins took a page from Tom Spurgeon's playbook and wrote a full week of Love and Rockets coverage as lines formed to meet the Hernandez Brothers. One small bit of the snippet of his lengthy coverage: "Gilbert and Jaime are both masters of the form of comics. . . Mario Hernandez is the great lost alternative cartoonist, the Lost Bro Hernandez. His interest in cosmopolitanism, leftist politics, the conflation of activism and terrorism by the authorities, the pas de deux between terrorism and authoritarianism, the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary power of art and pop culture, the Third World as a petri dish for first-world government’s reimportation of radicalism, all within the framework of vaguely science-fictional thrillers — he is in many ways the perfect comics-maker for our present moment."

•Commentary: Entertainment Weekly covered all aspects of the Hernandez Brothers panel. Jonathan W. Gray says, "Early artwork from the brothers, including the self-published first issue of Love and Rockets. Groth also showed a slide with Jaime’s rendering of a female Robin, an image that, according to Jaime, inspired the creation of Carrie Kelly in Dark Knight Returns" and overall, "The Hernandez brothers are legends who produced the most enduring indie comic series in history with Love and Rockets. It’s important that their sprawling oeuvre remain accessible for new fans, and their new agreement with Comixology to reprint their work digitally ensures that."

•Plug: Steve Appleford of the Pasadena Sun interviewed the Jaime Hernandez for the 30th Anniversary of Love and Rockets . "[My brothers and I] would go as often as we could to the shows. Whoever had the car, if we could afford gas."

•Commentary: Noel Murray of the A.V. Club spent a hell of a lot of time on the convention floor and covered the Hernandez Brothers panel: "Cartoonist Mike Allred stood up during the Q&A and gushed over the Hernandez brothers, saying that reading Love And Rockets as a young adult had rekindled his love of comics, not just because of Los Bros’ aesthetic and narrative sophistication, but because Jaime and Gilbert were able to put across what they loved: about Kirby, about punk rock, about wrestlers, and about women."

•Commentary: David Luna on Comic Book Resources covered the San Diego Comic-Con panel called 30th Anniversary of Love and Rockets featuring all three of the Hernandez Brothers and a packed room. Jaime Hernandez stated, "I got my cake and ate it too because I like drawing women and if I made them strong enough, not strong enough beating up people, but powerful just in their personalities and their lives and their brains, then I could draw them any way I wanted to."

•Plug: Mister Phil remembering and scanning ads from Love and Rockets back in the 80's is one of the greatest joys on the internet right now. See above.

•Commentary: UT San Diego.com and Peter Rowe touch on the Hernandez Brothers contribution to comics in their unique way. Gilbert Hernandez speaks, "[Characters who age and change] is a hallmark of great comic strips that inspired the [us], like 'Gasoline Alley.' Superhero comics are built on hype," he said. "But comic strips earn your respect over time."

•Plug: Love and Rockets get a con-based mention in Baldo comic by Hector D Cantu and Carlos Castellanos. See above (reformatted to fit our FLOG).

•Review: One of the original critics and reviews of Love and Rockets in the 80's, Brian Hayes writes a short 'n' sweet memory about the series, both old and new! On Hayfamzone: "Gary Groth and his associates have enriched the world of comics by publishing [Love and Rockets ] for all these years."

•Commentary: Sonia Harris spoke on a lifetime of love with the Hernandez Brothers' 30th Anniversary on Comic Book Resources. Harris exclaimed, "Gilbert Hernandez . . . told me that he remembered me from my first ever comic book convention in London, nearly 25 years ago. . . I explained to Jaime that after a misspent youth identifying with Hopey, then an awkward adolescence identifying with Maggie, I’ve now come to identify more with Izzy."

•Plug: Some very nice Brasilians made a Love and Rockets trailer called LÔCAS: MAGGIE, A MECÂNICA. 

Pictures people drew of Love and Rockets

The new prepackaged Online Commentaries & Diversion:

•Commentary: The Huffington Post made it over to the Robert Crumb exhibit called "Crumb: From the Underground to the Genesis" at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris: "Never one to shy away from his love-hate relationship with women, Crumb invited the world into his most perverted fantasies, one which includes riding on his mother's boot."

•Interview: Zachary Hunchar of Technorati questions Pete Bagge about a long life in comics. "People expect their entertainment to be for free now," said Bagge. "Musicians compensate for it by performing live more often, but the only equivalent to that for cartoonists is more comic conventions."

•Interview: WTF Podcast with host Marc Maron digs into the essentials of Tony Millionaire's work: "[Marc's place] is like my place, I have a very small garage, built for a model T, and it's cluttered. I have all the corners I need to work in."

•Commentary: Tom Spurgeon is afraid of all the press releases for San Diego Comic-Con will overwhelm your normall-observant Hernandez Brothers' radar. On the Comics Reporter, he made an impassioned called for Love and Rockets coverage during the 2012 Comic-Con International: "It's vital for the medium we love . . . that we treat San Diego as a place where Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez have been in attendance more than 25 times each more than we treat it as a place Steven Spielberg has been to once. Both Jaime and Gilbert remain vital, exciting cartoonists. . ."

•Plug: Gene Ambaum of Unshelved touches on Oil & Water by Steve Duin, Shannon Wheeler and Michael Rosen: "[an] anti plastic activist and bird enthusiast,” who wears a strange cyclops-like lens to aid his bird watching, says he has 'the poop story to end all poop stories.' He doesn’t tell it until the end of the book, so I had to keep reading."

•Review: From a rather rough translation of Swedien's second largest newspaper, Expressen, Jan Gradvall speaks on Paul Nelson from the book Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson by Kevin Avery: "Paul Nelson invested all of his feelings [in] records, books, movies. Them he could communicate with - not with live people."

The greenest Online Commentaries & Diversion:

•Review: Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing gushed about Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man. "[Carl Barks'] art is expressive and perfectly rendered. . . I think the best way to read Barks is via The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library, published by Fantagraphics."

•Review: The New York Review of Books takes a look at Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons. Barry Moser: "[Flannery O'Connor] also said that a story—or a linoleum print, if you will—has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle. Her prints certainly have muscle, and a lot of it."

 •Plug: Kotaku was pleased with their copy of God and Science by Jaime Hernandez in an article called "Four Comics That Will Vibrate Your Molecules This Week." Evan Narcisse expands on an idea, "It's as if [the Hernandez Brothers] never shook their adolescent fascination with rayguns and capes, choosing instead to deepen the metaphoric and escapist elements of such genre tropes."

•Plug: Comics Crux snagged a copy of Jaime Hernandez' God and Science plus the FIB mini. Jess Pendley matter-of-factly states: "If you are a fan of either Jaime Hernandez or traditional capes-and-tights stories, you’ll only be doing yourself a service by purchasing this right now."

•Interview (video): Watch an 'Outrageous Tub' interview featuring No Straight Lines editor Justin Hall on Accidental Bear. In reference to a superhero question "Are you good or bad?" Hall replied, "I haven't made a decision yet." Be bad, be sooo bad.

•Plug: The guys over at Stumptown Trade Review got excited about No Straight Lines, edited by Justin Hall: "It was just the other day that I mentioned one could never tell what was coming from Fantagraphics. As if to prove my point, they are at it again. . ."

•Review: Paste Magazine had a lovely time reading Mr. Twee Deedle (edited by Rick Marschall): "[Johnny Gruelle's] strips seem crafted mostly to impart lessons (be kind, don’t wiggle, giving is better than receiving), and there’s no question that they can feel preachy and simplistic, but the art, deliberately old-fashioned even at the time and reminiscent of Kate Greenaway’s illustrations, rescues them."

•Plug: Robot 6 caught the scent of a very good book slated for September by Chris Wright. Michael May is excited for Blacklung: "Depressing, existential AND romantic? I couldn’t sign up quickly enough for Chris Wright’s original graphic novel debut."

•Review: Litkicks takes the time for a lengthy review of Everything Is An Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, edited by Kevin Avery. Alan Bisbort also interviewed one of Nelson's mentees in the world of music criticism: "Rolling Stone was home to a lot of alpha males and females, especially on the writing side, and Paul was just the antithesis of that."

 The rawest Online Commentaries & Diversions:

•Interview: Christopher Irving questions the ineffable Pete Bagge on his vast body of work on NYC Graphic. Bagge says, "With the style of work that I do, I like it to look on the surface like it’s shallow and stupid, but when you read it, the context is really sweet. . ." Christopher Irving reports: "Part of what makes Pete Bagge such an effective writer is his ability to tap into personal experiences that are universal. . . being jilted by a lover, getting angry at traffic, or trying to hide something from your parents."

•Review: Tom Spurgeon sits down for a good read with God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls on The Comics Reporter: "It's only when you try to unpack the story that you realize what a graceful and economical storyteller Jaime Hernandez has become no matter what genre he might choose to utilize."

•Review: On the Spandexless Reads, Josh Simmons' newest work gets a thorough once-over. Shawn Starr on horror book, The Furry Trap: "The Furry Trap is what your parents warned you about. It’s what Fredric Wertham warned America about. . . Simmons takes the normal, the stale, and adds an “edge” like none other, taking the tropes of each genre to the edge of a sharp cliff and then hurling them off so he can re-examine their splattered remains."

•Review: In a one-two punch by Tucker Stone, both Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes and Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man are reviewed on comiXology. Stone continues on about Carl Barks' work: "Everything I could want out of a comic is there--it's funny, gorgeous, and I'd make a smoke alarm wait just so I could read it in one sitting. . . I'm not blind to the fact that the stories were created with the intent of engaging with children, in fact, I have to wonder how much of what I perceive to be their greatness stems from that basic restriction."

•Plug: Stumptown Trade Review enjoys the book based on Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker's experiment, Significant Objects: "The experiment, in short, was a smash hit. The Significant Objects book features 100 moving, absurd, surprising, and always entertaining stories from the project’s three volumes."

Get yer hot Online Commentaries & Diversions:

•Review: The long-awaited Comics Journal review of Gabriella Giandelli's graphic novel Interiorae is online. Sean T. Collins: "As the rabbit floats from one [apartment] to another, a sort of soporific rhythm sets in, a familiarity with the emotional and visual palette that allows individual moments to stand out. It’s not just the weird or grand stuff . . . but thoughtful and attractive details as well."

•Plug: The Stumptown Trade Review is as pumped as Fantagraphics is have the all-ages graphic novel The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. "Luba’s niece [Venus] creates and collects comic books, walks through a scary forest, plays soccer, schemes to get the cute boy she likes, laments the snowlessness of a California Christmas, catches measles, and travels to a distant planet. . ."

•Plug: Comics Alliance lists the Best Comic Covers of June 2012 and Jacques Tardi's New York Mon Amour makes the grade. Andrew Wheeler says, "romance is not the vibe evoked by this menacing red sky over Tardi's exquisitely rendered New York street. This cover tells you that this is not a love story."

 The most recent ramblin' Online Commentaries & Diversions:

•Commentary: ABC News and Amy Bingham picked up a few quotes by a partial interview online by Gary Groth with Maurice Sendak. The full interview will be published in The Comics Journal #302 in December: “Bush was president, I thought, ‘Be brave. Tie a bomb to your shirt. Insist on going to the White House. And I want to  have a big hug with the vice president, definitely."

•Commenary: MSNBC's Kurt Schlosser also writes on Maurice Sendak's TCJ #302 interview. In the article, associate publisher Eric Reynolds is also quoted, "[Sendak] was at the point in his life where he clearly didn't give a damn about propriety; he could speak his mind and clearly enjoyed provocation. I see these comments as part and parcel of his personality, not as a legitimate, actionable, treasonous threat."

•Review: The Washington Times takes a close look at Mr. Twee Deedle, edited by Rick Marschall. The long-forgotten artwork of Johnny Gruelle inspired writer Michael Taube: "Mr. Twee Deedle’s world is, quite simply, a series of innocent tales in a fantasyland that any child - and many adults - would have loved to experience, if but for a short while."

 •Plug: The Frank Book by Jim Woodring gets a nice staff recommendation on the Harvard Book Store site. Craig H. says, "[Frank] takes us on his adventures through the psychedelic terrain of “The Unifactor,” a universe alive with rich pen-width and symmetrical, flying devices. 

•Plug (audio): In the first few minutes of podcast Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, Angelman is recommended. Comics journalist Brian Heater of the Daily Crosshatch says, "it's Sergio Aragonés meets David Foster Wallace. . . about a little red winged superhero and his powers are good listening and empathy."

The most in vogue Online Commentaries and Diversions:

•Interview (audio): Perk up your ears to the soothing interview of Angelman's creator, Nicolas Mahler, on the Inkstuds podcast. Robin McConnell covers all the bases with Mahler: "[My] main influence is American newspaper comics from the 30s, this was what I discovered when I about was 15-16. It was Krazy Kat and Windsor McCay, those were the things that were important to my drawing style. Wouldn't you have guessed from looking at my drawings?"

•Preview: JK Parkin, Robot6, talks up a preview of The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. This previously uncollected work will also have a new story! Can you spot all the references?

•Review: The sweetest review is up on Sequential Tart of The Adventures of Venus. Sheena McNeil gives the book a thumbs-up for kids: "I love that this graphic novel is full of characters from different cultures with different appearances. Venus and her sister live with their bodybuilder-like mom and no dad, Venus's rival, Gilda Gonzalez, is Hispanic and her crush, Yoshio, is Asian. It's refreshing to see all these different types of people together and getting along normally."

 •Plug: Book Patrol teases with a few pictures of Jewish Images in the Comics by Fredrik Strömberg. Michael Lieberman says, "Spanning five centuries and  featuring over 150 images the book becomes an instant essential reference. . . Who knew Golem was a super-hero?"

•Review: The Comics Bulletin sat down to a round-table review of E.C. Segar's Popeye Vol. 1: "I Yam What I Yam". Columnists Jason Sacks, Daniel Elkin, Danny Djeljosevic and Zack Davisson loved the large format (except for night-time readin' in bed). Sacks says, "There's a depth to these characters, too. They may be incredibly self-involved and aggressive, but there's this odd sort of internal integrity to them that makes them lovable."

•Plug: Glenn Perrett of Simcoe mentions The Sincerest Form of Parody, edited by John Benson, and the juicy ordering details. "You can return to the era when these magazines [Mad, Flip, Nuts, Panic, Madhouse] were popular with The Sincerest Form of Parody which features 'The Best 1950's Mad Inspired Satirical Comcs'."

•History: Reminiscing about comics created and read in the 80's, The Comics Reporter reviews Dalgoda. Created by writer Jan Strnad and art by Dennis Fujitake, Tom Spurgeon states,"It was leisurely paced, and had a genial tone; it was neither pompous nor self-loathing. The art featured that somewhat peculiar, can-still-spot-it-across-the-room Fantagraphics coloring from that era. In fact, Fujitake's art, with its blend of mainstream rendering values, meticulous environmental detail and humorous exaggeration, is what lingers on in memory." You gotta love those striking logo colors.

 The up-to-the-minute Online Commentaries & Diversion:

•Plug: Our newest Jacques Tardi release, New York Mon Amour is out and available at your favorite comic shops. One of our such shop, Forbidden Planet, is very excited to have it in stock. Joe says, "I’m so glad the Fanta crew has been making these titles available again to English language readers."

•Interview: WMFU host of Too Much Information, Benjamin Walker, questions Michael Kupperman about comics as a serious form of literature at his MIT Center for Civic Media conference talk. Kupperman: "You see high points. You have to build to that humor. Sometimes there's just enough for three panels—I like to keep it short, keep the audience wanting more. It's kind of—there can be a central idea I need to do it."

•Review: On The Comics Journal, Jeet Heer takes a close look at Spain Rodriguez's newest collection of stories. In Heer's words, Cruisin' with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote "is a splendid book, a startling view of a plebeian world that tends to be submerged by the North American tendency to pretend that class doesn’t exist. The book is also evidence of the strength of the autobiographical comics tradition, which has room not just for minute introspection but also for stories of lively brutality."

•Review: Comics Worth Reading sits down with the latest issue (#16) of Linda Medley's Castle Waiting series. Johanna Draper Carlson glowingly states, "it’s [Medley's] character work, the small bits of perfectly realized dialogue, that make this series so rewarding."

•Plug: The ineffable Bud Plant mentions the brand-new Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Vol 3: High Noon at Inferno Gulch on his website: "Mickey Mouse was at his best in the 1930s newspaper daily and Sunday pages of Floyd Gottfredson."

This month's issue of Booklist reviewed two recent releases by Fantagraphics creators, excerpted below:

Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion by Hans Rickheit: "Here are early stories by the graphic novelist whose work... comes closer than any other’s (except Nate Powell’s) to the prose stories of Zoran Živkovi, Andrew Crumey, Kelly Link, Ray Vukcevich, Theodora Goss, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and other practitioners of what’s been called slipstream fiction. They feature people, animals, and flesh-and-machine hybrids in all stages of development and dissolution, from fetus and pupa to suppurating near-corpse to skeleton . . . Among their protagonists, a bear-headed man in a long coat and high boots and identical teen sisters Cochlea and Eustachia, who wear only black masks and very short-skirted tops, recur often. Rescued from their original appearances in Rickheit’s slim, stapled-together Chrome Fetus Comics, these stories are less polished than his current stuff . . . but fully developed in every other aspect of his puzzling, engrossing, and disturbing storytelling." — Ray Olson

Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli: "A large and (mostly) invisible rabbit looks over the affairs of various tenants in a modern apartment building: an elderly woman dying in one apartment, a couple entrenched in unhappiness and unfaithfulness in another, young schoolgirl friends in a third, and a happy group of ghosts in a fourth . . . the rabbit as harbinger of change [leaps] from panel to panel, view to view, addressing the reader enough to keep the outsider engaged in asking what might happen to whom next. The images are gorgeously penciled and inked, with coloring to note moods and approaching climaxes and denouements in the various tales. The rabbit’s own identity — or power — finds explanation in an Algonquin tale found in an open book on a bed in one scene; figuring out who is the Boss in the basement, sometimes referenced by the rabbit, takes more digging. Beautifully rendered art and sweetly told, serious stories." — Francisca Goldsmith

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Interview: On the National Post, Nathalie Atkinson interviews Gabriella Giandelli on her graphic novel, Interiorae., and the retrospective exhibit at the Italian Cultural Institute. Giandelli states, "There are some stories where it would be possible to have the soundtrack of what you listened to during the work for every page of the story. Or sometimes the song is inside my work — nobody knows but for me it’s there."

• Review: The Weekly Crisis solves the weekly dilemma for you with a "buy it" verdict for Gabriella Giandelli's Interiorae. Taylor Pithers says, "Giandelli also weaves magic on the way the other characters speak. There is a certain rhythmic beauty to the dialogue that gives the whole book a feeling of quiet, almost as if everyone is speaking in soft tones."

• Review: The Boston Phoenix gets a slap in the face from Hans Rickheit and asks for more. In the review of Folly: The Consequences of Indiscretion, S.I. Rosenbaum says, "It's as if other masters of visual bodyhorror — Cronenberg, Burns, Dan Clowes, Tarsem Singh — are weird by choice. Rickheit, it seems, just can't help it. There's a conviction to his creepiness, a compulsive nature even in his early draftsmanship."

•Commentary: BEA was last week and Publishers Weekly couldn't get enough of Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds and new book, The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver. Heidi MacDonald and Calvin Reid teamed up to cover the event: "Eric Reynolds said it was a good show for the house, noting that all the galleys for Van Sciver books were taken and there was “huge interest” in Fantagraphics titles, like the Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons."

•Review: The Comics Bulletin reviewed God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls by Jaime Hernandez. In the wake of near-universal criticism for super hero comics, Jason Sacks gives an angsty-yet-positive review: "[God and Science] is indeed very indy and quirky and idiosyncratic and personal and uncompromising as any of Jaime's comics."

•Plug: The blog for CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo) mentioned the our newest collection, No Straight Lines.  "LGBTQ cartooning has been one of the most vibrant artistic and countercultural movements of the past 40 years, tackling complex issues of identity and changing social mores with intelligence, humor, and an irreverent imagination. No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics . . . is the most definitive collection to date of this material, showcasing the spectrum from lesbian underground comix, to gay newspaper strips, to bi punk zines, to trans webcomics." Debuting this weekend at Cake in Chicago, you can find editor, Justin Hall, at table 76.

•Review: A short-and-sweet review on Scripp News popped up today. Andrew A. Smith tips his hat to Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 3. " . . .despite the stultifying constriction of the draconian Comics Code of 1954, Ditko managed a remarkable body of work in both volume and content. Even more amazing is his accelerated learning curve, which shoots straight up from first page to last."

•Commentary: Alt-weekly The Austin Chronicle writer Kimberley Jones mentions receiving Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things. "Maybe those kitty saucers and crumb sweepers will have to leg-wrestle Cary Grant for space in tomorrow night's REM picture show."