Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Of the artists that meant the world to me when I was young enough that lots of artists meant the world to me, Jaime Hernandez is the only one I know of that can still kill me dead with his newest and latest. Your mileage may vary, but Jaime's three-part story in the latest Love and Rockets brought to mind the same sweep of romance and regret and pursuit of all that's sweet in life as much as battered and broken insides allow that I remember all too well from the summer between my junior and senior years in college, when I would have put everything about my wonderful life on hold to climb into a black and white comic book for a little while. There are three or four panels in this newest effort worth some cartoonists' entire careers." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

• Review: "Set to Sea is [an] auspicious debut... Weing's nameless, landlubbing protagonist aches to rhapsodize about the sea but discovers that something's missing. After dozing drunkenly on a dock, he awakes to discover he's been shanghaied. His adventures provide ample material for a volume of poetry in this hilariously violent picaresque tale." – Richard Pachter, The Miami Herald

• Review: "A book like The Best American Comics Criticism invites argument. If you put 'best' in your title, argument will follow. I’ve got arguments, but I wanted to start by praising both the editor, Ben Schwartz, and the publisher, Fantagraphics, for making the effort." - Derik Badman

• Review: "...[T]his story is one where Deitch tries to tie the various unruly strands of his many stories together. In a way, I almost prefer that these overlapping, nesting, and sometimes contradictory stories never really congeal, but The Search for Smilin' Ed is, like all of Deitch's work, a compelling and highly personal piece of work." – Robert Boyd, The Great God Pan Is Dead

• Review: "Although the images are very haunting, they are extremely beautiful. Pim & Francie is a pretty unique book. ... This book as a whole is actually quite creepy, haunting, scary, beautiful, and intoxicating. I seem to enjoy it more every time I look/read through it. With images on almost every single page, this book is worth a lot more than its cover price." – Steven Thomas

• Review: "Wally Gropius ...[is] John Stanley for the 21st century. Not that Stanley doesn’t work just fine in 2010, but Hensley is worthy of that sort of praise. I wish this guy was writing Archie." – Chris Reilly, Guttergeek

• Review: "I loved this book and am glad I... could read something this wonderfully twisted... I really wish I could tell you what genre this is, but The Squirrel Machine defies that sort of commercial branding." – Chris Reilly, Guttergeek

• Review: "Man, Joe Daly is awesome. ...[H]e is back with thunder in his pen and ants in his pants. [Dungeon Quest] is as good as Scrublands on page one and it just gets better and funnier, more bizarre and familiar (if you have ever met or hung out with Larpers) with each page turn. Welcome back, Joe Daly. You rule." – Chris Reilly, Guttergeek

• Review: "The Troublemakers... is Gilbert [Hernandez] doing a Quentin Tarantino, in that he dips into a sleazy old unpleasant genre of crime exploitation films of the 60s and 70s and cherry-picks a bunch of the good bits and smashes them together and cooks them into a really sweet pie." – Chris Reilly, Guttergeek

• Review: "The Culture Corner... is the biggest score for fans of Wolverton since the publication of the Wolverton Bible. I guess you could also say that this is the first reprint collection of Wolverton material since the Wolverton Bible if you wanted to nit-pick. Great stuff." – Chris Reilly, Guttergeek

• Plug: "I’m barely able to form coherent thoughts about Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. It’s an amazing collection of her work, and I hope it just causes an explosion of interest in her work." – David Welsh, The Manga Curmudgeon

• Plug: Sarah McIntyre took some lovely photos of Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1961-1962

• Interview: At WFMU's Beware of the Blog, Kliph Nesteroff talks to Drew Friedman: "When I was talking to Albert [Brooks] at this party he said, 'Drew, did you know that Harpo's ex-wife married Frank Sinatra?' I said, 'No, it was Zeppo's ex-wife.' He said, 'No, no, it was Harpo's ex-wife.'  I said, 'No, it was Zeppo's ex-wife. Look, we have Andy Marx, Groucho's grandson standing right here. Let's ask him.' I said, 'Andy, which one of your uncles married Frank Sinatra's wife?' He said, 'Well, that was Zeppo's wife.' That's why I love L.A. It's handy to have Groucho's grandson [around] when you need him." (Note: audio of this conversation will be available from the Inkstuds podcast soon; we'll keep you updated)

• Profile: Seattle Times book editor Mary Ann Gwinn reports on the partnership between Rick Marschall's Rosebud Archives and Fantagraphics Books: "Now Marschall's company, Rosebud Archives, and Fantagraphics have formed a joint publishing enterprise that will draw from Marschall's immense collection, reclaiming the work of the great 20th-century magazine and newspaper artists for the 21st-century public."

• Commentary: At The Hooded Utilitarian, Shaenon Garrity kicks off a critical roundtable on Popeye with a 7-part appreciation: "Popeye hangs on, indestructible..., the last of a tougher, smellier, funnier breed."

• Reviewer: At Comics Comics, our own Jason T. Miles looks at something I'm also fond of: Andy Helfer & Kyle Baker's late-1980s run on The Shadow

We had a flurry of exciting celebrity shoppers toward the end of the day:

Above, Fire & Water author Blake Bell meets the television & movie actress of the oddly similar name Lake Bell and the world does not implode, possibly due to Lake's boyfriend, comedian Nick Kroll, executing the perfect photobomb.

Here, Nick strikes a perfect mirror-image pose with one of two Drew Friedman books he picked up while Tom Spurgeon botches his photobomb.

Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, creators of the BBC comedy series Look Around You among other things, stopped by the booth after a friendly hint from our own gutsy Janice Headley during the Q&A at the Look Around You panel shortly beforehand about Michael Kupperman's involvement in The Peter Serafinowicz Show (video link):

And finally (actually earlier in the day): Kick-Ass displays good taste in comics with his newly-purchased copy of Drinky Crow's Maakies Treasury!

The latest limited edition release from the Drew Friedman Fine Art concern is Drew's portrait of soul great Jackie Wilson. Click here for all the info and to order. The portrait is also included in Drew's new collection of portraits, Too Soon?, debuting at Comic-Con and available widely soon thereafter.

Looky here, it's the first advance copy of Too Soon? Famous/Infamous Faces 1995-2010 by Drew Friedman, which arrived in the office yesterday. Yes, we'll have copies for sale at Comic-Con! It should be widely available around the beginning of September.

RIP Harvey Pekar — sad, sad news. Eric is working on a tribute for tonight or tomorrow, but for now, I'll just borrow this from Drew Friedman.

Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• Dash Shaw identifies this only as "scrap"

• Mark Kalesniko presents the original art for the cover of Mail Order Bride

• A short autobio strip from poor Noah Van Sciver

• From Renee French: beetle, trap, trap

• Page 30 of Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary; also, this is NSFW

• Why not go look at some Drew Friedman classics over at Golden Age Comic Book Stories?

• Get a daily dose of Dan Clowes at Fuck Yeah Daniel Clowes

• Anders Nilsen presents some things to consider

• Two great things that go great together: Eleanor Davis artwork on the cover of the next Elf Power record, as revealed by Pitchfork — via Drew Weing

• Debbie Drechsler draws a broken butterfly

Periodic clips & strips — click for improved/additional viewing at the sources:

• The New Yorker's current Caption Contest cartoon is by Gahan Wilson

• Drew Friedman's Spitzer-take for The New York Observer

• It's your all-new weekly installment of "Cartoon Boy" from John Kerschbaum

• This week's clammy Maakies from Tony Millionaire

• The Daily Cross Hatch presents a guest strip from Noah Van Sciver

• This week's "I, Anonymous" and some fighter jets by Steven Weissman

• A page from a comic-in-progress by John Hankiewicz

• Richard Sala presents the original art for the endpapers of his first book Hypnotic Tales — a larger version is linked here

• It's this week's Belligerent Piano by Tim Lane

• It's Paul Hornschemeier's new weekly t-shirt design for his Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop and it features the logo for his upcoming series from Fantagraphics

• Quackers and Randy Gander funny business from Josh Simmons & co.

• This guy, plus a trap and a kung fu fly (?) from Renee French

• Renee also makes her first guest appearance at the always-great Trubble Club (where Laura Park & Lilli Carré are also known to hang out)

• Video: "How to Draw Judge Martin Feldman" by Steve Brodner

• Anders Nilsen presents photos of his thesis installation from 1996

• Two new batches of drawings from Derek Van Gieson

• A pair of recent illustrations for the Globe & Mail by Ray Fenwick

• Laura Park's recipe for kimchi cream cheese

If you missed Drew Friedman's appearance on Seven Second Delay on WFMU (broadcast live from the UCB Theatre in NYC on Wednesday), you can listen to the show on the archive page right here.

The latest release from the Drew Friedman Fine Art concern is this limited-edition archival print of Drew's portrait of "legendary jive hepcat" Lord Buckley. Ordering details and much more info about the print and the Lord can be found here.

Drew Friedman will be a guest on a live broadcast of WFMU's Seven Second Delay comedy/variety radio show from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in NYC next Wednesday, June 23. If you miss it the show will be archived here.