A bit late with the Online Commentary & Diversions today due to being a touch under the weather:

• Review: "OK, [Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons] is very expensive, but Wilson's a lot cheaper than Zoloft. Some people fly their inner freak flags as a sign of liberation. This strange dude isn't sure there's another type of flag out there. In his world, there's always something over the horizon ready to eat you, blow you up or turn you into a homicidal maniac. Sounds a lot like life." – Laurel Maury, San Francisco Chronicle

• Review: "...[An] exemplary republishing of Wilson’s Playboy cartoons... One of the many nice features of the new Fantagraphics book is that it is chronological and dated, so we can see Wilson responding to the changing social and political landscapes. ... As a physical object Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons cannot be praised highly enough. ...[L]ooking at Wilson’s work at length, eating it up with my eyes, I came to love his work. He is, in fact, a master. ...[F]or all their morbidity and ghoulishness, Wilson’s cartoons affirm the value of cherishing life. As inhuman as his characters often are, Wilson is a deeply humane cartoonist." – Jeet Heer, Comics Comics

• Review: "Published soon after the conflict that it documents, Safe Area Goradze is an intense reading experience and an active call for the condemnation of tribal and international leaders who put politics ahead of humanity." – Suzette Chan, Sequential Tart

• Review: "There’s a remarkably spare and lean quality to the plot and characterization cooked up by Jean-Patrick Manchette’s West Coast Blues. ... It’s a story that’s both grim and strangely detached (or at least restrained), eschewing the sort of cliches that an American might expect from a crime story. ... If the text felt a bit detached, then Jacques Tardi added muscle, bone and fat to it with his delightfully chunky line. ... It’s the first quotidian crime story that I’ve ever read, and Tardi’s commitment to the depiction of the everyday and the way nightmares crashed into daily life are what made this book work so well." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal (warning: spoilers)

• Feature: Comic Book Resources' Brian Cronin spotlights Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle as part of "A Year of Cool Comics": "Tales Designed to Thrizzle is one of those books where you might really need to see it to believe it. Michael Kupperman delivers thirty-odd pages of the most delightfully absurd ideas that you can imagine, to the point where I don't know if simply describing the comic would do it justice... I, for one, think it's one of the very best comics currently made."

• Interview: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan has a Q&A about Sublife with John Pham: "I hope to have established a sort of model for the upcoming issues with Volumes 1 and 2. So basically, continuing serializations of either Sycamore St. or Deep Space, accompanied by various, shorter strips where I can experiment and joke around."

• Things to see/Bookmark: STL Drawing Club, for fan art and sketchbookery by Huizenga, May, Zettwoch, and several others

• Things to see: "California" by Gabrielle Bell

• Things to see: Page 8 of Hans Rickheit's Ectopiary, plus a poster for an amazing 2003 exhibit of comic art

• Things to see: A new comic in Finnish and a sexy animated drawing by Lilli Carré

• Things to see: Michael Kupperman says "Another week, another illustration for The New Yorker" (the article's pretty funny too)

• Whoa, Nellie: The Beat spots a similarity. Of course, it's not an uncommon one

On the new episode of The Sound of Young America podcast, host Jesse Thorn talks to the great Gahan Wilson. Listen with the embedded player below or at the link above.

We hear the event was gangbusters! Here's Gahan signing a copy of the Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons collection. Strand TV footage will be up on the Strand's YouTube page in the next week, so we'll be sure to bring you that when it's available. Photo by Christina Foxley, courtesy the Strand — click for a larger version.

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is pleased to present a remarkable series of exhibitions, signings and receptions on successive Saturday evenings January 30 through February 13. These amazing events will feature both emerging talent and legendary masters of the comics medium.

Fantagraphics Books celebrates the publication of NEWAVE! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s with an exhibition, book signing, and mini comix workshop on Saturday, January 30 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. The show will feature original art and graphics by underground mini comix pioneers Jaimie Alder, Jim Blanchard, Wayne Gibson, David Lasky, Wayno, Steve Willis, Dennis Worden, and XNO. NEWAVE editor Michael Dowers will produce and distribute a mini comic on site. This festive reunion also includes live music, a comix jam, and the debut of the NEWAVE! anthology.

On Saturday, February 6 from 7:00 to 8:00 PM, prolific comics creator and illustrator Steven Weissman appears on the occasion of the debut of his latest book CHOCOLATE CHEEKS. The award-winning Weissman explores a peculiar alternative to traditional childhood relationships. Influenced by classic comic strip characters and pop culture icons, this wonderful artist appeals to readers of all ages.

Please join us on Saturday, February 13 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, when Fantagraphics Bookstore is honored to host an art exhibition and reception for living legend Gahan Wilson. His delightfully demented sense of humor is celebrated in GAHAN WILSON: 50 YEARS OF PLAYBOY CARTOONS, an exquisite 3-volume slipcase edition that includes over 1,000 comics and illustrations by the acknowledged master of the macabre. Don't miss this rare opportunity to meet one of America's most incredible idiosyncratic artists.

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street, only minutes south of downtown Seattle. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110. See you all soon.

An evening with GAHAN WILSON

Signing and discussing his new book:

GAHAN WILSON: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons

Tuesday, January 19, 7PM

THE STRAND BOOKSTORE
12th & Broadway
New York, NY

Gahan will discuss his distinguished career and answer questions in a talk moderated by Emily Gordon, former PRINT magazine Editor-In-Chief and proprietor of the Emdashes blog (about all things New Yorker). 

Some excellent Online Commentary & Diversions to round out the week thanks to Omnivoracious and The A.V. Club:

• List: Amazon's Omnivoracious blog names Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw a top-10 Comic of the Decade, and also names The Complete Peanuts, Love and Rockets Library, and Mome as Comics Archives and Anthologies of the Decade

• List: On Meltdown Comics' Meltcast podcast, Chris Rosa declares Low Moon by Jason his Absolute Best of 2009 "without a doubt," with additional commentary from his cohosts (begins around 2:26:21)

• List: And on the Meltcast Best of the Decade episode, Hey, Wait... by Jason (begins around 48:36)

• Review: "Since 1957, [Gahan] Wilson’s work has provided a grim counterpoint to the skin and pleasure-seeking of Playboy. Twisting pop-culture icons to dark-witted ends, Wilson places his characters in a world of terror and understatement. ... [T]he incidental commentary here about human selfishness and shortsightedness squeezed between the B-movie monsters and little green men feels timeless, as does the remarkably high level of quality Wilson has maintained over the years. ... [Grade] A" – The A.V. Club

• Review: "Strange Suspense offers page after lurid four-color page of Ditko’s weird monsters, rubber-faced crooks, and abstracted landscapes... The book is a white-knuckle trip through Ditko’s fevered imagination. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club (same link as above)

• Review: "[Al] Columbia’s book Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days strings together 200-odd (very odd) pages of sketches, strips, panels, and spot illustrations, assembled into one long nightmare-narrative about two loose-limbed tots wandering through a village of lusty killers and bleeding trees. There are no explanations here, and few conventional payoffs — just images designed to remind readers what it was like to be a panicked, paranoid child, convinced that every nighttime shadow contained a beast more menacing and repulsive than any grown-up could conceive. [Grade] B+" – The A.V. Club (same link as above)

• Review: "Like A Dog — a collection of [Zak] Sally’s self-published Recidivist comics, plus odds and ends — drips warped fantasy, bleak humor, and experimentation. Dynamically, the book also veers from being text-heavy to eerily wordless, even as it maintains the integrity of Sally’s stunning, stark-yet-lush linework. ...Like A Dog is a compelling slab of graphic narrative. As a warts-and-then-some chronicle of one man’s navigation through the world of underground comics (not to mention his own self-sabotaging psyche), it’s downright mesmerizing. [Grade] A-" – The A.V. Club (same link as above)

• Review: "Packaged in an ingenious VHS-like format, [Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box] comes complete with lofty intro... But the fun is paging through these lurid examples of videos you kind of forget you remember, like Streets of Fire or The Legend of Hell House." – Kristi Turnquist, The Oregonian

• Review: "[Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons is] a monster production, a slipcased behemoth, nearly 1000 pages in three volumes, with deliciously wicked humor on every page. ... Open the box, free the three volumes, and dive in anywhere. You will not be disappointed." – John Mesjak, my3books

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: On the Forbidden Planet International Blog Log, guest critic Chris Marshall's top 10 graphic novels of 2009 places Blazing Combat in a tie for 4th place: "There was a time when War Comics told War Fact. They showed us the blood, death, camaraderie and horror. [This] series did just that and didn’t hold back."

• Review: "Fantagraphics has truly pulled out all the stops on the production of [Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons], giving it such marvelous style and pizzazz. ... But it’s the content, of course, that is truly king. If the 20th century was indeed the American century, then Wilson is a cartoonist who had a hell of a time chronicling it, mocking it, signifying it, and holding it up to the light—albeit through his own twisted lens... The work is tremendous and witty and, as always with an excellent retrospective, it offers the reader an excellent chance to walk back in time through decades of experiences, memories, turbulences and triumphs, and just plain old human oddities. What’s truly amazing is how, for more than 50 years, Wilson rarely misses a witty beat." – John Hogan, Graphic Novel Reporter

• Preview/Plug: FEARnet presents some favorite pages, with commentary, from Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box

• Plug: Chris Jacobs of Sub Pop Records plugs the "predictably, really great" Mome Vol. 17, which includes artwork by Rick Froberg, who plays in Sub Pop band Obits, and the release party this Sunday at Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn, where Rick will be signing

• Plug: There's much love for Jordan Crane at French blog La Soupe d'Espace

• Plug: At Comic Book Galaxy, Johnny Bacardi, a Jaime Hernandez partisan when it comes to Love and Rockets, says "But this upcoming Troublemakers looks kinda interesting... despite my preference for Jaime, I think I'll pick this up when I see it..."

Apologies for the late late Online Commentary & Diversions update:

• List: Comic Book Resources continues listing their Top 100 Comics of 2009, with Pim & Francie by Al Columbia at #33 ("A totally creepy homage to the ink blot stylings of the early animation era, the book works as part horror comic, part abstract tour de force, part satire and all face melter, cementing Columbia's place as one of the most unique and mysterious voices in comics." – Kiel Phegley) and Ganges #3 by Kevin Huizenga at #20 ("a brilliant, insightful comic with inventive layouts and dead-on emotion" – John Parkin)

• List: Don MacPherson of Eye on Comics names the short list for the 2009 Glass Eye Awards for Best Original Graphic Novel: "Gilbert Hernandez’s The Troublemakers was no doubt a delight for fans of the Love and Rockets writer/artist, but as an only casual reader of his work, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The quirky combination of slice-of-life elements and a crime drama worked incredibly well, and while The Troublemakers boasts a connection to the world of L&R, one needn’t be aware of it or versed in those other comics to appreciate this graphic novel."

• Review: "[Hal] Foster’s classic tales of knightly derring-do are a beloved part of the newspaper comics section. It’s difficult to laud Foster too excessively; he was one of the undisputed masters of the craft. A new effort to reprint the Valiant epic in sequential order is off to a roaring start with Prince Valiant, Vol. 1: 1937-1938, a handsome oversize volume reprinting the first two years’ worth of the Arthurian saga’s Sunday strips. Despite its creation in the late 1930s..., the comic strip’s otherworldly setting and taut characterization keep this an evergreen favorite for readers of all ages, an American epic born of a tale of European romance." – Aaron Ragan-Fore, Eugene Weekly

• Review: "This incredible boxed set of three gorgeous hardcovers celebrates one of art's funniest and most disturbing cartoonists. ... Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons is the most comprehensive and attractive Wilson book ever produced." – Rick Klaw, The SF Site: Nexus Graphica

• Plug: Jason Pettigrew, editor-in-chief of Alternative Press magazine, lists our forthcoming Joost Swarte collection as one of the 5 things he's most looking forward to in 2010 — except that the book is now on tap for 2011 and the title has changed from Modern Swarte to Is That All There Is?

• Things to see: A new strip and sketchy stuff from Kevin Huizenga

Whew, what a year! Online Commentary & Diversions returns next week.

• List: Comic Book Resources continues listing their Top 100 Comics of 2009, with Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit: Book 1 at #75 ("A huge kick to the solar plexus, not just in terms of the way-beyond-NC-17 level of gore and bodily fluids on display, but also the sheer wealth of no-holds barred imagination and utter sense of play that's on every page. The craftsmanship on display is just as striking as the violence." – Chris Mautner) and The Squirrel Machine by Hans Rickheit at #56 ("Few artists in comics can tell surreal stories with the level of clarity and precision that Hans Rickheit achieves... In the same way that David Lynch squeezes compelling characters and memorable scenes onto film amid dark and obscured circumstances, Rickheit renders a feeling portrait of a young mad scientist named Edmund in one of the 2009's most inimitable reads." – Brian Warmoth)

• List: Jeff Smith names his favorite comics of the decade, including The Complete Peanuts ("Revolutionary.") and Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw ("I was also impressed by the mysteries in the story — and really impressed by Shaw’s restraint in revealing only what he had to — leaving much for the imagination, and keeping my thoughts on the book and its meaning for days afterward.")

• List: The writers at Robot 6 name their favorite comics of 2009: Tim O'Shea lists Blazing Combat in his top 10; Chris Mautner lists his 10 favorite reprints, including Humbug ("excellent... packaged with loving care and an eye towards history"), Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons ("an excellent package of A+ material from a great cartoonist"), Prince Valiant Vol. 1 ("a lively, vibrant strip full of thrilling action and humor"), and You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! ("More Fletcher Hanks? Yes please."); Sean T. Collins's top 25 includes Pim & Francie by Al Columbia at #1, West Coast Blues by Tardi & Manchette at #11, Ganges by Kevin Huizenga at #13, Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 by Michael Kupperman at #14, You Are There by Tardi & Forest at #16, The Squirrel Machine by Hans Rickheit at #17, and Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit: Book 1 at #23; and J.K. Parkin lists Ganges #3 ("a brilliant, insightful comic")

• List: Comics Alliance's thematic Best of 2009 list names You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation! "Best Indie Reprint Volume" ("The utterly insane adventures of the space wizard Stardust continue to be some of the most brilliantly surrealist comics around."), Pim & Francie by Al Columbia "Best Glimpse into a Terrifying Universe that will Haunt my Dreams for Years to Come," and Ganges #3 by Kevin Huizenga "Best comic to read when you can't sleep"

• List: Mike Sterling mentions some of his highlights of the past decade, led by Schizo #4 by Ivan Brunetti and including the renaissance of classic comic strip reprints led by The Complete Peanuts

• List: Brian Gibson of Edmonton's Vue Weekly lists Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco as one of the Best Graphic Novels of the 2000s: "Sacco’s made comics a serious and messily truthful place for journalism."

• List: Living Between Wednesdays lists The Best of 2009: Original Graphic Novels and Collections, including Blazing Combat ("Each panel of Blazing Combat is a stunning work of art, and they are beautifully preserved on heavy paper in this hardcover book. Just as relevant now as when they were first published, these stories should still draw an emotional reaction from anyone who reads them.") and Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 1 by Michael Kupperman ("It’s just something that you have to sit down and read, and when you do you’ll laugh your ass off.")

• List: Matthew Dick ranks Uptight #3 by Jordan Crane 7th on his top 10 Best Comics of 2009 on his Exquisite Things blog (here's his review)

• List: Sandy Bilus of I Love Rob Liefeld names Tony Millionaire's Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird as one of the 6 comics he's most looking forward to in 2010

• Review: "In ambition, breadth and heft, this far-ranging compilation is the worthy companion to Gilbert’s formidable Palomar volume. While capable of standing on its own, Luba is very much the continuing story of several characters now fully transplanted, unfettered and haunted, from their celebrated Mexican town to the Greater Metropolitan Land of Opportunity. Their histories grow longer, broader, more complex and richer as Hernandez’s rollicking, remorseless social comedy rolls on." – Rich Kreiner, The Comics Journal

• Tribute: More on David Levine's passing from Steve Brodner

The year's penultimate Online Commentary & Diversions:

• List: Comic Book Resources begins their countdown of the Top 100 Comics of 2009. At #82, "Because I Love You So Much" by Nikoline Wedelin: "Found in the pages of the recent anthology of Danish comics, From Wonderland with Love, this collection of strips about a mother who discovers that her daughter is being sexually abused by her dad is one of the most harrowing and utterly stunning stories about a difficult subject matter I've ever read and easily equal to the works of, say, Phoebe Gloeckner or Debbie Dreschler." (Chris Mautner)

• List: The Brazilian editions of The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952 and Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button have been voted among As melhores HQs de 2009 (The Best Comics of 2009) by a panel of critics at O Globo (via The Comics Reporter)

• List: Robin McConnell of Inkstuds re-posts his Best of 2009 and Best of the 2000s lists previously run at The Daily Cross Hatch

• List: Comicdom continues their Top 100 of the 00s with Black Hole by Charles Burns at #2: "I start, taking for granted that with Black Hole, Burns played the blues of the pelvis with unparalleled mastery."

• Review: "...[A] love letter to 70s exploitation movies. Beto being Beto, there’s a depth of visual symbolism and complexity of character that provides an emotional structure to the narrative not seen in the source material that inspired these stories. ...Elmore Leonard meets Roger Corman. ... There’s a wonderful luridness to the story that Hernandez revels in... The Troublemakers... shows the artist at the height of his powers, capable of crafting characters with surprising depth even in the basest of genre stories." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

• Review: Chris McLaren gives his impressions after reading the first book of the "marvelous" Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons

• Plug: Paul Constant of The Stranger picks up on our report of the recent Fletcher Hanks discovery and says "If you haven't read I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets! and its sister volume You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation!, you're in for a treat."

• Plugs: At Comics212, Chris Butcher comments on our spread in the December Previews: "Wow, some good stuff this month."

• Interview: Comics Alliance talks to Mome and The Comics Journal contributor Noah Van Sciver

• Interview: Comic Book Galaxy's Alan David Doane presents an exactly-decade-old chat with Barry Windsor-Smith, conducted on the occasion of the release of OPUS Vol. 1: "I mean, if I'd really wanted to sell it, I could have called it 'Tits Galore' or something like that." (I pulled the goofiest quote, but really, it's a substantive read.)

• Tribute: Steve Brodner mourns David Levine

• Things to see: This week's Seattle Weekly boasts illustrations from Jeremy Eaton and Pat Moriarity