• Also on Facebook, Bill Griffith posts this one-page story (excerpted above) which was recently published in a new book about Levittown, Second Suburb, edited by Dianne Harris (link goes straight to the image file, since I don't know Bill's Facebook privacy settings, but he posts cool stuff all the time)
• T. Edward Bak is posting several pages from his current serialized Mome story "Wild Man" — for 50 bucks you can purchase an original page and help fund his impending trip to Alaska for field research for the story, so hit that Paypal link on his blog
• Review: "Reading this book was like unearthing a trunkload of old baby pictures… if the babies in question would eventually grow up to become Mad Magazine and Rat Fink. ...[L]ike a Buddy Holly song on an oldies station or WWII-era tattoo flash, some art just stands the test of time and becomes classic. Basil Wolverton’s Culture Corner is a one-of-a-kind work and definitely falls into that category. [Grade: A]" – Chad Derdowski, Mania
• Review: "For some time now, Norwegian cartoonist Jason has been on my shortlist of recommended artists for the uninitiated. ... The next question, naturally, is: which Jason book to start with? Almost Silent... fits the bill perfectly. ... This is the output of an artist with a clear vision who is truly at the top of his game. ... Beautifully bound and reasonably priced, you’re not going to find a much better entry point into the world of contemporary graphic novels than Almost Silent." – Brian Heater, The Daily Cross Hatch
• Review: "...The Last Lonely Saturday [is] pretty much the best love story in comics form I've ever come across. ... It's an intelligent, moving, beautiful, terrific little comic." – Sean T. Collins (we linked to this previously when it ran on The Savage Critics but it's worth re-running)
• Review: "Here’s a book that was initially attractive as an intriguing, if intellectual, curiosity, only to reveal itself in short order as a continually fascinating experience. ... I hope this volume, despite its killer commercial potential, will inspire a second. ...Abstract Comics is the most surprising book of the year." – Rich Kreiner, "Yearlong Best of the Year," The Comics Journal
• Interview:Mr. Media's Bob Andelman talks to Monte Schulz about This Side of Jordan: "My dad read the book before he died. He liked Rascal a lot — 'He's such a funny little guy.' He used to tell me I was raising the level of art in the family." Listen via the embedded player above or at this link, or download the MP3
• SayethHans Rickheit: "I like Page 15 [of Ectopiary] simply because it contains a stuffy old lady denigrating beatniks and artists; that is always a winning ingredient of any succsessful book, in my opinion."
• The last word today goes to Jeremy Eaton, with this illustration for a (now out-of-date) Seattle Weekly article about that whole Amazon/Diamond foofarah. 'Nuff said!
I might have to start posting these art-blog roundups on the weekends too... these Monday updates are outa control...
• Airbrushed Zippy the Pinhead art (artist unknown)! Posting this on Facebook, Bill Griffith says "This is the 2-page spread ad for the 'Zippy Movie' from Variety magazine, 3/29/90. The ad was taken out by the Aspen Film Society (at that time they were the producers of the movie) in hopes of attracting a studio/distributor. Are we in turnaround yet?" More about it (and the likewise never-to-be Zippy TV show series) here
• Review: "Anderson’s King is most definitely NOT your feel-good, sanctifying version of King’s life that most readers are probably used to. ...[T]he MLK presented here is a multi-dimensional, gifted man … but still very much a man, nevertheless, filled with doubt, frustration, anger, arrogance, and even deceit. ... While Anderson starkly presents King’s less-than-saintly episodes... the final reaction is a fuller understanding of a great man, with inspiring ideals, and an unshakeable dedication to equality through nonviolent, loving means. ... MLK’s legacy undeniably lives on in Anderson’s King." – Terry Hong, Bookdragon (Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program)
• Review: "Dash Shaw was praised to the skies for his hefty 2008 graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button, but the 26-year-old cartoonist’s real strength so far in his career has been his short strips, which have displayed a diversity of subject matter and style that make each piece feel like something wholly new. The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D.... does reveal a future master in his formative stages, working to find a balance between his interest in subtle adult relationships—teacher/pupil, flirter/flirtee, etc.—and his yen to try out new approaches to drawing and coloring. Shaw may be the cartoonist of the rising generation most capable of delivering a long-form work with the formal daring and humanity of a David Mazzucchelli or an Art Spiegelman. Consider The Unclothed Man a document of his baby steps… B+" – The A.V. Club
• Plug: "The Complete Peanuts 1975-1976 comes out in March, meaning we'll be halfway through this amazing, historical publication. I can't say enough about these collections. It's not only remarkable in its simple, truthful capturing of the human condition, but a beautiful historical document of the second half of the 20th Century." – Rob Kozlowski
• Interview: On the Inkstuds radio programme, Jordan Crane and Sammy Harkham have a feisty conversation with host Robin McConnell about their webcomics concern, What Things Do
• Commentary:NPR 's Glen Weldon, surveying some of the connections between comics and pop music, says "Love and Rockets, by Los Bros Hernandez, wasn't just about a punk band, it was a book steeped in an anarchic punk sensibility that even today, 30 years later, still seems bracing and unapologetic."
• List: At The Comics Journal, the back half of Rob Clough's Top 50 Comics of 2009 includes:
#29, The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972 by Charles Schulz: "Twenty-two years into his run on this strip, Schulz was still at his peak even as Peanuts was moving into a new phase."
#31, Mome Vol. 14: "The most consistently excellent anthology in comics, issue after issue."
#39, Uptight #3 (misidentified as #2) by Jordan Crane: "Both [stories] were perfectly suited for this lo-fi yet gorgeously designed comic..."
#43, The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book by Joe Daly: "Daly didn’t create just a story or a set of characters, but an entire community for readers to wander around in and become comfortable with. Equal parts Tintin and The Big Lebowski, this was a stoner detective story, with all sorts of absurd events popping up in everyday life and eventually making a kind of sense."
#46, Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me by Peter Bagge: "This is Bagge-as-Mencken, trenchantly tearing apart stupid ideas from both the left and the right and doing it while actually going out into the field, gathering facts, and talking to people. His hyper-expressive style was a perfect fit for his over-the-top political commentary."
And finally, #50, Love and Rockets: New Stories #2 by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez: "Jaime’s conclusion to 'Ti-Girls Adventures' managed to combine rip-snorting action and compelling character work. Gilbert’s 'Hypnotwist' was both a callback to his New Love-style weirdness and yet another entry in his 'pulp movie' adaptations. ...[I]t’s clear both brothers were having such a good time following their impulses."
• Review: "Abstract Comics: The title is, in itself, a manifesto. It makes official the existence of these strange objects that some will reject as a contradiction in terms: 'abstract comics.' ... In the abstract comics gathered by Molotiu, sequential ordering produces nothing on the order of a story; but solidarity between the panels is established (in more or less convincing and seducing fashions) in another mode — plastic, rhythmic and so to speak musical. Personally, I do not refuse to make a place for these creations in the field of comics, because I wish that field to be as open and as diversified in its expressions as possible, without excluding anything a priori. Nevertheless, I still note that they have closer affinities with the operating modes of contemporary art that with the ordinary ambitions of drawn literatures." – Thierry Groensteen, Neuvieme Art (excerpt and translation by Andrei Molotiu at the Abstract Comics Blog)
• Review: "Perhaps the best adjective I could employ to describe Castle Waiting would be 'homey.' It’s all about the pleasures of home and the relief of being amongst family who accept you, even if they don’t happen to be related to you or even entirely human. ... Taken on the surface, it’s a perfectly cozy and enjoyable story. If one decides to delve more deeply, themes of tolerance and equality can be found gently at work, though by no means do they take precedence over the characters. Lest all of this sound a bit too quaintly domestic, let me assure you that the story is also quite funny." – Michelle Smith, Soliloquy in Blue
![The Last Lonely Saturday [Hardcover Ed.]](components/com_virtuemart/show_image_in_imgtag.php?filename=bookcover_llones.jpg&newxsize=145&newysize=&fileout= "The Last Lonely Saturday [Hardcover Ed.]")
