Following up on their exclusive preview from The Troublemakers posted yesterday, Comic Book Resources' Shaun Manning grills Beto about the book ("The 4 main characters are attractive people, for the most part, but they are drawn to shady doings because it turns them on. This type of immaturity is glorified everywhere you look, so why work a 9 to 5 job?") and future installments of the "Fritz filmography" (to appear in Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 next year, and in future collections with "added sex"!). Must read!

I knew I was getting off too easy! Nick Gazin is trying to kill me. There are also some negative reviews of our books at the links below, but I won't say any more about those:

• Review: "Fantagraphics has come to my foreign comic book rescue and published hardcovered English translations of West Coast Blues, which was good, and [You Are There], which is great. ... Tardi has nice skinny lines and large fields of black. His architecture and cars and landscapes are amazing. Just the idea of Arthur There running up and down the walls and living in this skinny little house are neat ideas. This book talks a lot about what it’s like when you spend your life alone and how nuts a slutty crazy girl can make you. ... Summing up: If you hate everything that isn’t old timey and French and love sluts who are nuts then get this book fast." – Nick Gazin, Vice

• Review: "[Portable Grindhouse] presents the most beautiful and lurid VHS boxes ever produced. ... Someone was inevitably going to make this book and Jacques Boyreau made something special that a lot of people are going to love owning. The design is beautiful, the art is reproduced perfectly, and the paper stock feels especially good. It even comes packed in a slipcase that looks like a VHS sleeve spattered in blood. A well-designed book showing off these funny and beautiful examples of a dead medium would be enough, but the introductary essay is a revelatory piece on the importance of VHS and the role it played in cinematic history." – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

• Review: "[Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1] is chock-full of intense faces and monsters and colors. Strong blacks, horror comics, mean revenge, strange surgery, and stuff. It’s all horror comics from before Frederic Wertham illegalized good-time comic books. The cover is really thick and the hardcover is hard as hell." – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

• Review: "This series is awesome, perfect, and essential. I’ll die with my collection of [The Complete Crumb Comics] on my shelf unless there’s a fire or America slips into a Mad Max-style society. ... These should sit on your shelf next to the complete Shakespeare, your Bible, and the complete Sherlock Holmes." – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

• Review: "...[The Troublemakers] is a sweet little book in which a bunch of grifters try to trick each other out of money. It seems to be about love and trust and whether anybody is dependable or if they’re all trying to survive. It’s pretty great." – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

• Review: "[Prison Pit Book 1] is great and an essential read since so few new good comics get made. ... If you love or hate Johnny R. you gotta get this shit. It is important. Buy buy buy." – Nick Gazin, Vice (new link!)

• Review: "Every issue of Love and Rockets is a winner and I am never bored by anything the Hernandez Brothers do. The comics have been so consistently good since the first one came out in 1981 that there's almost no point in reviewing [New Stories #2] other than to say, 'Hey, it came out so go to the store and you can buy it now.'" – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

• Review: "Tardi is a legend of European comics and it's wonderful to have hardbound English translations of his work. [West Coast Blues] is full of beautiful drawings of Paris, people, cars, fights, and rural life. The story deals with the human condition and what it means to be a man and civilization versus nature while the main character hides from hit men in the mountains. This book feels... like an updated Tintin..." – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

• Review: "Back in the Golden Age of comics there were few comic auteurs but Fletcher Hanks was one of the few. ... The stories [in You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation!] are weird and grim. The art is unprofessional and beautiful." – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

• Review: "Peanuts was an amazing comic. Charles Schulz was an amazing artist. Fantagraphics' Complete Peanuts series are great and [1973-1974] is the best one yet. The humor is unparalleled and the stories are great. ... Charles Schulz was a sad and funny guy and this book features him at his saddest and funniest. If you bought some of the earlier volumes in this series and then forgot about it, then it's time to catch up." – Nick Gazin, Vice (same link as above)

Wrapping up another week's worth of Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Bookmark: Presenting the newly redesigned BobFingerman.com

• Feature: At the Washington Post blog Double X, Sasha Watson recounts the emergence of female underground and alternative cartoonists, talking to Trina Robbins, Carol Tyler, and others, with an accompanying slideshow featuring Tyler, Jessica Abel, Lilli Carré and 10 more

• Review: "I really love comics. Reading a collection like Joe Daly's Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, I'm reminded of just why. ... It's drawn like a combination of Tintin, Dilbert, and King of the Hill. It's hilarious, both in terms of the plot and the one-liners. So, like so many other great comics, it's sui generis. ... Daly's plots move at a breezy pace, but his art is sharply detailed, and drawn expertly from a variety of perspective points. The palette is vibrant and fun. ...[T]his is some seriously funny shit." – Byron Kerman, PLAYBACK:stl

• Review: "Rickheit’s artwork [in The Squirrel Machine] is stunning, from the beautifully disgusting instruments to the ornate architecture. It’s like steampunk crossed with the animal-appropriating art of Damien Hirst or Ebony Andrews, with complicated machines adorned with the heads and torsos of unfortunate livestock." – Garrett Martin, The Boston Herald

• Review: "It's like a great adaptation of an old 1990s straight-to-video erotic thriller made unpredictable with a touch of magical realism. Hernandez's strength remains his depictions of women; like Love and Rockets, the female leads of The Troublemakers are both strong and believable, no matter how atypical their situations and dimensions may seem. – Garrett Martin, The Boston Herald (same link as above)

• Review...?: "Prison Pit is un-reviewable; it is what it is... [Johnny] Ryan is one crazy motherfucker, man — and I mean that in the nicest possible way." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

• Plug: Cartoonist Mike Lynch ogles the photos of Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons and shares a delightful Wilson anecdote

• Interview: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan talks to Greg Sadowski, editor of Supermen! and our upcoming series of Golden Age reprints: "Any comic I want to read I can borrow from one of the collectors I know. I don’t need to own them. As you get older, you realize the folly of having too many possessions."

• Interview: Graphic Novel Reporter's John Hogan talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning author and well-known Love and Rockets fan Junot Díaz about his favorite comics; of course, L&R comes up

• Things to buy: The new Robert Pollard DVD, The Devil Went Home and Puked (a compilation of Guided by Voices and Pollard solo footage) is now available for pre-order

• Things to see: Tim Lane's "complete classic five Temptations" cut-outs

• Things to see: Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty by Kevin Huizenga

Once again we're bringing you an advance sneak peek at our listings for the next issue of Previews, this time with our releases scheduled for February 2010. It's going to be a big month for us with 8 new books, including two new Love and Rockets collections (one from Gilbert & one from Jaime), a great Kim Deitch yarn, horror noir from Ho Che Anderson, Captain Easy Vol. 1 (resolicited from August), a new softcover edition of the almost-out-of-print Blazing Combat, The Best American Comics Criticism of the 21st Century, and, pictured above, the breathtaking new graphic novel from Eisner Award winner Cathy Malkasian! Check it all out right here.

Publishers Weekly names You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler to its list of Best Books of 2009 — Comics...

...and the editors of Amazon.com name Locas II: Maggie, Hopey & Ray by Jaime Hernandez to their Best Books of 2009: Comics & Graphic Novels Top 10, in the #6 position.

(Ed. note: As more end-of-year lists come in, we will collect the listed titles in a 2009 Critics' Picks category in our online shop, as we did for the 2008 Critics' Picks, in addition to noting them here on Flog.)

Happy day-before-Halloween — lots of treats in today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Bookmark: And I thought I was thorough! Hats off to Love and Rockets fan blog Love & Maggie, your one stop for comprehensive L&R/Hernandez Bros. link gathering, commentary and more (hat tip to Mike Sterling)

• Profile: Newcity's Beatrice Smigasiewicz talks to Paul Hornschemeier about the conclusion of his Mome serial "Life with Mr. Dangerous" and other topics: “People are routinely surprised to find that in person I joke around all the time and am obsessed with comedy: they think that I must walk around in a constant fog of philosophical conundrums and Weltschmerz.”

• Things to see: It's getting to be time for Giant Robot's annual Post-It Show, with artists such as Johnny Ryan and Tim Hensley revealing their entries

• Things to see: Speaking of Tim, I want this to be a real thing so badly I can feel the flocking on my fingertips

• Things to see: Speaking of Johnny, he reveals that the final (sniff) issue of Nickelodeon magazine includes a strip written by him and drawn by Hector Mumbly (Dave Cooper) — !

• Things to see: At the Jim Flora blog, outtakes from The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora

• ???: Can anyone translate this page for us? It's photos of Thomas Ott seemingly leading some kind of comics workshop, but beyond that I haven't a clue

• Contest: Create a text-only comic, submit it to Doctor Popular, and you could win a copy of Abstract Comics

• Staff: Oh snap! Our own Jason T. Miles is now blogging at Comics Comics. Holy crap that guy can write

• Crass Google pandering: Sasha Gray tells AOL's Asylum that she likes Ghost World (via AOL's Comics Alliance)

Here you go, today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Locas II, by Jaime Hernandez, combines lush artwork with vivid, heart-in-mouth storytelling. ...[I]f you haven’t encountered its two heroines before, you might find yourself a little lost in the ongoing magic realist soap opera that is Hernandez’s stock-in-trade. It would be a bit like dropping in on Coronation Street for the first time — albeit a Corrie soundtracked by The Germs and Big Black. ... [But] even if you find yourself lost somewhere in the middle of Locas II, the lostness makes a kind of sense. The lives Hernandez chronicles are a little lost. ... Best of all, there's the creamy out-and-out gorgeousness of Hernandez's cartooning, with its echoes of Peanuts, the old Archie comics and 'good girl' art (never, outwith [Russ] Meyer's movies, have so many worn so little so often). Can you fancy a drawing? Look at the portrait of Frogmouth on page 405 and tell me it's not possible." – Teddy Jamieson, The Herald

• Review: "The Good: Prison Pit reminded me a lot of Gwar, professional wrestling and the comic strips my friends and I used to draw in junior high. ... It was gross as hell and filled with blood and gore and just straight-up repulsive juvenile humor. It was a lot of fun. The Bad: It’s probably too awesome for a lot of people to handle. ... The Bottom Line: Dude, it’s great. Just shut up and buy it. ...I’m giving Prison Pit an A and as soon as I’m done writing this review, I’m going to sit down and re-read it." – Chad Derdowski, Mania

• Events: At comiXology, Kristy Valenti (moonlighting from her Assistant Editor position at The Comics Journal) recaps the graphic novels panel with Ellen Forney, Megan Kelso, Gary Groth & Top Shelf's Leigh Walton at last weekend's Seattle Bookfest

Rebel Visions author Patrick Rosenkranz sent us some photos of the sights (including the Hernandez Bros.) at the Wonder Woman Day charity event at Excalibur Books & Comics in Portland, OR yesterday to share with you. Below: The Bros., their artwork for the charity auction, and Rosenkranz & friend. More of Patrick's photos are in our Flickr set, including the cutest little Supergirl you ever did see.

Some Online Commentary & Diversions to wrap up your week:

• Review: "Artist Carol Swain brings a sober British reserve to her husband Bruce Paley's tales of hippie and punk excess for a nostalgic feel with the winning Giraffes In My Hair: A Rock ‘n' Roll Life. ...[F]rom the late ‘60s through the early ‘80s, his peripatetic adventures with drugs, women, and punker Johnny Thunders make for a series of fun, roguish vignettes. ... Swain uses pencil to understated effect, and works up a lyrical, nostalgic vibe. Her simple scenes arrange a loose chronological narrative into a warm experience conveyed as in a film or a song—at its best, Giraffes plays like Dylan's 'Tangled Up in Blue,' if you will. ... Highly recommended." – Byron Kerman, PLAYBACK:stl

• Review: "West Coast Blues is just the right mixture of action, suspense, and surprise to keep just about any reader’s attention. ... It’s hard to ignore the strength of Tardi’s art in making West Coast Blues such a strong graphic novel. ... West Coast Blues is a sharp, beautiful book. ... For people looking for a noir thriller, you’ve come to the right place." – Greg McElhatton, Read About Comics

• Things to see: At the Covered blog, a version of Love and Rockets #23 by the artist KG

• Things to see: Oh, these fairy tale illustrations for The Guardian by Eleanor Davis are just lovely

Your midweek Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "It’s probably not fair to expect Hernandez to issue another creative virtuoso like Palomar, but in the pages of Luba, he comes closer than might be expected. ... Although Luba doesn’t hit as hard as Palomar, it remains a compelling portrait of family in all its messy glory.  Alternately sexy and vulgar, beautiful and mean, optimistic and intolerant, Luba and her family encompass all the ugliness and amazement that comes with being part of the human entity." – Michael C. Lorah, Newsarama

• Profile: "Cartoonist Bill Mauldin was a genius at bringing the experiences of World War II home to the moms and dads, kids, wives or girlfriends of the GIs on the front lines in a very human way. ... To my knowledge, none of our wars since has produced a chronicler anywhere near the greatness of Mauldin." – Wesley G. Hughes, San Bernadino County Sun (via Newsarama)

• Video: A massive Peanuts ice sculpture depicting A Charlie Brown Christmas is being constructed in Nashville; The Daily Cartoonist has the PR and a promo video featuring members of the Schulz family

• Industry: Our own Eric Reynolds takes part in a roundtable on the topic of "Comics in the Age of Digital Piracy" at Graphic Novel Reporter

• Editorial: At his website, Barry Windsor-Smith writes eloquently in support of health care reform in the United States