Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "It should go without saying by now that any new volume of Love and Rockets is a must for any serious comics fan... [and] New Stories 4 is... one of the major events of the comics year ... [A]nyone who loves brilliant cartooning technique should appreciate the way Jaime draws the casual sag of a post-coital naked body, or the way he illustrates a pre-schooler tugging at his mother, oblivious to any notion of 'personal space.' And anyone who’s alive in the world should be moved by this story’s depiction of life as a series of accidents, miscommunications, and embarrassments, which sometimes work out okay regardless." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Love: At The Tearoom of Despair, Bob Temuka offers some spoiler-filled thoughts on Love and Rockets: New Stories #4, saying "this is no review. This is love. The art is as beautiful as always, evocative of time and place, and Jaime still draws the best body language and facial expressions in the medium, telling entire stories in a frown or wink.... While it’s no surprise that Jaime Hernandez is still producing magnificent and beautiful comics, it is also still incredible to see how big his storytelling balls are, man."

• Review: "Though not strictly a comic book, Michael Kupperman’s Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010 is very much of a piece with the cartoonist’s gleefully absurdist Tales Designed To Thrizzle series. ...Kupperman picks up the story of an American icon beginning with what the newspapers reported as Mark Twain’s 'death.' Kupperman’s Twain quickly sets the record straight, then relates what he’s been up to for the past century: fighting in World War I, losing a fortune by investing in chocolate-covered olives, making gangster pictures inspired by The Wizard Of Oz… y’know, the usual. Kupperman’s working method seems to be just to let his mind wander, making stream-of-consciousness associations that fuse into comedy." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

• Review: "Initially published in the ’80s, [The Cabbie] mimics the basic comic strip format — even going as far as aping the way Chester Gould used thick black lines for basically everything with Dick Tracy — but is supremely screwed up. The protagonist, a cab driver is obsessed with money, has a tricked out cab, happens upon bizarre crimes, and even gets tortured by a family living in the slums. It is a really uncomfortable experience from cover to cover, and I am stoked it exists." – Sam Hockley-Smith, The Fader

• Review: "This is a harsh and uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: blackly cynical, existentially scary and populated with a cast of battered, desolate characters of increasingly degenerate desperation. Even the monsters are victims. But for all that The Cabbie is an incredibly compelling drama with strong allegorical overtones and brutally mesmerizing visuals. Any adult follower of the art form should be conversant with this superb work and with a second volume forthcoming hopefully we soon all will be." – Win Wiacek, Now Read This!

• Interview: At The Comics Journal, Jay Ruttenberg sits down for brunch with Drew Friedman to kibbitz about the Old Jewish Comedians books: "Well, I found Jerry [Lewis] to be completely delightful. Just great. He’s very inquisitive about the process about what I do. He asks, 'Drew, how do you do what you do?' So I say, 'Jerry, how do you do what you do?' You gotta butter him up: 'I especially love drawing you, Jerry.' But a lot of them hate each other. It’s very funny. You bring up one comedian to another comedian, and there’s venom. It’s amusing to me. There’s nothing funnier than angry comedians. Nothing better!"

• Interview: Jason Diamond at Jewcy also gets a crack at Drew Friedman: "I kinda bounce around the [nerd] map. I don’t really fit into one category.  I love comedians, comic books, and old movies. Really anything from the past. With these Old Jewish Comedian books, they have nothing really to do with comic books, but everything I’ve done in my career led to these books."

• Interview: Robot 6's Tim O'Shea has a quick chat with Mome contributor Eleanor Davis about her contribution to that Nursery Rhyme Comics anthology

• Feature: October means features on horror comics, and Casey Burchby's look at the history of the genre at SF Weekly says "A recent collection called Four Color Fear, edited by Greg Sadowski, collects terrific examples of horror comics from non-EC sources, including Eerie, Web of Evil, and Chamber of Chills. The work in this volume is much wider ranging in subject matter and style than Tales from the Crypt, which tended to follow a handful of formulas."

• Commentary: Robot 6's Chris Mautner lobbies us to put out a collection of Mack White's Villa of the Mysteries and other comics, saying "CIA conspiracies. Carny shows. Obscure pagan rituals. Snake handlers. Brainwashed assassins. Nudist nuns. Roman gods. Psychedelic western landscapes. Very short men with very, very large penises. Such are the essential elements found in the comics of Mack White, who, for the past couple of decades, has created some of the most bizarre, paranoid and succulently pulpish comics around. Born and raised in Texas, Mack's comics are infused with the Lone Star state's own unique blend of rugged individualism and suspicion of authority."

• Plug: At Comic Book Resources, Greg Burgas goes "Flippin' Through Previews and finds "Fantagraphics offers Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons on page 294. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently O’Connor was quite the cartoonist in the 1940s. This has to be awesome, right?"

• Check out Mack White's illustrations for Michael del Ray's book Long Term Parking

• Monster Brains presents "Momster" by Ted Jouflas from Weirdo #26 (1989)

• "Ghost Dream," a sketchbook comic by Drew Weing

• From Lilli Carré, a short animated film, a poster for an event she'll be at, and a teaser of her work in the new Smoke Signal

• Leslie Stein gives this peek at artwork from the 6th issue of Eye of the Majestic Creature

• Panels for the next installment of "Nothing Eve" for Mome by Kurt Wolfgang at New Bodega

• Also working away on a new Mome story: Laura Park

• And yet more Mome previewing: new pages from "Wild Man" by T. Edward Bak

• Messages from Killoffer at Lewis Trondheim's Les petits riens blog

• Shirley from the TV show Community by Josh Simmons

• Renee French custom-painted this Dylan Sprouse vinyl figure; plus the usual drawings etc. at her blog; plus we like this photo on Sprouse's website for obvious reasons

• Sammy Harkham on Flickr

• A panel by Carol Tyler; also check out a photo of her drawing desk

And more Things to See from the past week:

• Illustrations, sketches and film reviews by Jason at his Cats Without Dogs blog

• Steven Weissman's latest "I, Anonymous" spot and sketching on his Chewing Gum in Church blog

• Drawings & diagrams from Frank Santoro

• Puppets in progress by Marco Corona

• Another possible puppet or other figurine in progress in some mysterious photos from Paul Hornschemeier

• Vintage Jim Flora artwork and illustrations at the Jim Flora blog

• Sketches by Mark Kalesniko for his new graphic novel Freeway at his blog

• "The Strangest Story You Ever Heard in Your Life" continues at Splog!, the Sergio Ponchione Lost Objects Gallery blog, plus an illustration at Mondobliquo

• Daily storyboards & production art from Dash Shaw at The Ruined Cast blog

• Watercolor panel process by Derek Van Gieson

• Daily sketches by Tom Kaczynski at his Transatlantis blog

Mack White appears as "Sir Real" in this clip from the film-in-progress Bozoland by J. Ryan Barone. Some old-school Austin weirdness there. See two additional clips at Mack's website.

Just arrived in our warehouse and ready to ship:

Hotwire Comics Vol. 3
By various artists; edited by Glenn Head

The Harvey and Eisner nominated anthology of action, thrills, chills and trangression is back with a third volume! Anything goes in Hotwire, eschewing literary high-mindedness for a pure, gut-wrenching viscerality that you can tune in and rest your brain on after a long day.

Hotwire the third leaps off the page from the get-go with David Sandlin’s “Infernal Combustion,” about boozing it up in a broke-down caddy, and Tim Lane’s bit of freight-hopping grit, “Spike.” Underground comics legend Mary Fleener returns with “The Judge,” a true tale about her own life fending off thugs… with a .38! Meanwhile, Hotwire Captain Glenn Head spins the biography of German surrealist Hans Bellmer as a down and out Vaudevillian in decadent Weimar Berlin. R. Sikoryak turns in a brand new batch of "Masterpiece Comics", as Dennis the Menace stars as Prince Hamlet! Other creepy delights: Rick Altergott delivers a fable of a child-molesting clown pleasuring himself in the suburbs, while Matti Hagelberg’s “Passion of Atte” is a modern-day Dante’s Inferno of comics.

There’s also more knockout work and crazy visuals by Mark Dean Veca, Johnny (Angry Youth Comix) Ryan, Mats?!, Max Andersson, Sam Henderson, Steve Cerio, Stephane Blanquet, Doug Allen, Michael (Tales Designed to Thrizzle) Kupperman, Danny Hellman, Mack White, David Paleo, Chadwick Whitehead, Onsmith, Karl Wills and Jayr Pulga. Looking for laffs? A psychic jolt? A partner for your next trip? Look no further than… Hotwire!

Download an EXCLUSIVE 15-page PDF excerpt with a sampling of pages from throughout the book (16.5 MB).

138-page color/b&w 9" x 12" softcover • $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-288-3
Add to Cart • More Info & Previews

On his blog, Mack White posts a bunch of teaser images for "Roadside Hell," his story in the upcoming Hotwire Comics Vol. 3, coming early 2010. Zombies, snakes, a luchador executioner... looks good!