The first bit of frost of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review (video): Last Gasp's John Longhi reviews The Lost Art of Ah Pook by Malcom McNeill, a story originally created with William Burroughs. Longhi says, "I can see why Burroughs wanted to work with McNeill because he's one of the few guys who could capture the crazy wacked out details of his story writing. . . [It contains] all the wonderful social discord that made his writing fantastic."

• Review: Blacklung by Chris Wright gets high marks on Paste Magazine. Sean Edgar says, "Blacklung is a weird, compelling creation, telling a harrowing story of redemption and savagery through art that could initially pass as adorable before you get to the tongue necklaces. Highly recommended for those with strong stomachs." 

• Review: School Library Journal announces their BEST BOOKS OF 2012 and in the graphics novels section, Noah Van Sciver's The Hypo is listed. "Van Sciver makes Lincoln real by picturing one of the hardest times in his younger life. . . Dickens-style squalor and melodrama plus Austen-style romance, all done in gritty cross-hatching."

• Plug: The NY Times listed Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons at the top of the Best Bathroom Reads of 2012. Dwight Garner believes "the prints collected here are droll and strange." Two of our favorite words to describe Fantagraphics-style creators such as Flannery O'Connor.

• Plug: Ken Plume mentions some of our books on his 2012 shopping guide: "Alongside the Peanuts collection, [Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown and Mickey Mouse Vol. 4 "House of the Seven Haunts"] reinforce the assessment that no one is doing archival comic collections as well as Fantagraphics."

• Plug: Drew Friedman is Boing-Boing-ed thanks to his amazing drawings, this time of John Severin from MAD/EC/Cracked comics. 

• Plug: Black and White adores Raymond Macherot's Gil Jordan, Private Detective: Murder By High Tide and Sibyl-Anne Vs. Ratticus . Miguel saw the English and French versions, "And I fell in love. . . [Macherot's] worlds are (usually) full of deceptively cute anthropomorphic animals, and in his best work, under that kids-friendly surface of pretty little animals there is real threat."

• Review: Roughly translated from Ediciones La Cupula, Jaime Hernandez's God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls is reviewed. "The excitement that overwhelms us after reading each of the installments of the saga of  [Ti-Girls] is directly proportional to its artistic excellence, his talent as a storyteller and human greatness that lives in his cartoons."

• Review: Lanacion reviews the writings and works of Alexander Theroux (Laura Warholic, Estonia and The Strange Case of Edward Gorey) and translated, barely, Matias Serra Bradford states, "If left as an untreated rarity, Alexander Theroux seems mysterious to the fantastic and impossible point of determining the trajectory of a particle and its position."

• Review: The Snipe News looks at Joe Sacco's Journalism collection. "the decade’s worth of stories. . . are most notable not from any kind of torn-from-the-headlines sensationalism but for the empathy the author brings to his subjects. . . . Sacco has a feel for displaced persons in general."