Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "At every turn, and every turn of the page, in Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune:  The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips Vol. 1 from Fantagraphics, the reaction is the same: Good Lord, but Roy Crane could draw. ...There are countless pleasures in this first volume of the Captain Easy Sunday pages." – Steve Duin, The Oregonian

• Review: "Of course, the Bradleys story remains the best reason to pick up any of these Hate Annuals, and this time Bagge doesn’t disappoint; even though I still can’t stand Buddy in his Popeye the Sailor look, this story of wife Lisa wanting to get out of the house (since the kid is in school) and do something for herself, eventually ending up in a two-woman rock band playing in a strip club, is consistently funny and sharply observed." – Johnny Bacardi, Popdose

• Plug: In the Portland Mercury, Floating World's Jason Leivian recommends Mezzo & Pirus's King of the Flies for fans of Paul Verhoeven's 1980 film Spetters: "Similar stories of fucked up youngsters spiraling into a black hole of self destruction with incredibly rendered artwork that will appeal to fans of Charles Burns."

• Plug: "If you've not checked out Luba by Gilbert Hernandez, you should. Especially if you live in LA. ... Luba is as funny and delightful as ever in these stories (some super short one-pagers, others much longer, over a hundred stories in this collection) of her and her family and the play between their work lives and personal lives is comical and poignant and over the top in classic Hernandez style." – Callie Miller, LAist (via Robot 6)

• Plug: "I've spent most of this week reading "Plunder Island," the fourth and latest collection of classic Popeye comics from Fantagraphics. This is the third time I've read this material... and it still never fails to enthrall me. In fact, I think Popeye has knocked Peanuts and Krazy Kat out of my personal canon to become my MOST FAVORITE COMIC EVER at the moment. There's just something about E.C. Segar's blend of melodrama, adventure and unrestrained, big-footed comedy that really knocks my socks off." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Interview: Via ¡Journalista!: "New to the TCJ Audio Archive: Over an hour of excerpts from Arn Saba’s 1979 interview with Prince Valiant creator Hal Foster, recorded toward the end of Foster’s life and originally published in The Comics Journal #102," and also reprinted in The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion

• Profile: "Other comics publishers have fallen all over themselves trying to leverage a hoped-for crossover appeal into the mainstream of culture in the last twenty or so years. Meanwhile, Fantagraphics has hung surprisingly tight to their mission statement. But the bigger surprise for me came from learning that Fantagraphics still runs its publishing operation out of the same full-to-bursting house in Maple Leaf where they first planted their Seattle roots in 1989." – E. Magnuson, In North Seattle (Seattle P-I)

• Contest: One lucky person will win a free copy of The Squirrel Machine by Hans Rickheit from Kevin Church, who describes the book as "beautifully drawn, disturbing and sad"

• Links: Love & Maggie highlights some recent Hernandez Bros. -related web action

• PSA: In a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jean Schulz warns collectors to be on the lookout for counterfeit original Peanuts art (via Mike Lynch via ¡Journalista!) — I guess this lady needn't worry

• Nerd-out: Spurge's no. 5 superpower FTW