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Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "Sala’s work is like a fusion of Hergé and Charles Addams, yielding a simple, cartoon-like style that makes his moments of gothic horror all the more disturbing. …[The Hidden] is a beautifully pulpy and incredibly imaginative book that gives a fresh spin on a well-used set-up." – Publishers Weekly • Review/Interview: SF Weekly's Casey Burchby, who says "Richard Sala's new full color graphic novel, The Hidden, fuses two classic horror tropes — the story of Frankenstein's monster, and the ever-popular zombie apocalypse — into a new form that is surprisingly free of cliché…

Ray Fenwick is all up on and in the current issue of Canadian literary magazine Grain. "The spectacular full-of-words-and-questions artwork is by Ray Fenwick, this issue’s Featured Artist — Ray’s gorgeous jealousy-inducing cover alone is reason enough to pick up this issue!" says they, and who are we to disagree?

Our own Jason T. Miles has joined in the efforts to benefit the family of Dylan Williams of Sparkplug Comics by gathering donations of artwork and auctioning them on eBay. Current offerings include Peter Bagge's original cover for Neat Stuff #5 (above) and pieces by our own Eric Reynolds and Jason himself, with an interpretation of a cover of one of Williams's Reporter comics (below). Click each image to go directly to the respective eBay auction page. Upcoming auctions from Jason will include work by a who's-who of Seattle cartoonists, including Max Clotfelter, Jeremy Eaton, Megan Kelso, David Lasky, Marc…

Remember that documentary that Eric was talking about last week, featuring interviews with Dan Clowes and Ivan Brunetti? Well, I just got word from our friends at the Northwest Film Forum here in Seattle that it's screening there through September 29th! Holy crap, go see it.

Jason Vanderhill of Vancouver Is Awesome dug up these rare 1972 illustrations by Rand Holmes for Rohan's Record Store (not included in our Holmes retrospective The Artist Himself) for "Illustrated Vancouver," a series of articles on visual depictions of the city throughout history. Nifty!

Sometimes you just have to post a screengrab of a celebrity tweet plugging an awesome book you just put out.

Our weekly strips from Kupperman & Weissman, plus links to other strips from around the web: — Up All Night by Michael Kupperman (view at original size): Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman (view at original size): And elsewhere: Cochlea & Eustachia by Hans Rickheit: Ectiopiary by Hans Rickheit: Forming by Jesse Moynihan: Humblug by Arnold Roth (another here): Keeping Two by Jordan Crane: Maakies by Tony Millionaire: Truth Serum by Jon Adams: What's in the Backpack by Victor Kerlow:

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "David B.'s newest, The Armed Garden and Other Stories, finds the creator turning his gifts to the world of historical legend. The subject may be different but the artist's mysterious and melancholy style saturates every panel; what's more, the three graphic novellas collected in The Armed Garden provide him with plenty of opportunities to draw the epic battle scenes he so loves…. The Armed Garden and Other Stories is the witty, finely executed work of an artist uniquely capable of capturing both the fervid ecstasy of belief and the dull, heartsick ache left…

We gathered up some press reaction and commentary to our announcement last week that we're publishing Moto Hagio's The Heart of Thomas next year: • Lissa Pattillo of Kuriousity, who inadvertently helped break the news on Twitter, comments: "I’m really looking forward to reading Heart of Thomas. It piqued my interest after coming up a number of times during conversations re: Moto Hagio and Drunken Dream. We’ve got a year to wait but for almost 500+ pages, hardcover, and a classic manga we’d only dream of any other publisher releasing, it’ll be well worth it!" • The mighty Anime News Network…

Our new David B. collection The Armed Garden and Other Stories has landed at #3 on this week's New York Times Best Sellers list for Graphic Hardcover Books! On the Times' Arts Beat blog Adam W. Kepler offers a brief review of the book: "The comics medium has grown adept at translating legendary stories from history… In The Armed Garden and Other Stories, the French artist David B. adapts less well-known, but no less interesting, mythic tales of man and their interactions with god(s)…. The stories are held together by the artist’s sense of humor and tone, not to mention…