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A bit late with the Online Commentary & Diversions today due to being a touch under the weather: • Review: "OK, [Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons] is very expensive, but Wilson's a lot cheaper than Zoloft. Some people fly their inner freak flags as a sign of liberation. This strange dude isn't sure there's another type of flag out there. In his world, there's always something over the horizon ready to eat you, blow you up or turn you into a homicidal maniac. Sounds a lot like life." – Laurel Maury, San Francisco Chronicle • Review: "…[An] exemplary…

One of the trickiest things about selecting interns is finding just the right balance of a person who will be helpful, but who will also gain something useful from the experience. I was put in mind of this when Claire Burrows, a graduate student and an awesome winter intern, just sent a lovely goodbye e-mail which included this line: "I feel like I achieved what I came for, plus had some excellent conversations (my next blog: talking cats who use sex as a weapon)." Ah, Claire, you've learned your lessons well. Thank you for your help and good luck with…

Sand & Fury: A Scream Queen Adventure By Ho Che Anderson 144-page two-color 7.5" x 9" softcover • $16.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-321-7 Ships in February 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Sand & Fury is a story of blood, of sex, of death — of sound and retribution. It opens as a girl by the side of a desert road accepts a ride from a stranger. How could she know that behind that wheel sits the angel of death? Of course, even the angel of death once had a life. During that life, death was a successful business woman, with a…

King of the Flies Vol. 1: Hallorave By Mezzo & Pirus 64-page full-color 9" x 12.5" hardcover • $18.99ISBN: 978-1-60699-320-0 Ships in February 2010 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now Set in a suburb that is both nowhere and everywhere, King of the Flies is a glorious bastard, combining the intricacy and subtlety of the best European graphic novels with a hyperdetailed, controlled noir style derived from the finest American cartoonists. Mezzo and Pirus, previously best known in Europe for a series of cynical, brutal gangster stories, have abandoned their guns and gals for this cycle of suburban stories, but…

Oops, your Friday webcomics update slipped into early Saturday… Your second of three bar gags in a row in this week's The House of No by Derek Van Gieson… …Blecky lays down the law in this week's Blecky Yuckerella strip by Johnny Ryan…. …and is it just me or does Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman just keep getting better and better?

A quick Online Commentary & Diversions update to close out the week: • List: Popmatters names Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box one of The Best of Books 2009: Non-Fiction: "This awesome picture book… [is] filled with a delightfully odd array of vintage video covers… VHS cassettes may be treated like toxic waste in the age of the Blu-ray, but Portable Grindhouse offers that micro minority who still remain faithful to their trusty VCR a long overdue reprieve." – Ronald Hart • Review: "Half the fun of [The Troublemakers] is trying to figure out just who is getting…

Мишка presents: GOBLIN – A print series by Jon Vermilyea! 350 BroadwayBrooklyn, NY Opening party Thursday, Janurary 28th, 7-10 pm. Limited edition Goblin prints and T-shirts will be for sale!

Join Jessica Abel, Gabrielle Bell, and Jillian Tamaki for a panel discussion with Publishers Weekly's Calvin Reid on Jan. 28 at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, at 10 Grand Army Plaza, in the Dweck Center, at 7:00 pm.

Past, present and future in today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • List: Library Journal picks "Trina Robbins’s glam grab bag of Nell Brinkley serials," The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons from 1913–1940, as the best reprint on their Best Graphic Novels 2009 list •List: Thanks to Zack Soto for naming West Coast Blues by Tardi & Manchette, Prison Pit: Book 1 by Johnny Ryan, and Pim & Francie by Al Columbia amongst his Favorite Books of 2009 (via) • Review: "Imagine then what yesterday — or today's — right wingers would say about The Great Anti-War Cartoons……