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By the way, multiple belated hat tips to Robot 6, whose roundups of end-of-year links have been invaluable to the last few installments of Online Commentary & Diversions. On with the links: • List: Publishers Weekly announced the results of their 2009 Comics Week Critic's Poll; among the top vote-getters are You'll Never Know, Book 1: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler ("I love this autobiographical family story as much for the way Tyler weaves between her own life and her father's, as for its painterly, illustrative panoramas of suburban neighborhoods and army scenes." – Sasha Watson) and…

I'm a secret life-long video game junkie* and found this feature at the Cracked website very entertaining. The twisted naïveté of the drawings is a perfect fit for the subject matter. I wish this is what I AM 8-BIT had been. How Five 8-Bit Characters Would Really Look *If anyone wants to get wrecked by my akimbo .44 magnums in MW2, post your 360 gamertag in the comments and I'll add you, hooah.   EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS:  I drew Q-bert on my big board way back in 2008 when I was working on Bill Schelly's excellent Joe Kubert bio Man of…

  Tuesday, January 12 Portland, OR POWELL'S7:30 – 8:30pm 1005 W. BurnsideREADING/SIGNING Portland, OR 97209Phone: 503-228-4651 Wednesday, January 13 Seattle, WA 7:00 – 8:00pm TOWN HALL SEATTLEREADING/SIGNING 1119 8th AvenueGreat HallSeattle, WA 98101Phone: 206-652-4255 Thursday, January 14 Berkeley, CA BOOKS INC.7:00 – 8:00pm 1760 4th St.READING/SIGNING Berkeley, CA 94710Phone: 510-525-7777 Tuesday, January 19 Los Angeles, CA SKYLIGHT BOOKS7:30 – 8:30pm 1818 North Vermont AvenueREADING/SIGNING Los Angeles, CA 90027Phone: 323-660-1175 Wednesday, January 20 New York, NY MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOKSELLERS7:00 – 8:00pm 52 Prince StreetREADING/BOOK SIGNING New York, NY Phone: 212- 274-1160 Thursday, January 21 Brooklyn, NY BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY7:00 – 8:00pm…

The latest limited-edition fine art print offering from Drew Friedman is this handsome portrait of groundbreaking radio comedians Bob Elliott (right) and Ray Goulding. Click here to order and to learn more about the duo. There's also a link to download an MP3 of one of their shows — highly recommended! (Note that this will also be included in Drew's forthcoming book of celebrity portraits, Too Soon? And Drew read my mind and confirms that Bob's son Chris owns one of these prints already.)

Go look: New Ray Fenwick paintings! Also, go HERE for a sneak peak at Ray's next book, MASCOTS, coming later this year from Fantagraphics. I bet you didn't know about that. You did? Well, did you also know that Ray's in a band? I'll stump you yet.

Apologies for the late late Online Commentary & Diversions update: • List: Comic Book Resources continues listing their Top 100 Comics of 2009, with Pim & Francie by Al Columbia at #33 ("A totally creepy homage to the ink blot stylings of the early animation era, the book works as part horror comic, part abstract tour de force, part satire and all face melter, cementing Columbia's place as one of the most unique and mysterious voices in comics." – Kiel Phegley) and Ganges #3 by Kevin Huizenga at #20 ("a brilliant, insightful comic with inventive layouts and dead-on emotion" –…

On the occassion of his 500th post, I want to direct Flog attention to the ridiculously hungry aesthetic mind of my pal Will Schofield and his blog, A Journey Around My Skull. Anyone interested in illustration and design (and photography and art and whatever is visually interesting that has existed somewhere in time, somewhere on the globe) should have this page bookmarked.  Equally impressive to any of the content is the sheer enthusiasm Will has for the work he features. This isn't link-blogging or pixelated attention-deficit syndrome, the guy is committed in a way that I wish I could be…

We're kicking off 2010 right with the following books scheduled to arrive at comics shops across the nation this week: The Troublemakers by Gilbert Hernandez — Newsarama says "Girls! Guns! Gilbert Hernandez!" Jog says "Oh shit, here's how you start 2010 off right." Robot 6 says "it's very hard to imagine this not being fantastic." It's the second of the "Fritz filmography" series of standalone graphic novels. Pulpy goodness! The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D. by Dash Shaw — by some accounts this was at some shops a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn't on the official…

No sooner did I post the Newsarama interview with Kim Deitch than I came across this profile by Graphic NYC's Christopher Irving: "When I’m starting to think of a good idea, I visualize myself walking into a comic book store, and I ask myself the question ‘What are you not seeing here that would absolutely knock your socks off, in terms of a book? You don’t expect that question is going to be answered right away, but by asking that question, it starts the wheels turning. After a while your subconscious mind starts to feed out little clues towards what…

Newsarama's Michael Lorah talks to Kim Deitch about his newest book, The Search for Smilin' Ed, coming this Spring: "I am definitely expanding (and redrawing a little here and there). I am adding 15 new pages at the end and there will be plenty of other new art visuals as well. The most ambitious new thing will be a double fold out of The Kim Deitch Universe. This will be a gigantic panoramic picture featuring one hundred of my characters past and present." There's a 3-page preview, too!