I think I might start posting weekend updates — these Monday roundups are getting bananas…
• Review: We received a wonderful endorsement of Supermen! from Bud Plant, which we've proudly placed on the product page
• Review: John Mitchell on Supermen!: “Supermen points to a time when comic books were a new and exciting form — admittedly low brow in presentation, but filled with visual and narrative leaps that would affect how we told stories visually for decades to come… This book chronicles the exciting, silly, fun and experimental world in which these kinds of [superhero] characters were forged — fairy tales from the modern era."
• Review: Lady, That's My Skull takes lunch with The Wolverton Bible, saying "It is a fascinating look at the side of an artist that most fans are not familiar with due to the scarcity of the material."
• Review: My Year Online on Ted Stearn's first Fuzz & Pluck collection: "[I] laugh[ed] out loud at many points. This is all down to Ted Stearn’s genius in depicting expressions, his excellent slapstick timing and great storyboards, where you can never tell what will happen next…"
• Reviews: The blogger behind Fluid Motion has "been reading a lot of comics by Jason recently," offering micro-reviews of 3 of his books
• Review: Newsarama enthuses about Popeye Vol. 3 (scroll about halfway down): "As with previous volumes of Popeye, it's a cornucopia of mangled English, slapstick, violence and hamburger soliciting… Fantagraphics continues to knock it out of the park with their work on the production of these books… With his fun designs and slapstick exaggeration, Segar's art has always been a plus, and nothing about that changes here… It's packed with adventure and humor, strong art, inventive and complex stories, and features more slam-bang punching than any other ten comics. It is a true, to use a much abused word, classic."
• Review: Blogger Kevin Schulke particularly enjoys the hockey strips in The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972
• Review: I'm not sure if this review originally ran in Rain Taxi or is original to the Powell's Books blog where it appears now, but: John Pistelli delves into The Lagoon by Lilli Carré: "The Lagoon's artisanal craftsmanship and child's-eye ironies reflect the baffled wisdom of a heroine too young to be foolish… it is a gorgeously bleak work for so young an artist."
• Interview: Baldur Bjarnason presents a 21-minute audio interview with el jefe Gary Groth recorded at the 2000 San Diego Comic Con
• Commentary: In re Strange and Stranger, here's some further Ditko analysis from Ken Parille at Blog Flume
• Commentary: Movement Point looks at pop cultural references in Peanuts, citing an obscure example from The Complete Peanuts 1971-1972
• Things to see: Peter Laird presents a treat for Usagi Yojimbo and TMNT (*cough*Covey*cough*) fans: rough layouts for the Usagi/Leonardo crossover story