Today's Online Commentary & Diversions, good buddy:
• Review: "…Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 is one of the best comics I’ve ever had the pleasure to read…. The potential hinted at in ‘Browntown’ and the first parts of ‘The Love Bunglers’ (all from last year’s Love and Rockets: New Stories #3) is developed here to a genuinely emotional and satisfying climax that, despite coming out of nowhere, feels utterly in-character and appropriate for the world of Locas, and is delivered with such virtuosic storytelling that I’m kinda choking up a bit right now just flicking through it again! The cartooning on display is really some of the best ever committed to paper. It’s such a joy to see a a guy like Jaime, who’s been around since before I knew what comics were, doing some of his very best work this far into his career." – Berserker Magazine
• Review: "Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez have been writing and drawing Love and Rockets for so long now that their newest work has become like the ever-growing peak of a tremendous mountain that stretches back through all previous incarnations of the series and the iconic characters that they keep returning to. …'And Then Reality Kicks In'… is the kind of elliptical, emotionally charged storytelling that Gilbert does best, where all of the substance lingers unspoken between the lines, slowly accumulating force through his whimsical, charming dialogue…. 'The Love Bunglers'… is just stunning, …the work of an artist who really knows and loves his characters and their long, tangled histories. The final act of this story is jaw-dropping in its audacity, and the last ten pages whip by in a rollercoaster of conflicting emotions. Jaime's craft is absolutely assured." – Ed Howard, Thinking in Panels
• Lore: "A big personal step forward for me occurred in North Carolina… I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and quit drinking. That happened in 1983 and I haven’t had a drink since. This laid a solid foundation for me to otherwise improve myself, to learn how to be more generally focused, to work harder, and to finally grow up a little" – Kim Deitch's epic memoir-in-music "Mad About Music: My Life in Records" at TCJ.com finally reaches its concluding chapter