Online Commentary & Diversions with a hockey mask:
• Review: "[Jacques] Boyreau’s new art book, Portable Grindhouse, is more than a stunning collection of VHS box art. Anyone with a sense of nostalgia for cruising the shelves at the local Video Depot will recognize old favorites alongside more than a few bizarre rarities within its pages, and if you don’t feel a sense of loss over the current state of DVD box art, you just don’t have any feelings. … Like the VHS boxes of old, Boyreau’s introductory essay is less a history of the VHS format and the culture of the rental business than it is a heady evocation of how exciting it was when it first arrived. …[A] book as lovingly edited as this could only have been put together by someone whose appreciation for these objects is matched by a real love of cinema." – Matthew Caron, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
• Review: "…West Coast Blues… is… a tightly-plotted little crime noir, just the sort of thing that today's discerning comic book readers seem to be interested in… It's noir by way of existential hell, which, let's face it is very French. This is… an admirable book, tightly plotted and full of great cartooning moments. …You Are There is a heavily dense and convoluted book… presented with a decidedly absurdist and surreal air. … You Are There constantly skirts the edge of comedy — it knows the language and does the dance — but never becomes the outright farce it so clearly and consistently hints at evolving into. … Whatever flaws these two books might posses, they and Tardi remain too interesting and rich to be easily dismissed." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6
• Interview: Martha's Vineyard Magazine's Karla Araujo has a Q&A with Jules Feiffer ("Success is nothing to sneeze at, but failure has many possibilities"), followed by an excerpt from Feiffer's upcoming memoir Backing Into Forward
• Reviewer: Laura Warholic author Alexander Theroux's latest book review for The Wall Street Journal tackles the posthumous Nabokov novel The Original of Laura