Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:
• Review: "The book is lovingly made and the strips presented with care and pleasure. But is it any good? Oh yes. It's funny and charming, bursting with witty wordplay and vivid characters you love immediately. You can see the influence the Marx Brothers and Krazy Kat and Mark Twain had on Pogo and its love of silly grammatical puns and Southern dialect. And you can see the influence Pogo had on Doonesbury and Calvin & Hobbes… In short, read Pogo and you can immediately see it slide into the pop cultural matrix and how it drew upon the work that came earlier, moved forward the art form of comic strips and influenced artists after it for generations to come. But most of all you'll laugh…" – Michael Giltz, The Huffington Post
• Review: "The only real problem with this beautifully produced book [Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture ] is that it’s much, much too short…. The art reproduces gorgeously, scanned in many cases from the original material, and the volume as a whole is an effort to give Davis the respect he deserves as a legitimate artist…. A few essays, slotted at the front and back of the back, rather than next to the art itself, place him in context and give some biographical details, but the work, with Davis’s fluid, effortless line and gift for characterization, speaks for itself." – Hillary Brown, Paste
• Review (Audio): Joe Daly's Dungeon Quest Book 1 is featured on the latest episode of Boing Boing's "Gweek" podcast (we'll bring you more info when we get a chance to listen)
• Review: At Greek site Comicdom, Tomas Papadimitropoulos looks at Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman: "Δεν είμαι σίγουρος αν είναι ο καλύτερος τρόπος για να γνωρίσεις τον Kupperman και τις ιδιαιτερότητές του, αλλά σίγουρα θα ικανοποιήσει (και θα χορτάσει) τους fans του (ίσως και αυτούς του Twain – ο Αμερικανός συγγραφέας δεν έγινε γνωστός για το συμβατικό χιούμορ του, άλλωστε), οι οποίοι θα βρεθούν σε γνώριμα μεν νερά, αλλά με κάποιες καλοδεχούμενες διαφορές."
• Interview: There's a fun Q&A with Michael Kupperman at the 92Y website that ran just before his appearance there last week
• Review: At his blog Mandorla, Santiago Garcia looks at the latest chapters of Jaime Hernandez's "Locas" saga: "Estas últimas semanas he comentado que uno de los mejores tebeos que he leído en el 2011 ha sido 'The Love Bunglers,' historieta que Jaime Hernandez ha publicado en los números 3 y 4 de Love and Rockets: New Stories. Pero no había dicho nada sobre ella todavía, quizás porque es de esas historietas sobre las que uno se queda casi sin nada que decir. Son demasiado inmensas para encerrarlas en un puñado de palabras. Pero eso es lo que tenemos aquí, un puñado de palabras, así que vamos a dejar que lleguen hasta donde lleguen, al menos."
• Interview: The writer of Straight 2 DVD blog talks with editor Michel Gagne about Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics: "I quickly realized that if someone didn’t make an effort to preserve this material, most of it would vanish into oblivion. That’s when it hit me! Perhaps I should be the one to start the ball rolling. I had been itching to do a comic book preservation project for many years and this would be the perfect opportunity."
• Plug: "Another comprehensive package is going to take a bit longer to collect: the complete Peanuts library from Fantagraphics…. Currently the collection has progressed to the early 1980s, where the strip is at its peak… There's nothing that says 'holidays' like the Peanuts gang. Didn't all of us watch A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving a thousand times?" – Andrew A. Smith, Scripps Howard
• Scene: At Examiner.com, Christian Lipski reports from the Oil and Water discussion group at Bridge City Comics recently, which was crashed by writer Steve Duin, artist Shannon Wheeler and editor Mike Rosen: "Those who had attended the team's convention panels and saw video clips from the trip tended to expect more of a straight travelogue, and were surprised by the addition of fiction to the equation. On the other hand, it was noted that the reader could identify with the observers as an entry into the story. The characters also allowed Duin to tell a side of the story through the reactions of outsiders. 'I think that Fantagraphics was as surprised as you guys,' the author confided."