Daily OCD: 2/22/11

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Anyone who ever got into fantasy role-playing games during their early adolescence no doubt remembers how those early forays into heroic adventuring could be fraught with profane characters, ludicrous moments during breaks from the quest at hand, and the strange, often puerile creations of a hormonally charged dungeon master. All of those elements fuel the entertaining world that Daly drops readers into with [Dungeon Quest Book 2]… There are encounters with monsters, violent battles, magical items to be gathered, eerie dungeons, and so on, but we are also treated to a hilarious bit where the characters get zooted on weed and cocaine while spouting drug-appropriate dialogue. With a visual style that’s a gene-splicing of Charles Burns’s Lynchian creepiness with an 'underground' sensibility, this quirky work is every bit as entertaining as it sounds, spouting anarchic humor in every direction." – Publishers Weekly

• Interview: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon talks to Alexander Theroux about the new edition of his book The Strange Case of Edward Gorey: "Gary [Groth] asked me to expand on the paperback. I didn't know I was going to add to that. I originally typed that manuscript. I got the paperback on-line, and started to see where I would expand it. That's why it's occasionally repetitious. If there was a paragraph on what Gorey collected, I would build on that for the hardcover. So we never really foresaw that it was going to be a much longer book. But once I got the bit between my teeth in looking at him, I had remembered a lot of things and interviewed a lot of people… it just builds. Since the hardcover has come out, I had about 20 new thoughts about him. Recollections, new things, that come every day."

• Interview: At Words Without Borders, the Amazon-supported Online Magazine for International Literature, Dot Lin talks to our own beloved Co-Publisher Kim Thompson about our line of Franco-Belgian all-ages comics: "I don't know how they'll be greeted by American audiences, but I'm in a position now where I can force them down people's throats. The fact that I seem to have succeeded with Tardi where everyone else failed has made me a bit cocky, I'm afraid."

• Interview: The Comics Journal presents the second part of Ian Burns's Q&A with Shaun Partridge, writer of the Josh Simmons-drawn Mome serial "The White Rhinoceros": "Me and Josh, we always know something is good when we feel we didn’t do it. When I do a painting, if I look at the painting and go, 'That’s a cool painting! Oh! I did that! How weird.' That’s when I know it’s good and that’s why I think we know The White Rhino is really good. I’m connected to it in a way. I am. I wrote it; Josh is illustrating it. But we stand back from it and we’re like, 'Wow, this is really far out and fun.' And we just laugh."