Daily OCD: 2/9/11

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Hell fuckin’ yeah. New Prince Valiant. Fantagraphics really does these reprints right. While they could easily pump out lazy reissues of the same poorly recolored old strips like everyone else did before them, they actually go ahead and find the original colors and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Unless you were reading Prince Valiant in the newspaper back in the early 40s. […] The whole story is sick as hell from beginning to end. […] What a book! For thirty bucks you get to own some of the prettiest comics that anyone's ever seen printed up like no one's ever done." – Nick Gazin, Vice

• Review: "Well, Fantagraphics Books has been printing some hefty collections of Peanuts for several years — each volume covers two years and has an introductory essay and an index (so you can easily find Joe Cool or all the references to Bo Derek). The bulk of the book, of course, is just the strips themselves, offered in chronological order without annotation or commentary so they can speak for themselves. They sent me their latest, 1979-1980, which is already the fifteenth volume in the series (and they still have twenty years to go). But you can pretty much start anywhere and be guaranteed a wonderful collection." – Jonathan Liu, Wired

• Review: "Fantagraphics’ new collection of the first two volumes [of Adèle Blanc-Sec]… in a sturdy hardback format is, if not a revelation, certainly the best presentation the material has had in English. Kim Thompson’s translation brings out the sardonic inelegance of Tardi’s dialogue much better than Lofficier’s workmanlike adventure-script translation from nearly twenty years ago, the colors are much more vibrant, and the linework better preserved… and they’re built to last, the definitive version of the work. …Tardi is a deep cynic who uses the breathless, endlessly-deferred structure of serialized comics to comment on the futility of action and the wretchedness of history’s march. Tardi’s meticulously detailed, enormously evocative Paris is a place to luxuriate in again and again…" – Jonathan Bogart, FA

• Commentary: "Every time I read a new interview with or profile of Joyce Farmer, the underground comics trailblazer who recently returned to the forefront of the medium with her moving memoir Special Exits, I’m struck by how intense the creation of the book was. Josie Campbell’s report on Farmer’s in-store appearance at Los Feliz’s Skylights Books for CBR is no exception." – Sean T. Collins, Robot 6

• Plug: "A new graphic novel by Jim Woodring? A mere year after the great Weathercraft? Yes, somehow, in between dreaming about his giant steel nib pen, Woodring managed to draw a whole new book." – Heidi MacDonald, The Beat