Daily OCD: 3/1/11

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Plug: "The Comics Journal: long known as a magazine where you can look at never before released sketches from R. Crumb next to essays about Wonder Woman’s bondage past next to in-depth interviews with superhero comics auteurs next to oral histories of underground dudes you didn’t even know you were interested in until you read about their entire lives. We could go on that tangent forever, but instead we’ll just direct you here to pre-order." – Sam Hockley-Smith, The Fader

• Plug: "In Mezzo and Pirus’ King of the Flies, characters who die in the first volume… come back to watch over the still-living – lovers, friends, mothers. Mezzo and Pirus’ undead are able to travel to Mars in the blink of an eye, and then back to the David Lynchian small-town that is the story’s main setting. Liberated from physical constraints, they are frustrated, morose, angry, holding onto grudges. …Mezzo and Prius… have created a darkly erotic and blackly humoured book that, days after finishing, I’m still thinking about." – Shawn Conner, Guttersnipe

• Plug: Los Angeles magazine features Freeway by Mark Kalesniko in their latest roundup of books of local interest

• Interview: The Daily Cross Hatch's Brian Heater continues his conversation with Stan Sakai: "Originally, I had wanted to do a series inspired by the life of a 17th century samurai named Miyamoto Musashi, but — he’s regarded as one of the great swordsmen in Japanese history, but one day I just drew a rabbit and Musashi became a rabbit. Instead of Miyamoto Musashi, my charcter was Miyamoto Usagi — 'usagi' means 'rabbit' in Japanese. The 'Miyamoto' part I kept as an homage to the original Musahi, but everything else is pretty much original."

• Profile: Variety recently talked to Dash Shaw about his artwork in the feature film Rabbit Hole — here's a scan, uploaded by Dash

• Feature: Mike Lynch posts scans of a "How to Draw Buz Sawyer" article by Roy Crane from a 1969 issue of Cartoonist PROfiles

• Unpaid product placement: Jordan Crane's Uptight #4 makes a cameo appearance in Kevin Church & Benjamin Birdie's relaunched webcomic The Rack