Spot the common thread in today's Online Commentary & Diversions:
• List: At The Truth About Comics Mario Z. Alipio (aka MZA) posts his top 11 comics of 2009, including You'll Never Know Book 1: A Good and Decent Man by C. Tyler at #6 ("A brilliant and disarmingly vulnerable historical memoir that converts a family's personal anguish into adult wisdom and grace. Part documentarian and part emotional wreck, Tyler examines her secretive father's WWII past and her own disintegrating marriage w/ an enviable balance between sensitivity and fearlessness"), Pim & Francie by Al Columbia at #9 ("Gorgeously reproduced — rough pencil marks, taped edges, discolourations, and all — this might be the sweetest thing to stare at, dumbly, in my whole library"), and Ganges #3 by Kevin Huizenga at #10 ("Huizenga conceives brilliant new methods of shorthand comix communication the way monkeys learn sign language to get the banana") (via The Comics Reporter)
• List: Library Journal's Martha Cornog names The Brinkley Girls: The Best of Nell Brinkley's Cartoons 1913-1940 as one of "27 Graphic Novels for Women's History Month," saying "Brinkley’s gloriously rococo line art introduced fun-loving, energetic gals who paved the way for modern American action heroines like Brenda Starr and Wonder Woman."
• Plug: Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable Vol. 2 is a Pick of the Week at Meltdown Comics in L.A.