It's today's Online Commentary & Diversions:
• Review: "Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me is as combative, iconoclastic, and embittered as its title suggests it would be. It is also smart, thought-provoking, and funny as hell. Disconcertingly, you'll agree with at least half of what [Peter] Bagge says. Then, gratifyingly, you'll realize that everybody is stupid except for you, too." – Tim Heffernan, Esquire
• Review: "There’s a bittersweet quality to You’ll Never Know, C. Tyler’s disarming memoir about attempting to learn what her father went through in World War II… Tyler’s impressive drawings and inks [are] vividly colored in an amazing array of fluidity… You’ll Never Know is so compellingly honest and unself-conscious that it makes its point all the more poignant." – John Hogan, Graphic Novel Reporter
• Review: "Both visually and narratively, [C.] Tyler keeps [the] threads [of You’ll Never Know] nicely wound into an account that carries readers along and shows how various pasts inform the present, how vulnerable parents can be, and how wartime can create minefields later in life. Her gently colored artwork is expressive and goes far to bring eras of the past to life through dress, hairstyles, and dance moves… [T]he story here will touch those who are just realizing that the older people they think they know have their own burdens and secrets." – Francisca Goldsmith, School Library Journal
• Review: "The cruelties, indignities, rebellion, and lack of self-confidence that form the high school experiences of many teens are well captured in [A Mess of Everything]… This is a spot-on portrait of one girl's struggle for intellectual and emotional honesty… [which] will touch teens who themselves have just succeeded in negotiating the mess of learning to be a mature social being." – Francisca Goldsmith, School Library Journal (same link as above)
• Review: Rui Gonçalves of Portuguese blog Crónicas da (e depois da) Califórnia calls Eightball #22 & #23 "the last two issues of the American comic written by one of the most imaginative and schizophrenic creators of comics from the other side of the Atlantic." (Translation help from Google)
• Plug: "As painful as it is to wait a year for new Love and Rockets now that the Hernandez brothers have switched to an annual format, it’ll be worth the wait if each issue is going to be as good as this one [L&R: New Stories #1]. Jaime Hernandez created the best superhero story of 2008 for this issue, and it should be required reading for anyone who reads or creates comics." – Corey Henson, Newsarama
• Interview: I can't wait to listen to the Inkstuds interview with one of the best and most outspoken artists in comics, Mr. Jordan Crane