Daily OCD: 7/1/10

Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "In plot terms, Werewolves of Montpellier is about an art student/thief who dresses up as a werewolf before he goes out to break into people’s homes at night, which a society of actual werewolves is not amused about. What that boils down to on the page, though, are scenes of people sitting next to each other at the laundromat, looking at each other in silence or talking about French actresses while playing chess — and each time, it’s utterly fascinating, and the scene draws you in almost immediately and you don’t want to stop. Jason tells stories with comics in ways that never occur to a lot of people who make comics." – Marc-Oliver Frisch, The Beat

• Roundtable: The critics at TIME.com's Techland (Douglas Wolk, Evan Narcisse, Mike Williams and Graeme McMillan) discuss Werewolves of Montpellier: "I pretty much have a love/love relationship with Jason's books. … It's true that you have to pay attention to catch the details: the fact that Jason draws everyone with animal heads makes it a little bit harder to read some of the characters' interactions. But maybe Jason's central joke is that you have to take extreme measures to create certain kinds of drama when a lot of the time people aren't feeling anything in particular." – Wolk

• Review: "The 13th volume in Fantagraphics' republishing of the complete Peanuts, The Complete Peanuts 1975-1976, could also be subtitled 'The Peanuts of the Absurd.' In the past Schulz had toyed with some absurdist plotlines, e.g. the talking school building. However, between 1975-1976, Schulz took those ideas to a whole new level. … It's a must for any Peanuts fan or anyone who is a serious fan of comic strips." – Tom Varner, The Real TV Land

• Interview: The Comic Geek Speak podcast discusses It Was the War of the Trenches and other Tardi topics with editor/translator Kim Thompson for their Book of the Month Club

• Interview: At Comic Book Resources, Alex Dueben talks to Jules Feiffer: "The point wasn't to make a living, the point was to express myself. I figured, as I say in the book, that given a shot at expressing myself, everything else would fall into place. It turns out I was right about that."

• Interview: The latest Royal Jelly Magazine video interview is with Anders Nilsen