Daily OCD: 9/14/10

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Anyone coming to this volume [of The Complete Peanuts] looking for the rumored decline that is supposed to have happened in the second half of the 1970s might shut the book after its last page slightly confused. Energized by the Peppermint Patty/Marcie duo's emergence into the prime of their own vitality as characters and as a classic comic-strip team (I'd never thought of it before, but there are obviously elements of Easy and Tubbs there), Schulz's dailies were as strong and funny as ever." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

• Review: "…[N]ot being a big manga reader, I didn’t expect to like the stories nearly as much as I did. But then smartly done genre tales make for some of the best literature, comics, film, etc. What I liked most about the different pieces in A Drunken Dream is the psychological form of sci-fi she employs (strictly speaking, the title story is the only sci-fi one, but I think a looser definition that incorporates the social aspects of the genre also applies here). I thought often of Tarkovsky’s Solaris." – Nicole Rudick, Comics Comics

• Feature: "When historians compile lists of the stuff that helped make America America, they don’t even rank the DeMoulin’s Patent Lung Tester alongside even relatively minor inventions like the cotton gin, the telegraph, and the automobile, much less epic game-changers such as instant coffee and air conditioning. Surely this is an oversight. […] Along with hundreds of similar devices, the Lung Tester appears in Catalog No. 439: Burlesque Paraphernalia and Side Degree Specialties and Costumes. Originally published in 1930 by DeMoulin Bros. & Co., this strange volume has been newly reprinted by Fantagraphics Books. Like the more iconic Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog, it illuminates its moment in American history as deftly and instructively as any novelist has ever done." – Greg Beato, The Smart Set

• Review: "The Education of Hopey Glass, the latest collection of Jaime's work originally serialized in Love and Rockets, is one of the best ever and requires the least amount of work to figure out what's going on beneath the surface." – Colin Panetta (via The Comics Reporter)

• Plug: "Are you a fan of pop culture-related art? Or possibly just of distorted human features? Well run don't walk… to purchase [Too Soon?,] the new book by Drew Friedman, longtime illustrator for The Observer, Mad Magazine and other publications." – Dan Duray, The New York Observer

• Profile: At Il Sole 24 Ore, Luca Boschi looks at the work of Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas, calling our collection of Sam's Strip "an exceptional volume of comic strips… As always, Fantagraphics' presentation is superb and worth sharing." (Translated from Italian)