Daily OCD: 9/22/10

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "Released last year, Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit: Book One was the kind of offensive, polarising piece of trash that readers either embraced like a lovable, rotting puppy carcass or bolted from in aghast terror. Both camps will feel vindicated then, that Prison Pit: Book Two returns with just as much phallic, alien grappling gore as the original, if not more. Me? I’m content to let the book slam its bloody, jagged nailed middle finger through my cornea any day of the week. […] Who needs Asterios Polyp when the central narrative movement of this comic is a mission titled 'Operation Rape Ladydactyl'? Not me, that's for sure." – Avoid the Future

• Review: "Prison Pit Book Two is as funny as Book One, and what it lacks in hysterical wordplay ('want me to send you an e-vite' remains the gold standard), it makes up for in its delirious commitment to excess, both in the grotesqueries on display as well as the suspense. This may not be the comic everybody else were waiting for, but around these parts, it most certainly was. Pin a rose on my dick, call me king of the geckos: I have found my homeland." – Tucker Stone, The Factual Opinion

• Interview: Ao Meng of The Daily Texan talks to Johnny Ryan about Prison Pit and his other work: "My experience when I’m watching a movie where somebody’s head explodes or some crazy monster cuts their legs off, I’m laughing my head off because it’s so outrageous and violent. That kind of stuff just makes me laugh, and so I guess I was incorporating that into my work." 

• Review: "The net cannot convey what a marvelous little object-book [Set to Sea] is. And the content ain’t bad either. I’ll throw in the same comparison everyone else is making: it’s like a collaboration between Herman Melville and E.C. Segar." – M. Ace, Irregular Orbit

• Review: "Forgotten comics genius, Milt Gross, sends up arty 'wordless novels,' old-time melodramas and silent movie potboilers all at once with his inimitable cartoon flair [in He Done Her Wrong]. Why, oh why couldn’t I see this when I was a kid?!" – M. Ace, Irregular Orbit

• Review: Dominic Moschitti of The Quarter Bin video podcast looks at Jason's Meow, Baby! (out of print but compiled in Almost Silent) and also writes "Elvis fights Godzilla! A Caveman goes on a date! Dracula watches TV! If any of these events sound exciting to you, or the mere thought amuses you, then you need to pick up Jason’s graphic novel, Meow, Baby! I did and now I’m writing this! But honestly folks, if you’re into comic strips you have to read this book. It’s hilarious."

• Plugs: "Instead of coming out with regular comic books on an irregular basis, the Hernandez brothers have smartly turned their legendary, groundbreaking comic series [Love and Rockets] into an annual, trade paperback-sized tome. It's an annual treat that's well worth the wait. […] Johnny Ryan's approach to humor is sort of like a scorched earth/take no prisoners strategy. Prison Pit mixes pro-wrestling, grindhouse, video games with Gary Panter and Kentaro Miura's manga and the results are brutal, hilarious and brutally hilarious. […] Too Soon? collects Drew Friedman's celebrity portraits from the past 15 years. His style is simultaneously hyper-realistic and grotesque, and always engaging and delightful. This is an excellent collection of one of the finest caricature/portrait/editorialist artists working today." – Benn Ray (Atomic Books), Largehearted Boy

• Plug: "Love and Rockets: New Stories #3 is the latest from the Hernandez Brothers and sees Jaime return to the cast of Locas after his superheroic two-parter. Gilbert’s offering is a somewhat weirder tale of alien terrain and a furry mating season. Alien mating season. Not the dress-up-as-squirrels kind of furry. Or something. I think. […] Drew Friedman’s been beavering away painting portraits of the famous and the infamous… so it’s about time someone collected the last fifteen years’ worth. Too Soon? is a hardcover full of familiar, grotesque faces…" – The Gosh! Comics Blog