Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:
• Review: "In this Golden Age of Comic Strip Reprints, Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse was, I had long assumed, the one that had gotten away…. It should go without saying that Fantagraphics has done their usual stellar job in regards to editorial presentation… and design… In addition to over two and a half year's worth of the strip, the book contains an impressive amount of introductory material and contextual essays… There are other neat bonus features, such as cover images from foreign editions collecting storylines from the strip. As for the comics themselves, they entertain on a couple of levels. First, it should be of interest to comics fans as one of the Great Comic Strips Of All Time…. The comic strip should also be of great interest to Disney aficionados, as it represents one of the earliest transitions of the animated characters into another medium…" – Patrick Markfort, Articulate Nerd
• Review: "This is a comic book that feels like a video nasty. Its characters could well have been discovered from drawings scratched into school desks, its plot may well have been cribbed from the insane diary of a 9 year old. But that is what makes the 2 volumes of Prison Pit (published to date) so brilliant and unique. Writer/Artist Johnny Ryan has taken all those dreams, that desensitisation to violence, and our eagerness to doodle the grotesque, and turned it into a full ongoing epic…. Prison Pit is insane; it is a title that simply shouldn’t exist outside of a teenager’s head. But it does, and it’s brilliant. A forgotten level of comedic violence, an absence of exposition and dialogue that all reduces down into a paste of pure barbaric fun." – Kevin Scully, Comicsphere
• Commentary: At his X-Ray Spex blog Will Pfeifer writes an ode to his favorite Love and Rockets panel, as found in The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.
• Industry: At The Comics Reporter, Eric Reynolds, Peter Bagge and others comment on the imminent shuttering of seminal (and awesomely named) Atlanta alt-comics/music outlet Criminal Records