In today's New York Times Sunday Book Review, Douglas Wolk turns in some short reviews of recommended comics for the holidays, including:
"The blandly didactic sobriety of old educational comics and earnest advertisements… is Michael Kupperman’s default tone for the deranged, gaspingly funny work collected in Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume One. Kupperman has a stiff, deadpan drawing style that suggests the textures of woodcuts, clip-art and old 'Mary Worth' strips; his writing, on the other hand, jumps the rails at every opportunity."
"The artists assembled by Andrei Molotiu for his anthology Abstract Comics push 'cartooning' to its limits: the selections have few if any words, no characters or plot, and very few clearly identifiable representations — just abstract images in sequence. … It’s a fascinating book to stare at, and as with other kinds of abstract art, half the fun is observing your own reactions…"
(Edited to add: There's also a very nice review of Lilli Carré's new Little Otsu book Nine Ways to Disappear.)
Meanwhile, over at Entertainment Weekly, Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1 is #9 on this week's "Must List":
"This exhilarating collection of stories by the comic-book artist who co-created Spider-Man captures all the glorious chills and blood spills from the first two years of his career."