• How have I blathered on all this time without calling attention to Derik Badman's great volume by volume analysis of Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix series? Obviously I need my head examined. (In backwards order, Karma, Yamato, Space, Future and Dawn).

• Craig Fischer has nice things to say about Patsy Walker: Hellcat : "It's not designed to be immortal art--in other words, it's not Raw or Love and Rockets--but as far as mainstream comics go, it's clever and fun, virtues that are too easy to take for granted."

• Takekuma Kentaro, co-author of Even a Monkey can Draw Manga wonders why the manga version of Hayao Miyazaki's Naussica is so hard to read: "Each individual panel is too complete, and the characters and background are drawn with lines of equal thickness. This leads to the characters not standing out."

• Awesome Engine is doing a series of posts on Go Nagai's Violence Jack who lives up to his name rather well (link is so NSFW by the way).

• Paul Gravett provides an interesting look at the work of Italian comics artist Gianna DeLucca.

• Andrew Wheeler didn't care much for Joseph Patrick Larkin's Arcade of Cruelty. He does, however, have nice things to say about Jimmy Gownley's Amelia Rules!

• Noah Berlatsky doesn't care much for Alan Moore's proposal for the Wonder Woman rip-off Glory, but he did like the first volume of Fruits Basket, though it took two readings.

• Stripper's Guide's Allan Holtz offers some capsule reviews of recent comic strip-related releases.