“[C]omics as a medium could ideally be the most visually honest and consciousness-plumbing medium out there, even more than film.”—Chris Ware

My wife’s friend Jackie

My friend Mannie

* One’s temptation to crumple the entire comics internet up and throw it in the garbage decreases considerably when everyone starts writing about Chris Ware. The Comics Journal is doing a whole series on Ware’s astounding new collection Building Stories; highlights so far include Joe McCulloch’s thoughts and Chris Mautner’s interview with Ware.

* Mike Mignola, John Arcudi et al’s excellent B.P.R.D., long an ongoing series in all but name, will make it official beginning with “issue #100.”

* Ware was one of the human highlights of the recent iteration of SPX, and unsurprisingly Tom Spurgeon has the best con report. One thing that happened there that had never happened to me before was that total strangers came up to me to compliment me on this blog four or five times, which was wonderful and uplifting, so thank you, strangers.

* If you’re looking for comics to try you could do a lot worse than to use Jessica Abel & Matt Madden’s list of Notable Comics from Best American Comics 2012 as your guide.

* Or you could read all of the Kevin Huizenga comics that have been posted online.

* I’m digging Mr. Freibert’s new style.

* Michael DeForge’s “Leather Space Man” is as good at depicting the weird un-logic of urban legends and pop-culture mysteries like “Paul is dead” or “Andrew W.K. is an impostor” as Kevin Huizenga’s Ganges #2 was at depicting the weird un-logic of Mario-style video games. Meanwhile “Manananggal” is as strong a horror/SF thing as he’s ever done and “Splitsville” is the same for the sex-comic category and Ant Comic remains the best webcomic going. It’s a shame he abandoned Open Country, that awesome minicomic series about astral-projection art, though. Michael, don’t abandon/destroy your comics anymore. They’re good!

* Jonny Negron draws David Lynch and a woman in the woods. Those colors!

* Jeez, Simon Hanselmann.

* Josh Simmons made a minicomic called Flayed Corpse for Chuck Forsman’s Oily Comics line that I’d like to read, and he also drew this tribute to Hans Rickheit’s Cochlea & Eustacea and this one-panel gag comic.

* Wow, look at this comic “Sparring” that my collaborator Isaac Moylan made.

* Ben Max F. Urkowitz made a very nice comic here — a little Tim Hensley, a little Gilbert Hernandez, a little pre-Maus Art Spiegelman even. Click to read the whole thing.

* Go buy a whole bunch of troubling, compulsively drawn comics by Heather Benjamin, who’s really got everyone else in comics beat in terms of interview attire and candidness.

* Uno Moralez gif/image gallery gloriousness.

* Once you’ve learned the grim true story behind the making of The Birds, this gif, which I’ve thought for years and years now is Hitchcock’s single most revealing-of-self moment, takes on an even more troubling new meaning.

* I once wrote an oral history of Marvel Comics with a 13,000-word first draft for Maxim, yet I’m still absolutely enthralled and regularly enlightened by the clips I’ve read from writer Sean Howe’s forthcoming book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Here’s a bit on the ’90s boom and Image defection, and here’s a justifiably internet-famous bit on the freewheeling, acid-dropping ’70s.

* In her Bloggingheads.tv show “Critic Proof,” Alyssa Rosenberg, who is one of my favorite TV critics, talks to Willa Paskin and Todd VanDerWerff, who are two of my favorite TV critics. Paskin is just a mercilessly efficient and effective critic, man, jeez.

* I’m looking forward to listening to four excellent comics talkers, Tucker Stone, Matt Seneca, Joe McCulloch, and Chris Mautner, talk about Love and Rockets at length in their podcast.

* Vanessa Pelz-Sharpe is probably the best sex writer I’ve ever read. Her advice in that post makes for excellent sex scenes in addition to excellent sex IRL, too.

* LISTEN TO CARLY RAE JEPSEN

* Please read this marvelous, harrowing true story about the coolest kids in the author’s hometown. Blood Sugar Sex Majik is a hell of a drug. (Via Molly Lambert.)

* Ta-Nehisi Coates presents an escaped slave’s furious response to an infuriating letter from his ex-master’s wife demanding he pay for the horse he rode off on. Incandescent writing.

* Coates is actually responsible for some of the best political writing I’ve read in ages himself: “Fear of a Black President”, his magisterially angry essay on the reaction to the Obama presidency that dare not speak its name.

* Conor Friedersdorf on the debilitating psychological effects of living life in constant terror of American drone attacks. Think about this every day, please.

* I don’t really know Zak Smith beyond liking his writing on gaming, art, and fiction and exchanging the occasional tweet or comment, and I don’t know his girlfriend Mandy Morbid at all, so I felt weird trying to talk to either of them about the issues raised in this post directly, so instead I’ll tell you to read Zak’s profoundly moving and blunt post on Mandy’s chronic, intensifying illnesses and living with death as a presence in your life and leave it at that.

* A very happy belated birthday to Jack Kirby, the King of Comics and one of the greatest artists, of any kind, of the 20th century. That link takes you to this year’s Kirby tribute gallery by Tom Spurgeon, an annual comics-internet highlight.

* Finally, I like Beyoncé.

I’m proud to announce that Hottest Chick in the Game (which I wrote) and, “uh…,” Stoner Alien (which I sometimes write) have made Mogg’s personal reading list in Simon Hanselmann’s Truth Zone.

My latest contribution to Stoner Alien is up. Asking the hard questions.

Page 18 of “Destructor Meets the Cats” has been posted. Click the link for the full-color version; I just wanted to show off Matt Wiegle’s ridiculous inks.

You can read the whole story so far on one continuously scrolling page by clicking here.

I interviewed Jaime Hernandez, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Gilbert Hernandez for Rolling Stone. Comics game Mount Rushmore.

(photo by Meredith Rizzo)

Heavy shit in today’s installment. It’s a supersized one, too.

Everyone does one eventually.

Just me and the four greatest living cartoonists, nbd

(thanks, Meredith Rizzo)

Part two of Cage Variations, a graphic novel I wrote and Matt Rota drew, is now up at Study Group Comics.

You can read part one here. I hope you enjoy it.

I’ll be attending SPX this weekend! Mostly Saturday. I’m hosting the Gilbert Hernandez panel at 2:30pm in the White Oak Room, and my illustrious colleague Colleen Frakes will be selling our comic Here at the End of All Things at table J3, pretty much right when you walk in the door. Please say hello to me! I look like this:

I “wrote” another Stoner Alien, god help me.

Colin Panetta and I made this comic as our submission for the Ahoy, Booty! zine, a tribute to butts curated by Lainey Diamond and Emily Partridge. It is of course a genderbending of this legendary page from David Boring by Daniel Clowes. We hope you like it, and we hope Lainey and Emily like it and put it in their zine.

I wrote a comic called Here at the End of All Things, which Colleen Frakes then drew and printed as a minicomic. She’ll be selling it at her table (J3 – you can’t miss it, it’s right when you walk in the door) at SPX this weekend. I will also be on hand and will likely have some copies on my person too. If you buy it I hope you enjoy it.

I wrote a graphic novel called Cage Variations that Matt Rota drew. Today the first part was posted at Study Group Comics. I hope you enjoy it.

For reasons unclear even to me, I have contributed two more guest strips to Stoner Alien. You’ll be able to find all my contributions by clicking here.

I’ve contributed another guest strip to Stoner Alien; this one is a hard-hitting, topical, political work.

Page 17 of “Destructor Meets the Cats” has been posted.

You can read the whole story so far on one continuously scrolling page by clicking here.

I contributed a guest strip to Stoner Alien, a new webcomic made by an anonymous person who clearly knows what they’re doing but chooses to ignore this knowledge for fun. I hope you like it.

If anyone out there is interested in drawing a very short, very straightforward, slightly smutty Daniel Clowes pastiche for me, please let me know. Thank you!