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We are constantly in training here at the Comics Comics mansion, keeping the Danger Room busy while always trying to hone our critical acumen, broaden our coverage, and sharpen our skills. We vow never to stop improving, growing, and providing better philosophical funny-page fodder. As the song says, “Time will not allow you to stop still. No.”

As you probably noticed, yesterday a brilliant writer made her debut as a new occasional contributor to the Comics Comics juggernaut. For those who don’t know, Nicole Rudick is a freelance writer and critic. She formerly worked at Bookforum, and was responsible for commissioning much of the great comics content there in recent years, including hiring a bunch of us from here, including myself, Dan, Jog, and Jeet. She’s also interviewed cartoonists such as Gipi, Adrian Tomine, and Dan Clowes, among others. (The Clowes interview will appear in an upcoming issue of The Believer.) She is sure to be a great addition to the site.

Stay tuned.

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Hergé fans may be interested to know that the latest issue of Bookforum includes a review I wrote of Pierre Assouline’s recently translated biography of the artist.

You can read it here.

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Over the last two years or so, Bookforum has emerged as one of best venues for alert comics criticism that is both informed but engages a mainstream audience. So I was pleased that Bookforum asked me to review Crumb’s new Genesis book. The review can be found here. The latest issue also has Dan’s review of Asterios Polyp, available here. Aside from taking comics seriously, Bookforum is a great review journal, wide-ranging and smart. It’s open to young writers in way that The New York Review of Books and other venerable journals just aren’t. There is much in the latest issue that merits attention, particularly Scott McLemee’s review of David Harvey’s new book.

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1. I reviewed Amanda Vähämäki’s The Bun Field for the April/May issue of Bookforum, which is impressively packed with comics-related material in general, including Ben Schwartz on Harvey Kurtzman, CC contributor Joe McCulloch on Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and Nicole Rudick on Beasts!

2. Gary Panter animated, kinda.

3. Pretty awesome Milt Gross-created book reviews in comics form. I’ve never seen or heard of these before.

4. Not comics: The only review of Watchmen (the movie) you need. (The author of that also said some other stuff worth reading.)

5. Oh, and various prominent comics bloggers have weighed in on the new Cold Heat: here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: I forgot one.

6. An interview with Ted May, partly re Injury 3. I’m pretty excited to see that issue, not only because I really liked the first two, but because CC designer Mike Reddy drew one of the stories in it. Mike showed me a few of the pages, and they were great, and I can’t wait to see the whole thing. Ok, I’m done now.

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Dan wrote a review of the first two Herbie Archives in the latest Bookforum, and it’s now available online. (Good ol’ Joe McCulloch wrote a review there, too.)