ICYMI -- Small Press Comics Criticism and Whatnot for 1/16/17 to 1/22/17

Highlighting some great small press comics criticism being published, as well as other random things that have caught my eye over the past week.

COMICS CRITICISM

* Andy Oliver writes about David Biskup's SEAGRAM, "a comic of deliberate contradictions."

* Megan Purdy reviews WUVABLE OAF: BLOOD AND METAL by Ed Luce, immediately calling it "probably the raunchiest non-fuck comic I've read in recent years." Purdy also talks about this book with Joe Schmidt and Chase Magnett on Comics Bulletin's podcast, Reboot Comic Book Club.

* Dominic Umile takes a look at the new graphic novel by Emil Ferris called MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS.

* Philippe LeBlanc reviews the latest issue of Youth In Decline's Frontier Series, FRONTIER #14 by Rebecca Sugar, a book "permeated with the idea of motion." LeBlanc also has this wonderful review of IT'S ME by Becca Tobin.

* Alex Hoffman has been slowly compiling his six-part list of what he calls COMICS THAT CHALLENGED ME IN 2016. It's an extensive group of books that reveals as much about the quality of Hoffman's thinking in the last year, as it does about the quality of books that were released. 

* Rob Clough looks at Jacob Bladders and the State of the Art, The End of a Fence, and (In a Sense) Lost and Found in his aptly titled SLIPPING THROUGH THE SHADOWS WITH ROMAN MURADOV.

* Sarah Miller makes it personal and explains what is right and what is wrong with Koren Shadmi's LOVE ADDICT: CONFESSIONS OF A SERIAL DATER.

* Thanks to Aaron Cockle over on the Comics Workbook Daily News Blog for directing me to this amazing "tumblog" called Calm Undertones Now Transmitting and this insightful review of A COSPLAYERS CHRISTMAS by Dash Shaw.

WHATNOT

* Koom Kankesan posts this smart, revealing, and informative interview with SETH. 

* Zack Soto and Mike Dawson interview LEELA CORMAN for Study Group's podcast, Process Party.

* MariNaomi talks about her process in creating her book I Thought You Hated Me in her article called THE MAKING OF A COMICS MEMOIR. 

* Thi Bui's comic for The Nib is called FEAR IS A GREAT MOTIVATOR FOR POLITICAL ACTION. 

* J. Hoberman discusses the East German-Bulgarian Holocaust film Sterne, in the context of other films made in Communist countries on the same subject in his article for Tablet called, THE HOLOCAUST FOR COMMUNISTS. 

* Christophe Casamassima's FOUR POEMS FROM THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG.