This morning, Rob Clough weighs in with a review of Craig Thompson's Habibi, which demonstrates that the range of possible opinions on the book is by no means restricted only to those found in last week's roundtable discussion of the book.
Thompson was also just interviewed over at the A.V. Club, and Abhay Khosla had a funny reaction to one of Thompson's more dubious claims featured in it.
One of the most frequent topics of discussion regarding Habibi is the question of its use of Orientalist tropes, and whether or not the book furthers racial and cultural stereotypes. Comics has been in the stereotype business for a long time of course, as the never-ending arguments over Hergé's early Tintin albums demonstrate. This week, a Belgian judge ruled that Tintin in the Congo (easily the most controversial of these books) is not racist. David Brothers had a funny reaction to some of the judge's more dubious claims.
The book designer Peter Mendelsund has an excellent post up regarding cover design choices, using various attempts at Lolita as examples, and in passing covers a lot of ground that will likely be interesting to any cartoonist.
Finally, three quick links: 1) Chris Mautner interviews Kevin Huizenga, 2) Chris Butcher talks about non-superhero comics, and 3) Chris Duffy and comics-editing colleagues from the late, lamented Nickelodeon magazine have launched a comics iPad app aimed at kids and featuring several of their cartoonists they used to work with in print.
