History buff alert: Michelle Smith reviews volume one of Adolf at Soliloquy in Blue… Ed Sizemore enthusiastically recommends the latest installment of 20th Century Boys at Comics Worth Reading… the folks at Pink Tentacle share pics of JAL’s new Doraemon plane… Lissa “Kuriosity” Patillo has the skinny on Vertical’s latest Tezuka license, Ayako… Brigid “Mangablog” Alverson shares her list of the best online comics criticsm of 2009… Yen Press cracks the NY Manga Bestseller list with two volumes of Maximum Ride and volume one of Soul Eater… and if you subscribe to the idea that bartenders play an integral role in their customers’ lives, then David Welsh’s most recent license request is for you.

Word to movie lovers in the New York area: to honor the centennial anniversary of Akira Kurosawa’s birth, Film Forum is sponsoring a retrospective of the legendary director’s films. Kurosawa’s best-known works — Kagemusha, Rashomon, Ran, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo — are judiciously sprinkled throughout the program, as are a number of lesser-known films — The Most Beautiful, Dodes’ka-den. On deck for this weekend: The Hidden Fortress, a sprawling adventure story that inspired Star Wars, and The Idiot, a unique gloss on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel. Tickets and film times at the Film Forum website.