First, Brandon Hicks’s most recent comic provides a guidepost for the maturing male artist.

Then, in a cutting Saturday Essay, Eileen G’Sell exposes the forward-looking and regressive trends in advertising. Though Progressive’s fully-clothed and “offbeat” spokeswoman, “Flo,” is a step in the right direction, other advertisers seem to be balking.

And in a review of Carl Phillips’s thirteenth collection, Reconnaissance, Alana Folsom pays heed to its binaries and a theme of relief that pervades the poems. Phillips, she writes, “guts you and continues on, implying formally that this is life, we must move forward…” Once we do, we can appreciate the collection for its “vigor” and “warmth.”

Finally, in the Sunday Interview, D.R. Haney talks with David Ulin about his most recent book, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles. For a city that always hummed along at the speed of freeway traffic, the tentative beginnings of public transit development are posing a challenge to the Los Angeles we know and love. Ulin discusses “car culture” and compares LA to other famous cities around the world.