I’m not the only one who likes Fullmetal Alchemist (Viz). It got a very positive review in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times in a piece that also looked at Negima! (Del Rey) and Hunter X Hunter (Viz). It’s nice to see manga reviews in a major metropolitan daily.
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At Reading Along, James Schee reviews Viz’s Shojo Beat Compilation, which collects sample chapters from the line’s tankoubon titles. I almost picked this up, but I couldn’t resist the call of Watase (and I’d already picked up the first volumes of Ultra Maniac and Tokyo Boys and Girls).
A couple of weeks ago, I was among those grumbling at the flood of Viz product that came out in a single week. After a trip to Barnes and Noble, I can sort of see the logic of it. If Viz puts out all of its Shojo Beat digests in a single week, bookstores are more likely to shelve them all in one of those nifty cardboard specialty displays. (I can’t imagine bookstore employees relishing the arrival of that much material any more than manga-friendly comic shop employees do, though.)
This week, the only things shipping from Viz are the latest issues of Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump, though SB 2 has been in bookstores for a couple of weeks. It’s that kind of time lapse between bookstore and comic shop ship dates that makes me less inclined to pre-order popular manga titles through Previews, because I’m very much about the instant gratification. It’s still useful for the more off-kilter stuff, though.
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Speaking of which, I could have sworn this was the week for Antique Bakery and Bambi and Her Pink Gun from Digital Manga. Alas, this week’s arrivals begin and end with Yellow, a yaoi title that seems to feature gangsters rather heavily. I’ll wait for the pastry chefs. (Yaoi is one of those niches of the manga market that I almost always have to pre-order, by the way. I’ve never seen any of Digital Manga’s line in bookstores in town, though I have up in Pittsburgh.)
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Del Rey has second volumes of Genshiken and Nodame Cantabile. I thought both titles started well, and I’ll probably pick these up at some point, if not tomorrow.
There’s also a new title from Othello creator Satomi Ikezawa, Guru Guru Pon-Chan. Inter-species romance? Well, Ikezawa has already done nice work with dissociative identity disorder, so who can say how it will work out?
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At iComics, Greg McElhatton gives a glowing review to Capote in Kansas (Oni), by Andre Parks and Chris Samnee. This sounds really intriguing, and I’ve been having very good luck with Oni books lately, whether they’re about funny, talking primates, fur traders, or ambivalent fathers.
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Get the children inside! Tape the windows and check the expiration dates on the canned goods! Did you stock up on bottled water?! The 11th volume of Fruits Basket is coming!
Actually, I finally got around to trying the second volume of this after being somewhat unimpressed with the first. I can sense it slowly creeping up on me, kind of like when people say that pot didn’t do a thing for them the first time they tried it, then they’re begging their optometrists to diagnose them with glaucoma so they can ingest it by prescription.
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And even DC and Marvel will be making their contributions to the week in comics. I’m looking forward to seeing if Brian K. Vaughan can pull together the various story elements of his current arc in Runaways 6. And I’m always happy to see a new issue of Legion of Super-Heroes (8). Tense teens in turmoil!
While I bought the individual issues, it’s nice to see Marvel turn right around with a collection of Dan Slott’s delightful Spider-Man/Human Torch mini in an affordable digest format. Oooh, and it’s going to have a Paul Smith cover.
And lastly, while I seem to have fewer and fewer reasons to care about Marvel’s far-flung solicitations, the announcement of the October re-launch of She-Hulk fills me with delight. Even a Greg Horn cover can’t diminish my enthusiasm.
