There are a number of things I’d like to buy this week, but they have very little to do with this week’s releases.
There are a few new arrivals that catch my eye – the second volume of Death Note (so soon?), the third volume of Ultra Maniac – but I’ll have to hit the bookstore to make my consumer dreams come true.
In this Engine thread on how manga artists work, Dirk Deppey mentioned a newish book, Manga: Masters of the Art by Timothy Lehmann. It sounds fascinating, and it profiles an interesting mix of creators. (I guess it isn’t so hard to find great women cartoonists in Japan.)
I think I’ve made a bad call in hitching my hopes of buying a copy of Go! Comi’s Cantarella on the local Barnes and Noble. It was kind of a challenge to convince them that the title existed, and I should have just abandoned the effort and ordered it on line, but the staff became really determined about halfway through the search process. By the time the order was placed, three employees had joined the project, and I couldn’t very well pull the rug out from under such a determined group. (I’ve found that while B&N’s manga section is large, it isn’t really as interesting or diverse as I’d like. I’ve had much better luck finding weird, marginal titles or stuff from smaller publishers at Borders. Of course, the closest Borders is an hour away.)
But my unhealthy fascination with the Borgia family might limit my patience. If there’s even a small chance of a sequence featuring someone poisoning an associate via a secret compartment in their jewelry, I must have this manga, and soon.
It’s yaoi–za–palooza over at Love Manga, and I find myself hopelessly distracted by the cover to Man’s Best Friend. Its bodice-ripper composition makes me laugh and laugh. (I probably won’t buy it, as I’m closed-minded about the narrative possibilities of a dog falling romantically in love with its owner. It’s why I’ve been avoiding Guru Guru Pon-Chan.)
