It’s a bit of a slow week in terms of comic shop arrivals, which is fine. I’ve got a huge list of fantasy titles to track down at the library, and I’m ready for some prose.
The ComicList shows the fifth volume of Girl Genius (Airship) coming out this week in both hard- and soft-cover formats. It came to the local comic shop last week, and I loved it a lot. I’m constantly amazed at the Foglios’ ability to pack their stories with new, distinct, and engaging characters in chapter after chapter. That means my favorite cast members might not get as much focus as I’d like, but it also means new favorites are always on the horizon. The Foglios also have a terrific knack for folding exposition into the story in creative ways that are handy for new readers but still entertaining for long-time fans. It’s just great stuff – funny, vivid, action-packed, and delightful.
CMX rolls out the first volume of Meca Tanaka’s Omukae Desu, a book I liked a lot. Afterlife bureaucracy, part-time teen employees, and bunny suits combine for something funny and weird. (Oh, and speaking of CMX titles I liked in preview form, prepare to become sick to death of me talking about Sakura Tsukuba’s Penguin Revolution. In spite of my disappointment that it featured no actual penguins, it’s a very funny piece of shôjo romantic comedy with some great characters.)
Graphix is rolling out the first of its Goosebumps graphic novels in comic shops, which means they’ve probably been in bookstores for a while now. These tween horror books were well after my time as a young-adult reader (though that didn’t keep me from exploring the shamefully tawdry world of Sweet Valley High as a twenty-something), but it’s interesting to see Graphix further establish itself with adaptations of kids’ classics. (No information is readily available on the Graphix web site. Here’s a preview piece from Publishers Weekly.)
On the self-promotion front, Brian Cronin was kind enough to ask me to do a guest entry at Comics Should Be Good. I immediately abused his hospitality by pimping a bunch of pet manga titles, figuring that I could bore a relatively new audience.
I did roughly the same thing in this week’s Flipped, with a healthy sprinkling of pet Oni books as well.