Major booksellers seem to be on a mission to clog my e-mail in-box with in-store and on-line offers. I think I’ve made pretty good use of some of them, though I managed to resist the one-day discount thing Barnes and Noble sent yesterday, since it was only usable yesterday and, well, I had things to do that didn’t involve extra left turns.
And I do have to save some of my retail expenditures for the local comics shop, because I’ll feel like a soulless Big Box pawn if I don’t. So let’s look at the week’s ComicList, shall we?
If the season’s huggy, over-stuffed sentiment is getting to you and you want something a little faster and leaner, Dark Horse offers a tonic in the form of the second volume of Banya: The Explosive Delivery Man. While the title character hasn’t actually exploded yet, he’s done just about everything short of it in terms of action-adventure behavior. It’s a lot of fun, and Kim Young-Oh’s art is gorgeous.
One of these days, I’m going to have to delve further into Clamp’s xxxHOLiC (Del Rey). I read the first two volumes long ago, was baffled and put off by the irrelevant crossovers with other Clamp series, then read the third and became intrigued. So perhaps I’m not quite ready for the eighth volume, but I will be someday.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about So-Hee Park’s Goong (Ice Kunion). In spite of a massive recent overhaul of its web site, the publisher still doesn’t seem to have any previews available for the series, but it’s a what-if story about what Korea might be like if the monarchy was still in place. It was popular enough in Korea to be adapted into a television drama, which I believe is still an unusual development. Wikipedia has a spoiler-y summary of the manhwa.
Oni launches Maintenance, a sci-fi workplace comedy from Jim Massey and Robbi Rodriguez. I read a preview a while back and really enjoyed it.
Viz provides new volumes of Monster and Train Man: Denha Otoko. Monster is always reliably entertaining, and this volume seems to promise more of the Knots Landing antics of saintly Tenma’s hell-on-wheels ex-fiancée, so there’s really no down side. As for Train Man, Hidenori Hana’s adaptation of the story is easily my favorite of the competing versions.