Spinning off of the praise for The Building Opposite (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), ICv2 takes a flattering introductory look at nouvelle manga. And despite the sometimes frustrating process of actually getting my hands on the stuff, I’m all in favor of these books getting a higher profile than they currently enjoy. ICv2 zeroes in on the retailers who might benefit from keeping them in stock:
“Retailers in urban areas, college towns, specifically those who do well with alternative comics should definitely consider carrying the Fanfare/Ponent Man line of Nouvelle Manga as well as the thematically related gekiga titles of Yoshihiro Tatsumi (The Push Man and Other Stories, Abandon the Old in Tokyo) published by Drawn & Quarterly.”
And while you’re at it, order a few copies of Sexy Voice and Robo (Viz). I swear you won’t regret it.
Speaking of slightly overpriced comics with that cosmopolitan savoir-faire, the highlight of Thursday’s ComicList is Glacial Period from NBM. It’s by Nicolas De Crécy, one of the contributors to F/PM’s Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and it sounds intriguing, even at roughly $15 for 80 color pages. A post-apocalyptic look at the Louvre? Why not?
Also promising is DC’s Huntress: Dark Knight Daughter collection. I’ve got a lot of nostalgia for the Earth 2 incarnation of the Huntress, daughter of Batman and Catwoman. (I’m extremely protective of the current incarnation of the character as well, mostly because I resent the hypocritical way that Batman treats her like a moral inferior. But that might have changed since the last time I picked up a DC book, so who knows?) Anyway, Helena Wayne always struck me as a potentially great character in her own right, beyond her intriguing heritage, so this will be a good opportunity to read some of her adventures that I missed the first time around. (I’ve also gone from despising Joe Staton’s art as a teen to viewing it with nostalgic fondness in the intervening years. I’ve mellowed with age.)
Project X continues over at Digital Manga, this time probing the origins of 7-Eleven. The fifth volume of Dragon Head is snuggled in the middle of Tokyopop’s long list of offerings.