Upcoming 8/22

With a relatively lean week on our hands, you’d think it would be easy to single out a pick of the week, but it’s a tough call.

Fond as I am of comics about food, I can’t wait to check out a comic starring food. In this case, it’s David Yurkovich’s Death By Chocolate – Redux (Top Shelf). I’ll just let the first sentence of the solicitation do the talking:

“Agent Swete — an unlikely hero comprised of organic chocolate and a member of the FBI’s Food Crimes Division — and his sharp-tongued partner, Anderson, investigate a series of bizarre, food-inspired crimes.”

Sold! (“Food Crimes Division” inspires a lot of unkind Sandra Lee jokes, but I’ll spare you.)

I’m a sucker for both hype and manga that lives on the border of shôjo and josei, so I’ll have to pick up a copy of the new Shojo Beat from Viz. It includes the debut chapter of Chika Umino’s Honey and Clover, an eagerly anticipated Kodansha Award winner about a group of students at an art college. It sounds right up my alley.

A new issue of Jimmy Gownley’s Amelia Rules! is always worth noting.

Netcomics re-offers the first volume of Morim Kang’s 10, 20 and 30. Katherine Dacey-Tsuei has already made an extremely persuasive case for the book over in her latest Weekly Recon column, so I’ll just point you there.

Oh, and it’s Viz Signature week at comic shops with new volumes about endangered elementary school students, saintly doctors and the serial killers who fixate on them, and ruinously endowed assassins. Choose your poison.