An intriguing new arrival and a couple of old favorites are the highlights of this week’s ComicList, at least for me:
Del Rey breaks into new territory with the debut of Faust, an anthology of manga-inspired fiction. CLAMP and Takeshi Obata provide illustrations for two of the stories. Perhaps you may have heard of them.
There are only three volumes left of Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare (Go! Comi), and I’m going to miss it terribly when it’s done. The eighth installment of awesomely Freudian teen angst arrives Wednesday, promising “a mountain of new problems.” The thing about this series is that, when blurbs use words and phrases like “heartache” or “the breaking point” or “shocking,” it isn’t hyperbole. Mizushiro delivers.
There are only three (thanks, James!) volumes left of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster (Viz Signature), so I have a little more time to gird myself for the inevitable grief. It took a while for this series to work its way into my heart. The early going, dominated by saintly fugitive Dr. Tenma, was at times laughably simplistic in its moral framework. Over time, though, and as the supporting cast has emerged and evolved, it’s become a tense must-read for me, and I’ve even reached the point where the ensemble is more interesting to me because of the ways Tenma has influenced them. (I still think he’s a goody-goody stick, though.)