I’m in an easily confused state, so I’ll just note that the stuff on this week’s ComicList looks an awful lot like stuff that was on it the last couple of weeks. So click on the ComicList category and marvel at my prescience, or something.
I’m going to confine myself to a “pick of the week,” and that pick would be Asano Inio’s Solanin, arriving courtesy of Viz. I thought it looked promising when I first thought it was shipping, and I’ve actually read it in the intervening weeks thanks to a preview copy from the publisher. I don’t want to go into too much detail and rob myself of column fodder for next week, but I really liked Jog’s blurb about the book:
“Actually, it sounds just like Seiichi Hayashi’s 1970-71 lingering youths landmark Red Colored Elegy (in English this year from Drawn and Quarterly), although I’m sure this latter work is 7,000% more straightforward and contemporary mainstream-palatable. And Asano could certainly go places with it.”
If there was a highly conceptual costume partly, Solanin would kind of be like what you would get if Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad went dressed as Red Colored Elegy, had a little too much to drink and started getting sort of Method-actor about it all. That’s intended as a compliment. There are lots of stories about aimless 20-somethings in all kinds of media, but I would argue that there are only a handful of really good ones, and I think Solanin makes the cut.