This week’s ComicList offers a happy hodgepodge of choices, from cross-cultural curiosities to comic strips to creepy classics. (It also allows for a lot of alliteration.)
First and foremost is the fourth volume of Adam Warren’s razor-sharp but still endearing super-hero and fan-service parody, Empowered (Dark Horse). Rarely is the enduring fortitude of the human spirit celebrated with such enthusiastic bad taste.
I can rarely resist a travelogue comic, and Enrico Casarosa’s The Venice Chronicles (AdHouse) looks like an extremely pretty one.
A new volume of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s old-school horror manga, Parasyte (Del Rey) is always a welcome arrival, and the fifth installment shows up Wednesday.
As much as I enjoy Vertical’s manga releases, I’ve missed the design genius of Chip Kidd. I can kind of get over it thanks to the arrival of Kidd’s Bat-Manga! (Pantheon).
While I strongly suspect The Venice Chronicles will be much more to my narrative-friendly tastes, I’m sure there will be much to admire in Yuichi Yokoyama’s Travel (PictureBox).
I’ve heard nothing but raves about the anime adaptation of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and I keep meaning to put it in the queue, but I’m just not that much of an anime geek. And besides, I tend to like to read the manga first. (Except in the case of Inu Yasha, because that series is like 75 volumes long, so I’ll stick with the animated version for now.) But thanks to Yen Press for launching the series this week. Yen is also delivering the second volume of Satoko Kiyuduki’s four-panel fairy tale, Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro. I really enjoyed the first volume, so this is another welcome arrival.