A quick look at this week’s ComicList:
The pick of the week is the fourth volume of Drawn & Quarterly’s collection of Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip. Click here and scroll down a bit to see a preview, and if you’re able to resist the gentle satire and high adventure of these strips, then I don’t know what to tell you. Personally, I think Drawn & Quarterly deserves some kind of international peace prize for publishing these.
In my ongoing effort to expose myself to as many “tour guides of the recently deceased” manga as I possibly can, I believe I pre-ordered Ballad of a Shinigami (CMX), illustrated by Asuka Izumi and based on an original story by K-Ske Hasegawa. I believe the shinigami in question also has a talking bat; stories with talking bats constitute another “manga I must at least try” subset, though I have no idea exactly why.
Oh, Mijeong (NBM), why do you make me stalk you? I know I pre-ordered you, and the ComicList says you arrive Wednesday, but I can’t seem to access Diamond’s site to confirm. And you aren’t listed in the e-mail from my local comic shop, so I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I’m sure you’ll be worth the wait.
I’ve quite liked what I’ve read of Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl (Seven Seas), written by Satoru Akahori and illustrated by Yukimaru Katsura. It’s about a boy who’s transformed into a girl and ends up in a love triangle with two other girls, and I remember its sensitive moments outnumbering any cheesy fan-service by a fairly wide margin. So I’m glad that Seven Seas is releasing an omnibus version of the series.
The fifth volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack arrives courtesy of Vertical. That pretty much all that needs to be said, right?
Viz has an overwhelming volume of product on the way, much of it desirable, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll focus on just two: Chica Umino’s art-college romantic comedy Honey and Clover reaches its sixth volume, and Chika Shiomi’s Raretsu debuts. It’s a follow-up to Shiomi’s Yurara, which Kate Dacey re-reviews as part of her Chika Shiomi Appreciation Week.
