Time for another quick look at this week’s ComicList:
There are some nice guilty pleasures on the Wednesday agenda. Dark Horse offers the sixth volume of Gantz, Hiroya Oku’s ultra-violent, oversexed action drama. CMX delivers the ninth volume of Yoshito Usui’s ode to kindergarten crudeness, Crayon Shinchan.
It’s a hefty week for Del Rey. I’m most eagerly anticipating the fifth volume of Ryotaro Iwanaga’s underrated Pumpkin Scissors, an intriguing blend of wacky action and thoughtful political commentary. I was surprised by how much I liked the first volume of RAN’s Maid War Chronicle, given its fan-service friendly premise, but it’s got an unexpectedly quirky charm, even though I’d very much like the male lead to die horribly. Anyway, the second volume is due out Wednesday. For me, Koji Kumeta’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is about 50% impenetrable, culture-specific humor, and 50% really, really funny stuff that requires no supplementary essays. That ratio is balanced enough to put the third volume of the series on my “to buy” list.
Someday I’ll set down and try to compose a reasoned piece on the things that bother me about the Color of… trilogy of books by Kim Dong Hwa (First Second). It doesn’t seem like a project that should be entered into lightly, as lots of people seem to really admire them. The concluding volume, The Color of Heaven, is as laden with gynobotanical metaphor as its predecessors, though it’s beautifully drawn.
Tokyopop unleashes a couple of the new series it announced at its recent webcast. Minari Endou’s Maria Holic generated a fair amount of interest in the previously linked poll, landing in the middle of the pack, while Kazusa Takashima’s Mad Love Chase ranked a bit lower.