After what feels like a solid month of gray skies and falling snow, it’s therapeutic to think of good things to come, like ice-free roads, the color green, and temperatures above freezing. That kind of optimism (or mitigation) was the inspiration for this week’s Flipped. But you know what? Awesome as those titles may well prove to be, I’m hoping they’re joined and perhaps even trumped by another 2010 possibility.
Last week, a certain publisher was teasing the Twitterati about an imminent announcement of a new license of a work by Osamu Tezuka featuring a “great female lead.” If you’re me, this can only mean one thing.
I could be wrong, but I’ll let that mistake live in my heart for as long as contrarian reality allows. This would make a certain publisher the fulfiller of two of my license requests, not to mention the only publisher to fulfill any at all. It’s a good thing I don’t make any unseemly promises when I make these requests.
Okay, back to the exciting books we know we’re going to get in 2010: one of them is by Fumi Yoshinaga, who has a one-shot coming out soon, courtesy of Viz. Christopher Butcher also adds Yoshinaga’s Antique Bakery (DMP) to his roster of Ten Manga That Changed Comics. It’s an excellent choice, and I thought it was a particularly intriguing one in juxtaposition to his other recent choice, Gutsoon’s Raijin Comics. Raijin fairly dripped testosterone, as Chris notes, but what some might forget is that DMP’s manga catalog was also quite the men’s locker room pretty much right up until the publication of Antique Bakery. Bambi and Her Pink Gun, Worst, IWGP and the Robot anthology were the books that defined DMP’s output prior to the launch of Juné, and Antique Bakery certainly seems like the fulcrum point for that shift.