License Request Day: Soil

What’s that great old definition of madness again? Repeating unproductive behaviors with the expectation of a different outcome? Fair enough, but nobody ever said that madness didn’t overlap with fandom in the Venn Diagram of Nerd, did they?

So, yes, it would be foolish, probably, to think it too likely that some publisher would snatch up the work of a creator whose other major title has already bombed in translation. And if no one has listed to my pleas for someone to rescue Atsushi Kaneko’s Bambi and Her Pink Gun (two of six volumes published by Digital Manga), why would they rush out to publish Kaneko’s Soil?

A commenter mentioned this title earlier this week, and, all factors to its detriment aside, I would like for someone to license and publish it because of all of the factors in its favor.

First of all is the sheer pleasure of those two volumes of Bambi. Lots of creators try to transcend juvenile, exploitative material and turn it into something more interesting and purposeful, but very few of them succeed, and I felt like Kaneko achieved that.

Secondly, there is the fact that Soil originally ran in Enterbrain’s Comic Beam, which was also the home to Bambi, and Astral Project, and Emma, and Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu, and The Strange Tale of Panorama Island, and Wandering Son, and Thermae Romae, and a bunch of other glorious things that give life joy and meaning. Here’s the link to Comic Beam’s web site.

Lastly, it’s a mystery. I don’t think there are enough mysteries in comic-book form, and I almost always enjoy reading them. Admittedly, it’s an odd-sounding mystery about the disappearance of a seemingly normal from a seemingly perfect rural town, but that sounds like it’s right in Kaneko’s wheelhouse.

On the down side, it’s already at ten volumes. That’s also an up side for people who cherish the idea of ten volumes of Kaneko comics. I have no idea who might publish the series, to be honest. CMX is gone. DMP doesn’t seem like it’s interested in this kind of manga any more. Tokyopop has published a bit of Comic Beam manga in the past, but they’ve had to scale back. Vertical would be a good choice, but they’re already making good choices, and their slate might be as full as they can allow it to be at the moment. Maybe Dark Horse might provide a good home for the series? But Dark Horse is not without its own history of putting series on hiatus, so we might just be setting ourselves up for a case of Bambi II: Abandonment Boogaloo.

Discussion of lamented publishers and unfinished series leads me to conclude with a question. What series would you like to see liberated from the limbo of either a publisher-induced hiatus or the unfortunate and total conclusion of that publisher’s efforts? Well, two questions, really: just out of curiosity, do you have a manga magazine that’s sort of your fantasy subscription? You’re crazy about a lot of the manga that comes from it and you’d totally subscribe if you could read Japanese? Comic Beam is one of mine.