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Upcoming 11/10/2010

November 9, 2010 by

It’s one of those neat ComicList weeks where all kinds of interesting comics from throughout the space-time continuum are due to land.

Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney tweeted about this book, and it has a definite allure for me as a person who read a lot of Archie comics in the back seat of the station wagon on long drives to various vacation destinations during his childhood. It’s Dark Horse’s Archie Firsts collection, which promises “first issues, first appearances, and other milestones, collected for the first time in one hardcover volume!”

I was a huge fan of Scott Chantler’s Northwest Passage (Oni Press), so it would stand to reason that I should pick up a copy of his Two Generals (McClelland and Stewart), which promises “poignant graphic memoir that tells the story of World War II from an Everyman’s perspective.” I’m not a history buff, per se, but Chantler is phenomenally talented.

The first volume of Lars Martinson’s Tōnoharu (Top Shelf) was very intriguing, so I’m looking forward to Martinson’s second look at a fish out of water teaching English in rural Japan.

Erica (Okazu) Friedman is crazy about Hayate X Blade (Seven Seas), written and illustrated by Shizuru Hayashiya, and that’s reason enough to seriously consider the purchase of the first omnibus collection of the series.

And I am crazy about Kou Yaginuma’s Twin Spica (Vertical), and I would never consider delaying in the purchase of the fourth volume. This is easily one of the great series debuts of 2010.

What looks good to you?

Filed under: ComicList, Dark Horse, Linkblogging, Seven Seas, Top Shelf, Vertical 7 Comments

Early voting

November 8, 2010 by

In last week’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, NPR’s Monkey See crew discussed (among other things) the advent of “Best of” season and greeted it with the weary resignation of people who will be writing and editing at least a few before December comes to a close. And, as if they uttered “Candyman” three times as they faced the mirror, the first few graphic novel lists have arrived:

  • Amazon’s manga-free Best Books of 2010: Comics
  • Publishers Weekly‘s Best Comics List

    • Like Christmas advertising, these things seem to arrive earlier and earlier each year. I’d guess this means we’ll probably see the companion Best Manga list in this week’s edition of Publishers Weekly Comics List.

    I was chatting with people about these lists on Twitter, and some trends emerged:

  • Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (Fantagraphics) didn’t seem to make much of an impression outside of dedicated manga readers, which is disappointing to me as a dedicated manga reader.
  • While many fine comics from established talents arrived in 2010 (or at least in the ten months of the year so far), there were fewer big, splashy debuts or career-redefining turns by known quantities than there were in 2009.

    • Your thoughts? Any particular Japanese comics you would have liked to see on these more general lists?

    Filed under: Awards and lists, Linkblogging 3 Comments

    From the stack: Cross Game vols. 1-3

    November 8, 2010 by

    There’s a conversation that almost always starts when someone mentions a sports manga like Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game (from Viz’s Shônen Sunday imprint). Those among us who left athletic pursuits behind as soon as society permitted it (basically, once we had completed our high-school physical education requirements) ask if the comic is about sports or about people who play sports. Will we, as conscientious objectors to competitive athletics, be asked to care about the minutiae of some particular sport, an interest many of us cannot be bothered to fake even for loved ones, or do we just need to like the characters and let the details wash over us?

    While the details of baseball matter to a certain extent in Cross Game, they’re easy enough to ignore in the wake of the characters, a complex and sympathetic group who also manage to be idiosyncratic and funny a lot of the time. In other words, Cross Game is undeniably about baseball, but it’s not so much about baseball that people who don’t give a fig about the sport won’t find their price of admission paid in a variety of other ways.

    One of those ways is Adachi’s own idiosyncratic nature as a creator. The tone of the three-volume introduction to Cross Game shifts a great deal from chapter to chapter, sometimes page to page, but the shifts work. Low comedy sits comfortably next to innocent romance, just as sly slice-of-life isn’t out of place near unexpected tragedy. It really is marvelous to watch Adachi mix and match but still make all of these disparate bits seem like they’re part of the same whole.

    Part of that has to be due to his fluid art style. It’s got innocence to it and simplicity of line, but that doesn’t keep it from exhibiting strength and wonder. I sometimes think that’s one of Tezuka’s greatest contributions to cartooning – abundant evidence that something can be simultaneously cute and forceful, goofy and moving, delicate and muscular. Adachi lives up to Tezuka’s example nicely, even throwing in some of the master’s bits of fourth-wall breakage. He also does a nice job with the small modulations of a cast that ages about five years over the book’s three volumes.

    Another part is that he writes well, particularly in terms of creating engaging, root-worthy characters with a few simple strokes. We meet average kid Ko Kitamura, son of the local sporting goods franchise and an indifferent athlete, and we’re introduced to the four Tsukishima sisters, heirs to the local batting cage and café. It’s clear that Ko is our core protagonist, but it’s equally clear that the manga isn’t really about people standing around and admiring him. It feels like an ensemble piece, even if it isn’t in its secret heart, but it’s always nice when a creator goes to the effort of camouflaging the obvious conclusion.

    The first collection reads in a breeze, and I’m fairly sure that the only reasonable response when setting it down is, “That was really, really nice.” The rather odd back-cover text suggests that Cross Game “will change your perception of what shônen manga can be,” which might be asking too much of it, but it’s got an off-kilter quality – a willingness to give its subject a sidelong glance rather than charge at it — that certainly helps it stand out from the pack. It’s unusual and, partly because of that, kind of lovely.

    (This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. You can read the first chapter on Viz’s Shônen Sunday site.)

    Filed under: From the stack, Viz 12 Comments

    Random Sunday question: flakes

    November 7, 2010 by

    It snowed here yesterday, and since it didn’t stick to the ground or make travel difficult, I was delighted. So for this weekend’s random question, what are some comics you’ve read with memorable scenes or sequences in snowy landscapes? I’ll start after the jump.

    Filed under: Uncategorized 24 Comments

    License request day: Piece

    November 5, 2010 by

    Have you read Hinako Ashihara’s Sand Chronicles (Viz)? I think it’s really terrific and would recommend it if you like moving coming-of-age stories. The main plot takes eight volumes to complete, and what’s really interesting about it is that the story matures with the protagonist, Ann. It starts with Ann as a moody pre-teen moving to her mother’s childhood home, a rural village, and follows Ann as she grows into a young woman with a job, responsibilities, and a complicated emotional life. Basically, it grows from a shôjo series into a josei title, which is a kind of amazing conceit as much as it is just an excellent comic. Viz is publishing two additional volumes of side stories about the well-developed and sympathetic cast of characters, but we’re just about done.

    So when I overheard Danielle Leigh tweet about Ashihara’s current series, I had to leap into license request action. It’s called Piece, runs in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi (also home to Sand Chronicles), and sounds very promising. It also sounds like it uses time, though in a different way than Ashihara did with Sand Chronicles.

    It’s about a young woman who hears of the death of a classmate who apparently viewed their relationship as being much closer than our heroine did. Mizuho looks into the sad, short life of Origuchi, trying to fill in the blanks and understand her connection to Origuchi. (I think that’s what it’s about, at least, though it’s partly guesswork.) Four volumes have been published so far, and Shogakukan seems to be branding it in its Flower josei imprint, for whatever that’s worth.

    I sometimes forget that I also enjoyed Ashihara’s fun, one-volume SOS (Viz), which is about a secret dating agency in a high school. I’m almost entirely unfamiliar with her Forbidden Dance (Tokyopop), a four-volume series about a ballerina, aside from that I’ve heard some mixed responses to it. Please feel free to let me know if I should track it down.

    And, for another approach to license requests, please check out Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney’s run-down of the potential license-ability of the books that made a recent best-seller list in Japan.

    Filed under: License requests, Linkblogging 8 Comments

    Momentous occasion

    November 3, 2010 by

    Vertical’s Ed Chavez reminds his Twitter followers that Osamu Tezuka was born on this day in 1928.

    I’m really looking forward to Ayako. While it’s frustrating that there’s still so much of Tezuka’s work that has yet to be translated and published in English, it’s also kind of great that there’s still so much of Tezuka’s work that has yet to be translated and published in English. Anticipation, you know what I mean?

    Filed under: Birthday books, Vertical 6 Comments

    The Seinen Alphabet: O

    November 3, 2010 by

    “O” is for…

    Old Boy (Dark Horse), written by Garon (Astral Project) Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi, won an Eisner Award in 2007. The eight-volume series originally ran in Futubasha’s Weekly Manga Action.

    Oh My Goddess!, written and illustrated by Kosuke Fujishima, has been a staple at Dark Horse forever. The 40-plus-volume series is running in Kodansha’s Afternoon.

    Dark Horse is releasing two seinen series written by Eiji Otsuka, The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and MPD Psycho.

    Ohikkoshi (Dark Horse) collects an interesting mix of shorts stories written and illustrated by Hiroaki (Blade of the Immortal) Samura. The stories originally ran in Afternoon.

    Sensible people all wish Viz had released more of Oishinbo, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki and still running in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits. It’s a sprawling look at food culture through the eyes of rival father-and-son gourmands.

    Viz did publish all four volumes of Rumiko Takahashi’s One-Pound Gospel, originally published in Shogakukan’s Weekly Young Sunday. It’s about a boxer and a nun.

    Viz has also published some of Natsume Ono’s seinen works, not simple and House of Five Leaves. Some yet-to-be licensed works include COPPERS, Danza, and Tsuratura Waraji from Kodansha, La Quinta Camera from Penguin Shobou, and Tesoro and Ometura from Shogakukan.

    Yen Press has done the manga world a great service by picking up the license for Kaoru (Emma) Mori’s Otoyomegatari, originally published in Enterbrain’s Fellows!, though I’m not sure about its release date here.

    Fanfare/Ponent Mon has published Hideji Oda’s A Patch of Dreams and included Oda’s work in Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators.

    And while it’s not my favorite of his crazy seinen titles, I am very fond of Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (Vertical), about a doctor whose career is threatened by a mysterious disease and the schemes of the medical establishment. It originally ran in Shogakukan’s Big Comic.

    What starts with “O” in your seinen alphabet, particularly on the unlicensed front?

    Update:

    Scott Green reminds me of Toru Yamazaki’s Octopus Girl (Dark Horse). I thought it was shônen for some reason.

    Filed under: The Seinen Alphabet 4 Comments

    Upcoming 11/3/2010

    November 2, 2010 by

    I’m about to go vote, because the alternative is just too horrible. When I vote with my dollars in tomorrow’s ComicList election, the big winner is likely to be Viz.

    A new title by Usumaru Furuya is a big reason why. He’s so weird and smart. Here’s what Viz says about the Genkaku Picasso:

    “Hikari Hamura, nicknamed Picasso because of his natural artistic abilities, survived a horrible accident, but his friend Chiaki wasn’t so lucky. Suddenly, Chiaki appears in front of him and tells him in order to keep living he must help the people around him. Can Hikari save people with his sketchbook and a 2B pencil?”

    In the interest of full disclosure, I’d pick up a new Furuya series no matter how it was described, but this one sounds fun.

    Viz also offers some new volumes of fun series:

  • Gin Tama vol. 20, written and illustrated by Hideaki Sorachi
  • Hikaru no Go vol. 21, written by Yumi Hotta, illustrated by Takeshi Obata
  • Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You vol. 6, written and illustrated by Karuho Shiina

    • What looks good to you?

    Filed under: ComicList, Viz 3 Comments

    Another nostalgia experiment

    October 28, 2010 by

    I fell into a nostalgia pit trap this week after seeing the write-up of the online leader ballot for DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes. That was always a fun element of the franchise back in the day, and I generally enjoyed the issues written by Paul Levitz, so it seemed like a reasonable enough excuse to give the new series a chance. After learning that the shop had sold out of the Beasts of Burden/Hellboy One-Shot , I grabbed a copy of Legion of Super-Heroes #6.

    First of all, this series could really use a “Previously” page. Levitz is pretty scrupulous about inserting little tags introducing his main characters on first appearance, but there seems to be a fair amount going on that might be helpful to know. This issue is one of those “between big events” chapters that allow the cast to go off and do lots of little things that show what might be considered everyday life for a team of super-heroes in the future. Most of this involves them talking about or to a new character I don’t recognize.

    He’s called “Earth Man,” and he apparently just recently switched to the Legion’s side after being a big, anti-alien xenophobe. And, again, he’s called “Earth Man.” Get it? Yeah. Oh, and he’s apparently started a sexual relationship with Shadow Lass, an alien, so he can’t be all that xenophobic, right? (Maybe he’s like one of those homophobic closet cases, scoring with aliens on the down low and making a big deal about hating them in public. I can’t believe I just typed that.) His power is to borrow the powers of other people, and most of them are aliens, which means he wouldn’t have any powers at all if he drove all the aliens off of his planet, but nobody ever accused bigots of being geniuses or writers of being coherent satirists.

    Anyway, Earth Man is grumpy, square-jawed and uninteresting, U.S. Agent 2.0 (or whichever iteration we’re up to at this point), and having a lot of characters focused on him isn’t particularly entertaining or promising. It suggests that future issues will spend a lot of time interested in the evolution of Tea Party satire guy, and that’s not something I’m keen to pay for.

    The back-up story has some extremely specific references to events or issues from Levitz’s first run. Cosmic Boy (who seems to be the current leader) visits the academy where they teach young heroes to possibly be Legionnaires at some point in the future. This is an opportunity for Cosmic Boy to be mopey about how hard and dangerous it is to be a Legionnaire, especially to be their leader, which isn’t a tonal element that ever worked in the past in this franchise and seems kind of 1990s to me. The worst bits of this sequence, aside from some confusing cutaways to unrelated plot points that involve women napping with their dead boyfriend’s clothing, are some really bad character designs for the trainees, both aesthetic and conceptual. By the end of the story, Cosmic Boy decides to step down as leader, which is sure to be a great confidence boost for the cadets, and the election begins.

    I suppose I should comment on the art, though I’m not sure if any of these people draw the series regularly. Francis Portela draws the main story, and the pages have an interestingly light line, but there are an awful lot of weirdly heightened facial expressions. It also must have been an interesting meeting when the creative team sat down and decided to focus on costumes that combined all of the worst elements of everything the cast had worn previously. Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass appear in a total of two panels, and my eyes still hurt, but that might owe more to the really unfortunate juxtaposition of colors.

    Phil Jiminez and Scott Koblish do better with the back-up piece. Nobody looks like they’re mugging in a school play, but I have to bring up the character designs again, because they’re really bad. Gravity Kid is very “leather bar… of the future!” which I don’t object to at all personally but doesn’t really translate very well in this context. Dragonwing , with her transparent kimono, padded thigh-highs, and magenta dreadlocks, is the definition of a hot mess. Duplicate Girl sort of embodies the previously discussed costume issue – her look is a very awkward attempt to update the kind of thing she wore previously and ends up looking like PTA Lady.

    It all makes you wonder if it went through any editing process. Things don’t really hang together at all. Bits seem like they’re chipped off the good raw material the Legion concept offers, but a lot of stuff seems random and sloppy. I’d suspect it would be most interesting to people who might be curious as to where it would fit into the team’s awfully muddled publishing history. I’m that guy, and it’s still not that interesting

    Filed under: DC, From the stack 2 Comments

    The Seinen Alphabet: "N"

    October 27, 2010 by

    “N” is for…

    Neko Ramen (Tokyopop), written and illustrated by Kenji Sonishi, is a gag manga about a cat who works in a noodle shop. It originally ran in Mag Garden’s Comic Blade.

    Viz released five two of eight volumes of Taiyo Matsumoto’s No. 5, which was widely reported to be one of the publisher’s worst-selling titles of all time. It originally ran in Shogakukan’s IKKI.

    NOiSE (Tokyopop), written and illustrated by Tsutomi Nihei, is a prequel to that creator’s Blame! (also published by Tokyopop). Both NOiSE and Blame! ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon. Nihei is also the creator of Biomega (Viz).

    Natsume Ono’s not simple (Viz) originally ran in Penguin Shobou’s Comic Seed!, then ran again in Shogakukan’s IKKI. It received some of the most vigorously mixed reviews I’ve ever seen for a title, which made for very interesting blog reading.

    While Neon Genesis Evangelion (Viz), written and illustrated by Yoshiyuki Sadamato, originally ran in a shônen magazine, it’s been calling Kadakowa Shoten’s seinen magazine Young Ace home for the past couple of years.

    Maybe the best-known manga-ka from this corner of the seinen alphabet is Go Nagai, who has had a very prolific career that includes a number of seinen titles.

    Of all of the yet-to-be-translated titles that start with the letter “N,” I’m most eager to see someone publish Iou Kuroda’s Nasu, which originally ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon.

    And while it seems rather unlikely that anyone is going to publish a 36-volume series about sumo wrestling, it’s nice to imagine a world where such a fate might be possible for Tetsuya Chiba’s Notari Matsutaro, originally published in Shogakukan’s Big Comic.

    Who or what starts with “N” in your seinen alphabet? Fill in my gaps, please!

    Filed under: The Seinen Alphabet 5 Comments
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