There’s a new Flipped column up over at The Comics Reporter. I thought Tom would like that panel at the top.
Upcoming 6/24/2009
June 23, 2009 by
Let’s take a quick spin through this week’s ComicList, shall we?
I can’t remember if it was in Mad or Cracked or Crazy, but many years ago there was a great parody of Casper, the Friendly Ghost called “Casper Kaspar, the Dead Baby,” where Wendy convinces Casper to take revenge on the irresponsible parents who let him die. I swear this comic exists somewhere. It lingers with me because it was a punchy, successful attempt to insert some kind of logic into a beloved children’s property. (Updated: Tony Salvaggio points to the story from Crazy, which was written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by Marie Severin, of all people. Thanks, Tony!) AdHouse sent me a copy of Remake by Lamar Abrams, which is a venture into roughly similar territory. Abrams applies certain realities to Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, reimagining him as a powerful but otherwise average robot kid called Max Guy. Max is an average little boy in the vaguely unpleasant ways little boys can be average – easily bored, self-indulgent, prone to tantrums, and given to sadistic curiosity. It’s a nice conceit, and Abrams executes it with a notebook-in-study-hall style that suits it well. Unfortunately, I’ve never found average little boys to be very good company, even when I was one. Your mileage may vary.
Much more to my liking is the sly, sweet, smutty super-hero satire delivered by Adam Warren in his ongoing Empowered series, now in its fifth volume from Dark Horse. This time around, our heroine continues to face the disdain of her obnoxious heroic peers and some fractures in her relationship with best-friend Ninjette and boyfriend Thugboy.
I’m less likely to love but equally likely to buy the fifth volume of Hiroya Oku’s violent guilty pleasure, Gantz. I’m not proud.
Enthusiastic praise from folks like Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey has finally penetrated my thick skull and driven me to check out Taka Amano’s Kiichi and the Magic Books (CMX). Its fifth volume is due out tomorrow, and I have a couple of the earlier ones winging my way via standard delivery.
Del Rey has lots of manga on the way. My personal favorites are Ai Morinaga’s My Heavenly Hockey Club (now in its eighth volume) and Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi (which reaches volume seven).
Updated: I almost never look at the Marvel section of the ComicList, so I missed the listing for the collection of the Patsy Walker: Hellcat mini-series, written by Kathryn Immonen and illustrated by David LaFuente Garcia. I liked the first issue and made a mental note to pick up the trade eventually, as the shop cut back on its orders after the first issue and there were never any shelf copies by the time I got there. Anyway, it looks to be a refreshingly fun take on one of my longtime favorite C-list characters. (Thanks to Tom Spurgeon for giving the list a more careful perusal than I did. And thanks to Marvel for passing on the hardcover collection of this series and going right to paperback.)
Previews review
June 10, 2009 by
After a couple of months of overwhelmingly appealing product in Diamond’s June 2009 Previews catalog, the industry seems to take a bit of a breather. Here’s what caught my eye, mostly new volumes of entertaining, ongoing series.
There are some debuts. I quite liked the first volume of Natsuna Kawase’s The Lapis Lazuli Crown (CMX), so I’ll certainly take a chance on the second volume (page 121) and the first volume of another Kawase series, A Tale of an Unknown Country Girl (also CMX, page 120), about a princess who goes undercover to see if her arranged fiancé is a total asshat.
Many people viewed Brandon Graham’s King City to be one of the great casualties of whichever Tokyopop meltdown put its future in peril. Those folks will be happy to see pages 138 and 139, which reveal that Image and Tokyopop will be presenting a floppy version of Graham’s comic. I find Image’s web site impossible to navigate, so I’ll just link to this Newsarama interview with Graham.
Two of Del Rey’s solicitations on page 237 catch my eye: the fifth volume of Ryotaro Iwanaga’s underrated postwar adventure, Pumpkin Scissors, and the third volume of Sayonara, Zetsubo-Sensei, a dark satire of school comedies that’s more heavily annotated than just about any book not edited by Carl Horn. Sayonara also has some of the tiniest print in the history of translated comics from Japan, and some fairly impenetrable humor, but enough of the jokes work for me to make it worth the eye strain.
Fanfare/Ponent Mon presents the second volume of Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood (page 245). You scrambled for the order form right after I typed the publisher’s name, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?
I’ve enjoyed Josh Neufeld’s travel comics, though he tends to go places I would never personally consider for a vacation. My idea of roughing it is hotels with limited room service. But his A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge (Pantheon, page 273) promises to be one of the books of the year.
I thought IDW or someone had the CSI comic-book franchise. It isn’t exclusive apparently, as Tokyopop launches the two-part CSI: Interns, written by Sekou Hamilton and illustrated by Steven Cummings (page 283).
Viz Udon gets its sci-fi on with the return of Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius in an unflipped, all-new translation with restored color story pages (page 285). Trivia note: Asamiya was first introduced to many English-reading comics fans through the dubious distinction of illustrating some of the worst issues of Uncanny X-Men ever written.
If I’m going to be completely honest, I’m more intrigued by the Viz’s debut of Hiroyuki Asada’s Tegami Bachi (page 288), which I’ve seen described as being about postal workers called “Letter Bees” carrying the hearts of correspondents to their loved ones. I admit that most of my interest comes from the probably mistaken mental image of sacks full of human hearts and the shocked reactions of their recipients.
In the “new volume” category, Viz offers Oishinbo: Vegetables (written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki), the fourth volume of Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, and the second volume of Kiminori Wakasugi’s Detroit Metal City, which is sick and wrong and I think I’m in love with it (all listed on page 292).
Weekend reading
June 8, 2009 by
Aside from the strong third volume of Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto (Viz), my weekend’s reading ran towards the inoffensively pleasant.
Ballad of a Shinigami (CMX), adapted by Asuka Izumi from stories by K-Ske Hasegawa, falls into the venerable category of stories about agents (human or supernatural) that help the spirits of the deceased cross over to what comes next. Momo, the titular shinigami, doesn’t quite fit in with her peers. She’s sparkly white, and she bends the rules when a human sparks her sympathy or curiosity. Neither of these qualities makes her especially interesting as an entity in her own right, but the stories are amiable, reasonably moving, and don’t wear out their welcome. Izumi’s art is very pretty, which is a bonus.
The most interesting thing about the first volume of Yuki Sato’s Yokai Doctor is the chance to read the same story twice. Half of the book is filled with Sato’s try-out pieces, followed by the launch of the series proper. The series is about Kotoko, the granddaughter of an exorcist who has turned her family legacy into a comedy act for her classmates. She can actually see yokai, troublesome imps of varying sizes and threat levels, but she can’t really do anything to banish them. Mysterious and nerdy classmate Yuko arrives and reveals himself to be a “yokai doctor,” whose ministrations tend to make the imps cease and desist their mischief. The try-outs are fast and frisky, viewing the weirdness from Kotoko’s perspective. The “real” chapters are more Kuro-centric, and the desire to round the characters out pushes things in an unexpectedly maudlin direction. Kotoko hates yokai; Kuro is linked to them in ways beyond his mystical, medical ministrations; can the two ever be true friends? I didn’t end up caring much, to be honest, and I found myself missing the fast-and-shallow approach of the try-out version. There’s probably a metric ton of comics about an average girl and a weird boy dealing with the supernatural, some of it very good indeed, and this one’s just okay. (Comments based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)
I’m always happy to see shôjo titles show up on bestseller lists, but I’m often puzzled by which ones earn that distinction. Both volumes of Aya Kanno’s Otomen (Viz) have shown some impressive initial sales, but I continue to be disappointed with its watery execution of a great idea. It’s about Asuka, an outwardly manly high-school student who keeps his adoration for all things cute deeply in the closet. He’s got a crush on a tomboy named Ryo, and their ever-stalled romance is obsessively observed by Juta, their male classmate who cranks out shôjo manga on the side. I could be wrong, but it feels like there’s a heavy editorial-demographic curfew on the series; it can flirt with interesting, transgressive ideas about gender roles, but it isn’t allowed to actually date them. None of the thematic or plot elements go nearly far enough for my taste; the best bits of the series are when Asuka actually indulges in his secret hobbies – knitting, piping whipped cream, generally turning the world around him into a cuter place. If the series consisted nothing but those moments, I’d love it, but someone stubbornly insisted it have a story.
Upcoming 6/3/2009
June 2, 2009 by
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.
From the stack: Fire Investigator Nanase
May 25, 2009 by
I generally like episodic crime dramas and procedurals. The genre isn’t usually appointment television viewing for me, but it doesn’t need to be. There’s almost always one airing at any given hour of the day or night, so catching an episode of this or that doesn’t demand careful scheduling.
The quantity of choices lets me be picky, too. I tend to avoid procedurals that make me endure a bunch of subplot drama about the investigators. I have a very “Get back to work” attitude towards forensic scientists, detectives and their ilk. (The original Law & Order is usually perfect for this. The only times we find out anything about a character’s personal life is when they’re about to leave, which only happens every couple of years. On the flip side, I haven’t read a Patricia Cornwell novel in years because of all the intolerable whining. Solve something, for pity’s sake.)
I’m also not crazy about properties with big, recurring super-villains. These baddies are all geniuses, which is fair enough, but the protagonists are supposed to be geniuses too, and repeated failure makes them look dumb. (It also leads them to take things personally, which triggers my first aversion. Quit whining and get back to work.)
Fire Investigator Nanase (CMX), written by Izo Hashimoto and illustrated by Tomoshige Ichikawa, features personal drama and a big bad, but neither of these elements overwhelm the meat of the series – intriguing arson investigations.
As a young trainee, Nanase inadvertently saved a serial arsonist known as “Firebug.” Years later, the creepy killer has developed a protective streak towards Nanase and mentors her through a series of suspicious and deadly fires. Nanase lost her parents to fire, and she’s fostering a child who suffered a similar fate. She’s understandably conflicted about the guidance she’s getting from a natural enemy, but he’s helping her avenge other arson victims and expose criminals. It’s a familiar dynamic, but Hashimoto and Ichikawa execute it well. And it’s impossible not to like Nanase. She’s smart, dogged, ethical and still a bit innocent.
Ichikawa’s illustrations are competent but a bit by-the-manual shônen, but they’re energetic and they serve the story. It feels like there’s something more that could be done with the rendering of fire; those sequences get the job done, but I didn’t get the sense of fire as a destructive entity.
Overall, though, the book has all of the makings of an enjoyable procedural. The cases move quickly, and the suspects and their motivations are credibly rendered. The various elements – drama, science, investigation, and the symbiosis of Nanase and Firebug – are all nicely in balance.
Upcoming May 20, 2009
May 19, 2009 by
The quantity of really good product in this week’s ComicList has forced me to flee to an undisclosed location. Okay, not really, but I will be on the road, and I’m not really sure how much connectivity I’ll enjoy. I’ve got some posts lined up, but tweeting and email may be at a minimum. Now, let’s move on to the haul:
Johnny Hiro vol. 1, by Fred Chao, AdHouse: Charming genre mash-up comics grounded by a wonderful romantic relationship between young lovers trying to make their way in the big city. It includes three stories that saw print as singles and two that didn’t.
Clover Omnibus, by CLAMP, Dark Horse: 512 un-flipped pages from the hit-factory manga-ka collective. Kate Dacey is quite excited about this, which is always an excellent indicator.
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Serice vol. 9, by Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki: More afterlife adventures with the otherwise unemployable. One of the most reliably entertaining and smart series out there.
The Lapis Lazuli Crown vol. 1, by Natsuna Kawase, CMX: Endearing, well-executed shôjo fantasy-romance, which I reviewed here.
Flower of Life vol. 4, by Fumi Yoshinaga, DMP: I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think this is Yoshinaga’s funniest series. It’s a smart, endearing look at high-school students with all of the customary Yoshinaga flourishes – great characters, quirky twists, marvelous dialogue, and stylish art.
Mijeong, by Byun Byung-Jun, NBM: You can click here for a preview of this likely lovely manhwa from the creator of Run, Bong-Gu, Run!
Fullmetal Alchemist vol. 18, by Hiromu Arakawa, Viz: One of my favorite shônen series keeps plugging along.
Oishinbo vol. 3, by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki, Viz: The A la Carte collection has offered an introduction to Japanese cuisine and sampled sake and other libations, and now it moves on to noodles and dumplings. I always like carbs after drinking too much.
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka vol. 3, by Naoki Urasawa, Viz: I can’t wait to find out more about Urasawa’s take on Astro Girl. The brief introduction in volume 2 was very, very promising.
Upcoming 5/13/2009
May 12, 2009 by
What’s on deck with this week’s ComicList? Not The Lapis Lazuli Crown, as I misread, which actually comes out May 20, but CMX does offer the 14th volume of Kiyoko Ariyoshi’s classic ballet shôjo, Swan.
Brigid Alverson offered a preview review of the first volume of Sakae Esuno’s Future Diary (Tokyopop), and it sounds intriguing:
“Despite one cringe-inducing scene of violence toward the end, this is great escape reading, with plenty of action and an interestingly twisted premise.”
Fantagraphics offers a big hardcover collection starring one of my favorite characters from Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar stories, Luba. Here’s a bit of the solicitation:
“These ‘America’ stories — over 100 of them, ranging from quick one-page blackout sketches to bona fide graphic novellas — were originally published in a number of different comics and reprinted in a trilogy of oversized paperbacks. Luba finally collects in one compact, affordable hardcover the entirety of these tales, showcasing Gilbert Hernandez’s wicked wit, great compassion, and uncanny understanding of how human beings love, squabble, and ultimately find a way to make it through this life.”
From the stack: The Lapis Lazuli Crown
May 11, 2009 by
I’ve belatedly realized that I like comics for ‘tweens and teens for the same reasons I like some actual ‘tweens and teens. A good nature, a sense of humor, a reasonable amount ambition, intelligence – these qualities go a long way towards making me enjoy a comic or a kid. (I like the surly ones a lot if they’re sarcastic and perceptive enough to leaven their moodiness.)
Natsuna Kawase’s The Lapis Lazuli Crown, which debuts Wednesday from CMX, has enough of the good qualities to make it pleasant company. It’s pretty and outgoing but just insecure enough to spare it cheerleader blandness. And it’s only two volumes long, so how wrong can it go?
It’s about Miel Violette, middle daughter of a family of aristocratic sorcerers who’ve seen better days. Miel’s parents have lost their high-profile positions, but they’re getting by. Miel’s older sister, Sara, is already an accomplished magician, and little sister Renee has started magic school. Miel has inherited the family magic, but she’s awkward in its use, and she’s abnormally physically strong. Her middling magic and brute strength leave her wanting to fly under the radar and be average.
While out shopping one day, she meets a cute, goofy boy who finds her interesting, which is pretty much the last thing Miel wants. Radi encourages her to work on her magic and to not be so self-conscious about her strength. Miel is shocked when she discovers that Radi is actually the prince of the kingdom; he’s modified his appearance to let himself mingle among the people. After some initial irritation at Radi’s deception, Miel starts crushing on the prince and decides to hone her magical powers so that she can work in the palace and be closer to him.
It’s always at least a little gross when a character decides to do something they should be doing anyways to win the approval of a character they like. Kawase doesn’t entirely get around that problem, nor does she really seem to want to, but she comes close by making Radi wonderfully likable. Prince types don’t vary a whole lot, so Radi is a breath of fresh air. In his commoner guise, he’s enthusiastic about everything and genuinely interested in his subjects and their welfare. His in-disguise walkabouts are about having fun, but they’re also about connecting with the people he serves. I wish Miel was more self-motivated, but there are good reasons to crush on Radi, so I won’t carp too much.
The Lapis Lazuli Crown has the added advantage of being really, really pretty. I’m sort of crazy about faux-European, quasi-period settings, and Kawase does a very nice job of conceiving and executing designs for her setting and the looks of her characters. There’s a nice sense of motion to her illustrations, and the magical sequences have an understated quality that’s a nice change from some of the super-sparkly examples in the genre. (She doesn’t demonstrate a tremendous range in terms of character design. The back-up story is an appealing thief caper, but it looks like Miel and Radi are part of a summer stock company playing a one-act on the nights the main production is dark.)
But really, the biggest selling point for the book is Radi, the dream boy who’s actually dreamy and at least as interesting as the girl who loves him. That’s rare enough to make The Lapis Lazuli Crown worth a look.
(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)
I can't decide
Oh, Kaoru Mori, what is it that I love best about your cartooning? Is it your elegant and understated way of rendering emotion?
Or is it your richly evocative images of a bygone era, so lush and detailed?
Would you think less of me if I admitted that it was probably your shameless autobiographical notes?
Whatever the reason, you really can’t go wrong with Mori manga. There are the first seven volumes of Emma (CMX), which trace the love story between a shy maid and a wealthy (but not aristocratic) young man (which I reviewed here). Or you could get a taste of Mori’s style and sensibility in the one-volume Shirley (also CMX). Or you could get some stand-alone glimpses of what Mori calls the “Emmaverse” in volumes eight and nine of Emma.
For those of you who haven’t yet read the first seven volumes of the series, don’t worry about being lost if you decide to sample volume eight or nine. They feature stand-alone stories of supporting characters from the main story, but they don’t depend on any previous knowledge. They’re simply charming, moving stories of people from across the Victorian social spectrum. I would imagine that they’d be slightly more moving if you’d seen the characters in their original context, but I think they’d still read beautifully without any prior knowledge.
I’m not giving you excuses not to read all of Emma, though.
(The images above are from the eighth volume of Kaoru Mori’s Emma.)