The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

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Upcoming 8/26/2009

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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.

sayonara3It’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.

Upcoming 8/19/2009

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astralproject4Before I delve into this week’s ComicList (which is impressive), I wanted to make sure to point you towards Christopher Butcher’s examination of San Francisco’s New People center and what it might mean for the evolution of otaku culture in North America.

Okay, moving on to the “bitter complaint” agenda item: as regular readers of this blog surely know by now, I’ve been obsessively stalking the progress towards English-language publication of Fumi Yoshinaga’s award-winning Ôoku: The Inner Chambers for a really long time. It’s included on Diamond’s shipping list, but @Toukochan informs me that the quasi-monopolistic distributor evinces a winsome disregard for residents of “the Northwesteast Corridor” and often makes us wait for a week or more for new Viz titles. So when I said to myself, “Gosh, I really want to support manga for grown-ups in the direct market, and I also want to make sure I get a copy of this in a timely fashion, so I should pre-order it,” I should have replaced “in a timely fashion” with “at some point.” Screw you, Diamond. (Update: Apparently, the problem is not with Diamond but with garden variety slapdash-ery at the local level. There will always be reasons to say “Screw you, Diamond,” but this is not among them. Apologies.)

On the bright side, Diamond will manage to deliver the fourth and final volume of Astral Project (CMX) in a timely fashion. I’m not sure how marginal and Syuji Takeya are going to wrap up the many concurrent threads of the story, but I’m sure it will be fascinating. I’m also sure that I will wish there were more volumes. (And I really need to track down a copy of Mai Nishikata’s Venus Capriccio, which has gotten a lot of review love. The second volume arrives Wednesday.)

delreyxmenDel Rey continues with the manga-fication of Marvel’s mutant franchise with X-Men: Misfits, written by Raina (Smile, The Baby-Sitters Club) Telgemeier and Dave (Agnes Quill) Roman and illustrated by Anzu. It’s all about Kitty Pryde’s admission to Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, which sounds like a promising take on the property.

Random House releases Josh Neufeld’s A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge, a journalistic look at various citizens’ experiences during and after Hurricane Katrina. I’m planning on posting a full review later this week, but Neufeld has done a fine job with the subject matter. It’s excellent graphic-novel reportage. Tom Spurgeon recently ran a meaty interview with Neufeld about the genesis and evolution of the project.

I already picked up a copy of the fourth volume of Naoki Urasawa’s excellent 20th Century Boys (Viz) over the weekend at a bookstore, which is what I probably should have done with Ôoku, not that I’m bitter or anything. Urasawa continues to fold complications into his thriller while introducing and expanding on his complex cast of characters. It’s well worth your money, though Northeast Corridor residents may have to wait. Also promising is the first volume of Shiro Miwa’s Dogs: Bullets and Carnage. I really enjoyed the prelude volume.

Pinoko says…

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Um… sure you are, Pinoko, but remember what we talked about? How you were going to mention Kate Dacey’s Black Jack Contest over at The Manga Critic? It ends at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 5, and it’s open to United States residents 18 years of age or older.

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Well, then you could enter to win the first six volumes of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack from Vertical. It’s about a gifted but unlicensed doctor treating all kinds of maladies for ridiculous fees, and you’re in it, too!

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Lots of people do. According to this week’s ComicList, the sixth volume arrives in comic shops today.

Other promising arrivals include the eighth volume of Girl Genius: Agatha Heterodyne And The Chapel Of Bones (Airship Entertainment) by Phil and Kaja Foglio and Cheyenne Wright and the 16th volume of Nodame Cantabile (Del Rey) by Tomoko Ninomiya.

On the less promising front, at least by my taste, is the first volume of Kanoko Sakurakoji’s Black Bird (Viz), which seems to be anticipated with some eagerness. I agree entirely with Kate Dacey’s review. Those covers with the blood-flecked girl being manhandled by some dude are entirely accurate.

Oh, look… they're waving good-bye!

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There’s another very noteworthy title in this week’s ComicList, and I didn’t want to bury it under a review of another book, or vice versa. The book is neglected enough as it is, and I didn’t want to contribute to that.

parasyte8It’s the final volume of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s horror demi-classic Parasyte (Del Rey), and there are lots of reasons to be excited by its arrival. First of all, there’s the fact that it got here at all. Parayste is one of those sort-of rescues, originally published by Tokyopop. That out-of-print version is lovingly recalled by Shaenon K. Garrity in one of her much-missed installments of the Overlooked Manga Festival. Sincere appreciation should be extended to Del Rey for giving the series another opportunity to reach new readers.

I’m devoted, but lazy, so I’ll just point you to my Flipped column on the book:

“The thing that I like best about Parasyte is that it reminds me that spooky schlock and thoughtful storytelling aren’t mutually exclusive. A story can use shock tactics but not lose its hold on the reader or the authority of its underlying message. Humans and parasites may not be able to peacefully coexist on Iwaaki’s pages, but art and pulp are living in perfect harmony.”

I’m toying with various ideas about how to further promote Parasyte appreciation, so check back on, say, Thursday of next week. Because we know what happens to the inattentive and/or careless.

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From the stack: Kimi ni Todoke

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This week’s ComicList is kind of lean, so I’ll focus on one particular release. It’s Karuho Shiina’s Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You (Viz), and it’s hilarious and delightful.

kiminitodokeYou remember that girl who crawled out of the well in The Ring, right? Sawako Kuronuma bears an uncanny resemblance to that creepy character, and the coincidence hasn’t escaped her classmates’ notice. Sawako is a sweet, optimistic girl, but her spooky, slump-shouldered bearing is completely at odds with what’s inside. Remember that bit in Addams Family Values when Wednesday tried to smile? It’s like that, except that Sawako is really trying to be genial.

As high-school students are a cowardly and superstitious lot, rumors fly about Sawako. They think she communes with ghosts and can curse those around her. Even the teachers are wary of her. Hell, even puppies get skittish in her presence. It probably doesn’t help that the kanji that constitute her family name also translate into “black swamp.”

So Sawako takes it upon herself to try and clear up what she believes to be simple misunderstandings. She meets with limited success until Kazehaya, the most popular boy in class, starts treating her with the same cheerful courtesy he extends to everyone. The tide begins to turn for Sawako, and she starts making other friends. And while she still looks and acts like she crawled out of a well, she’s sparkling with happiness on the inside.

It’s that disconnect – Sawako’s frightening mien wrapped around the open heart of a true shôjo princess – that makes the book so funny and endearing. Also delightful is the fact that Sawako never once entertains the notion of changing her appearance; she just wants to introduce her classmates to the girl on the inside. Shiina has a real gift for constructing scenarios that allow you can to root for Sawako and still giggle at the ways her efforts can backfire. Shiina’s illustrations hit all the right notes, from funny-creepy to sparkly-sweet, sometimes in the same panel.

Kimi ni Todoke is off to a wonderful start. It’s a great look at an offbeat kid trying to find happiness on her terms. Sawako is undeniably naïve, but she’s naïve in the best possible way. She believes the best of people, that they’ll accept truth and overlook appearance. And Shiina lets her be right often enough to balance out the laughs that come from the moments when Sawako is wrong.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Upcoming 7/22/2009

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The books on this week’s shipping list may not appear on any best-seller rosters, but they certainly top the Comics That Delight David List. And though Viz is clearly trying to leave me impoverished with periodic front-loading from its Signature line, I can’t help but be happy at so many wonderful arrivals.

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I mean, just look at that. Who couldn’t be happy?

Okay, technically, Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea is not on Diamond’s shipping list for the week, but it’s on the “what’s arriving” list at my local shop, so that’s all that really matters to me. You can read an extremely generous sample of this marvelous title at Viz’s SIGIKKI site. It’s an alluring combination of fantasy and environmentalism, which seems to be Igarashi’s stock in trade. Play to your prodigious strengths, I say.

The fish may be disappearing in Children of the Sea, but they’re popping up on tables all over the place in the latest volume of Oishinbo: Fish, Sushi and Sashimi, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki. If you haven’t treated yourself to a book from this series yet, here’s the short version: a know-it-all young journalist is working on an “Ultimate Menu” for his newspaper, and his blowhard father is working on a “Supreme Menu” for a competitor. Father and son detest each other, and I honestly can’t blame either of them, but their over-the-top dysfunction is often a lot of fun, and the food facts are absolutely fascinating.

The fourth volume of Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto arrives, continuing Urasawa’s extrapolation on a classic Astro Boy story by manga grandmaster Osamu Tezuka. It’s a rich suspense story with great characters, terrific art, and heartbreaking, slightly creepy child robots. What more could you want?

It wasn’t nominated for this year’s Eisner for Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Japan, which is unfortunate, but if Takehiko Inoue’s wheelchair-basketball opus Real isn’t nominated next year, it may actually qualify as a scandal, because the two volumes that have come out so far this year have taken the series from excellent to transcendent, and I have no reason to expect that the fifth volume will buck that trend in any way. I tend to refrain from doing full reviews on new volumes of ongoing series unless something changes drastically, but I’ve decided to loosen up on that policy with Real, because it’s simply one of the best ongoing series on the shelves, and it’s rather neglected.

Upcoming 7/15/2009

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It’s a slim one, but let’s take a quick look at this week’s ComicList:

swallowingThe week’s standout (at least in terms of items actually confirmed to be shipping through Diamond) is Osamu Tezuka’s Swallowing the Earth (DMP). Early reviews have been mixed on some points, most notably a rather un-evolved portrayal of women, but we all know that any newly translated Tezuka is worth reading. And when it’s crazy early gekiga from Tezuka, it’s even worthier. Here’s part of the plot summary: “What brought this woman to conspire for decades against patriarchal society – against an entire gender – and can anything be done to stop her plans?”

littlemouseI don’t see it on the ComicList, but the weekly arrivals e-mail from the local shop indicates the arrival of Jeff Smith’s Little Mouse Gets Ready (Toon Books). As with Tezuka, anything from Smith is worth reading, and this book looks adorable: “There’s lots to do before Little Mouse is ready to go visit the barn. Will he master all the intricacies of getting dressed, from snaps and buttons to Velcro and tail holes?” Yes, it’s a book for children, but that’s never stopped me before, and it certainly isn’t going to stop me now.

If you find yourself with extra cash in the comics budget and a surfeit of new arrivals to meet your needs, you might head on over to Twitter and check out the weekly #mangamonday tweets. The recommendations range from hot-off-the-press items to vintage oddities.

And while it isn’t a new release yet, I’m thrilled to read Deb Aoki’s news that Last Gasp will be publishing a hardcover version of Fumiyo Kouno’s exquisite, extraordinarily moving Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. I already own the softcover, but I’ll definitely go for the hardcover as well, then donate the paperback to the library.

Upcoming 7/8/2009

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fb23I’ll begin my look at this week’s ComicList with a request. If you’ve never actually read a volume of Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), which concludes with its 23rd volume, I beg you to refrain from writing about the mega-hit in condescending, reductive terms. It’s not a cutesy romantic fantasy about people who turn into animals, or at least it hasn’t been since maybe its second or third volume. It’s actually a crushingly effective drama about breaking a generational cycle of emotional abuse and neglect, and it’s one of a very small handful of comics that has ever made me cry. It’s also a rare example of an extremely popular comic also being an absolutely brilliant comic, so in deference to the people who are going to miss new volumes rather terribly, please don’t call it “fluffy” or something equally inane.

catparadise1With that off my chest, I can look to the future, which includes a new series from Yuji Iwahara, Cat Paradise (Yen Press). CMX published Iwahara’s three-volume Chikyu Misaki, which still ranks for me as one of the most underappreciated manga ever to be published in English. It’s a terrific blend of fantasy and mystery with wonderful characters and unusual, eye-catching illustrations. Iwahara’s King of Thorn (Tokyopop), was less successful for me, though I found it to be a very competent survival drama. Of course, it was coming out at roughly the same time as Minetaro Mochizuki’s utterly genius survival drama, Dragon Head (Tokyopop), so it was bound to suffer in comparison. Anyway, Cat Paradise seems to be about students and their pets fighting against demonic forces or something like that, but describing Iwahara’s comics never really does them justice, and his work is always worth a look.

kp10I suspect the impact of its conclusion will be washed away in a sea of Fruits Basket tears, but I’ll also miss Kitchen Princess (Del Rey), written by Miyuki Kobayashi and illustrated by Natsumi Ando. It’s a cooking manga, which is enough to put it on my “read automatically” list, but it also became an increasingly effective melodrama as the series progressed. And there are recipes in the back. Try the Madeleine recipe. On the shônen front, Del Rey also offers a new volume of Hiro Mashima’s very entertaining Fairy Tail.

It’s also Viz’s week to remind me that I really need to hunker down and catch up with some series that I like very much: Hideaki Sorachi’s Gin Tama, Kazune Kawahara’s High School Debut, Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and Yuki Obata’s We Were There. In my defense, Viz keeps publishing great new manga, particularly in its Signature line, so it’s becoming increasingly impractical to keep up with ongoing series.

Upcoming 7/1/2009

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There’s not much of exceptional interest on this week’s ComicList. Kate Dacey pulls out some of the highlights, so I can fix my gaze on one of the odder items. That would be the first issue of Marvel Divas.

divasWhy is Marvel Divas odd, you ask? Well, for one thing, it’s a story of friendship among C-list super-heroines coming from Marvel. For another thing, you could never tell that from J. Scott Campbell’s cover, which is unpleasant in that boob-sock way. You might also have trouble discerning the book’s true nature from its solicitation text, which blows the dust and cobwebs off of that “Sex and the City with…” pitch that has aged so badly. It concludes with “Let your inner divas out with this one, fellas, you won’t regret it.” (Even when Marvel comes up with a property that might appeal to women, the solicitation is still written for the “fellas.”)

Now, I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s perfectly all right to judge a book by its cover, especially a comic book. If the cover is pandering and unattractive, I feel perfectly safe in assuming that the contents may well be pandering and unattractive as well. There are lots of comics in the world, and many of them have a lower cost per page of content, so screw you, boob socks. (There’s a “‘70s Decade” variant cover, and it’s kind of awesome.)

divasvariantOf course, the ugly cover and dumb solicitation have forced author Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to hit the PR trail and explain that, no, the cover really has little tonal bearing on the contents. Still, as this piece at Jezebel indicates, that cover is a tough hurdle to vault. Then Kevin (Robot 6) Melrose went and muddied the water further by checking out a preview of the interior pages, and he rightly notes that they look kind of appealing.

Oddest of all is the fact that The New York Times actually covered Marvel Divas (with big story SPOILERS) on its ArtsBeat blog. Now, generally when the Times covers something super-hero related, they politely listen to what Marvel or DC has to say about one of their properties, nodding and murmuring, “Well, you’d know better than we would,” and repeating the PR verbatim. But George Gene Gustines summarizes the book’s story quite nicely, and one can hardly imagine that Marvel is devoting any of its promotional time to something that doesn’t have “Dark” in the title.

So, y’know, it’s all too much for me to be able to avoid. I love Hellcat, and I have a demonstrable fondness for comics about also-ran super-heroines. If the local shop ordered any shelf copies, I think I’ll pick one up.

Upcoming 6/24/2009

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Let’s take a quick spin through this week’s ComicList, shall we?

remakeI 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).

hellcatUpdated: 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.)