Upcoming 4/7/2010

Perhaps looking through this week’s ComicList will distract me from the fact that I have a perfectly miserable cold. Perhaps not, but I should at least write this up before I start self-medicating.

Fanfare/Ponent Mon releases the fourth volume of The Times of Botchan, written by Natsuo Sekikawa and illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi. Here’s what the publisher has to say about the series:

“The Meija Era (1868-1912) was probably the most defining period in Japanese history. It was a time of massive change from the more traditional; Takugawa era to a positioning of Japan in the modern world. Contemporary writer, Soseki Natsume, suffered due to all the social and cultural changes and expressed his feelings through his character Botchan, a classic in the vein of Mark Twain or Charles Dickens.”

I believe the seventh issue of Brandon Graham’s King City (Image) marks the start of material that hasn’t been previously published by Tokyopop, so if you were waiting for the new stuff, tomorrow is the day. Of course, if you’ve been waiting, you’ve missed the handsome pamphlet packaging. I won’t judge either way.

And, since it’s the first week of the month, Viz will try to crush us all with new arrivals.

New on the shôjo front is Rinko (Tail of the Moon) Ueda’s Stepping on Roses, which is being serialized in Shueisha’s Margaret magazine. It’s about a desperately poor young women who agrees to marry a snotty aristocrat so that he can snag an inheritance. Viz sent me a review copy, and, while it’s got aggressively attractive art, it’s one of those stories about a powerless girl who gets yanked around by a jerky guy. It’s not as distasteful as Black Bird, but my attention quickly drifts from punching-bag romances unless the creator does something really interesting and self-aware.

Much more to my liking, at least based on the first volume, is the second installment of Yuki Midorikawa’s Natsume’s Book of Friends, which is currently being serialized in Hakusensha’s LaLa magazine. Generally speaking, I prefer Hakusensha’s shôjo to almost anyone else’s. For bonus points, this one’s about a kid who can see supernatural creatures. It’s executed very well, which makes up for the fact that none of the stories are particularly groundbreaking. (For example, a group of kids sneak into a haunted school in this volume, which has been done a million times. That doesn’t mean no one should ever do it again, of course.)

Last, and certainly not least, is the latest wave of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, volumes 39 to 43. These have been out in bookstores for a while, so I already own them and have read them, because I’m addicted. Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney tweeted that “if you could only save 5 One Piece volumes from a fire, these would be [his] choice.” I haven’t read all of the available volumes yet, so I don’t know if I’d agree, but I can say that these volumes represent Oda in very fine form – big, crazy action, surprisingly wrenching, character-driven drama, and lots of laughs.

Upcoming 3/31/2010

I’m on the road, so here’s a bare-bones look at this week’s ComicList:

Vertical feeds your need for Osamu Tezuka with a new paperback edition of Ode to Kirihito (I revisited the series yesterday) and the tenth volume of crazy, awesome Black Jack.

Naoki Urasawa’s take on Tezuka’s hero-robot with a heart concludes with the eighth volume of Pluto (Viz).

And Viz’s soft launch with josei continues with the second volume of Yuki Yoshihara’s Butterflies, Flowers. I was intrigued and often amused by the first.

Upcoming 3/24/2010

Depending on your tastes, it’s a relatively lean week for comics arrivals, but there are still some appealing options.

NBM releases the third in a series of graphic novels created in collaboration with the Louvre in Paris. It’s On the Odd Hours by Eric Liberge, and the preview pages are quite striking. Johanna (Comics Worth Reading) Draper Carlson has posted a favorable early review. NBM is offering a bargain if you purchase On the Odd Hours along with Nicolas De Crécy’s gorgeous Glacial Period.

Those of us who’ve been itching to see some of Eisner Hall of Fame nominee Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s early, pulpy dramas will have our itch scratched when Drawn and Quarterly releases Black Blizzard. D&Q doesn’t seem to have a permalink for the book yet, but scroll down a bit on this page and you can see some preview pages.

I’m much more interested in Dark Horse’s omnibus editions of CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that the first volume of the manga super-group’s Chobits is due on Wednesday. It’s about a struggling nerd who finds a computer shaped like a beautiful girl. It was originally licensed for English publication by Tokyopop until original publisher Kodansha withdrew its titles from Tokyopop and handed the relevant CLAMP titles over to Dark Horse, perhaps as a consolation prize for the fact that Kodansha yanked Akira and Ghost in the Shell from Dark Horse to sort-of launch its own comics-in-translation imprint. Next week on All My Licenses

Speaking of properties that used to call Tokyopop home, Image releases the sixth issue of Brandon Graham’s King City. I’m not going to bother trying to link to this one, but I’ve been enjoying this series very much in pamphlet form, and the individual packages are very handsome things.

Viz has only one book to offer, and I bought it a couple of weeks ago at a bookstore. It’s the third omnibus edition of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, collecting volumes seven, eight and nine. I’m of the opinion that all of Oda’s gifts as a creator really, truly come together in the ninth volume, but I’ll get into that in more detail at a later date, possibly Sunday, since that’s the day I seem to devote to my pitiful One Piece geek-outs. We now enter an unfortunate fallow period before the release of new volumes and the fourth omnibus. I may have to pick up the tenth, eleventh and twelfth volumes individually, though I may maintain my resolve to stick with the cheaper omnibuses.

Upcoming 3/17/10

I assumed that Natsume Ono’s Ristorante Paradiso (Viz) would be the pick of the week, and I think it’s very good, but I have to say that Bunny Drop (Yen Press) took me by very pleasant surprise. Let’s see what else will arrive on Wednesday.

Of course, Bunny Drop could just be the debut pick of the week, leaving room for me to single out an ongoing option and rejoice over the arrival of the second volume of Time and Again (Yen Press), written and illustrated by JiUn Yun. I found the first volume to be absolutely delightful, and I can’t wait to learn more about the woman with the positively menacing bouffant who provided that installment’s cliffhanger.

If you’re interested in the perspectives of sorcerers who navigate landscapes filled with monsters, you’ have no shortage of choices. But what if you’re more interested the monster’s point of view? Look to Q. Hayashida’s Dorhedoro (Viz) for this neglected perspective. In it, “a clan of sorcerers have been plucking people off the streets to use as guinea pigs for atrocious ‘experiments’ in the black arts.” One of those experiments is looking for payback, and he’s just the lizard-headed amnesiac to… well… okay, maybe he isn’t. I can’t say that this is my favorite series in the SigIKKI roster, but it’s got some gorgeously gritty art and an amusingly brutal sense of humor.

I’m so crazy about Banri Hidaka’s V.B. Rose (Tokyopop), so I’ll have to make a concerted effort to catch up with her I Hate You More Than Anyone (CMX), which hits the nine-volume mark. (I think there are a total of 13 in the series, which was originally serialized in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume, which is kind of a gold mine of terrific shôjo.) Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney has been reviewing the series.

Upcoming 3/10/2010

Let me just clear a little paperwork out of the way before we delve into this week’s ComicList. I’m keeping a running list of reactions and coverage of yesterday’s grand and glorious news from Fantagraphics, so feel free to drop me a line if you’ve shared some thoughts that I might have missed. Also, the second iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast is in full swing, with Matt (Rocket Bomber) Blind keeping track of everyone’s thoughts on Kaoru Mori’s Emma (CMX), which was originally serialized in Enterbrain’s Comic Beam, the same magazine that hosted Shimura Takako’s Wandering Son. It all comes together.

Back to the ComicList and sticking with CMX, DC’s manga imprint has some fine comics shipping on Wednesday. I posted a review of the first volume of Mayu Fujikata’s My Darling! Miss Bancho last week, and Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey rounds up some other early word of mouth in her look at this week’s arrivals.

But, as exuberant pitch persons remind us, that’s not all! There’s also the second (and final) volume of Asuka Izumi’s adorable The Lizard Prince. And in a timely arrival, CMX reminds us that they’ve been putting out classic shôjo for ages. This week’s reminder comes in the form of the 15th volume of Yasuko Aoike’s From Eroica with Love.

If for some inexplicable reason you missed Scott Chantler’s Northwest Passage in its original, three-volume form or in its hardcover annotated version, Oni Press gives you yet another opportunity to enjoy this terrific period action yarn in the form of a softcover edition of the annotated collection. Chantler does an amazing job combining history and adventure, so treat yourself.

As with Miss Bancho, I’ve already reviewed the first volume of Yuu Watase’s Arata: The Legend (Viz), and so has Danielle (Comics Should Be Good) Leigh. I’ll quote Danielle so as not to bore you by repeating myself:

“In the end, the categorization of ‘shonen’ really only tells us that this was published in a shonen magazine and I suppose that makes it useful in some ways. What is more important, though, is the name of the creator attached to the work and in this instance, that name is a tried and trusted ‘brand’ in the world of fantasy manga aimed at a teen audience. Yet in spite of the Watase brand, I want to stress that nothing feels formulaic or stale here — somehow this work feels fresh and energetic and I’m quite looking forward to seeing how the two Aratas’ journeys progress in upcoming volumes.”

In a very different corner of the Viz catalog, there’s the fourth volume of Kiminori Wakasugi’s Detroit Metal City, a distasteful and hilarious tale of an acoustic kind of guy thrust into the death metal limelight. It’s in the middle of its first multi-part epic, so you might want to pick up the third volume before you read this one. Of course, you probably already own all of the available volumes, right?

And this is less a recommendation than an inquiry: I remember thinking the first volume of naked ape’s switch was kind of pallid Wild Adapter fan fiction, but I recently got a random later volume in a batch of review copies, and at some point it seems to have become very readable Wild Adapter fan fiction. So my question is this: when did that happen, and is it worth rounding up the previous volumes? Or was the 12th volume just an aberrant quality spike?

Oh, and in case you were wondering what would top the next Graphic Book Best Seller List at The New York Times, Yen Press is releasing the first volume of the graphic-novel version of Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight, adapted by Young Kim. The only question is whether it will topple Crumb in the hardcover section or Akamatsu in the manga list. I’m sure I’ll read it eventually. I don’t see any reason to rush, though.

Upcoming 3/3/2010

An interesting mix of books will be arriving at comic shops this week.

First and foremost is Vertical’s soft-cover version of Osamu Tezuka’s MW. This is one of my favorite comics by Tezuka, as you could probably guess from my really long discussion of it with Tom Spurgeon. Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey is giving away four copies of the book, and she takes the opportunity to revisit her review.

Staying with the classics, CMX releases the 15th volume of Kyoko Ariyoshi’s peerless ballet drama, Swan. In a weird coincidence, I’ve also written about this one at length.

Underground (Image), a nifty mini-series written by Jeff Parker and illustrated by Steve Lieber with colors by Ron Chan, concludes with its fifth issue. I can’t seem to find a cover image, but you can go visit the title’s site and see some sample pages. I’ve enjoyed this cave-bound tale of rangers versus no-good developers quite a bit.

Marvel gathers a whole lot of talent for its three-issue Girl Comics mini-series, which debuts Wednesday. It’s got a kind of unfortunate name, but what’s new about that? The participation of Colleen Coover will probably meet the price of admission, at least for me. You can take a look at several preview pages over at Comics Alliance.

Or you could just dump all of your comics budget on new volumes of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece from Viz, specifically the 34th, 35th, 36th, 37th, and 38th. I won’t lie; I’d almost entirely support that decision, because I’ve developed a seriously unhealthy addiction to this tale of dimwitted pirates and the out-there friends and foes they meet as they pursue big dreams.

But if you did that, you’d be denying yourself the pleasure of the ninth volume of Chica Umino’s Honey and Clover, so my support for an Oda-centric purchasing strategy must be at least partly qualified. And really, after five volumes of nutty high-seas adventure, won’t it feel nice to decompress with some quirky, art-school drama?

Upcoming 2/24/2010

It’s kind of a dead week for manga in terms of new arrivals at comic shops, so what better way to spend it than by focusing on a book that deals with dead bodies? Conveniently enough, the highlight of this week’s arrivals is the 10th volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse), written by Eiji (MPD-Psycho) Otsuka and illustrated by Housui (Mail) Yamazaki. In another bit of fortuitous timing, Johanna (Manga Worth Reading) Draper Carlson has just added this series to her roster of Recommended Series:

“The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, it was well-recommended, but I wasn’t sure it was for me, given that it was classified as horror and the premise involved lovingly depicted dead bodies. I’m glad I went ahead and tried it, because I very much enjoyed it. It reminded me of Pushing Daisies, if that show was more laconic and Japanese.”

Kristen Chenoweth could totally play Makino, the embalmer. And musical numbers are just about the only thing that could actually improve this title, though I think musical numbers improve just about everything.
Johanna points to this entry from Shaenon K. Garrity’s Overlooked Manga Festival. Tremble before the force of her persuasive writing:

“Anyway, Kurosagi is a horror comic, in kind of the same way ‘Scream’ was a horror movie, or ‘Buffy’ was a horror TV show. That is, it’s smart and self-aware and full of pop-cult references and weird little factoids. Writer Eiji Otsuka likes to show off just how damn clever he is by mixing two offbeat elements no other manga writer would think of into a single story. A story about crop circles and mummified chimpanzees. Professional mourners and a serial killer who targets depressing blogs. The urban legend about the bride kidnapped from a dressing room and turned into a circus freak and the Japanese version of the ‘Bodyworlds’ corpse-art exhibition. The Rape of Nanking and soap people. And so on.”

What, you need more persuasion? Or maybe you’re worried about not being able to find the volumes in order? Let Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey put your mind at ease:

“A final tip: you don’t need to read the volumes in order — or even all of them, for that matter — to enjoy The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, though I highly recommend all nine volumes.”

That about covers it, don’t you think?

Upcoming 2/17/2010

Now that the Sexy Voice and Robo Manga Moveable Feast has pretty much wound down, things can return to what passes for normal here at The Manga Curmudgeon. (Though if you want to add your thoughts on Kuroda’s book, I’ll happily add them to the roster.) So let’s take a look at this week’s ComicList along with a quick recap on last week’s neglected offerings.

If a week’s shipping list includes a new volume of Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, then that volume will very likely be the book of the week. It’s just that simple. Here are some thoughts on the seventh volume from Johanna Draper Carlson at Manga Worth Reading:

“Urasawa’s use of standard action manga elements demonstrates that it’s not the raw material, it’s what you do with it. He draws so well and he’s so clearly thought through what he’s doing with these elements that cliched scenes, such as a prison escape chase, become interesting all over again.”

This is easily one of the most enjoyable series of any provenance that you’re likely to find in a comic shop or bookstore.

Also out from Viz is the first volume of one of their IKKI series, Bokurano: Ours, written and illustrated by Mohiro Kitoh. It’s about a group of classmates who end up piloting a giant robot. I’m not going to lie. This one runs at about the middle of the pack for me of the titles serialized at the IKKI site, but perhaps reading it in book form will leave me with a more enthusiastic impression. It just feels kind of standard to me next to all of the other series on offer.

CMX offers new volumes of two series from a category that’s a particular strength for the imprint, endearing shôjo. I preferred Natsuna Kawase’s The Lapis Lazuli Crown to A Tale of an Unknown Country, but the latter is charming enough that I’ll certainly snag the second volume. I am seriously behind on Yuki Nakaji’s Venus in Love, so I’ll likely have to do a big catch-up order at some point before I can commit to buying the eighth volume. It’s an endearing college love triangle-quadrangle-pentagram, so I’ll definitely make the effort.

As to last week, here are some of the retrospective highlights:

  • Little Nothings vol. 3: Uneasy Happiness, written and illustrated by Lewis Trondheim, NBM: Funny, smart observational comics available for your perusal at NBM’s blog.
  • Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit vol. 4, written and illustrated by Motoro Mase, Viz: Mase has got your death panels right here, Palin. I like this series. I don’t think it’s one for the ages or anything, but I always pick up new volumes in a timely fashion, which has to mean something.
  • Juné’s Reversible anthology, which I reviewed yesterday.
  • Upcoming 2/3/2010

    I was surprised to discover that Tsutomu Nihei’s Biomega (Viz) isn’t an adaptation of an existing video game. Its set-up and execution are exactly like a good first-person shooter, with a well-armed guy on a tricked-out motorcycle entering hostile territory with a mission and a subset of shifting objectives. There’s melee combat with a horde of shambling zombies, timed vehicle rescues, and malicious opponents in the form of a shadowy government conspiracy. There’s even a holographic wrangler providing useful information and reminding the protagonist of pending tasks. A more suggestible person might try and turn the book’s pages with their Xbox controller. (It doesn’t work.)

    With its fast pace and progressively escalating stakes, Biomega actually does a better job capturing the experience of playing a video game than comics that are actually adaptations of existing franchises. As a result of that, the characters are thin and serviceable and their consequence is a distant second to event and spectacle, but there’s rarely a shortage of either of those ingredients. It’s also drawn extremely well, with clear, kinetic staging and some inventive bits of design (but not too many, because if you stare at how neat things are, the zombies will get you). There’s also a talking bear with a rifle for reasons that are probably no more complex than “just because,” but he’s welcome, as he keeps things from being entirely functional.

    Biomega isn’t a book that inspires any contemplation, and it only takes itself as seriously as it absolutely must. There’s nothing wrong with that, though, any more than there is spending a few hours shooting digital zombies in the head and making a last-minute motorcycle jump from a burning building. It’s a time-waster executed with style and craft. (Review based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

    Now, let’s move on to the rest of this week’s ComicList, which offers a bounty of potentially appealing books for young adults:

    I picked up Raina Telgemeier’s mini-comics at a Small Press Expo a few years ago and really liked them a lot. It was no surprise that publishers asked her to work on adaptations franchise properties like Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club (Graphix) and X-Men: Misfits (Del Rey). But it’s especially nice to see that Graphix is giving her original work such lovely treatment with Wednesday’s release of Smile. It heightens the average obstacles of life in middle school with a big bout of dental drama.

    I expressed my enthusiasm for Chris Schweizer’s Crogan’s March (Oni) over the weekend, so I won’t repeat myself.

    Collections of Jimmy Gownley’s terrific Amelia Rules! have been available for a while now, but they’ve found a new home at Simon & Schuster. One of those trade paperbacks, Superheroes, is due out Wednesday, and if you haven’t sampled the series yet, this is a perfectly good opportunity.

    It’s also time for Viz’s monthly mangalanche, and the emphasis is on titles from their Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump lines. There’s lots of good stuff on the way, but I find myself unproductively fixated on the first volume of Ultimo, a collaboration between Stan Lee and Hiroyuki (Shaman King) Takei, with assists from inker Daigo and painter Bob. With that many credits, it’s easy to suspect that Lee has already been a bad influence. To be honest, I’m not quite ready to issue a verdict on the book, but please do go read thoughtful reviews from Erica (Okazu) Friedman and Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey. In the meantime, I’ll continue my fruitless stare-fight with the book as I try and figure out what it is about it that irritates me so.

    Upcoming 1/27/2010

    Beyond offering some enjoyable and promising material, this week’s ComicList gives me the opportunity to review a couple of likeable titles that I received from the publishers.

    Remember how the producers of Saturday Night Live used to try and turn characters that worked in five-minute sketches into the stars of full-length movies and how rarely that worked? That could have been the fate of Afrodisiac (AdHouse Books), the powered-up pimp who guest-starred in Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s terrific Street Angel mini-series (SLG). Fortunately, Rugg and Maruca are smart enough to keep their creation in sketch contents, assembling an amusing “best of” volume of adventures that satirize both blaxploitation and, to a lesser extent, the ups and downs of a super-hero franchise. Afrodisiac pays homage to the marginally distasteful, fad-driven characters that publishers like Marvel created over the years, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, taking him just far enough beyond his predecessors to make the joke worth telling. The formula is basic – the unflappable, irresistible flesh peddler keeps his neighborhood and stable safe from the schemes of stupid, greedy white guys like Dracula and Richard Nixon. Those stories are fun, but I liked the random covers even better. They suggest a publisher trying to build a character franchise by any means available, wedging him into crossovers, true-romance comics, and even a Marvel Knights-style revamp. Afrodisiac isn’t ambitious in its satire, but it’s smartly presented and consistently amusing. It’s just right for its aims and given its raw materials.

    Miku Sakamoto’s Stolen Hearts is another worthy entry in CMX’s roster of amiable, endearing shôjo manga, and it has three elements in particular that work in its favor. First, it’s about maintaining an established relationship, which I always like. Sunny, short Shinobu and scowling, tall Koguma get their romantic act together fairly quickly, allowing Sakamoto to spend the rest of the volume cementing their bond. They work together in Koguma’s grandmother’s kimono shop, which covers the other two aspects. I like the detail Sakamoto expends on kimono culture. I’m partial to books that focus on a specific activity or enterprise, as it adds an extra layer of interest to the proceedings. Last but not least is Grandma, who falls into that category of funny, formidable senior citizens that I enjoy so much. Grandma’s product maybe old-fashioned, but her business practices are aggressively modern. Her marketing schemes set the stage for profits and push the romance forward.

    Now, on to the rest, though that hardly seems like a fitting phrase for the range and appeal of the items I haven’t yet read.

    I’m not quite ready for the fifth volume of the breathtakingly beautiful, not-always-entirely-coherent Bride of the Water God (Dark Horse), written and illustrated by Mi-Kyung Yun, but I’ll certainly catch up at some point. This is one of those titles that’s best read in the bathtub with a glass of wine close to hand, possibly sparkling. I’m glad to see that Dark Horse is sticking with this series, as it gives me hope that the rumored solicitations for new volumes of Kazuhiro Okamoto’s Translucent will someday result in me being able to purchase new volumes of Kazuhiro Okamoto’s Translucent.

    Last Gasp concludes its admirable effort to release Keiji Nakazawa’s deservedly legendary Barefoot Gen. The ninth and tenth volumes arrive Wednesday. What more do I need to say?

    You’ll probably need to lighten the mood a bit after that, so how about a little super-dense comedy about a suicidal schoolteacher? Yes, it’s time for another volume of Koji Kumeta’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (Del Rey). This installment promises a visit to a hot spring, and I can only imagine what bizarre tangents such an excursion will yield. I also really like the color palette for this cover. It suggests both delicate gentility and decay. This series was among my favorite debuts of 2009.

    So was Karuho Shina’s Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You (Viz), a delightfully off-kilter shôjo title. Thinking about the subject of yesterday’s Flipped column, it occurs to me that this book is a delightful subversion of the peasant-prince model. The heroine of this book is so socially disadvantaged that she doesn’t even realize that the boy of her dreams is probably already in love with her. But I’m confident that she’ll catch on in time, and then I will cry and giggle in equal measure.

    And if you’re curious about this week’s debuts from Tokyopop, tangognat has you covered with reviews of Alice in the Country of Hearts and Portrait of M and N.