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Monday linkblogging, etc.

October 22, 2007 by

J.K. Rowling has revealed that one of the characters from her Harry Potter series of books, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, was gay. It’s nice, but I’d have been more impressed if she’d actually revealed that in the text, ideally before the character died.

On the one hand, she seldom devoted any space to the private lives of the Hogwarts faculty unless it was essential to the narrative (Snape) or factored heavily into a thematically linked subplot (Hagrid and Madame Maxim). On the other, it seems like his one relationship was pretty punitively disappointing. On another hand, I still think poor Tonks was the biggest beard in the fantasy canon, and that anyone who thinks Sirius and Lupin weren’t totally in love is kidding him- or herself.

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While not everyone agrees on the tenor of that Tigra sequence from New Avengers #35, there does seem to be general consensus that Matt Brady’s Newsarama interview with writer Brian Bendis was the kind of tounge-bath seldom seen outside of the cozy, secluded nests mother cats create to welcome their newborns. Here’s one of my favorite responses, and probably the most comprehensive.

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So I don’t seem completely grumpy, I’ll like to two reviews of books published by Dark Horse that made me happy, both the books and the reviews. First is Greg McElhatton’s look at Kazuhiro Okamoto’s far-more-interesting-than-it-sounds Translucent, and second is Ken Haley’s praise for the first two volumes of Adam Warren’s better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be Empowered.

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I love this sauce. I think it would be good on just about any kind of protein, and probably many vegetables as well. (Maybe someday I’ll point you to a healthy recipe. Don’t hold your breath.)

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Speaking of cooking, wow, I gave up too quickly on Kitchen Princess (Del Rey). I thought the first volume was pretty uninspiring, but I caught up with more recent installments via complimentary copies, and it definitely picks up steam. It’s still not life-changing, but there are lots of pretty pictures of food and some reasonably moving story material.

Filed under: Dark Horse, Del Rey, Food, Linkblogging, Prose 1 Comment

From the stack: The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite

October 11, 2007 by

I don’t think it was the actual pitch for The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse), but I would love it if it went something like this: “What if some of the kids from Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies survived and became super-heroes?” The book has something of the same morbid sweetness, and it’s extremely likeable.

The book owes a fair amount to Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and that trio of mini-series Grant Morrison wrote for Vertigo a couple of years ago, with high-concept craziness and a retro-adventure feel. But those are balanced out by a quirky sense of humor that owes more to The Venture Brothers. And the influences cohere into something distinct, if not groundbreaking.

Anyway, the plot: forty-three infants are born simultaneously under bizarre circumstances. A crusty old genius-adventurer adopts as many as he can and raises seven of them to save the world. (“From What?” newspapers wonder.) They make their debut when the Eiffel Tower starts throwing visitors to the ground below. Time passes and the group drifts apart, though circumstances conspire to bring them back together.

Nothing mind-boggling there, but the execution is just about faultless. Wray is a witty, imaginative writer. The dialogue is fluid and funny, and he’s written some appealingly crazed bits for Bá to draw. Pardon the gushing, but Bá’s illustrations for this kind of genre pulp are just pitch perfect – energetic, funny, moody, explosive, bizarre. Whatever the script demands, Bá delivers with just a little something extra.

The craft on display makes up for the fact that the characters aren’t developed very well. At this point, they’re highly functional archetypes, and Wray and Bá could probably get away with that for several more issues. I hope they build some more layers in as the story progresses, but I could be quite content with the book’s status quo. It’s great fun.

Filed under: Dark Horse, From the stack 4 Comments

Upcoming 10/3/2007

October 2, 2007 by

Okay, it’s not entirely in keeping with Obscure Comic Month, but this week does offer a lot of titles that might be classified as under-read, in spite of varying amounts of critical appreciation.

Dark Horse offers the fourth volume of Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, which I really, really enjoy. (Short version: unemployable psychic college students help dead bodies – or parts of dead bodies – with unfinished business in hopes of financial recompense.) There’s also the second volume of Adam Warren’s Empowered, which is simultaneously extremely tawdry, extremely funny, and very sweet. I can see how the tawdriness might easily overwhelm the other two qualities for some readers, but I think Warren keeps things in just the right balance.

If you missed them the first time around, Fanfare/Ponent Mon gives you another crack at the splendid anthology, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and Jiro Taniguchi’s The Walking Man. Japan collects short works from Japanese and European creators that range from really good to extraordinary. The Walking Man is one of the most serene reading experiences comics have to offer.

Tokyopop provides the eighth volume of the constantly surprising, sometimes terrifying series Dragon Head, by Minetaro Mochizuki. The seventh volume was probably the most haunting yet, and the relatively long wait between new installments hasn’t diminished my interest in what happens next.

Viz digs into its back catalog for a new addition to its Signature line. This time around, it’s Junji Ito’s extremely unsettling horror series, Uzumaki. I found the early chapters to be the strongest in the three-volume series, but it’s solid all the way through. It’s just scarier before the pattern solidifies and you aren’t really sure what you’re dealing with.

And okay, no one would call these obscure or underrated, but I like these series a lot, so I’ll mention new volumes of Ai Yazawa’s Nana (Viz), Kairi Fujiyama’s Dragon Eye (Del Rey), and Tenshi Ja Nai!! (Go! Comi). Alas, this is the final volume of the funny soap opera of cross-dressing pop idols that is Tenshi. I’ll miss you, emotionally unstable and fundamentally dishonest teens!

Filed under: ComicList, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, Go! Comi, Tokyopop, Viz 3 Comments

Upcoming 9/6

September 5, 2007 by

Why am I more lethargic after a three-day weekend than I was before? I have only a vague grasp of what day it currently is and whether I need to put the trash out, but I know that comics will be arriving at some point, because the ComicList tells me so.

The local comic shop has stopped ordering shelf copies of almost every manga series and unloaded its back stock. Plenty of people still pre-order, though I think the chain bookstores in the area have presented more competition than the management wants to wrangle. So it’s one of those comic shops, pretty much, though it’s still useful as an order point for things that won’t readily show up in bookstores.

One of the few series that get shelf copies is MPD Psycho by Eiji Otsuka and Sho-U Tajima (Dark Horse). This is handy, because I’m not quite ready to commit to putting the series on my reserve list. The first volume neared my upper limit of lurid violence, but it was intriguing enough to keep me reading for another volume.

I managed to enjoy First in Space (Oni), even though animals in peril make me even more uncomfortable than dismembered humans. I’m not sure I’ll have the emotional fortitude for Laika by Nick Abadzis (First Second). It looks terrific, and I’ll definitely keep it in mind for one of those days when I’m in the mood for a good cry, but the current emotional barometer readings suggest that now isn’t the time.

It had to happen sometime. After a long string of good choices, Go! Comi has finally picked a couple of licenses that really don’t work for me. This week sees the launch of Takeru Kirishima’s Kanna and Ryo Takagi’s The Devil Within. Kanna has some gripping scenes, but it doesn’t hang together as well as I’d like. (And twenty-something men reacting with varying degrees of inappropriateness to an eight-year-old girl will never sit well with me. Sorry.) As for The Devil Within, you know how super-deformed art sequences can sometimes be a happy break from pages of rich visual detail and emotional nuance, and can sometimes look like the manga-ka was just trying to turn his or her pages in on time? I strongly suspect the latter in this case, and the story and characters just aren’t engaging enough for me to overlook the inconsistent, rather ugly art.

(On the other hand, Hideyuki Kurata’s Train + Train just gets better and better. The series still isn’t taking advantage of the visual possibilities of its premise, but the characters and scenarios are gaining considerable emotional weight as things progress. It doesn’t come out this week, but the experience of saying negative things about Go! Comi’s catalog was odd enough that I had to compensate somehow.)

Filed under: ComicList, Dark Horse, First Second, Go! Comi 1 Comment

Choices, choices

July 30, 2007 by

You’re standing in the lobby of the cineplex. Do you choose the wildly improbable action-fest or the quirky chick flick? I couldn’t decide, so this week’s Flipped looks at both Samurai Commando (CMX) and Translucent (Dark Horse).

Filed under: CMX, Dark Horse, Flipped Leave a Comment

Paradise lost?

July 5, 2007 by

Is Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! (Dark Horse) looking at a hiatus? That’s the word from Ed Chavez at MangaCast, who thinks this would be a big loss for fans of manga in general. He also notes how unusual it is for a manga publisher to leak this kind of news:

“I have never heard a comment like that made at a panel before, so for a fan like myself it really sent a message as to how much DH loves that title and how much it needs help, as well. I never want to see a title discontinued or put on hiatus and generally when they do suffer such fate fans of the series are often the last to know.”

He goes on to suggest that fans pick up a copy of Eden at their local bookstore and give the title a chance, which highlights what might be one of the problems the series is facing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it (or a lot of my favorite Dark Horse manga titles) in a bookstore. I’ve seen Banya, the Explosive Delivery Man with some regularity, and a handful of others, but their seinen stuff is generally confined to the Direct Market. That might be a regional thing, and larger urban areas may be blessed with stores that carry full runs of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and Mail.

Even if it did find a home at your local Barnes & Noble or Borders, would it fly off the shelves? Kethylia isn’t convinced:

“This is not new news. The overaged fanboys can lament the demise of Raijin Comics and the failure of DMP to follow through with the seinen side of their initial “mandate” all they want. It just doesn’t change anything. They might be the ones to protesteth loudest on the Internet, and they might be the ones in control of the manga industry, but they’re not the ones with the buying power. And if it’s not clear to you by now who IS the demographic with the buying power, I’ll spell it out for you—Girls and Women. Who do not, surprise surprise, flock to Blood and Breasts in satisfyingly large numbers.”

It’s a persuasive argument, and seinen junkie Tina Anderson expands on it in the comments:

“Shonen does well for VIZ largely due to the fact that there are just as many women reading those damn titles from JUMP as their are men; I’m a fan of seinen, but damn if I always fail at trying to convert my (female) friends and get them to try it.”

It’s not hard to conclude that the seinen fan’s life is one of recurring disappointment and loss. DMP has abandoned titles like Worst and Bambi and Her Pink Gun, and even Dark Horse seems to be testing the shôjo (or at least shôjo-friendly) waters with books like Translucent and Red String.

For an extremely well-written qualitative look at Eden, check out Katherine Dacey-Tsuei’s review at Manga Recon:

“More importantly, Endo makes us care about the outcome of these battles by creating characters that the reader… well, I won’t say ‘identifies with’ in the sense that these characters inspire empathy. They don’t. Most are violent, misanthropic, and flawed, with little regard for others. Yet their fierce determination to survive and their desire to find dignity in dehumanizing circumstances make them compelling and believable, even when Endo’s narrative is not.”

Update: MangaBlog’s Brigid learns that reports of Eden‘s potentially imminent demise may have been exaggerated.

Filed under: Dark Horse, Linkblogging 22 Comments

Exes

June 28, 2007 by

Okay, I’ve finally gotten around to composing the list of manga series I’ve dumped after a fairly significant investment of volumes (inspired by John Jakala). Looking at them, the common thread seems to be novelty wearing off. And this doesn’t count the series where I tried a single volume and decided to give it a pass, because I’m terrified that any mention of them would lead to people swearing that things improved later and that I’m really cheating myself by not reading a little farther. Because I’m totally susceptible and would find my B&N member card and car keys and say, “D’or, okay!”

Absolute Boyfriend, by Yuu Watase (Viz – Shojo Beat): There’s just something depressing about the premise here. If the heroine had come out and said, “Listen, he’s hot, he’s devoted, and he’ll never cheat on me, you lowly human, and I don’t feel like working very hard on a relationship,” that might have been one thing. But the suggestion that there’s actually some kind of competition-fostering inner life to the robot guy is just something I don’t see.

Case Closed, by Gosho Aoyama (Viz): This is a perfectly pleasant mystery series with a cute premise and absolutely nothing in the way of forward momentum. What finally broke me was the knowledge that the series is still apparently going strong in Japan with some 60 volumes in print. I couldn’t see myself making that kind of commitment to something that was just reasonably entertaining.

Cromartie High School, by Eiji Nonaka (ADV): I’ll chalk this one up to too much of a good, weird thing. I just couldn’t quite keep up with the releases, as there was always something with an ongoing narrative that I wanted to read more. It’s funny and weird, and I’m fairly sure I might check in with the series again at some point when I need a disorienting laugh. But it doesn’t feel like something I need to “subscribe to,” per se. Am I spoiled? (On the bright side, it’s like the only opportunity I’ve ever had to link to ADV’s web site without it being in the context of not being able to find information on a series.)

Iron Wok Jan! by Shinji Saiyo (DrMaster): I’m really making a lot of you weep for my taste, aren’t I? I’m not doing it on purpose, I swear. And again, I like what I’ve read of the series. It just didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and I guess I need narrative momentum more than I thought. Like Cromartie, though, it’s always possible that I’ll pick up a couple of volumes on a rainy day when I need outrageous, over-the-top culinary action.

I’m trying to decide whether or not to count Shuri Shiozu’s Eerie Queerie (Tokyopop). It’s only four volumes long, and I made it through two of them. The first was really promising, the second was creepy in all the wrong ways, and I have no idea about the third and fourth and plan to keep it that way.

And just for bonus points and to give more people the opportunity to tell me how foolish I am for even considering such a reckless course of behavior, here are some series that are on the bubble:

Eden! It’s an Endless World, by Hiroki Endo (Dark Horse): Seriously, if I wanted to read about gangsters, prostitutes and illegal narcotics, there are approximately one billion choices out there in the world that didn’t bait-and-switch me with a thoughtful sci-fi introductory run. This is not what I was led to expect from the series, and I find myself irritated to a possibly unreasonable degree.

(Update: Myk speaks… from the FUTURE! Or in this case, Germany, where more Eden is available, and he confirms Huff’s assurance that the hookers-and-blow mini-arc comes to an end and things get back to abnormal. That’s good news, but I still think that wedging this story into a landscape where the vast majority of the population has been turned into crumbled Swarovsky figurines was a really, really bad, self-indulgent idea.)

Kindaichi Case Files, by Kanari Yozaburo and Sato Fumiya (Tokyopop): You know what could get me more invested in this series? A forward time-jump that gets Kindaichi out of high school and into a different setting with a different dynamic. He can still be a slacker, but I think moving him to a different stage of his life would revitalize things. I feel like there needs to be a sense of time passing that isn’t limited to references to previous cases.

(Still no Tokyopop links available, as 2.0 is still in limbo.)

Filed under: ADV, Dark Horse, Drmaster, Tokyopop, Viz 17 Comments

Previews review

June 11, 2007 by

It’s time for a look through the latest Diamond Previews catalog! (Only slightly related, but it’s also time for a lot of publishers to updated their web pages!)

Sometimes all it takes is a gorgeous illustration to make me want a book, and that’s certainly the case with Mi-Kyung Yun’s Bride of the Water God (Dark Horse, page 44). In my defense, the plot sounds interesting too, with a human sacrifice getting even more than she bargained for.

Sample pages (and great-looking art) go a long way towards piquing my interest in Mike and Louise Carey and Aaron Alexovich’s Confessions of a Blabbermouth (DC – Minx, pages 118-120). The fact that it’s about a blogger probably doesn’t hurt either.

For those of you who passed on Andi Watson and Simon Gane’s Paris (Amaze Ink/SLG, page 218) in single issues, it’s being released in collected form. The story is okay – two very different girls meet and fall in love in the City of Light – but the art is truly wonderful.

I snickered at part of the solicitation for Hoyuta Fujiyama’s Ordinary Crush (DMP – Juné, page 286) – “in an all boys school where 90% of the students are gay” – until I remembered the rumors about some of the parochial schools in the area where I grew up.

Well, lots of people have been wondering about the health of Ice Kunion, given shifting shipping dates and an unresponsive web site, but they’ve got listings in this month’s catalog (page 309). Take that for whatever it’s worth, which might be nothing.

My adorability sensors have been triggered by Mizuo Shinonome’s Chibimono (Infinity Studios, page 319). It’s about a guardian spirit for household items with some serious memory problems.

Bryan Lee O’Maley’s Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together (Oni Press, page 330) is almost here. That is all.

Vertical offers more classic stuff from Keiko (To Terra…) Takemia with Andromeda Stories (page 368), the first of a three-volume science fiction story.

There’s no cover image to lure me, but I’ll give anything in Viz’s Signature line a look. The latest addition is Taiyo Matsumoto’s TEKKONKINKREET: Black and White. (Okay, so it’s just a repackaging of a series that Viz has published previously. It’s still nice that they’re giving older, weirder books from their catalog another shot at an audience.)

Filed under: Dark Horse, IceKunion, Infinity Studios, Juné, Minx, Oni, Previews, Slave Labor Graphics, Vertical, Viz 1 Comment

Quick comic comments: MPD-Psycho

June 7, 2007 by

Just a couple of initial reactions to MPD-Psycho (Dark Horse):

  • Was anyone else put off by the font used for the dialogue? It seemed excessively bold to me, like everyone was shouting all the time. At the same time, it almost struck me as kind of whimsical, like the specialty font that might be used for a fantasy character to provide contrast. (It’s possible that I’m just a little overly sensitive to lettering.)
  • If the Nymphet controversy didn’t provide sufficient evidence of cultural differences in terms of age-appropriateness of material between Japan and the U.S., the fact that this book was originally published in a kids’ comic (it was in a shônen magazine, according to the author’s notes) should bolster the argument. Nipples! Dismemberments! Fetish gear!

    • It was a pretty absorbing read, though, once I got used to the font. I like the premise and (surprisingly, given my general level of squeamishness) wasn’t too bothered by the explicit gore and violence. I’m not entirely sold on the series yet, but I’ll definitely be back for the next volume.

    Filed under: Dark Horse, Quick Comic Comments 6 Comments

    The geek shall inherit

    June 5, 2007 by

    This week’s shipping list seems designed to thrill the hardcore manga consumer.

    First up is Dark Horse’s release of MPD-Psycho, and here’s what the publisher has to say about it:

    “Originally licensed by another U.S. publisher, MPD-Psycho was deemed too shocking for them to release. But Dark Horse is always prepared to give manga readers what they want!”

    Sometimes only a couple of weeks after they were originally solicited! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) The book is written by Eiji Otsuka, of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service fame, so that’s promising. It’s illustrated by Sho-U Tajima, whose name doesn’t ring a bell, but Dark Horse promises “controversial and unflinchingly grotesque glory.” This sort of thing isn’t my usual cup of tea, but I find myself overwhelmed by pre-release buzz.

    Early word on the debut issue of Otaku USA (Curtis Circulation) has been overwhelmingly positive, which shouldn’t be surprising given the credentials of many of the contributors. Here’s Jog’s run-through, and here are the views of the good folks at Heisei Democracy. (That last link was found via Simon Jones.)

    I’m still not entirely clear on what to expect from Aranzi Aronzo’s Aranzi Machine Gun from Vertical, but I’m intrigued all the same by the promise of “a massive assault of cuteness and ridiculousness, with a special craft section at the end of every issue, to make practical use of the hilarious (if useless) inside scoops you got in the rest of the book.”

    Filed under: ComicList, Dark Horse, Vertical 8 Comments
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