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Previews review May 2010

May 2, 2010 by

There aren’t very many debuting titles in the May 2010 edition of the Previews catalog, but there are lots of new volumes of slow-to-arrive titles that are worth noting.

First up would have to be the omnibus collection of Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi (Del Rey), offering volumes eight through ten. (It seems appropriate, since this is the title’s week in the Manga Moveable Feast spotlight.) These volumes were fairly meaty individually, and getting three in one for $24.99 seems like a really good value. (Page 292.) Edit: The tenth volume is the final one of the series, so this will conclude Mushishi in English.

Also on the “good manga for relatively cheap” front is the third volume of Kaoru Tada’s Itazura Na Kiss (Digital Manga). What mishaps will befall our dumb heroine Kotoko in pursuit of the smart boy of her dreams? (Page 295.)

I’m just going to come out and say that A Distant Neighborhood was my second favorite Jiro Taniguchi title of 2009. Topping that category was The Summit of the Gods, written by Yumemakura Baku. The second volume is due from Fanfare/Ponent Mon. (Page 304.)

A new volume of Adam Warren’s super-smart, addictive satire, Empowered (Dark Horse), is always good news. It seems like Warren gets around to dealing with the rather loose definition of mortality among the spandex set, and I’d much rather read his take than something like Blackest Night. (Page 35.)

Is it ungrateful of me to be really eager to see what Bryan Lee O’Malley does next? It’s not that I’m indifferent to the conclusion of the Scott Pilgrim saga (which arrives in the form of the sixth volume, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour from Oni Press), which I’m sure I’ll love as much as the previous five. But O’Malley’s been working on Scott for a long time. (Page 233.)

Before we jump fully into the “all-new stuff” department, I’ll bypass quickly to Dark Horse’s release of an omnibus edition of CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth. You can get all three volumes of this magic-girl shôjo classic from the manga superstars. (Page 53.)

CMX publishes a lot of excellent shôjo from Hakusensha, but they branch out this month with Rika Suzuki’s Tableau Gate. It originally ran in Akita Shoten’s Princess Gold, and it’s about a guy who must help a girl capture some escaped tarot cards. I’m sort of a sucker for comics with tarot imagery, and I trust CMX’s taste in shôjo. (Page 129.)

I’m always game for a new graphic novel drawn by Faith Erin Hicks, and First Second is kind enough to provide one. It’s called Brain Camp, and it’s about oddballs dealing with mysterious forces, which is right in Hicks’s wheelhouse. The script is by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan. (Page 305.)

It’s coming! It’s coming! Top Shelf’s 400-page collection of alternative manga, AX, finally hits the solicitation phase, and it should be very exciting to see. (Page 342.)

Vertical continues to branch out of classic manga mode with the English-language debut of Felibe Smith’s Peepo Choo. For those who’ve forgotten, Smith has been creating the series for Kodansha’s Morning Two magazine. It’s about a kid from Chicago who gets mixed up with a model from Tokyo and a lot of underworld mayhem. (Page 346.)

I don’t get a particularly good vibe off of Kaneyoshi Izumi’s Seiho Boys’ High School!, due out from Viz. It’s about the student body of an isolated, all-boys’ high school. Anyone who’s read more than one boys’-love title would know how these lads could deal with their isolation, but Izumi apparently decided to take a different approach. The series originally ran in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi.

Filed under: CMX, Dark Horse, Del Rey, DMP, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, First Second, Oni, Previews, Top Shelf, Vertical, Viz 1 Comment

If you like Mushishi…

April 29, 2010 by

I’m a big fan of Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi (Del Rey), and I’m a big fan of episodic manga in general. I particularly like Urushibara’s thoughtful, expansive take on her subject matter. For this installment of the Manga Moveable Feast, I thought I’d do something a little different and play a round of the “If you like…” game, finding titles that share qualities with Mushishi and that fans of the series might also enjoy.

If you like the meditative, gentle quality of Mushishi, then I strongly recommend you pick up a volume of Natsume’s Book of Friends (Viz), written and illustrated by Yuki Midorikawa. This shôjo series has a number of qualities in common with Mushishi – an isolated but basically good-natured protagonist, a stand-alone approach to chapter storytelling, and a wide variety of supernatural forces on display. Like Urushibara, Midorikawa is concerned with the coexistence of the mortal and the mysterious, positioning her hero as a sort of diplomat between humans and yôkai, the often mischievous minor demons of Japanese folklore. I find Urushibara and Midorikawa’s visual styles to be similar as well, though whether that’s a selling point for you or not is a matter of taste.

If you just can’t get enough of an optically challenged guy in a trench coat, then Mail (Dark Horse), written and illustrated by Housui Yamazaki, might be the book for you. Like Mushishi’s Ginko, Mail’s Reiji is a man with a mission, though his approach is far less benevolent. He can see ghosts, and he can exorcise them with his trusty firearm. While Urushibara is focused on rural folklore, Yamazaki leads his hero through ghostly urban legends. As with Mushishi, there’s no real underlying narrative, though Reiji gets a nifty origin story, just as Ginko does. Yamazaki’s art is crisp and imaginative, and Mail is excellent companion reading for The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse), also illustrated by Yamazaki and written by Eiji Otsuka.

If you want your well-informed protagonist to be a whole lot meaner, then look no further than Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack (Vertical). I’m not saying that Ginko is the nicest guy on the block, but he’s positively cuddly next to Tezuka’s mercenary, antisocial surgeon. Black Jack, you see, is so contrary that he won’t even bother to become a licensed physician, no matter how legendary his surgical skills are. Perhaps that’s because he puts “First, do no harm” after “Run a credit check” when it comes to patient care. Black Jack may not have a diploma hanging on his wall, but his nigh-supernatural abilities as a physician put him in tremendous demand with the desperately ill and their loved ones. He has no cuddly bedside manner to offer, but he will travel the world to cure you, if you can afford it. (Black Jack also has the creepiest sidekick imaginable, a sentient tumor named Pinoko trapped in a child’s artificial body, even though she’s been around for 18 years.)

If you just can’t get enough of pesky microbes that influence day-to-day human existence, there’s always Moyasimon (Del Rey), written and illustrated by Masayuki Ishikawa. Unlike the magical microbes in Mushishi, the bacterial supporting cast of Moyasimon can be found in any respectable taxonomy of the tiny. Sometimes they’re beneficial, sometimes they’re malignant, and sometimes they can be both. And where better to ponder their myriad qualities than in an agricultural college? And who better than a student who can actually see and speak to them? That’s what his nutty, fermentation-obsessed professor thinks, and if Tadayasu wanted a normal life, he shouldn’t have signed up for manga stardom. Only one volume is available so far, and the comedic results can be a little scattered, but the series shows a lot of promise.

If you like a little more wrathful judgment in your episodic manga, then unwrap a volume of Presents (CMX), written and illustrated by Kanako Inuki, to see terrible things happen to awful people. This is the title that inspired John Jakala to coin the immortal term “comeuppance theatre,” which has subsequently served countless manga bloggers, me included. In these three volumes, the selfish, greedy, stupid, and neglectful get what’s coming to them just as they grab for what they think they deserve, and Inuki stages these moments of karma with real glee. Mushishi is all about the balance of things, of sometimes opposing forces being restored to equanimity and learning to accept that neither acts with malice. There’s malice aplenty in Presents, which offers a refreshingly nasty change of pace as that malice boomerangs back onto the people who send it out into the karmic ecosystem.

Filed under: CMX, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Manga Moveable Feast, Quick Comic Comments, Vertical, Viz 13 Comments

Upcoming 3/24/2010

March 23, 2010 by

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.

Filed under: ComicList, Dark Horse, Drawn & Quarterly, Image, Linkblogging, NBM, Viz 1 Comment

Weekend reading: Ikigami, Sayonara, Kurosagi

March 1, 2010 by

The fourth volume of Motoro Mase’s Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (Viz) nicely displays Mase’s strengths and weaknesses as a storyteller. Each volume contains two arcs, and the paired tales here include one mawkish affair and one smart outing. “The Last Lesson” displays what happens when Mase neglects his underlying premise – a pernicious government program that randomly kills young people to teach society the value of life – in favor of examining some other social ill. In this case, it’s all about horrible kids, willfully ignorant parents, and overwhelmed teachers, leading one character to wonder “What kind of evil has taken over our schools these days?” That bit of dialogue is in great big type in case you missed the fact that it’s the moral. “A Place of Peace” shows Mase at his sharpest, telling a character-driven story within his larger context. A young mother gets her death notice and must decide what to do with her child in the face of her husband’s complete aversion to responsibility. The human drama plays out with some nice twists and turns and some chilling overall implications. In spite of its inconsistencies, Ikigami is always a very readable series, even when Mase ramps up the melodrama. As always, the bleak little moments of death-dealing bureaucracy provide unsettlingly funny framing. I really wish Mase did four-koma salaryman strips about the death notice office.

I was a little worried when I heard that Joyce Aurino wouldn’t be translating and adapting the fifth volume of Koji Kumeta’s densely satirical Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (Del Rey). I can understand it, because four volumes of copious end notes and incredibly fiddly references must be enough to send anyone off to a healing retreat on an island in a lake in the Alps that can only be reached by rowboat. (I have no idea if Aurino chose that recuperative strategy. I just like to picture the nuns greeting her with a warm bowl of broth and a hand-woven blanket while reassuring her that “Your work is done for now.”) In all seriousness, Aurino did a remarkable job delivering a funny, frisky script and a veritable encyclopedia of annotations to round out the reading experience. David Ury’s translation and adaptation don’t seem quite as… well… flawless as Aurino’s, but they’re still very, very good, and this tale of a suicidal teacher and his diversely horrible students maintains its grim, biting charm. Highlights of the fifth volume include a new student, “mean-looking girl” Mayo Mitima, and the ongoing descent of “methodical and precise girl” Chiri Kitsu, and Kumeta’s twisted dissection of human foibles never really falters.

There’s nothing game-changing in the 10th volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse), written by Eiji Otsuka and illustrated by Housui Yamazaki, but it does show the creators in top form. It occurred to me that Kurosagi’s intentions are the same as Ikigami’s – how people deal with death, and how they address their unfinished business. In spite of the fact that Kurosagi is a comedy, I think it has smarter and more interesting things to say on the subject. I also really enjoy the way that Otsuka and Yamazaki frame their mini-mysteries, both criminal and emotional. Their satirical edge is in evidence as well, tweaking everything from community health initiatives to moronic reality shows. There’s nothing quite as pleasurable as watching creators establish an intriguing, flexible premise and a quirky, engaging cast and apply them to a wide variety of stories that are still thematically linked. It does make the series hard to review volume to volume, because how many ways can you say it’s still really good?

Filed under: Dark Horse, Del Rey, Quick Comic Comments, Viz 1 Comment

Second chances

February 28, 2010 by

I mentioned yesterday that Fanfare/Ponent Mon is re-offering Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators in the new Previews catalog, and I felt like I should note some other “offered again” items of note:

  • Dining Bar Akira vol. 1, written and illustrated by Tomoko Yamashita, Netcomics. I’ve heard great things about this boys’-love series.
  • Mail vol. 1, written and illustrated by Housui Yamazaki, Dark Horse. Supernatural sleuthing and a nice mix of humor and horror make this a fine companion series for The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.
  • Manga: The Complete Guide, written and edited by Jason Thompson, Del Rey. This is a terrific buyer’s guide filled with succinct reviews and informative essays. I can’t tell if this is an updated edition or just a reprint, though.
  • Satsuma Gishiden vol. 1, written and illustrated by Hiroshi Hirata, Dark Horse. This series got a lot of praise but fell off of Dark Horse’s schedule halfway through. Three of its six volumes have been published, the last in March of 2007.
  • Translucent vol. 1, written and illustrated by Kazuhiro Okamoto, Dark Horse. I like this series a lot. It’s a coming-of-age drama about a girl who turns invisible against her will. It was originally serialized in a seinen magazine (Media Factory’s Comic Flapper), but I think it would click with the shôjo audience. Dark Horse just solicited the fourth volume after a long hiatus.

    • As you may have surmised, Dark Horse is re-offering just about all of their first volumes.

    Filed under: Dark Horse, Del Rey, Netcomics, Previews 2 Comments

    Previews review March 2010

    February 27, 2010 by

    There’s plenty of interest in the new Previews catalog, as befits that Hallmark Holiday known as “Manga Month,” so let’s dive right in.

    Dark Horse celebrates the month in style, though it passes on the Manga Month logo. Still, they’re releasing the first volume of their omnibus treatment of CLAMP’s beloved Cardcaptor Sakura, and this excites me immoderately. I thought Dark Horse did an absolutely beautiful job with their Clover omnibus, so this qualifies as the month’s “must buy.” (Page 51.)

    CMX will release Miku Sakamoto’s Nadeshiko Club, a shôjo series from Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume, which is a well-known crack mine. (Personally, I find series from Hakusensha’s LaLa slightly crack-ier, but that’s just a matter of personal preference.) This one spins out of the possibly sexist premise of a girl getting dumped for being insufficiently feminine and joining her school’s home economics club to girl up. CMX has demonstrated excellent taste in shôjo, so this one goes right on the “to buy” list. Rando thought: Hakusensha’s trade dress is really boring. (Page 126.)

    Hey, you like Adam Warren’s Empowered, right? He’s writing a one-shot for Marvel, Galacta: Daughter of Galactus, with interior art by Hector Sevilla Lujan and a cover by Warren. I’ll buy anything from Warren, but this does raise the question: who’s this girl’s mother? I really love Warren’s renderings of Marvel stalwarts from the cover image. (Marvel’s insert, page 31.)

    Okay, so maybe Cardcaptor Sakura has some competition for book of the month, as Fanfare/Ponent Mon finally releases Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators. “Twelve insightful short graphic stories into the ‘Hermit Kingdom,’ six by European and six by indigenous creators,” the publisher notes. They’re also offering Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators again, so if you’re sick of hearing people recommend it and not being able to find a copy, now’s your chance. (Page 251.)

    I’ve liked some comics written by Kathryn Immonen, and I think Stuart Immonen is a terrific artist. They collaborate to explore a potentially fascinating story in Moving Pictures (Top Shelf): “During World War II the Nazis pillaged much of Europe’s great art collections. Museum curator Ila Gardner and SS officer Rolf Hauptmann are forced by circumstances to play out an awkward and dangerous relationship in a public power struggle.” Sounds like a winner to me. (Page 292.)

    Cats and comfort food sound like an extremely promising combination, so I’ll take a chance on the first volume of Kenji Sonishi’s Neko Ramen: Hey! Order Up! (Tokyopop). It’s about a “former kitten model” (an actual kitten, apparently, so be at ease) who leaves celebrity behind to become a ramen cook. The only possible down side to this is that it’s a manga based on an anime, which sometimes has mixed results. (Page 297.)

    I don’t actually think Kumiko Suekane’s Afterschool Charisma is a good comic, but I find it addictively ridiculous. Viz has been serializing the tale of clones of famous historical figures on its SigIKKI site, and now it’s releasing a print version. It’s probably worth the price of purchase just for the thrill of watching the clone of Sigmund Freud torment his classmates. “Daddy. Daddy. Daddy!” (Page 303.)

    You all already known how awesome librarians are, right? But did you know that there’s an action-packed shôjo manga that celebrates that awesomeness? It’s Kiiro Yumi’s Library Wars: Love and War, original concept by Hiro Arikawa, and Viz will release the first volume: “In the near future, the federal government creates a committee to rid society of books it deems unsuitable. The libraries vow to protect their collections, and with the help of local governments, form a military group to defend themselves – the Library Forces!” SOLD. This is an example of the crack-iness of Hakusensha’s LaLa anthology. See what I mean about the trade dress? (Page 305.)

    If Cardcaptor Sakura isn’t quite enough CLAMP for you, Yen Press accommodates with the first two volumes of the super-group’s Kobato. It’s about a girl who tries to have a wish granted by mending the wounded hearts of people she meets and “fill a magical bottle with the suffering she has relieved.” This sounds like the kind of CLAMP manga that can be injected directly into a vein. (Page 308.)

    Oh, and that Twilight graphic novel is due. (Page 309.)

    And there are plenty of new volumes of noteworthy series:

  • 20th Century Boys vol. 9, written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa, Viz, page 303
  • Black Jack vol. 11, written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka, Vertical, page 300
  • Children of the Sea vol. 3, written and illustrated by Daisuke Igarashi, Viz, page 303
  • Detroit Metal City vol. 5, written and illustrated by Kiminori Wakasugi, page 303
  • The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service vol. 11, written by Eiji Otsuka, illustrated by Housui Yamazaki, Dark Horse, page 53
  • Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture vol. 2, written and illustrated by Masayuki Ishikawa, Del Rey, page 244
  • One Piece vols. 49-53, written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, Viz, page 305
    • Filed under: CMX, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, Marvel, Previews, Tokyopop, Top Shelf, Vertical, Viz, Yen Press 12 Comments

    License request day: Freesia

    February 26, 2010 by

    Looking back on my roster of license requests, I’m noticing a tendency towards the sparkly or the introspective. Those are certainly my two favorite kinds of comics, but I feel like I’m neglecting ultra-violent manga. I mean, if the category is going to get marginalized in popular media for its sexed-up bloodshed, there might as well be more of those comics available in English, right?

    In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that this wasn’t my original intent. I was looking through a list of titles serialized in Shogakukan’s IKKI anthology with the notion of maybe cobbling together a list of comics that might be added to Viz’s SigIKKI site. I saw one title, Freesia, and thought to myself, “Why, that’s one of my favorite botanicals! I wonder what it’s about?”

    Okay, so Freesia, written and illustrated by Jiro Matsumoto, will not be posted on the SigIKKI site any time soon. There are nipples and hunting knives on page two, and while Viz is to be admired for expanding its catalogue with edgier titles, it seems unlikely that this is going to be one of their online loss leaders. Still, the series sounds kind of awesome in a Dark Horse kind of way.

    Like Motoro Mase’s Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (published in English by Viz, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Weekly Young Sunday), Freesia spins out of a really misguided government program. Due to recessionary pressures, Japan closes down most of its prisons and passes a law that allows the victims of crime to take revenge on the people who hurt them. Since not everyone is equipped for that sort of therapeutic activity, a thriving sector of “Vengeance Proxy Enforcer firms” pops up in the entrepreneurial landscape.

    Freesia follows an agency full of variously disturbed enforcers, some of whom seem to have specifically useful skills when it comes to assassination. Here are links to Shogakukan’s listings for the first six volumes. If you click on the button with the magnifying glass under the cover image in the listings for the first six volumes, you can look at some sample pages, though I don’t recommend you do it at work:

  • Volume 1
  • Volume 2
  • Volume 3
  • Volume 4
  • Volume 5
  • Volume 6

    • It’s also been published in its entirety in Spanish by Ivrea, and I think there’s also a live-action movie.

    I have no idea if Dark Horse is able to license Shogakukan titles, but they do seem like the most natural habitat for manga with lots of brutality and nudity. Just have the shrink wrap and the “Mature Content” stickers at the ready.

    Filed under: Dark Horse, License requests, Viz 4 Comments

    Upcoming 2/24/2010

    February 23, 2010 by

    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?

    Filed under: Audience development, ComicList, Dark Horse, Linkblogging 6 Comments

    Birthday book: Ohikkoshi

    February 17, 2010 by

    Hiroaki Samura may be best known for Blade of the Immortal (Dark Horse), but if you want an easier (and less expensive) way to observe his birthday, I strongly recommend his one-volume Ohikkoshi (also from Dark Horse). It’s a unique collection that includes the titular novella and some appealing short stories. But don’t just take my word for it. Let’s see what some other reviewers have to say:

    Brigid Alverson of MangaBlog:

    “Samura doesn’t give us clever plot twists or neat endings. His characters are messy, and the stories are as illogical as real life. This work is full of caricature, exaggeration, and just plain ridiculousness, but in a way, it also feels more real than other manga.”

    John Thomas of Comics Village:

    “A romance comedy by the writer of Blade of the Immortal with cover art based on a Thin Lizzy album cover…translated into English? Yes, yes, (the album ‘Fighting’) and an enthusiastic yes! Welcome to the unique and rarely explored modern world of Hiroaki Samura’s Ohikkoshi.”

    Jarred Pine of Mania:

    “I definitely applaud Dark Horse for not only supporting one of their top artists and rewarding fans of Samura’s, but also for releasing a manga that while still niche, is also something off the normal beaten path of dudes and swords.”

    Jog:

    “So this is a turbulent, endearing work. I think it’s very flawed, but also very interesting in the way that only a real talent’s hazardous steps toward something not entirely familiar can be. Surely there’s no self-delusion: in that Afterward, Samura himself deems the works collected here as ‘just another average achievement.’ He’s both right and wrong, but his honesty will take him places, with the skills he obviously has.”

    If you’re looking for something a little unexpected, particularly from Samura, give Ohikkoshi a try.

    Filed under: Birthday books, Dark Horse, Linkblogging 2 Comments

    Upcoming 1/27/2010

    January 26, 2010 by

    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.

    Filed under: AdHouse, CMX, ComicList, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Last Gasp, Linkblogging, Quick Comic Comments, Viz 5 Comments
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