You are here: Home / Archives for Dark Horse

Warren words

March 18, 2008 by

K.D. Bryan offers thoughtful commentary on the third volume of Adam Warren’s Empowered (Dark Horse), and extrapolates the discussion to consider contemporary super-heroines in general:

“So my major problem here isn’t that Empowered vol. 3 has taken a misstep because an intelligent, thoughtful writer tried to deepen the series – taking the comedy out of the equation in two of the chapters to provide contrast between how she is treated and the true potential she wields. No, my real problem is that so many more well-known superheroines aren’t being given the same basic consideration as Empowered.”

Well worth your reading time, as is Bryan’s comment on my reaction to the book.

In other Adam Warren news, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort counts Warren’s Livewires (Marvel) among his “Unknown Greats.” I agree that this is a terrific comic, and it’s fascinating to read about just how meticulous Warren was in the process of creating it.

Filed under: Dark Horse, Linkblogging, Marvel 3 Comments

Powerless

March 13, 2008 by

If you’ve read either of the first two volumes of Adam Warren’s Empowered (Dark Horse), you know that the series was born from commission work that Warren did for fans with what one might delicately refer to as “specialized interests.” Early in the third volume is a story more directly inspired by those pieces. It struck me as a misstep in an otherwise really effective series.

(Spoilers after the jump.)

In the introduction to the story, the title character warily notes the difference in style. Instead of the loose, friendly pencils used in the rest of the book, it’s “inked with markers, for that chiaroscuro-riffic kinda look.” Empowered is kidnapped by thugs, used as a bet in a poker game, is discarded, and later breaks down while having car sex with her boyfriend, sobbing and begging for affirmation.

It’s creepy as hell, visually and tonally antithetical to just about everything else in the book. Or maybe “antithetical” is the wrong word. It’s the rest of the book stripped of satirical wit and generosity of spirit, and I can take a stab at what the point might be. “This is what you’re laughing at when you get right down to it… humiliation and suffering.”

Warren doesn’t waste pages, so the story works on those terms. But wow, it sure leaves an aftertaste. It’s like brushing your teeth, then drinking orange juice. I can’t really say I enjoyed the return to business as usual – fumbling heroics, loyal friend, loving boyfriend – after that early screed.

Filed under: Dark Horse, Quick Comic Comments 3 Comments

Upcoming 3/12/2008

March 12, 2008 by

First, I must reveal how pitifully easy it is to manipulate me. Echo has a new home! Echo has a new home! Well played, Pedigree. You make Grant Morrison look like Mark Millar.

Okay, now we will move on to this week’s comics, before I become dehydrated from the tears a dog-food company has wrung out of me.

Fortunately, my pick of the week is a wonderful piece of satire that will surely cleanse the palate. It’s the third volume of Adam Warren’s racy, funny Empowered (Dark Horse). For those of you just tuning in, a young super-heroine gets by with a little help from her friends, in spite of a singularly unreliable costume and the sexist contempt of just about everyone else in her line of work. Here’s my review of the first volume.

Kaoru Mori’s Emma (CMX) concludes with the seventh volume. After the absorbingly languid pace of the previous six books, this one felt almost hyperactive by comparison. It’s still lovely and extremely moving, though.

I really loved the classic feel of the first volume of Yuu Asami’s A.I. Revolution (Go! Comi), so I’m really looking forward to reading the second. A young girl helps prototype robots learn about human behavior in smart, sensitively conceived stories.

Maintenance (Oni) is one of the few series I still buy in pamphlet form, and the ninth issue arrives today. Custodians at a mad-scientist think tank encounter a wide range of mangled genre ambassadors, making for observant, odd workplace comedy. The first trade paperback is available, and the second is on its way. Here’s my review of the first issue.

Suppli (Tokyopop) is a great change of pace, following a twenty-something advertising exec as she tries to cobble together a new personal life after the end of a lengthy relationship. The art is lovely, and the observations are sharp and specific, and I’m looking forward to the second digest. Here’s my review of the first.

I already have the first volume of Ai Morinaga’s Your and My Secret, from way back in the days when ADV published it. Now Tokyopop has rescued the series from licensing limbo, and I might just love Morinaga enough to buy it all over again just to add one more to the sales column (and to spare myself a hunt through my shelving “system”). Kate Dacey summarizes all the reasons you should give it a try over at Manga Recon.

Filed under: CMX, ComicList, Dark Horse, Go! Comi, Oni, Tokyopop 2 Comments

Or as I like to call it, "Poverty Month"

March 2, 2008 by

It’s Manga Month again in Diamond’s Previews catalog, and there’s quite a mix of stuff for varied tastes. Oddly enough, there’s isn’t a Manga Month spread at the front pointing to items of particular interest or even any indication of the occasion on the cover, but why dwell?

Dark Horse has been making some interesting choices lately, stretching further and further out of its seinen mold. This month, they’re offering four books from Akiko Ikeda’s Dayan Collection series of children’s books featuring “the mischievous cat… and his woodland friends.” The illustrations look gorgeous. Dark Horse has a bunch of preview pages up at its site. (Pages 30 and 31.)

Del Rey really gets on the Manga Month bus. I’m most interested in the first volume of Faust, “a fiction magazine showcasing innovative short works by young authors. Deb Aoki interviewed Faust editor Katsushi Ota over at About.com not too long ago which really whetted my interest. (Page 256.)

In addition to new volumes of lots of series I love, there’s also the debut of the Odd Thomas graphic novel, In Odd We Trust, by Dean Koontz and Queenie (The Dreaming) Chan. I haven’t read Koontz’s Odd Thomas novels, but it’s about a guy who talks to the dead, and it’s drawn by Chan, so I’m almost sure to like it. (Page 256.)

Drawn & Quarterly’s third collection of the works of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Good-Bye (Page 283), will undoubtedly get lots of well-deserved attention, but I’m more drawn to the possibilities of Seichi Hayashi’s Red Colored Elegy. It follows “the quietly melancholic lives of a young couple struggling to make ends meet” during “a politically turbulent and culturally vibrant decade that promised but failed to delivery new possibilities.” (Page 284.)

I’m only going by what Go! Comi’s solicitation tells me, but I like the concept behind Shino Taira and Yuki Ichiju’s Bogle, promising a contemporary teen-girl Robin Hood. (Page 293.)

Netcomics offers another title with a josei vibe, Wann’s Talking About. “Three lonely women in search of “happily ever after” in one modern city filled to the brim with difficult men.” (Page 316.)

That sound you just heard was probably Kate Dacey’s head exploding. Viz is offering a second edition of Rumiko Takahashi’s One-Pound Gospel, forbidden romance between a budding boxer and a beautiful nun. (Page 375.)

General head explosion will probably result from the announcement of two fat collections of Kazuo (The Drifting Classroom) Umezu’s Cat Eyed Boy. Horror fans will undoubtedly want to take note, as Umezu is an insanely gifted practitioner in this genre. Here’s some early, illustrated enthusiasm from Same Hat! Same Hat! The softcover books offer about 500 pages a piece for $24.99, but you can hack about a third off of that price if you pre-order at Amazon. (Page 377.)

In addition to a fair number of former Ice Kunion titles, Yen Press deliver’s the first volume of a manga that instantly hooks me with its title: Shoulder-a-Coffin, Kuro! by Satoko Kiyuduki. I don’t even care what it’s about. (Page 379.)

In the realm of comics not from Japan, there’s still plenty of interest. Phil and Kaja Foglio and Cheyenne Wright offer the seventh volume of Girl Genius: Agatha and the Voice of the Castle. I really enjoy this funny adventure series, which is also available online. (Page 203.)

Based on the strength of La Perdida, I’ll read just about anything by Jessica Abel, even if it’s about underemployed hipster vampires. Abel collaborates with Gabe Soria and Warren Pleece on Life Sucks from First Second. (Page 289.)

I really need to read Matthew Loux’s Sidescrollers (Oni Press), which has gotten tons of praise. Loux has a new book coming from Oni called Salt Water Taffy. The new quarterly series follows a bizarre family vacation to a small fishing port in Maine, and it looks like it will be a lot of fun. (Page 317.)

New comics from Hope Larson always make me happy. Her latest is Chiggers from Simon and Schuster, which promises friendship crises at summer camp. Larson is one of the most imaginative visual storytellers around, so it should offer an intriguing on familiar-sounding material. (Page 337.)

Filed under: Airship, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Drawn & Quarterly, First Second, Go! Comi, Netcomics, Oni, Previews, Simon and Schuster, Viz, Yen Press 2 Comments

Shrinkwrapped

February 21, 2008 by

I was working on a long-ish piece, and it was going pretty well. I took a quick break to do some blog hopping and noticed that Danielle Leigh had done a terrific job covering almost exactly the same material in her column at Comics Should Be Good. So it’s back to the keyboard.

Speaking of manga for grown-ups, I finally got around to reading the second volume of Hiroki (Eden: It’s an Endless World!) Endo’s Tanpenshu (Dark Horse). Overall, I found the content of the two books to be excellent overall, but I think I’ve developed an allergy to anything Endo writes about organized crime. The two-part “Platform” just made me tired. Why are creators so fascinated with mobsters, and why do so many of their otherwise admirable sensibilities go out the window when they dramatize them? I’ve seen Endo pose a thousand interesting questions about the human experience in his science fiction and slice-of-life stories, but pieces like “Platform” read as depressingly literal. I’m thrilled that Dark Horse is committed to delivering more Eden, but Endo’s gangster stuff leaves me utterly cold.

On the brighter side of Dark Horse, the opening story of the sixth volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (written by Eiji Otsuka, illustrated by Housui Yamazaki) left me slightly giddy. Anyone who can craft a funny, creepy, strangely sweet story around the privatization of the postal service has won me as a lifelong fan.

Filed under: Dark Horse, Linkblogging, Quick Comic Comments 4 Comments

Upcoming 2/20/2008

February 19, 2008 by

Some picks from the ComicList for Wednesday, Feb. 20:

Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s very entertaining mini-series, The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse), concludes with its sixth issue. If you’re coming in late and are curious, the trade paperback is available for pre-order.

A new volume of Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse) is always cause for celebration. The sixth tankoubon arrives tomorrow, promising new business rivals for the afterlife entrepreneurs.

I really need to catch up on Tomomi Yamashita’s Apothecarius Argentum (CMX), which is already up to its fourth volume. It’s very attractive, features appealing leads, and offers fun bits of trivia about medicinal and/or lethal substances.

After four volumes of dealing with the somewhat generic machinations of snotty classmates, the orphan heroine of Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi’s Kitchen Princess (Del Rey) gets slapped right in the face with actual adult duplicity in the fifth installment, and holy crap, is it good.

If you’re craving tales of weird, malevolent, otherworldly organisms turning humans into death machines but find Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte (Del Rey) a little too old-school, the publisher also offers a more modern take on the same subject matter with Tadashi Kawashima and Adachitoka’s Alive. I like both, but Alive is the one with a new volume arriving tomorrow.

It’s Signature week from Viz, which is always exciting, but I find myself distracted by the latest issue of Shojo Beat, infused as it is with lots of Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Still, it’s hard to get too distracted to note that Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, now in its thirteenth volume, has become a really spectacular thriller. Watching Urasawa keep his multiple narrative threads from becoming a hopeless tangle is quite breathtaking.

Filed under: CMX, ComicList, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Viz 1 Comment

Upcoming 2/13/2008

February 12, 2008 by

I need to just abandon introductory paragraphs on these things and come up with some lazy boilerplate, because they’re becoming increasingly feeble. Something like…

Some picks from the ComicList for Wednesday, Feb. 13:

Dark Horse offers the third volume of Kazuhiro Okamoto’s Translucent, a coming-of-age comedy about a girl you can see right through. I know, it sounds like it will pound your skull to jelly with the metaphor hammer even if you manage to find protective headgear, but it’s really sweet, often very funny and populated by charming, quirky characters.

I was instantly smitten with the first volume of Yuki Nakaji’s Venus in Love (CMX), a slice-of-life college comedy about a girl and a guy in love… with the same guy. The second volume arrives Wednesday, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m not entirely sold on Lewis Trondheim’s Little Nothings: The Curse of the Umbrella (NBM), but I’m willing to be convinced. The pages posted at the blog NBM has erected are absolutely gorgeous, though it’s hard to get a handle on the general subject matter and tone. I guess what I’m asking is if it’s good mundane or bad mundane?

Filed under: CMX, ComicList, Dark Horse, NBM 4 Comments

Previews review Feb. 2008

February 6, 2008 by

There’s plenty of intriguing stuff in the February 2008 Previews catalog. Let’s get to it, shall we?

I’ve seen lots of excitement about Hiroya Oku’s Gantz (Dark Horse, page 34), and the solicitation does make it sound intriguing. It promises recently deceased average folks put through their paces by a bossy, alien orb. I’m not usually drawn to crazy violent manga, but there’s something about Dark Horse’s taste in those kinds of books that works for me. Usually.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, but also from Dark Horse (page 57), is Simone Lia’s Fluffy, which is about a preschool-aged rabbit and his human father. If the premise makes you want to check your glucose levels, the absolutely charming preview pages feature Fluffy’s teacher sneaking out of dad’s bedroom. Father and son also go to Sicily. I’m there.

In other comics travel news, Del Rey launches Yuko Osada’s Toto! The Wonderful Adventure (page 270). Wanderlust drives young Kakashi to stow away on a zeppelin filled with crooks.

I’m a huge fan of Takako Shigematsu’s Tenshi Ja Nai!!, so I’m glad to see that Go! Comi has picked up another of her titles, Ultimate Venus (page 303). Honestly, I wasn’t crazy about Shigematsu’s King of the Lamp, but it was hardly bad enough to put a dent in the positive impression left by Tenshi.

The premise of Lars Martinson’s Xeric Award-winning Tōnoharu (Top Shelf, page 356) sounds great. It’s the semi-autobiographical tale of an American teaching English in rural Japan. Martinson has a blog about the book and the experiences that inspired it.

There’s always justifiable excitement when Vertical announces that they’re releasing another beautifully produced translation of Osamu Tezuka’s work. This month, it’s Dororo (page 362). There doesn’t seem to be any room in it for cross-dressing sociopaths, but I’m sure it will offer its own unique charms.

Filed under: Dark Horse, Del Rey, Go! Comi, Previews, Top Shelf, Vertical 1 Comment

Upcoming 2/6/2008

February 5, 2008 by

After a couple of slow weeks, things kick back into gear in the comic shops.

I’ve often suspected that my cats have struck up demonic alliances, so it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a comic based on that premise. It’s Ubu Bubu (SLG) by Jaime Smart. Here’s a preview.

Dark Horse delivers the second volume of Mi-Kyung Yun’s gorgeous, folklore-steeped soap opera, Bride of the Water God.

Go! Comi offers new volumes of two of my favorite ongoing series, each of which turns the traditional school setting upside down. Setona Mizushiro’s Afterschool Nightmare (now at volume six) makes adolescent anxieties manifest in a surreal dreamscape. Hideyuki Kurata and Tomomasa Takuma’s Train + Train has an entire planet as its classroom. Experiential learning is so trendy these days.

Looking for something gorgeous and restful? Look no farther than the second volume of Kozue Amano’s Aqua (Tokyopop), in which a young girl learns to navigate the waterways of Neo Venezia.

Also from Tokyopop is the third volume of Yuji Iwahara’s King of Thorn. I was really looking forward to this series, but I must admit that it’s testing my patience. I hope the characterizations start to deepen beyond survival-adventure stock figures and that the story comes closer to meeting the standard set by Iwahara’s thrilling illustrations.

Filed under: ComicList, Dark Horse, Go! Comi, Slave Labor Graphics, Tokyopop 1 Comment

Upcoming 1/16/2008

January 16, 2008 by

Before I get started with this week’s comic releases, I just wanted to note that it’s Jakala Family for the Win Week over at Sporadic Sequential. (“But they don’t think that Spider-Man making a deal with the devil looks bad?”)

Gerard Way and Gabrial Bá’s The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse) nears its conclusion with the fifth issue. I’ve really been enjoying this series in single issues, which is kind of rare given my general opinions on what constitutes a satisfying chunk of comics. I still think the collection is going to sell like crazy, and I can’t imagine Dark Horse will wait too long to release it, because they seem to have missed few opportunities to wring every dollar possible out of the new franchise.

Of all the titles coming out from Juné today, the one that interests me most is Tatsumi Kaiya’s Party, as it seems to start where many boys’-love titles end: with the relationship established and the protagonists dealing with life as a couple.

I can’t believe I forgot to put Yu Yagami’s Hikkatsu! Strike a Blow to Vivify (Go! Comi) on my “Year in Fun” list. It’s the moving story of a young man who practices appliance repair via the martial arts and the raised-by-pigeons girl who has decided she loves him.

It’s already the best-selling book of all time, but perhaps a manga version will help The Bible hold the top spot. Random House releases The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation, adapted by Siku. I made a point of reading as little of The Bible as a Catholic upbringing would allow, so I’ll point you towards Katherine Dacey’s thoughtful review at Manga Recon.

Do weaponized dead fish count as some kind of Biblical plague? If so, you can supplement your Manga Bible reading with the second volume of Junji Ito’s Gyo. Tremble before their smelly, skittering onslaught! (Silly as almost all of this book is, I think things are always creepier when they skitter.)

Filed under: ComicList, Dark Horse, Go! Comi, Juné, Random House, Viz 3 Comments
« Previous Page
Next Page »