The Manga Curmudgeon

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If you knew then what you know now…

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This week’s Flipped looks at A Distant Neighborhood and considers the various sides of Jiro Taniguchi. (I bet he has more than five; that’s just based on his works that are available in English.)

As I suspected I would, I’ve wound up with an extra copy of the first volume of the book. I’m kind of like one of those animals that shouldn’t be allowed to free feed, at least on Fanfare/Ponent Mon titles. If I see one, I feel a panicky compulsion to buy it. So I picked it up at SPX strongly suspecting that I’d pre-ordered it through Diamond as well, which I had. (And let’s face it, pre-ordering through Diamond doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll get the book as a result.)

But my poor impulse control is your free manga. In this blog’s grand tradition of chintzy giveaways, I’m offering up the unread copy of the first volume of A Distant Neighborhood. All you need to do is fire me an email at DavidPWelsh at yahoo dot com that includes a year of your life you might revisit if you could do so with present knowledge intact. You don’t have to over-share; just a year will be fine.

I’ll arbitrarily set the deadline at midnight Friday, Oct. 16, 2009, and randomly draw the winner from the entries.

Previews review October 2009

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The October issue of Diamond’s Previews catalog offers lots of promising material from all over the place. Let’s get down to it.

EmpoweredComicI’m always happy to see more of Adam Warren’s brilliant Empowered. This time around, Warren and Dark Horse take a different approach, offering the struggling super-heroine in “traditional comic-book format.” It’s 32 black and white pages for $3.99 featuring two stories – a desperate battle in a secret, super-hero mausoleum and the always-alliterative musings of the Caged Demonwolf. (Page 26-27.)

StolenHearts1It’s always wise to keep an eye on CMX’s shôjo offerings, as they’re usually pretty charming. New this month is Stolen Hearts, written and illustrated by Miku Sakamoto. It’s about a girl who befriends “the most intimidating guy at school” and becomes involved in his family’s kimono shop. I’m always looking for underrepresented careers in manga, and kimono model certainly qualifies. It was originally serialized in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume. (Page 120.)

AfrodisiacA few years back, the big blogosphere hit was Jim Rugg and Brian Marucca’s Street Angel from SLG. A much-loved supporting character from that book gets a shot at solo stardom in Afrodisiac from AdHouse Books. It’s written by Maruca and drawn by Rugg and promises “cats, gats, spats, and feathered hats.” (Page 188.)

KingofRPGs1You may know Jason Thompson as the author/editor of the invaluable Manga: The Complete Guide, but he’s also a creator of comics. He’s authored King of RPGs, illustrated by Victor Hao, for Del Rey. It’s a “send-up of manga, gaming and geek culture,” which is subject matter well within Thompson’s sphere of experience. Thompson is also updating the guide and giving away manga over at suvudu.com. (Page 242.)

Talk about long-awaited! I can’t remember the first time I heard about Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators, but it appears at long last in the pages of Previews (page 250, to be precise). I can’t find any information on Fanfare’s site, but if Korea is half as good as Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, it will be a must-buy.

TreasuryFamousPlayersI’m crazy about Rick Geary’s Treasury books, but I’m cheap so I wait for the paperback versions. Happily, NBM slates the soft-cover version Geary’s A Treasury of 20th Century Murder: Famous Players for publication. It examines the murder of early Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor. (Page 271.)

I loved Crogan’s Vengeance, Chris Schweizer’s first look at the long saga of the Crogan family and its cross-century adventures. The second volume, Crogan’s March, is due from Oni Press, looking at life in the French Foreign Legion. (Page 274-275).

MercuryThe gifted Hope Larson delivers her next work, Mercury from Simon and Schuster. It looks to be a mystery surrounding a magnificent mansion in Nova Scotia. But really, it’s Larson, and that’s pretty much all you need to know. (Page 285.)

Even with setbacks, the last few months might be pinpointed as the beginning of Tokyopop’s comeback tour. They announced a bunch of titles in August, and one appealed to me in particular. It’s Kou Matsuzuki’s Happy Café, a romantic comedy set in a restaurant. I find it very hard to resist romantic comedies set in restaurants, even if they feature that old warhorse, the clumsy shôjo heroine. It was originally published in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume. (Page 289.)

notsimplePage 301 promises more goodness from Viz Signature. My poor, poor wallet, how you will weep. New to the imprint are Natsume Ono’s not simple. Ono is the creator of House of Five Leaves, and I’ve become very intrigued by her work. not simple is told backwards and follows a young man as he travels the world in search of his sister. It was originally published in Penguin Shobou’s Comic Seed! and was later picked up by Shogakukan.

AllMyDarlingDaughters1And, of course, Viz triggers squeals across the internet by offering more manga from Fumi Yoshinaga. It’s All My Darling Daughters featuring an adult woman who still lives with her mother until mom’s new boyfriend drives a wedge into the family. It was originally published in Hakusensha’s Melody.

Last, and certainly not least, Yen Press continues to rack up manga karma by rescuing Kiyohiko Azuma’s Azumanga Daioh Collected Edition from limbo. This makes me so happy that I will simply run the solicitation in its entirety: “The classic returns! This four-panel comedy chronicles the everyday lives of six very quirky high school girls. Meet the child prodigy Chiyo, the animal-loving Sakaki, the spacey out-of-towner Osaka, the straight-laced Yomi and her best friend Tomo, and the sports-loving Kagura throughout their high school lives. As the first four-panel comic to gain popularity in the U.S., Yen Press is proud to present the complete fan-favorite in a single volume, complete with all the original color pages and an updated translation so new and old readers can enjoy the best, most authentic Azumanga available!” (Page 306.)

Upcoming 10/7/2009

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This week’s ComicList has some welcome, off-the-beaten-path items, so let’s dig in.

The arrival of one book from Fanfare/Ponent Mon is a welcome delight. The arrival of two seems positively decadent, but that’s what they do, and both are from master illustrator Jiro Taniguchi. Which excites you more will depend on your taste for Taniguchi. Summit of the Gods, about fateful trips up Mt. Everest, is in his man-versus-nature vein, like The Ice Wanderer and Quest for the Missing Girl. A Distant Neighborhood is more slice-of-life, kind of like his story in Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators or The Walking Man (if it had a plot). I picked up the first two volumes of A Distant Neighborhood at Small Press Expo and can heartily recommend it. I’ll cover it in more depth later, but it’s about a middle-aged man who wakes up as his teen-aged self shortly before his father’s disappearance.

masterpiececomicsThere are two arrivals that can be described as clever ideas executed extremely well. R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics (Drawn & Quarterly) was another SPX purchase. In it, Sikoryak fuses classic literature with classic comics in some extremely witty ways. Blondie and Dagwood are reinvented as Adam and Eve, Mary Worth becomes Lady Macbeth, Bazooka Joe does Dante, and so on. The juxtapositions are great, and Sikoryak’s ability to adopt such a variety of visual styles is very impressive. The book is more amusing than absorbing, but there’s an amazing amount of craft on display.

I’ve already written about The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks (Random House), mostly for its weird crediting of author Max Books and illustrator Ibraim Roberson on the review copy I received and the web listing, some of which seems to have been fixed. Brooks inserts zombies into various, far-flung scenarios – the colonial Caribbean, a Foreign Legion outpost in northern Africa, even pre-history – offering a faux-anthropological examination of zombie encounters through history. Again, it’s clever, and Roberson draws the heck out of it. I’d recommend it for zombie fans looking for a marginally fresh take on the (in my opinion) exhausted topic.

I tend to like the shôjo titles CMX publishes. I’ve heard effusive praise for Ken Saito’s The Name of the Flower, and I’ll track it down at some point, but in the meantime, I was glad to receive a review copy of Oh! My Brother so I could get a sense of Saito’s style. It’s got its strong points, mostly in terms of interesting characters and nicely delivered emotional moments. It’s about a girl who finds herself sharing her body with the spirit of her dead older brother, trying to help him with his unfinished business. That could have turned into something really unsavory, but Saito takes a sweet, sensitive approach to the material, thankfully. Some of the storytelling is a little sketchy, but there’s a nice, sentimental core to the work. I suspect Brother came before Flower, though I can’t seem to find any confirmation of that.

kiminitodoke2Viz releases many, many books this week, some of which will very likely show up on the Graphic Book Best Seller List over at The New York Times, but my attention is fixated on the second volume of Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, written and illustrated by Karuho Shiina. It’s about an outwardly off-putting girl trying to convince her classmates that she didn’t crawl out of a well to claim their souls. I liked the first volume a lot.

I couldn’t find it on Image’s web site with a sextant and a dowsing rod, but I’ll definitely pick up the second issue of Brandon Graham’s King City, as I really enjoyed the first. It’s a pamphlet reprinting of a book Tokyopop originally published as a paperback. I missed it in digest form, so I’m glad Image and Tokyopop are giving readers a second bite of the apple, particularly in a format that’s probably friendlier to Graham’s illustrations.

While in Bethesda…

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I’m sure I’ll miss a lot of excitement at the New York Anime Festival this weekend, but I’m profoundly consoled by one thing: Fanfare/Ponent Mon will be at the Small Press Expo. Here’s there press release:

FANAFARE/PONENT MON CELEBRATES FIRST SPX APPEARANCE WITH DUAL TITLE PREMIERE

Limited quantities of Years of the Elephant and A Distant Neighborhood #2 to be available to attendees.

yearsofelephantFanfare/Ponent Mon, publishers of quality translated European and Japanese graphic novels, makes its inaugural visit as exhibitor to SPX this year. To mark the occasion, the company is scheduling a special drop-shipment of two of its most anticipated titles — Years of the Elephant and A Distant Neighborhood #2 — to be available for purchase at the show a month prior to their official release. Pick up a copy at table F16!

Years of the Elephant by acclaimed Belgian artist Willy Linthout is the touching autobiographical exploration of his son’s suicide, a moving story made all the more powerful by Linthout’s use of pencils sans both color and inks.

Renowned Japanese manga creator Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood #2 is the haunting conclusion to middle-aged businessman Nakahara’s reliving of his childhood as himself only with his elderly thoughts and experiences left intact.

Both titles exemplify the quality graphic storytelling that is the hallmark of Fanfare/Ponent Mon, whose much-lauded The Summit of the Gods Volume 1 and A Distant Neighborhood #1 by aforementioned Jiro Taniguchi premiered at San Diego this year and will also be available at SPX.

SPX is the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comic books and the discovery of new creative talent. In its fourteenth year, the show will held the weekend of September 26 and 27, 2009 at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Center in Bethesda, MD.

Happy text

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I’m sensing one of those seasonal disturbances in the force where people start to get knowingly pessimistic about The State of Manga and Its Future, so I thought I’d just highlight some of the great books coming out during the remainder of 2009 in the hopes of nipping this round of gloom in the bud. Nouvelle manga, award winners, classic shôjo, an alternative anthology… things are looking pretty terrific from where I’m sitting. Expensive, but terrific.

adistantneighborhood1A Distant Neighborhood vol. 1, Jiro Taniguchi, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, $23.00, sometime soon: “Who hasn’t thought about reliving their past, correcting perceived mistakes or changing crucial decisions? Would this better your life or the lives of those closest to you? Or would your altered actions prove even more harmful? One man gets the chance to find out… Middle-aged Hiroshi Nakahara is on his way home from a business trip when he finds himself on the wrong train heading for his childhood hometown. His footsteps take him to his mother’s grave and it’s there that he is catapulted back into his life as an 8th grader – but with all his adult memories and knowledge intact. As he struggles to make sense of his predicament his adult memories of his childhood return but are somehow subtly changed. The questions start to form … would his father still disappear without explanation? would he still marry his wife?”

ookuÔoku: The Inner Chamber, Fumi Yoshinaga, Viz – Signature, $12.99, Aug. 18: “In Edo period Japan, a strange new disease called the Red Pox has begun to prey on the country’s men. Within eighty years of the first outbreak, the male population has fallen by seventy-five percent. Women have taken on all the roles traditionally granted to men, even that of the Shogun. The men, precious providers of life, are carefully protected. And the most beautiful of the men are sent to serve in the Shogun’s Inner Chamber…”

moyasimon1Moyasimon vol. 1, Mayasuki Ishikawa, Del Rey, $10.99, Sept. 29: “BACTERIA TO SCHOOL: Tadayasu is a new, fresh-faced university student hiding a bizarre secret: He can see germs with the naked eye. Between the machinations of an eccentric professor determined to unlock the power of the microbial world and the doomed agricultural experiments of his fellow students, will Tadayasu ever find the cool college atmosphere he so desires?”

itazura1logooutlineItazura na Kiss vol. 1, Kaoru Tada, Digital Manga, $16.95, Nov. 4: “High school senior Kotoko Aihara has had a crush on Naoki Irie since freshman year. Unfortunately, there a few things are discouraging her from to him: he’s a member of ‘Class A,’ the top ranking class in school, whereas she’s in ‘Class F’; he gets the top score on every exam; and he’s so smart, popular and handsome that he’s been class president every year. When Kotoki finally musters up the courage to present him with a love letter, though, Naoki outright refuses it, telling her point blank—with a look of disgust and boredom—that he doesn’t like ‘stupid girls.’ Poor Kotoko’s worst nightmare! Her heart is broken, but then a change in circumstance forces Naoki and Kotoko to be together every day…!?”

ax1Ax (vol. 1): A Collection of Alternative Manga, $29.95, Dec. 29: “Ax is the premier Japanese magazine for alternative comics. Published bi-monthly for over ten years now, the pages of Ax contain the most creative and cutting-edge works of independent comics in the world’s largest comics industry. Now Top Shelf presents a 400-page collection of stories from ten years of Ax history, translated into English for the first time! This groundbreaking book includes work by 33 artists, including Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Akino Kondoh, Kazuichi Hanawa, Shinichi Abe, and many many more!”

Previews review July 2009

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There’s quite a bit of interesting material in the July 2009 edition of Diamond’s Previews catalog. Whether it actually makes it to comic shops is always a question worth considering, but the theoretical abundance is certainly alluring.

First up is Reversible: A Dojinshi Collection by various artists, published by Digital Manga. I’ve never heard of any of the creators involved (“Kometa Yonekura, Shiori Ikezawa, Haruki Fujimoto, Goroh, and many more!”), but the prospect of a book full of fan-created yaoi is too intriguing to pass up. (Page 241)

Masayuki Ishikaway’s eagerly awaited, Tezuka Prize winning Moyasimon arrives courtesy of Del Rey. “You might think that life at an agricultural university in Japan isn’t exactly exciting. But Todayasu, a student, sees the world differently – he has the unique ability to see, and communicate with, bacteria and micro-organisms, which appear to him as super-cute little creatures.” I was sold on this before it was even licensed. (Page 244)

ayaIf you haven’t treated yourself to the first two volumes of Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie’s earthy, charming soap opera set in the Ivory Coast of the 1970s, then you should catch up, since the third, Aya: The Secrets Come Out, arrives via Drawn & Quarterly. “It’s a world of shifting values, where issues like arranged marriage and gay love have Aya and her friends yearning to break out of the confines of their community, while the ties of friendship and support draw them back into its familiarity.” (Page 246)

Every month is better with some Jiro Taniguchi in it, and Fanfare/Ponent Mon provides. In this case, it’s the second volume of The Summit of the Gods, illustrated by Taniguchi and written by Yumemakura Baku. The ascent up Mt. Everest continues, and I’m guessing Taniguchi draws the holy hell out of it. (Page 252)

Oni Press is wise enough to devote a two-page spread to Lola: A Ghost Story, written by J. Torres, because you get to see some really lovely sample pages illustrated by Elbert Or. It’s about a boy named Jesse, who “sees dead people, monsters, demons, and lots of other things that no one else can see,” and must take up his grandmother’s mantle as protector of a small town. The mere promise of “pigs possessed by the devil” is reason enough for me to jot it down on the order form. (Page 278 and 279)

alecTop Shelf drops a massive omnibus, available in soft- and hardcover versions, of Eddie Campbells Alec comics, called The Years Have Pants (A Life-Size Omnibus). It “collects the previous Alec books, as well as a generous helping of rare and never-before-seen material, including an all-new 35-page book, The Years Have Pants. The softcover is $35, and the hardcover is $49.95, each coming in at 640 pages. (Page 296)

wawwI saw this on Twitter yesterday, and there it is in the catalog. Viz releases two volumes of Inio (Solanin) Asano’s What a Wonderful World! “With this series of intersecting vignettes, Inio Asano explores the ways in which modern life can be ridiculous and sublime, terrible and precious, wasted and celebrated.”

stitchesI automatically become nervous when buzz about a book reaches a certain pitch, so I’m glad I read a comp copy of David Small’s Stitches (W.W. Norton) before that buzz became too frenzied. It really, really, really is an extraordinary book. Small fearlessly renders childhood horrors with restraint and dignity, re-creating “a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka.” That isn’t hyperbole, and the advance interest in the book is entirely deserved, as will be the raves after it’s released. Seriously, it’s the kind of book that will end up on Best Books of 2009 lists in addition to a whole lot of Best Comics of 2009 lists. (Page 311)

yotsuba6Last, but certainly not least, Yen Press brings boundless joy to the world (at least the world occupied by people with good taste) by releasing the sixth volume of Kiyohiko Azuma’s hilarious, completely endearing Yotsuba&! Yen also releases brushed-up versions of the first five volumes, previously published by ADV. “Yotsuba recycles! She gets a bike, learns about sticky notes, and drinks some super-yummy milk which she then decides she has to share with everyone!” Bless you, bless you , bless you, Yen Press. (Page 312)

Previews review

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After a couple of months of overwhelmingly appealing product in Diamond’s June 2009 Previews catalog, the industry seems to take a bit of a breather. Here’s what caught my eye, mostly new volumes of entertaining, ongoing series.

taleThere are some debuts. I quite liked the first volume of Natsuna Kawase’s The Lapis Lazuli Crown (CMX), so I’ll certainly take a chance on the second volume (page 121) and the first volume of another Kawase series, A Tale of an Unknown Country Girl (also CMX, page 120), about a princess who goes undercover to see if her arranged fiancé is a total asshat.

Many people viewed Brandon Graham’s King City to be one of the great casualties of whichever Tokyopop meltdown put its future in peril. Those folks will be happy to see pages 138 and 139, which reveal that Image and Tokyopop will be presenting a floppy version of Graham’s comic. I find Image’s web site impossible to navigate, so I’ll just link to this Newsarama interview with Graham.

Two of Del Rey’s solicitations on page 237 catch my eye: the fifth volume of Ryotaro Iwanaga’s underrated postwar adventure, Pumpkin Scissors, and the third volume of Sayonara, Zetsubo-Sensei, a dark satire of school comedies that’s more heavily annotated than just about any book not edited by Carl Horn. Sayonara also has some of the tiniest print in the history of translated comics from Japan, and some fairly impenetrable humor, but enough of the jokes work for me to make it worth the eye strain.

Fanfare/Ponent Mon presents the second volume of Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood (page 245). You scrambled for the order form right after I typed the publisher’s name, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?

adI’ve enjoyed Josh Neufeld’s travel comics, though he tends to go places I would never personally consider for a vacation. My idea of roughing it is hotels with limited room service. But his A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge (Pantheon, page 273) promises to be one of the books of the year.

I thought IDW or someone had the CSI comic-book franchise. It isn’t exclusive apparently, as Tokyopop launches the two-part CSI: Interns, written by Sekou Hamilton and illustrated by Steven Cummings (page 283).

Viz Udon gets its sci-fi on with the return of Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius in an unflipped, all-new translation with restored color story pages (page 285). Trivia note: Asamiya was first introduced to many English-reading comics fans through the dubious distinction of illustrating some of the worst issues of Uncanny X-Men ever written.

If I’m going to be completely honest, I’m more intrigued by the Viz’s debut of Hiroyuki Asada’s Tegami Bachi (page 288), which I’ve seen described as being about postal workers called “Letter Bees” carrying the hearts of correspondents to their loved ones. I admit that most of my interest comes from the probably mistaken mental image of sacks full of human hearts and the shocked reactions of their recipients.

In the “new volume” category, Viz offers Oishinbo: Vegetables (written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki), the fourth volume of Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, and the second volume of Kiminori Wakasugi’s Detroit Metal City, which is sick and wrong and I think I’m in love with it (all listed on page 292).

The Eisner ballot… of the FUTURE!

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Okay, the order forms from the current issue of Diamond’s Previews catalog were due yesterday. I apologize for the tardiness, but the day job has been rather distracting lately. (Not bad, just busy.) And there’s abundant genius being solicited, so maybe it’s not too late for you to nag your local comics shop, or at least pre-order online from some other vendor.

Eden: It’s an Endless World! Vol. 12 (Dark Horse): Hiroki Endo’s dense, absorbing science-fiction series continues. (Page 44.)

Emma, Vol. 9 (CMX): More glorious period soap opera from Kaoru Mori. (Page 124.)

Johnny Hiro Vol. 1 (AdHouse): The first three issues of Fred Chao’s very funny genre mash-up are collected here. (Page 186.)

Swallowing the Earth Vol. 1 (Digital Manga Publishing): It’s by Osamu Tezuka, which is really all you need to know. It’s also about a mysterious demigoddess “wielding her mysterious power over all men to exact revenge for their crimes against women since the beginning of time,” which sounds ceaselessly awesome. (Page 245.)

Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Vol. 4 (Drawn & Quarterly): So funny, so quirky, so sweet. It’s one of the few perfect things in the world. (Page 249.)

The Summit of the Gods Vol. 1 (Fanfare/Ponent Mon): Jiro Taniguchi heads back to the mountains, accompanied by Yumemakura Baku. The slope in question this time around is Mount Everest. (Page 251.)

A Treasury of 20th Century Murder Vol. 2: Famous Players (NBM): Rick Geary applies his unique and abundant cartooning skills to the case of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor. (Page 275.)

Salt Water Taffy Vol. 3: The Truth About Dr. True (Oni): More delightful adventures for all ages from Matthew Loux as the Putnam brothers discover weirdness in Chowder Bay. (Page 279.)

Fruits Basket Vol. 23 (Tokyopop): The mega-popular series from Natsuki Takaya comes to what will undoubtedly be an amazingly moving conclusion. (Page 288.)

Oishinbo: Fish, Sushi and Sashimi (Viz): Viz continues to offer highlights from Tetsu Kariya’s culinary manga masterpiece. (Page 298.)

Cirque du Freak Vol. 1 (Yen Press): I can’t honestly remember the context or the content, but I swear I heard something really extreme about Cirque du Freak, which makes me curious. (Page 302.)

Upcoming March 18, 2009

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I love a Wednesday that makes it rough to select a pick of the week. This week’s ComicList is a cornucopia of crack.

I thought Saika Kunieda’s Future Lovers (Deux Press) was a one-shot, which was pretty much the book’s only disappointing aspect. I was happily mistaken, and a second volume about a mismatched but devoted couple is due out Wednesday. I love comics about grown-up gay men in actual relationships.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Anything Fanfare/Ponent Mon releases in English is automatically a contender for the week’s best release, and My Mommy Is in America and She Met Buffalo Bill, by Jean Regnaud & Émille Bravo, will likely do nothing to buck that trend.

Tokyopop can’t be entirely sanguine about the release of the final penultimate volume of Natsuki Takaya’s uber-shôjo masterpiece, Fruits Basket. I can’t say I’m thrilled either, but I know that we’ll all get through this together. As to content, I would hazard a guess that, in this volume, all of the characters find their lives becoming less alienating and difficult to varying degrees. I would also hazard a guess that I will sob.

Viz picks up the baton of miserable adolescence with the launch of the VizBig edition of Miki Aihara’s Hot Gimmick. This book is emphatically not for everyone, and I don’t say that in a condescending “Your tastes might not be refined enough to enjoy this” kind of way. I say it in a “Really horrible, anti-feminist things happen in this book from beginning to end, and you will likely want to scrub your brain clean after reading it, but it’s addictively crafted” way.

On the Signature front, the second volume of Pluto, Naoiki Urasawa’s homage to Osamu Tezuka, arrives.

The trusty month of May

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It’s “Manga Month” again in Diamond’s Previews catalog. When this crops up each year, there’s always a small part of me that sneers and says, “Oh, like the direct market really cares.” Still, there are lots of wonderful-looking upcoming arrivals among the listings.

I find it very difficult to resist bittersweet comics about helping the recently or not-so-recently deceased deal with the fact that they’re… well… dead. CMX offers another variation on this theme, Ballad of a Shinigami, illustrated by Asuka Izumi, original story by K-Ske Hasegawa. (Page 121.)

Manga Month might just be coincidental with their regular release schedule, but Del Rey brings it. New volumes of Mushishi, Pumpkin Scissors, and Toto! The Wonderful Adventure are among the offerings. (Pages 240-241.)

And holy crap, Digital Manga is listing the fourth volume of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Flower of Life! With a great big two-page spread, which it totally deserves! And the first three volumes are offered again, so you can order all four! Oh, May, you can’t come soon enough. (Pages 248-249.)

But wait, there’s more! Jiro Taniguchi is one of those creators where I feel I can safely recommend his work even if I’ve never seen the title in question. Fanfare will be shipping the first volume of Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood this month, which sounds like a lovely blend of mystery and nostalgia. (Page 252.)

Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim sound like peanut butter and chocolate to me, so I’m very much looking forward to their joint effort, The Eternal Smile, from First Second. Yang handles the writing, and Kim draws the pictures. It’s a collection of three stories. (Page 256.)

I’ve been dying for someone to license work by Daisuke Igarashi and staring enviously at France when I see his works recognized at festivals like Angoulême. Viz makes me happy by announcing the first volume of Igarashi’s Children of the Sea. Now do Witches. (Page 295.)

I’m not familiar with it at all, but Yen Press does a good job piquing my interest with the solicitation for The History of West Wing, written by Jiayu Sun and illustrated by Guo Guo. It’s a “full-color historical romance based on a classic Chinese romance saga.” (Page 303.)