The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

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I only dunk donuts

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Hey, have you read Takehiko Inoue’s Real (Viz) yet? You really, really should, and I try and articulate some of the reasons why in this week’s Flipped column. Don’t get me wrong. Slam Dunk is perfectly entertaining, but if you read only one basketball manga…

Three from Deux

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A while back, I asked for recommendations on yaoi titles that meet my impossibly picky standards. In this week’s Flipped, I talk about three books from Deux that I really liked, so thanks for all the feedback, and special thanks to Deb Aoki for passing along some yaoi bounty.

I'm in the "Liked it" column

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Well, really, after Jog and Chris Butcher have discussed it, what else is there to say? In my defense, I did not yet know that they’d both already gone over Solanin (Viz) when I wrote this week’s column.

And really, there’s only so much I could have written about the terrorist fist-bump in the eighth volume of Beauty Pop. I’m not fooled by you, seemingly innocent, would-be beauty experts.

Upcoming 7/30/2008

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Hey, why didn’t anyone tell me it was Weird Manga Week? At least that’s what it seems like after a quick glance at tomorrow’s ComicList.

Fortunately, this week’s Flipped at The Comics Reporter looks at the strangeness that is Akira Hiramoto’s Me and the Devil Blues (Del Rey). Weird enough for any week, you say? But wait! There’s more!

Del Rey also delivers the fourth volume of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte, for that tried-and-true, old-school manga weirdness.

And you can pretty much guess that anything released by Last Gasp is going to be at least a little bit unusual, and it will probably also be pretty great. At least that’s my theory about Yusaku Hanakuma’s Tokyo Zombies. And the title is apparently entirely accurate. And Ryan Sands, of Same Hat! Same Hat! fame translated it, and his credentials in the area of weird manga are absolutely impeccable.

Purely theoretical

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This week’s Flipped is up, and since I’m a hopeless follower, I scan through the Comic-Con International programming for the manga highlights. It does look like I wouldn’t have any trouble filling my time, even beyond fending off panic attacks.

That said, a convention that would require me to spend hundreds of dollars on a plane ticket, additional hundreds of dollars on lodging, plus the hundreds of dollars I’d spend on stuff, plus the cost of the extra checked bag to get it all home… I don’t know. I’m not much for big, crowded events to begin with, and I’ve gotten really picky about how I spend my travel dollars. I either want natural splendor or rich culture, and while both certainly have their place in the comics medium, it’s still a convention center in a California city that isn’t San Francisco. I’ll go some year.