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Upcoming 11/21/2007

November 20, 2007 by

If I’m up to date with my reading, it’s only slightly, you know? I’m just about done with the second volume of Gilbert Hernandez’s wonderful Palomar stories, Human Diastrophism, which I’ll probably get around to reviewing later in the week. (It’s not that you need me to tell you how great these stories are. I just feel like it, okay?) This week, Fantagraphics is delivering the third volume, Beyond Palomar. (Don’t even get me started on New Tales of Old Palomar, or I’ll be forced to admit that I’m waiting for the trade.)

I’m not waiting for the trade with Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting (also from Fantagraphics). Would it read better in big chunks? Probably, but patience has never been my strong suit.

Go! Comi sent me a complimentary copy of Aimee Major Steinberger’s Japan Ai: A Tall Girl’s Adventures in Japan, a cute journal/sketchbook detailing Steinberger’s otaku pilgrimage. I like Steinberger’s friendly style of illustration, and I almost always enjoy travel comics. (Even ones that partake of the kind of travel I’d never consider, though Steinberger seems to be as much a fan of hotels and consumerism as I am.)

Filed under: ComicList, Fantagraphics, Go! Comi Leave a Comment

From the stack: Hikkatsu! Strike a Blow to Vivify

November 11, 2007 by

I’ve just put the finishing touches on this week’s Flipped, with cooking manga in the spotlight, and I was hoping to be able to wedge Yu Yagami’s Hikkatsu! Strike a Blow to Vivify (Go! Comi) into the mix. Alas, in spite of the protagonist’s dedication to violent appliance repair, he doesn’t give so much as a hostile look to a microwave, much less roundhouse-kick a convection oven into compliance.

Yes, the protagonist, Shota, uses karate to repair broken appliances, or at least he hopes to. For the most part, his efforts just guarantee that the appliances will never work again. It’s amusingly ridiculous, if not ridiculously amusing.

Shota’s quest is based in a misunderstanding. During a scolding, his sensei insisted Shota use karate only to help, and the logic of a six-year-old took it from there. After a decade of training atop Mt. Fuji, he re-enters the world with an equally bizarre paramour at his side. (Momoko is a spirited young woman who was raised by pigeons, and she’s completely undeterred by the fact that Shota seems only marginally aware of her presence.) A trio forms when Shota and Momoko run into a crook named Kanji who makes a living selling a variety of dodgy merchandise.

Fortunately, Yagami has a better success rate with the jokes than Shota does with his work-in-progress repair strike. They don’t all work, but some are genuinely hilarious, and the series is good-natured overall. The art is a lot of fun, all gangly figures and loopy action sequences. It’s Go! Comi, so you know the production values and translation are of high quality.

If I was going to unreservedly recommend an absurdly funny action series, it would probably be Hideaki Sorachi’s Gin Tama (Viz). But Hikkatsu! makes a solid, second-place showing.

(Review based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Filed under: Go! Comi 5 Comments

Upcoming 10/24/2007

October 23, 2007 by

It isn’t a huge week in terms of new comics arrivals, but there are some choice items.

The one I’m anticipating most eagerly is probably Mi-Kyung Yun’s Bride of the Water God from Dark Horse. It looks gorgeous, its folklore-rich premise sounds intriguing, and any series that starts with attempted human sacrifice is worth at least a look. Manga Recon’s Katherine Dacey-Tsuei thinks very highly of it, which is always a good sign.

Del Rey, Tokyopop and Viz are taking the week off, for the most part, but Go! Comi leaps into the breach with new volumes of four ongoing series. Of them, I’d definitely recommend Setona Mizushiro’s Afterschool Nightmare, which hits the five-volume mark. It’s still providing unsettling, emotionally complex new developments for its cast of identity-challenged teens. Then there’s Hideyuki Kurata’s Train + Train, which has been steadily improving since a rather lackluster first volume. The third ended in a surprising cliffhanger, with the Special Train students visiting a city beset by terrorists. I’m looking forward to seeing how things play out.

Next week, I’ll be in range of one of the best comic shops I’ve ever visited, so I’m sure I’ll be able to browse the four new releases from PictureBox. I’m especially curious about Yuichi Yokoyama’s New Engineering, though I suspect I’ll be more interested in “Public Works” than “Combat.” Chris Mautner picked it as his “book of the show” from SPX, a show that always seems to yield a number of amazing books.

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

Dead of winter

October 3, 2007 by

The new Previews is out, with lots of offerings to get your mind off the gray chill.

The first product of DC’s partnership with Flex Comics arrives in the form of Daisuke Torii’s Zombie Fairy (CMX) which seems to start with a visit to a Japanese version of Antiques Roadshow and follows up with pesky ghosts (Page 100).

There seems to be a new global manga publisher in the Previews listings, Demented Dragon, or maybe I just haven’t noticed them before. There are solicitations for first volumes of The Phoenix Chronicles by Kenyth Morgan and Melissa Hudson, A Steel Wing Shattered by Chris Hazelton, and Stray Crayons by Yoko Molotov. Here’s their web site. (Page 265.)

Go! Comi goes global with the release of animator Aimee Major Steinberger’s Japan Ai – A Tall Girl’s Adventures in Japan. It’s a journal of Major Steinberger’s travels in Japan and her “passion for all things cute.” (Page 295.)

Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, offers Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story by Frederik Peeters. It’s a memoir about the creator’s relationship with an HIV+ mother and son. (Page 296.)

NBM releases the softcover version of Rick Geary’s ninth Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Bloody Benders. I’m crazy about these books, but I always wait for the paperback version. Yes, my love is cheap. (Page 312.)

Tokyopop drops the first volume of Kozue Amano’s much-admired Aria, with a new cover and “refreshed translation.” (ADV published it a while back.) It’s one of those books that’s always been on my “to try” list, and this seems like a good opportunity to start from the beginning. (Page 333.)

I just mentioned this book a couple of days ago, and voila, here it is in Previews: Fox Bunny Funny by Andy Hartzell (Top Shelf). I dug out my copy of The Book of Boy Trouble (Green Candy Press) to refresh my memory about Hartzell’s style, and his story is really funny in a mortifying, slightly perverse way. (Page 342.)

I’ve read a couple of chapters of Hinako Ashibara’s Sand Chronicles (Viz) in Shojo Beat and found them really effective and moving. The first collection is solicited in this issue. (Page 365.)

Filed under: CMX, Demented Dragon, Go! Comi, Houghton Mifflin, NBM, Tokyopop, Top Shelf, Viz 8 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

Upcoming 7/11

July 10, 2007 by

It’s that time of the week for another tour through the ComicList. I’d try to come up with some thematic introduction, but it’s just too hot.

On the debut front, CMX rolls out Samurai Commando Mission 1549 (original concept by Ryo Hanmura; written by Harutoshi Fukui; illustrated by Ark Performance). I’ve seen a short preview of the series, and it looks insane (in a good way).

From Minx comes Andi Watson’s Clubbing. While my first choice for “next Andi Watson project” would be more of Princess at Midnight, this looks like a fun read. Murder in the English countryside should more than make up for the painfully hip fashions of the protagonist.

I don’t see it listed on the ComicList, or in the local shop’s “what’s on tap” e-mail, but Katherine Dacey-Tsuei heralds its arrival of Byun Byung-Jun’s Run, Bong-Gu, Run! (NBM) in the latest Weekly Recon. I know I pre-ordered this, so I just have to be patient. It looks wonderful, as most books from NBM are.

On the continuing series front, it’s hard to decide which is more enticing: a second installment of that priests-versus-zombies extravaganza, Black Sun Silver Moon (Go! Comi) or the ninth chapter of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. I can’t choose, so I won’t, and I’ll just get them both.

I’ll probably wait for the paperback, but I’m happy to see the second volume of Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.: I Kick Your Face (Marvel), moving through the production pipeline. I thought the first collection was hilarious.

Filed under: CMX, ComicList, Go! Comi, Marvel, Minx, NBM, Viz 2 Comments

Upcoming

June 19, 2007 by

Who’s the weird, green-haired tyke all the manga readers like? Yotsuba&! Yes, the fourth volume of Kyohiko Azuma’s much-loved, long-dormant series arrives Wednesday in better comic shops everywhere courtesy of ADV. I’ll let you absorb that for a moment, then distract you with the knowledge that Tokyopop has picked up Ai Morinaga’s delightful Your and My Secret, along with 37 other titles. ADV squeezed out a single volume of the series years ago, then left us all hanging.

Fantagraphics releases Human Diastrophism, the second collection of Gilbert Hernandez’s richly entertaining Palomar stories. Information can be found by scrolling down this page, and while they’re a step up from ADV by having information on recent and upcoming releases at all, I’d really love it if they’d give a blogger a break and start building some pages that would let me link directly.

Speaking of gender ambiguity, Go! Comi delivers the fourth volume of Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare. (And Go! Comi has updated its web sight to profile two upcoming releases, Ryo Takagi’s The Devil Within and Takeru Kirishima’s Kanna.)

It had to happen sooner or later, and if I’m going to be entirely honest, I’ll admit that I’m happy it’s sooner. Can you imagine what Death Note (Viz – Shonen Jump Advanced) would have turned into if it had been one of those 20-plus-volume monstrosities? The very suspenseful series ends with the 12th volume this week, which seems just about right in terms of length.

Filed under: ADV, ComicList, Fantagraphics, Go! Comi, Tokyopop, Viz 9 Comments

Looking forward

May 15, 2007 by

DC’s Minx imprint hits comics shops this week with the arrival of The Plain Janes, written by popular young-adult novelist Cecil Castellucci and illustrated by Jim (Street Angel) Rugg. Early critical reaction has been generally positive, if not rapturous, but I’m looking forward to it. The recent wave of young-adult novelists entering the graphic novel arena is starting to make me feel like I should read more novels for young adults. I mean, I love to read younger than my demographic in comics, so why not prose?

And while some of Minx honcho Karen Berger’s early interviews on the imprint indicated that she might not realize that DC published manga, the CMX imprint adds another appealing title to its roster with Apothecarius Argentum by Tomomi Yamashita. MangaCast’s Ed Chavez previewed it recently, and I reviewed it for CWN a while ago.

I fear that we are nearing the end of Takako Shigematsu’s Tenshi Ja Nai!! (Go! Comi). The seventh volume ships this week, and I think there’s only one more after this. But hey, it’s not like there’s a shortage of somewhat mean-spirited, showbiz-set romantic comedies to fill the void.

Filed under: CMX, ComicList, Go! Comi, Minx Leave a Comment

Suddenly next fall

April 29, 2007 by

When I do these trawls through Diamond’s Previews catalog, I generally try and limit my focus to new series and graphic novels. Sometimes, that’s just impossible.

After over a year and a half in limbo, ADV will release a new volume of Kiyohiko Azuma’s delightful Yotsuba&! I could stop right there and be perfectly happy. (Page 217.) I won’t, obviously.

A new collection of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s funny fantasy adventure, Girl Genius (Airship), is always good news. The sixth trade paperback is listed on page 221, and I’ve reviewed previous volumes here, here and here.

David Petersen’s beautiful Mouse Guard (Archaia) was one of the surprise hits of last year, which leads me to suppose that the sequel, Winter 1152, will also be a hit, but not a surprising one. (Page 230.)

Aurora enters the Previews fray with two listings: Makoto Tateno’s Hate to Love You, described as “Romeo and Romeo,” and Chihiro Tamaki’s Walkin’ Butterfly, a shôjo series about an aspiring model. (Page 238.)

I had expected more of a wait for the second volume of Adam Warren’s sweetly subversive, cheerfully shameless piece of cheesecake, Empowered. Apparently not, which is certainly good news. I reviewed the first volume here. (Page 45.)

Dark Horse dabbles in shôjo with Kazuhiro Okamoto’s Translucent, about a girl who’s starting to turn invisible. My teen-angst metaphor sensors are pinging, but in a good way. (Page 47.)

If Tokyopop’s Dragon Head and Viz’s The Drifting Classroom aren’t adequately feeding your need for student survivalist drama, Del Rey launches Tadashi Kawashima’s Alive. There goes that metaphor sensor again! (Page 272.)

I must have been experiencing a shortage of serotonin last weekend, because I ordered a big box of Fumi Yoshinaga manga from Amazon. I read it all in a sitting, and I think my aura transformed from a dingy gray to a cloud of flowers that were sparkling in a slightly ironic fashion. I really recommend it, and manga publishers like Blu, 801 and Juné seem determined to keep these mood-elevating supplements in ample supply. Juné launches Don’t Say Anymore Darling (page 289) and releases the third volume of Flower of Life (page 290). I don’t know why DMP is publishing it in the Juné imprint [Edited to note that they actually aren’t, and I’m just blurring things in my feeble brain], because there doesn’t seem to be any ai among the shônen, but I don’t really care, because I love the series to a positively embarrassing extent.

Fantagraphics releases the second volume of Gilbert Hernandez’s marvelous Palomar stories in Human Diastrophism. (Page 302.) I reviewed the first volume here.

Go! Comi adds more shônen to its line up with the first volume of Yu Yagami’s Hikkatsu. (Page 308.) In it, the protagonist can use martial arts to repair appliances. Since the ice maker in my refrigerator has been on the fritz for weeks, this concept appeals to me.

While the concept of Oni’s The Apocalipstix doesn’t really speak to me – post-apocalyptic rocker girls! – I’m crazy about Cameron Stewart’s art, and he’s teamed up with writer Ray Fawkes for this original graphic novel. (Page 335.)

Back on Yoshinaga patrol, Tokyopop’s Blu imprint offers Truly Kindly, a collection of shorts from the mangaka. Let’s see… I love Yoshinaga, and I love manga shorts. We’ll mark that down as a “yes.” (Page 365.)

Filed under: ADV, Airship, Archaia, Aurora, Blu, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Fantagraphics, Go! Comi, Juné, Previews 6 Comments
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