Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them
Okay, I totally agree with Tom Spurgeon’s sentiment here, and I thought Heidi MacDonald did a nice job outlining the special blend of greed and disorganization behind it all, but who would have ever thought things could get worse?
Comics, once again I have underestimated you.
Before I get into this week’s releases, let me just note that there could not be a worse time for Anime News Network to experience server problems than on the day when there’s news to be read about a new series called “Detective Puppy,” as was noted at MangaBlog. Since this is manga, chances are only about 50-50 that the comic will actually feature an adorable canine solving crimes, but I must know more. (As an example of this kind of misleading cuteness bait-and-switch, Penguin Revolution = cute + funny – actual penguins.)
Okay, I’ll shift my focus to the nearer future, as in Wednesday.
My pick of the generally strong week is the second volume of Keiko Tobe’s With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child (Yen Press). In addition to having the really admirable intentions, the first volume combined documentary and dramatic elements quite well.
It’s a strong week for Del Rey, or perhaps more accurately for me as a reader of Del Rey titles. There are new volumes of Fuyumi Soryo’s sci-fi psychodrama, ES: Eternal Sabbath, Ai Morinaga’s screwball sports-manga parody, My Heavenly Hockey Club, and Tomoko Ninomiya’s funny and charming look at music students, Nodame Cantabile.
Fans of Andi Watson’s Glister (Image) should definitely give Princess at Midnight (also Image) a look. It was originally published in the first Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, and Image is releasing it as a stand-alone with some additional material.
Oni offers the second trade paperback collection of Maintenance, a funny look at custodians at a mad-scientist think tank, written by Jim Massey and drawn by Robbi Rodriguez.
Tokyopop ensures high placement on the month’s sales chart with the release of the 19th volume of Natsuki Takaya’s extremely moving, often emotionally raw fantasy-romance, Fruits Basket. The story itself is still going strong, even if Takaya has been forced to resort to members of the student council for her cover subjects.
Fruits Basket might get edged out of the top sales spot by the 16th volume of Hiromu Arakawwa’s Fullmetal Alchemist. I’ve almost gotten used to bestsellers also being really entertaining comics. At least in this context.
Wow, there’s quite a few comics worth nothing coming out this week.
Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá have created quite the entertaining comic in The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse). The fourth issue arrives Wednesday.
DrMaster gets on the omnibus… um… bus with a collection of the first three volumes of Gokurakuin Sakuraks’ bluntly creepy Category Freaks. (I’ll probably pass on the collection, but it does remind me that I still need to catch up with the third volume.)
Go! Comi releases two first volumes this week: Yuu Asami’s A.I. Revolution and Kyoko Hashimoto’s Love Master A.
The third issue of Andi Watson’s absolutely charming Glister arrives from Image. What bizarre and mildly irritating difficulties will our heroine’s bizarre family manse present this time? I can’t wait to find out. (And okay, is it just me, or should the ratio of frame and banner to actual content be a little higher than it is at Image’s web site? It’s like Watson’s poor comic is hiding down at the bottom of the page. There’s very much of a “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” vibe to it.)
A new issue of Otaku USA arrives, which means I need to swing by Barnes & Noble. Not that I ever need a specific reason.
Queenie Chan’s The Dreaming (Tokyopop) concludes with the third volume. And if you’re looking for the gift that may secretly be plotting world domination, there’s a three-volume collection of Sgt. Frog.
And Viz releases its intermittent avalanche of Signature material, with new volumes of The Drifting Classroom, Naoiki Urasawa’s Monster, and Uzumaki. In the more commercial (though no less artistically worthy) corner of Viz-ville, there’s a new volume of Fullmetal Alchemist due as well. Oh, and a new issue of Shojo Beat, which I have to buy because of Honey and Clover and The Sand Chronicles.
See? Something for everyone. Or lots of things for me.
It’s time again for a quick tour through the latest Previews catalog.
In Andi Watson’s Princess at Midnight (page 140), a sheltered, home-schooled girl becomes a capricious, adorable despot when the lights go out. The story was one of the highlights of the first Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, and now Image is publishing a stand-alone version. I’m half-heartedly debating whether ten new pages merit buying it again, but I think I will for two reasons. One, if sales are strong, Watson might be more inclined to do a follow-up, and two, it seems like a reasonable enough way to thank Image for publishing Glister. (I’d thank them even more wholeheartedly if I could ever find anything on their website.)
I try and resist mentioning new volumes of ongoing series when I do these things, but when the series is as good as Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! (volume six on page 191, ADV), I weaken.
The same flexible ethics apply to Fuyumi Soryo’s ES (volume 8 on page 250, Del Rey). This is great, character-driven science fiction. (Does anyone know if this is the last volume in the series?)
Sometimes a premise sounds so delightfully idiotic and tacky that I’m unable to resist. That’s the case with Kei Azumaya’s All Nippon Airline (Juné, page 265):
“ANAL – All Nippon Air Lines – is a unique airline company. All of its employees are beautiful gay men. On top of that, relationships between employees, or even between passengers and employees, are highly encouraged!”
I’m not proud.
It’s been running in Shojo Beat, and now the first collection of Chica Umino’s sweet, hilarious Honey and Clover (Viz, page 357) will be available for people who pass on the magazine.
The premise sounds really familiar (Wild Adapter Junior, maybe), but the full-page ad for Saki Otoh and Nakamura Tomomi’s Switch (Viz, page 359) is really eye-catching and clever.
Okay, and since I’m indulging in mentions for ongoing series, I’ll note that the second volume of Keiko Tobe’s With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child (Yen Press, page 363) is due. It’s a really admirable series, executed well, and it’s unlike pretty much anything else in the manga category, though I wish it weren’t.
Andi Watson’s Glister (Image) is set in one of those places I kind of want to live. Chilblain Hall is a big old wreck of a country house filled with oddities, yet it’s strangely inviting. Weird things happen there, but the worst of them never come close to being menacing. Irritating, maybe, but they’re nothing the titular heroine can’t handle, and life would be dull without them.
So when a haunted teapot arrives and dictates the most tedious novel imaginable to poor Glister Butterworth, she rolls up her sleeves and works towards a solution, one that hopefully won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. When a stuck-up neighbor makes disparaging remarks about Chilblain Hall and it wanders off in a huff, Glister’s imaginative coping skills kick in again.
Charming without being sickly, witty without any bite, these are really delightful comics. This isn’t really a surprise, given Watson’s track record for tremendously appealing work. His heroine sets the tone for everything – sensible but not completely without sentiment, quick-witted, and ready to roll with whatever her strange home and life present.
For all of the weirdness, the comedy is very low-key. It’s almost observational, except Glister deals with pushy bridge trolls and tourists renting the dungeon for war games instead of the line at the DMV or bad cell phone connections. What’s the opposite of magical realism? Because that’s what Glister is.
(I haven’t even tried to describe Watson’s illustrations, mostly because Tom Spurgeon described them so well and anything I wrote would seem kind of pitifully derivative.)
(Oh, and I have to admit that when I looked at the back cover and saw that this had been published by Image, my first thought was, “No, really? Image? Not Oni? Do I even have a category for Image?” My second was, “Good for them.”)
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The year in fun (2007)
From a fun comics standpoint, 2007 was absolutely awesome. You know how I know? I had a hard time keeping the list below to 26 items. Okay, it’s an arbitrary number, and I could have just listed everything, but I thought I would make a stab at some pretense of discernment.
I’m not saying these are the best comics of 2007, though I’d put several in that category. I’m never entirely comfortable with that label, because I haven’t read everything and worry that my tastes are too narrow to make a reasonable stab at such a project anyways. But I have no trouble telling which comics I had a lot of fun reading, so here they are.
(Doesn’t the jump create a breathtaking level of suspense? Well, doesn’t it?)
(Updated because I can’t keep my years straight.)