The Manga Curmudgeon

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

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Upcoming, updates, upbraiding

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I’m going to be lazy in my assessment of this week’s ComicList and just point you to stalwarts like Jog, Matthew J. Brady, and Chris Mautner and Kevin Melrose. I will just note that the soft-cover version of the second volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack (Vertical) seems to be due in comic shops.

And with that lazy segue out of the way, I’ll move into a quick update on my Black Jack Preventative Medicine Giveaway, which is bustling right along. I’ve gotten some great entries so far, and I can’t wait to post people’s thoughts on how to make the comics industry healthier. Even with under a dozen entries so far, people are covering a lot of ground from a number of different perspectives.

Thanks to everyone who’s linked to the contest. Well… almost everyone. I continue to be shocked by the number of sites and individuals who swipe content from hard-working bloggers like Brigid Alverson and post it as their own. Seriously, that just sucks. If you’re trying to generate content for your site, do it the old fashioned way and just write it, if you’re capable of such complex thinking. Cutting and pasting isn’t writing, and doing so without any kind of attribution is plain old plagiarism.

Tidings, grim and otherwise

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The New York Times casts its gaze on holiday sales prospects for bookstores. It’s sort of a hodgepodge of optimism and pessimism and everything in between, though this passage certainly casts a pall:

“Like many businesses across the retail sector, the publishing industry has been hit by a raft of doom and gloom in the past few weeks. Leonard S. Riggio, chairman and largest shareholder of Barnes & Noble, said in an internal memorandum predicting a dreadful holiday shopping season, as first reported in The Wall Street Journal last week, that ‘never in all my years as a bookseller have I seen a retail climate as poor as the one we are in.’”

It seems like there’s too much innate variability in book-buying patterns from consumer to consumer. Some view book purchases as bedrock, others cut that part of the budget first. And you know there’s no chance that anyone will consider a bailout for the publishing industry, because they just provide illumination and entertainment instead of grossly irresponsible financial products or gas-guzzling vehicles.

Speaking of the Times, I think they have the best web site in the news industry, so I’ll be very interested in what Vivian Schiller does with National Public Radio’s web presence when she leaves the Times to become NPR’s CEO. (In an indication of the current state of NPR’s web presence, I had to do a search to find the Schiller story, which struck me as weird.) If there’s a news organization that should have a good, free online resource, it’s NPR.

Seconded

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I’m really glad Tom Spurgeon reviewed American Widow (Villard), because some variation on cowardice has been keeping me from writing about my own negative response to the book. I’m reluctant to review autobiographical works in the first place, which springs from the probably false assumption that creators are more sensitive to criticism of their own stories as opposed to criticism of ones they’ve invented. (There’s also the unpleasant prospect of essentially telling someone either that their life story is kind of boring or that they don’t tell it very well, or both.)

Anyway, Tom makes a fine argument against the book, and the only thing I’d add is that I felt like I knew less about the subject after I read it than I did before.

Revenuers

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Who doesn’t like to kick off the weekend pondering an ethical conundrum. Dirk Deppey points to David Doub’s attempts to inform Google that they were profiting from advertisements that promote sites that traffic in illegal distribution of other people’s intellectual property:

“The problem is further complicated because a lot of sites for the anime and manga industry uses Google Ads as a source of revenue and in turn you’re linking to sites that then cause a loss in revenue.”

Swampy!

The scholarly approach

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I got an e-mail about a yaoi survey:

“My name is Mara Blair and I am a graduate student in Japanese Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I am currently conducting a research study for my Master’s thesis. This research study is about reading habits and personal reactions to characters in manga, books and fanfiction by readers of yaoi/BL/boy’s love/shounen ai manga.

“The results of this study will be published in my Master’s Thesis for the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. In addition, it is possible that a paper based on this research will be published in Girls Doing Boys Doing Boys: Japanese Boys’ Love Anime and Manga in a Globalized World, edited by Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, & Dru Pagliassotti, to be published by McFarland & Co. in 2009.

“Should you wish to participate in this survey it is located at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=puoorQo7sbuuy0cZYtOcnGg&hl=en “

When you’ve got a little time, go take a look.

Recon recon

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Since I’m too lazy to develop interesting content of my own, I’ll point you towards two really solid pieces over at the recently renovated Manga Recon:

First up is a round-table on MR contributors’ favorite CMX titles. (Note to self: try once again to convince people that Monster Collection: The Girl Who Can Deal With Magical Monsters is, in spite of its dubious provenance and cumbersome title, surprisingly awesome. Also: poach idea for future blog post or column.)

Second is a report on Yaoi-Con 2008 from Isaac Hale, “a real living and breathing gay male.” It’s well worth reading:

“There were definitely some nice aspects of the Con: I wasn’t assumed to be heterosexual (as I am everywhere else) and I was definitely welcomed by all the panelists and industry staff with great warmth. Furthermore, it was just relaxing to be in a place where male x male romance was desirable as opposed to being stigmatized. Generally though, that’s where my warm fuzzies ended.”

I’m sure he’ll get crap for it from people who think Yaoi Con is just fine the way it is, “Bishonen Spanking Inferno” and all, but I’m grateful for his frankness and perspective.

Why I re-read

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John Jakala recently pondered the re-readability of manga… the “keepers” on the shelves that you revisit instead of donating to the library or selling or trading. As I started composing my own list, I thought about what general qualities make a book re-readable for me, or what I’m looking for as I identify the keepers.

One thing that’s true of almost any entertainment I enjoy over and over again, whether it’s a book or a movie or a comic or whatever, is a lightness of spirit. Maybe it’s shallow, but I think a big factor in re-readability is comfort and escape. I pick up a comic again because it made me smile the first time I read it, and I likely could use the mood boost. (It’s sort of the same as comfort food. Mashed potatoes and grilled cheese sandwiches aren’t culinary challenges or super foods, but they soothe. They’re reliable.)

There’s a spin-off of that category that I’ve described as “bathtub manga.” In this class, the comedy doesn’t need to be laugh-out-loud, but it should be a significant component of the work. “Bittersweet” might be the best term for it. Prime bathtub manga, the ideal complement for a good, relaxing soak, is generally romantic in nature, though not necessarily mushy.

And while I’ll often go back to refresh my memory on past developments in sprawling sagas, the titles I re-read a lot tend to be either shorter series or stand-alone works. John mentioned Love Roma, which hits pretty much all of my re-readability buttons – funny, occasionally bittersweet, often romantic, and short. It’s sort of the platonic ideal for me. But I also find that I’m a lot more flexible when grabbing a one-volume story or collection of short stories to re-read. This category has more leeway in terms of complexity, and it extends to episodic titles that feature a regular cast engaged in stand-alone stories, books where there’s a formula but not necessarily a driving narrative that carries from volume to volume.

Up later: What I re-read.

Tuesday links

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Matt Thorn takes a well-informed, two-part look at some recent statistics from Japan on who’s reading manga and how much.

John Jakala contemplates re-readable manga over at Sporadic Sequential and baits me into composing my own list in the process.

Manga Recon has a handsome new portal.

Good Comics for Kids has joined forces with the School Library Journal, which makes total sense. Also, I covet the adorable new avatars for the contributors.

And, just because I’m trying to keep track of my nieces and nephews and see who else from my high school graduating class came out of the closet, I now have a Facebook profile.

Cutting the pie into more pieces

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The New York Times looks at efforts by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing to get a cut of the profits generated by film adaptations of its properties. I’m kind of surprised it took them this long, and it will be interesting to see how complex deals for film rights become.

“In exchange for a percentage of the revenues, Simon & Schuster may agree to publish a book long before it is written, based on an assurance from the Gotham Group that it has Hollywood potential.

“Simon & Schuster will also receive money when its children’s books are turned into video games, comic books or other properties.”

Is anyone else feeling that shiver running down the spine?