The Manga Curmudgeon

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

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More of the same

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I know, I know… more linkblogging. What a surprise! Let’s start off with a round-up of manga reviews:

  • At PopCultureShock, Erin F. (of Manga Recon and MangaCast fame) takes a gander at Densha Otoko (Train Man) phenomenon, and Katherine Dacey-Tsuei reviews Omukae desu (CMX).
  • Back at the MangaCast mother ship, Jack Tse reviews Suzuka (Del Rey), D. Gray-man (Viz – Shonen Jump Advanced) and Q-Ko-Chan (Del Rey).
  • Updated to note: I missed a bunch, but Brigid didn’t, so go ye to MangaBlog.

At Crocodile Caucus, Lyle synthesizes much of the recent talk about manga anthologies and takes a look at comics anthologies past and present.

At Love Manga, David Taylor filters through the week’s ComicList for manga offerings. At the risk of repeating myself, god, finally.

Other Wednesday highlights include the concluding chapter of the first volume of Scott Chantler’s Northwest Passage (Oni Press), which I may have previously mentioned in passing. Or ad nauseum. And before I’ve even gotten around to reading Pyonyang: A Journey in North Korea, Drawn & Quarterly releases Guy Delisle’s Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China. A PDF preview of Shenzhen can be found here.

In truth, I’m still fixating over some of the books I bought over the weekend, particularly Dokebi Bride (NETCOMICS). I liked the first volume so much that I had to hit Amazon for the second.

On an unrelated note, I’m developing a horrible case of WordPress envy. I crave tags, but I worry that my web haplessness would lead to disaster if I tried to transition. Many others have survived the experience, so I’m sure I wouldn’t make too much of a muddle of it. We’ll see.

Via

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I have to admit to some disappointment that Paul O’Brien didn’t review Civil War #4 in this week’s X-Axis. Nobody takes a controversial and/or dreadful Marvel comic out for a spin like O’Brien. He does neatly address the issue of continuity in this Usenet thread. And John Jakala fills the void with a look at potential pro-registration contingency plans still lurking in the shadows.

Moving on to the topic of superhero comics that aren’t sickening, ICv2 notes that Bleach (Viz – Shonen Jump) has been gently blessed with the Cartoon Network Effect. David Taylor at Love Manga and Brigid at MangaBlog both offer some analysis.

Here are even more manga reviews:

  • It will probably never climb too far in the BookScan charts (since it hasn’t already), but Dragon Head (Tokyopop) keeps getting love from the blogosphere. This time, Bill (Pop Culture Gadabout) Sherman praises the book over at Blogcritics.org. (Found via The Comics Reporter.)
  • At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson looks at Day of Revolution (Digital Manga Publishing).
  • Updated to add: TangognaT looks at manga and graphic novels for younger readers at Chicken Spaghetti.
  • Updated again because: It’s Manga Monday over at Comics-and-More. Dave Ferraro takes a look at two titles from Viz’s Editor’s Choice line, Blue Spring and Flowers & Bees.

At The Beat, Heidi MacDonald sets up a comments area for SPX planning. At CWR, Johanna notes that the show is still looking for volunteers. I had a great time volunteering last year, and the show as a whole was a lot of fun. I won’t be able to make it to the show this year, though.

In this week’s Flipped, I chat with David Wise about Go! Comi’s first year on the eve of their next round of releases.

I had great luck doing some manga shopping up in Pittsburgh on Saturday, finding titles that just didn’t seem to make it over the mountains into West Virginia. The only mild irritation came from those stupid theft-deterrence tags that Borders insists on sticking into their inventory. I can appreciate the need to discourage shrinkage, but I live in fear of ripping out a word balloon with the sticky backs on those things.

Wee hours linkblogging

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Pata weighs in on the delivery system issue, focusing on the reading experience and user convenience issues:

“(In regular Engrish: If I try to fit the whole page onscreen, I can’t read the text. If I want to read the text, I can’t fit the whole page onscreen. GAR. )”

Can’t argue with that.

And speaking of reading comics on your computer, MangaCast finds a couple of on-line previews from CMX: Kaoru Mori’s Emma and Wataru Watanabe’s Densha Otoko. (The latter shouldn’t be confused with Hidenori Hara’s Train Man: Densha Otoko from Viz or Machiko Ocha’s Train Man from Del Rey.) I think it’s awfully nifty of the MangaCasters to start assembling these previews in a tagged, easily browsed category.

And I like the re-design of Del Rey’s manga site. It’s more visually interesting and the organization is somewhat clearer, with a prominently displayed “Series” button right up on the top.

Many manga reviews

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At Postmodern Barney, Dorian makes a strong case for toddler assassins and Akira Amano’s Reborn! (Viz – Shonen Jump Advanced).

Because my anticipation was not yet eager enough, Greg McElhatton reviews Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki’s Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse). Update: The weekly e-mail from the local comic shop says this will arrive next Wednesday. Huzzah!

At Completely Futile, Adam Stephanides looks at Risa Itoh’s Konnan de ikka, a four-panel gag strip that features, among other things, shinigami disguised as kittens. Why can’t I buy this right now?

At MangaCast, Jarred Pine peruses on-line previews of some Dark Horse titles including Seiho Takizawa’s Who Fighter with Heart of Darkness, Kim Young-Oh’s Banya: The Explosive Delivery Man, Hiroshi Hirata’s Satsuma Gishiden, and Hiroaki Samura’s Ohikkoshi.

Blogfonte’s Mitch H. isn’t especially impressed with Christopher Volger and Elmer Damaso’s Ravenskull (Seven Seas), where Ivanhoe meets Ladyhawke.

At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson is impressed with Tania del Rio’s Sabrina the Teenaged Witch #78 (Archie Comics).

And while this has been up since Saturday, I’ve been meaning to mention the latest offering from Jeff Lester at Savage Critics, which includes comments on a goodly number of recent volumes of manga titles such as Beck, Death Note, Dragon Head, Golgo 13, and Monster, and debuts Abandon the Old in Tokyo and The Drifting Classroom.

Updated to add a couple of reviews from Dave Ferraro’s Comics-and-More. Ferraro and Patrick offer Double Take reviews of two excellent books, Kazuo Umezi’s The Drifting Classroom (Viz – Signature) and the seventh volume (the craziest yet) of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s Death Note (Viz – Shonen Jump Advanced).

Free and easy

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Queenie Chan follows up on some issues and clarifies others raised in her excellent LJ post of the other day. She raises some additional excellent points about consumer psychology and makes an argument about the kind of audience e-providers should be targeting:

“The holy grail of e-marketing is not capturing the money of the obsessed fans. It’s capturing the money of the vaguely interested people, in the hope that for a little money, they’ll find something that can convert them into paying fans. Because in the Internet age, if that ‘cheap alternative’ isn’t available to people, they’ll just download it for free.”

On the subject of products I probably wouldn’t even read for free, wow, Civil War #4 sounds just awful. And apparently Mark Millar strikes another blow against character diversity with a Nordic-clone death machine as his instrument. Yikes! (Spoilers abound at all of these links, obviously.)

If only I were in San Francisco, I could cleanse the mental palate by stopping by tonight’s signing at A Different Light, featuring Justin Hall, Andy Hartzell and Steve MacIsaac. Of the three, I’ve only read Hall’s work (he was at SPX last year), but I liked his comics a lot. And I’ll just have to catch up with the other two, won’t I?

Thursday linkblogging

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You probably aren’t hearing about this for the first time here, but you really should go take a look at Queenie (The Dreaming) Chan’s thoughts on different potential delivery vehicles for comics. (Found via MangaBlog.) There’s also some no-nonsense chat on the potential for anthologies, especially in niche categories, over at MangaCast.

Tina Anderson piques my interest in When Worlds Collide (Iris Print) by describing it as what would happen “if Antarctic Press, Oni Press, and Avatar got together, and sponsored a BL comic trimmed to manga size.”

There’s a thread over at Anime On DVD that asks if guys should translate yaoi. The consensus seems to be that anyone who will approach the material with respect, do diligent research, and try to capture the spirit of the original is a good choice for the job, though someone with all of those qualities and a thorough grounding in the category would be ideal. And Bill Flanagan stops by to offer his perspective. (Found via When Fangirls Attack.)

John Jakala has heard back from Dark Horse on the release schedule of Oh My Goddess!

I agree with Heidi MacDonald. Back-to-print announcements generally aren’t very exciting to me when they’re about 52 or Civil War, but it’s great to hear news like this about a book like Action Philosophers.

Over at the Print magazine site, there’s an early review of Tom Spurgeon’s Comics as Art: We Told You So (Fantagraphics). Speaking of which, folks at The Engine are responding to the lawsuit Harlan Ellison has filed against Fantagraphics.

At Newsarama, Gail Simone offers an update on the Hernandez family’s progress since the devastating fire that destroyed their home and rounds up the varied efforts to help out.

Make it work, people

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Do you have what it takes to enter the exciting world of comics alterations? John Jakala wants to give you the opportunity to test your mettle in this up-and-coming sector of graphic novel production!

Stop by Sporadic Sequential for all of the details! (There’s even a prize!)

Consumerism

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Oh, Marvel. When I said I wished you’d take lessons from manga publishers, I didn’t mean for you to adopt nipple phobia. (Images at the link might not be work safe.)

ICv2 has some interesting manga-related content today. Yaoi Press is putting the YA in yaoi, launching a line for the 13-and-over crowd. (Honestly, DMP and Blu already publish a bunch of titles that would suit early teens, or at least what grown-ups think they can handle, but I think this is the first time anyone’s specifically tried to market a line towards them.) And Viz responds to questions about edits in a recent volume of Fullmetal Alchemist.

Comic Book Resources has posted sales figures in the Direct Market for August. Would I be spoiling the surprise if I told you that Naruto topped the manga chart? Update: David Taylor crunches the numbers over at Love Manga.

Lyle loves Yakitate!! Japan. Pass it on.

John Jakala has some issues with Dark Horse’s scheduling problems.

Speaking of Dark Horse, there’s still no sign of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Serivce in this week’s comics, even though it was due out in August. While I’m sure Banya: The Explosive Delivery Man has its charms (and is Dark Horse’s first manhwa release), I will not be appeased by the fact that they did release a book with “delivery” in its title.

In happier new arrival news, Seven Seas delivers the first volume of Boogiepop Dual. Fanfare/Ponent Mon, while still leaving me wondering where my copy of The Building Opposite is, does offer Mariko Parade by Kan Takahama and Frédéric Boilet.

Update #2: The MangaCasters offer their picks of the week.

Manga review linkblogging

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Over at PopCultureSchock, Erin F. goes highbrow with the latest Manga Recon column. There are reviews of A Patch of Dreams (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), Sexy Voice and Robo (Viz), Pyonyang: A Journey in North Korea (Drawn and Quarterly), How to “Read” Manga: Gloom Party (Digital Manga Publishing), and The Push Man & Other Stories (D&Q). (The fan-service averse should skip the PCS front page, lest they be confronted by some young woman threatening site visitors with her Ass of Doom.)

At Sporadic Sequential, John Jakala takes a look at the adorable but baffling Q-Ko-Chan: The Earth Invader Girl (Del Rey) and Omukae Desu (CMX). (John isn’t as taken with OD as I was.)

MangaCast (at the spiffily redesigned site) offer reviews of RavenSkull #1 (Seven Seas), Lunar Legend Tsukihime #2 (DrMaster), and the utterly appealing, way-too-short Chikyu Misaki #3 (CMX). Brigid at MangaBlog gave her thoughts on RavenSkull not too long ago.

Halfway there

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What is it with Marvel reminding me of Heathers? Anyway, when reading Ray Randell’s scathing summary of the final issue of Marvel Team-Up (found via Postmodern Barney), I couldn’t help but think of that funeral scene for the jocks. “I love my dead, gay son!”

That great black comedy rightly makes Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 50 best high-school movies ever made. Alas, Saved does not, which is just wrong.

To assuage me, EW provided a profile of the endearingly bitter Rachael Harris, who is set to appear in Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration. The prospect of watching Harris improvise opposite Parker Posey makes me even more excited about the movie.

At Yet Another Comics Blog, Dave Carter provides the promised additional comparative data on Tokyopop and Viz release trends. In the comments on the first post, Jake Forbes notes another point of comparison: that Viz has a reliable source of longer manga series, while Tokyopop has to work with smaller publishers who tend to put out shorter stories.

Forbes, who provides fluid, literate adaptations for Fullmetal Alchemist and other series, weighs in on the alteration of a sequence in the eighth volume of FMA over at MangaBlog.

And thanks to Lyle for ensuring that the theme music from Paranoia Agent will be in my head for at least three more days. More, if I keep compulsively clicking on the video clip.