Guilt by association

Over at NPR, author David Lipsky identifies his literary guilty pleasure, Marvel’s Runaways. Setting aside the justice of whether or not comics should still be considered a guilty pleasure instead of just a pleasure (and right after Read Comics in Public Day!), there’s been some consternation over a portion of his commentary:

“But I bear the books a grudge. Marvel collected them — because their biggest fans were female teenagers — in tiny digests with girlish covers that were intensely embarrassing to read on the subway. I kept locking eyes with people I could swear had just shaken their heads.”

What do you think of the covers of the first three digests? Do you find them particularly gendered?

On a slightly different front, I’ve seen a few people mention that they’re put off by the covers of Vertical’s Twin Spica, noting that they read a little young. Thoughts?

From the stack: Secret Avengers 1-4

It seems as though Marvel and DC had a bad month in August, seeing big sales drops which subsequently led some people to wonder if $4 is too much to expect people to pay for a 22-page comic. I don’t really have a position on that, as I don’t buy that many pamphlet comics and I flunked the one economics course I took in college. But I did feel like mentioning that there’s a Marvel comic I’m enjoying a lot. It’s Secret Avengers, written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Mike Deodato.

I’m an Avengers fan from way back, and while I haven’t read any of their titles or crossover events with any regularity since Brian Bendis took over, I do like to check in from time to time when some new phase starts to see if any of them click with me. Avengers and New Avengers, both written by Bendis, didn’t click with me. New Avengers looks great, but it’s packed with pet Bendis characters and the kind of dialogue that I find grating after a while. Avengers looks horrible to me, and the cast is more thematically assembled than emotionally functional, if that makes any sense.

Secret Avengers has a few interesting things going for it beyond the fact that it isn’t being written by Bendis. It’s one of those “proactive super-team” concepts where a group of heroes tries to prevent problems rather than just reacting to them. This has never, ever worked to my knowledge, whether we’re talking about Extreme Justice or Force Works or what have you. But it actually works reasonably well here, at least in the first arc.

I think it works because the characters seem like competent grown-ups. They don’t have the kind of interpersonal chemistry that a lot of great Avengers groupings have had in the past, but they work well together, and Brubaker has collected an interesting mix of abilities, backgrounds and character types. That’s always a good choice, but it’s an even better one when there’s an actual narrative point to it. Steve Rogers, formerly dead Captain America who is apparently neither dead nor Captain America now, recruited people based on what they can do and what they know, and that makes sense to me.

This is also one of the more… well, only… interesting portrayals of Steve Rogers that I’ve ever seen. In the past, he’s been the ridiculously perfect icon that everyone tries to please. In Secret Avengers, he seems like an actual leader rather than an object of idolatry. The way Brubaker writes him, he strikes that confident position that suggests, truthfully or not, that consensus has already been achieved, that the people he leads are all on the same page, and that he trusts them to contribute to the best of their abilities. He’s the kind of figure you can see people wanting to follow.

I also like the cast, which is filled with interesting second stringers like the Beast, War Machine, and Valkyrie. Some of them have no previous connection to the Avengers, but all of them bring something interesting to the table, and none of them seem like a ridiculous, meta-driven choice. I’m particularly pleased to see Valkyrie, as she gets to be the demigod muscle. That role usually goes to a guy, and it’s great fun to see a woman in the bruiser role, and to see it not being presented as any kind of big deal.

Deodato’s art is more on the competent side than anything else. It’s attractive enough, and I always understood what was going on, but his body types are disappointingly similar. It’s not just that gymnast Black Widow and warrior Valkyrie have basically the same physiology; almost all of the men look like they could swap heads without difficulty as well. It’s not offensive, just kind of dull.

But overall, if you’re craving an Avengers comic where the characters seem functional and heroic, Secret Avengers might be a good choice.

(I also like Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, but I like it for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with whether it’s a good, accessible comic. I’d guess that it requires a doctoral level of familiarity with Avengers back story to make much sense, given that it references a good dozen major Avengers stories of varying vintages. A good half-dozen characters enter the fray every time you turn around. But I like it because it holds the promise that the Scarlet Witch will be redeemed after an unfortunate “women can’t handle power, especially when they’ve got babies rabies” turn, and also because Wiccan and Hulkling are the cutest gay couple in comics, bar none.)

Upcoming 9/1/2010

It’s an interesting week in ComicList terms. Let’s go right to the pick of the week, shall we?

That would be Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, the first result of the Fantagraphics-Shogakukan team-up that’s being curated by Matt Thorn. It’s a deeply glorious book that brims with Hagio’s psychological and emotional insights. I plan on posting a review on Thursday. You can order a signed copy from the publisher.

If that doesn’t slake your appetite for classic manga, Vertical is kind enough to offer Osamu Tezuka’s Apollo’s Song in two paperback volumes. It’s an example of deeply crazy Tezuka, with the added bonus of lots and lots of sex. If you can resist that description, you’re stronger than I am.

One of last year’s big books is now available in paperback. David Small’s Stitches (W.W. Norton) offers a beautifully rendered and stunningly bleak look at a miserable childhood. It’s a really great graphic novel.

There are also new issues of three very different and very entertaining pamphlet comics. First is the second issue of Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, following the Young Avengers as they search for the Scarlet Witch to the dismay of most of the rest of the residents of the Marvel universe, who seem happy to assume that the longtime heroine is evil and crazy. Next is the penultimate (I think) issue of Brandon Graham’s King City from Image, whose website is so terrible that I won’t even bother trying to find a link to additional information on the comic. And last is the fourth issue of Stumptown, a smart tale of a down-on-her-luck private investigator from Oni.

What looks good to you?

Updated: I forgot one big pamphlet offering, the arrival of Veronica 202 (Archie Comics) and Riverdale’s first openly gay resident, Kevin Keller. I hope I can find a copy so I can be appropriately derisive when conservative groups condemn the comic.

Upcoming 7/28/2010

There’s a perfectly mammoth volume to this week’s ComicList, and a lot of it looks really good. I’ll just take things as they come in alphabetical order.

It’s a big week for Del Rey, which has revised its web site and is now seemingly impossible to navigate in terms of finding information about specific books. Let’s head over to the Random House site instead. There you can find details on the omnibus collection of the last three volumes of Mushishi, written and illustrated by Yuki Urushibara. I love this episodic series of environmental folklore stories. It’s been the subject of a Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by Ed Sizemore at Manga Worth Reading. I’m a little bit behind on Koji Kumeta’s very enjoyable satire, Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, which sees its seventh volume released on Wednesday. And I was pleasantly surprised by the oh-so-formulaic-sounding Code: Breaker, written and illustrated by Akimine Kamijyo.

You can call pretty much any book from Fanfare/Ponent Mon either “eagerly awaited” or “long-awaited.” Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators has been in the pipeline for years, and it’s finally due in comic shops, which is very exciting. It features “[twelve] insightful short graphic stories into the “Hermit Kingdom”, six by European and six by indigenous creators, including award winning Park Heung-yong and “Best Manga 2006” artist Vanyda.” I’m equally excited about the second volume of The Summit of the Gods, written by Baku Yumemakura and illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi. It’s about mysteries and manly mountain climbers circling around Mt. Everest, and it’s very beautifully drawn. (I know I pre-ordered both of these, yet they don’t seem to be arriving at my local comic shop, which I hope is just a function of warehouse weirdness at Diamond and not something… ahem… local.)

I’m surprised by how much I’m liking Marvel’s Secret Avengers, written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Mike Deodato. It’s always nice to see super-heroes behaving like well-intentioned professionals, and this may be the first time that the “proactive super-team” concept has actually worked. I’m not entirely sold on Deodato’s mildly cheesecake-y art, and Valkyrie’s braids are completely insane, but it’s a minor quibble.

Comics by Osamu Tezuka are always a welcome pleasure, and that certainly includes his episodic medical melodrama, Black Jack, about a mercenary surgeon dealing with more bizarre maladies than House could ever have imagined. The 12th volume arrives Wednesday.

Viz offers quite the mixture of titles from along the quality spectrum, so I’ll focus on the good and/or promising. Personal highlights include the 20th volume of Hikaru no Go, written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, and the fifth volume of Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, written and illustrated by Karuho Shiina. On the confirmed debut front is Bakuman, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by the aforementioned Obata. This one’s by the creators of Death Note, which is still selling tons of copies ages after the series concluded. That series was about using a notebook to rule the world. This one’s about using a sketch pad to make lots of money: “verage student Moritaka Mashiro enjoys drawing for fun. When his classmate and aspiring writer Akito Takagi discovers his talent, he begs Moritaka to team up with him as a manga-creating duo. But what exactly does it take to make it in the manga-publishing world?” If anyone should know, it’s these two.

Upcoming 7/14/2010

It’s a momentous, manga-influenced week for the ComicList! Let’s take a look.

I can’t do any better than Oni in describing the sixth and final volume of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s wonderful Scott Pilgrim Series, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour:

“It’s finally here! Six years and almost one-thousand pages have all led to this epic finale! With six of Ramona’s seven evil exes dispatched, it should be time for Scott Pilgrim to face Gideon Graves, the biggest and baddest of her former beaus. But didn’t Ramona take off at the end of Book 5? Shouldn’t that let Scott off the hook? Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn’t, but one thing is for certain — all of this has been building to Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour!”

O’Malley could be said to embody one version of the dream of creators who list manga among their influences. He’s got a hugely successful series, critically and commercially, with a major movie adaptation about to hit theatres. Another enviable outcome went to Felipe Smith, who first saw print as one of Tokyopop’s Original English Language manga creators with MBQ. He then went on to secure a spot in Kodansha’s Morning Two line-up with Peepo Choo. The three-volume series is now being released in English by Vertical, and the first volume arrives in comic shops tomorrow.

I read a review copy from the publisher, and I wish I liked the book’s narrative as much as I like the story behind the comic. It falls into the category of comics that aren’t really for me. It’s about a young American otaku who wins a dream trip to Japan. The kid has romanticized Japan beyond all proportion, picturing it as an Eden of manga- and anime-loving cosplayers who can all get along by virtue of their shared love for a particular character. Little does the kid know that he’s going to be mixed up with vicious gangsters, assassins, brutal teen starlets, and the far-less-idyllic reality of indigenous otaku.

Smith shows terrific energy as a creator, and I appreciate his satirical intent, but Peepo Choo is a little coarse for my tastes. I know that’s weird to say, given how much I love Detroit Metal City and Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu, but Peepo Choo doesn’t quite have the precision with which those books use their gross-out material. The vulgarity doesn’t say as much as it could, and the satire is a little too broad to be as effective as I’d like. Still, this book should have no trouble finding an audience of comic fans who like to see their hobby tweaked and their fandoms punked, and it’s amazing that Smith has been published in a highly regarded manga magazine by a major Japanese publisher.

Over at the Manga Bookshelf, Melinda Beasi is running a mid-season poll on the year’s best new manhwa so far. I’m hoping that I can include Youngran Lee’s There’s Something About Sunyool (Netcomics) on this list, as it looks really promising. Here’s what Melinda had to say:

“Born the illegitimate child of a big-time politician, Sunyool has been accepted officially into her father’s household as an adult and thrown straight into negotiations for arranged marriage. While the premise seems rife with cliché, the execution (so far) is anything but. What could easily be a typical rags-to-riches or fish-out-of-water story actually appears more likely to be a thoughtful, wry look at two young people from vastly different backgrounds learning to make a life together within the cold world of politics. Sunyool’s smart (occasionally cruel) sense of humor and self-awareness make her a very appealing female lead, while her pragmatic young husband is still a bit of a mystery.”

I also might have to pick up a copy of the Young Avengers Ultimate Collection (Marvel), written by Alan Heinberg and penciled by various people, mostly Jimmy Cheung, just so I can have all those stories in one convenient package. I really enjoyed the first issue of Avengers: The Children’s Crusade that came out last week, mostly for the adorable gay super-hero boyfriends being adorable with each other, and also because a Marvel character finally suggested that there might be more to the Scarlet Witch’s behavior than her just having a bad case of babies rabies and not being able to handle her powers because, well, chicks. Also, no one suggested killing the Scarlet Witch, though her fair weather friend Ms. Marvel seems like she’d be more than happy to do so. Shut up, Ms. Marvel.

Upcoming 7/8/2010

As we dive into this week’s ComicList, I’ll remind you that I’ve already named a pick of the week (the second volume of Kou Yuginami’s Twin Spica from Vertical), but there’s lots of other interesting material on its way.

I was a big fan of Chigusa Kawai’s dreamy, intense La Esperança (DMP), so I have high hopes for Kawai’s Alice the 101st (also DMP). It’s about an elite music school that admits an out-of-nowhere prodigy at the violin. Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey gave it a provisional thumbs-up, noting that it’s “haping up to be a very entertaining series about a young musician learning the hard truth: there’s only one way to get to Carnegie Hall.”

If Young Avengers had come out with any regularity, I might not have abandoned Marvel entirely after the systematic trashing of the character of the Scarlet Witch. Young Avengers creators Alan Heinberg and Jimmy Cheung reunite for Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, which features the teen super-team searching for the Scarlet Witch and teases the possibility that one of the company’s first major heroines might be repaired and redeemed. It’s nine issues long and will be released bi-monthly, which is kind of frustrating, but it’s not exactly onerous in terms of cost, just patience.

I’m always game for one of Rick Geary’s Treasury of XXth Century Murder offerings. This time around, he tells the undoubtedly gruesome tale of The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans, which promises “Nights of terror! A city awash in blood! New Orleans right after the First World War. The party returns to the Big Easy but someone looks to spoil it. Grocers are being murdered in the dead of night by someone grabbing their axe and hacking them right in their own cushy beds!” It sounds perfectly charming, doesn’t it?

It’s a big week for Viz, so I’ll focus on two books. My Viz shônen pick of the week would have to be the 54th volume of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece. I’m a little behind on the recent volumes, but it won’t take me very long to catch up.

My Viz shôjo pick of the week would have to be the 21st volume of Ai Yazawa’s gorgeous NANA, sexy rock-and-roll soap opera that should appeal to anyone who might like that sort of thing, because it’s really one of the best examples. Speaking of Yazawa, her English-language debut, Paradise Kiss (Tokyopop), will be the next subject of the Manga Moveable Feast.

Last, but not least, I’m always up for a new volume of Time and Again (Yen Press), sly supernatural comeuppance theatre from JiUn Yun.

What looks good to you?

Upcoming 6/30/2010

Poor Chi looks nervous about this week’s comic-shop debut! Yes, the eagerly-awaited first volume arrives Wednesday, though it may already be in bookstores. And if you would like to try and win a volume or two, you have until midnight (EST) tonight!

Speaking of eagerly awaited volumes, Tokyopop unveils a combined four-and-fifth-volume collection of Mari Okazaki’s Suppli, a series I discussed at length here.

The masochist in me will sometimes emerge when Marvel tries one of its hundreds of new takes on their Avengers properties. I really didn’t care for the self-referential and -congratulatory script and even less for the kind-of-ugly art on adjective-free Avengers, and while I thought Stuart Immonen’s pencils for New Avengers were terrific and witty, I had no patience for the script. (Um, Luke, do you have any idea what your property taxes will be like on a Fifth Avenue mansion? Not to mention the utilities? Tony Stark didn’t do you any favors.) I’d love it if Immonen was drawing Ed Brubaker’s Secret Avengers, as I like the set-up and cast a lot. I don’t dislike Mike Deodato’s pencils, but I do find them a little Swimsuit Issue for my tastes. They aren’t objectionable enough to keep me from checking out the second issue, because the first was written well, and I can’t believe it took someone this long to put Valkyrie and the Black Widow on the same team.

Upcoming 6/3/2010

It’s not a huge week for new comics, but there are plenty of potentially enjoyable arrivals on the ComicList.

It’s a very good week for fans of Kathryn Immonen. She’s got a new mini-series at Marvel called Heralds, illustrated by Tonci Zonic, which features a group of super-heroines dealing with a threat posed by a not-quite-dead-yet female herald of Galactus. I liked her work on the Hellcat mini-series, and in spite of its awful covers and insulting marketing, I liked Zonic’s work on Marvel Divas, which featured a number of the same characters. I’m also looking forward to seeing Hellcat and Valkyrie fighting side by side, as they were mainstays of The Defenders back in the day. I have no idea why any of these women would attend a birthday party for Emma Frost, or why Cyclops would think they’d want to do so, but…

Kathryn Immonen teams up with gifted illustrator Stuart Immonen for Moving Pictures (Top Shelf). The publisher describes it as “the story of the awkward and dangerous relationship between curator Ila Gardner and officer Rolf Hauptmann, as they are forced by circumstances to play out their private lives in a public power struggle. The narrative unfolds along two timelines which collide with the revelation of a terrible secret, an enigmatic decision that not many would make, and the realization that sometimes the only choice left is the refusal to choose.”

Viz does its usual first-week flood with tons of shônen and shôjo. The two most interesting-sounding debuts are Library Wars: Love and War, story and art by Kiiro Yumi, original concept by Hiro Arikawa. It’s about militarized librarians protecting books and preventing censorship. You can find approving early reviews at Manga Worth Reading and The Manga Critic.

On the shônen front, there’s Toriko, written and illustrated by Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro. It follows the titular “Gourmet Hunter,” who must “hunt down the ferocious ingredients that supply the world’s best restaurants.” I suppose this technically counts as food manga, so I feel obligated to read it. MangaBlog’s Brigid Alverson thinks it fulfills its aims admirably.

Elsewhere in Viz’s listings is the final volume of Chica Umino’s lovely Honey and Clover and a bunch of new volumes of Eiichiro Oda’s excellent One Piece.

Upcoming 5/26/2010

Before I get into this week’s ComicList, I wanted to do some linkblogging.

There are two pieces celebrating the CMX catalog. Over at Mania, a quartet of writers compiles a list of “20 Must Have CMX Manga.” The Good Comics for Kids crew focuses on tween- and teen-friendly titles in “The GC4K Guide to CMX Manga.” Pieces like this are important, as DC has already dismantled its CMX web site, and all links to title information now go to a listing for the second issue of the Brightest Day mini-series. That strikes me as both telling and tastelessly ironic.

Over at The Beat, Rich Johnson takes manga’s pulse in an interesting overview. Johnson was DC’s Vice President of Book Trade Sales Sales during the early days of CMX before helping launch Yen Press for Hachette. Over at Robot 6, Brigid (MangaBlog) Alverson examines some of Johnson’s points, finding cause for disagreement. I’m particularly smitten with this passage:

“The graphic novel market boom of the early 2000s was due in part to the fact that publishers started serving the other half of the population. For a long time there were no comics for girls; then suddenly, there were, and the girls bought them. Dismissing their tastes as Rich does (or by complaining about comics being too pink and sparkly) ignores the fact that their money is just as good as any Dark Horse fan’s. Certainly, the opening of the manga market to more literary titles is a welcome development, as is the fact that many indy publishers are now embracing manga. That’s the kind of book I like to read. But the comics market is much bigger than me and my tastes. Girls like to read about schoolgirls with superpowers. You can tell them that’s stupid, or you can publish comics they like (keeping in mind that even genre fans can distinguish between a good comic and a bad one). One of those is a winning business strategy, and one isn’t.”

In the comments, Melinda (Manga Bookshelf) Beasi helps demolish the initial argument about the declining demand for comics for girls and the underestimated relevance of piracy with some page-view figures from scan sites. Those two birds never stood a chance!

Want some manga for grown-ups? Viz provides with the eighth volume of Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, which is my favorite Urasawa title to be released in English so far. It feels like it should be able to save a category, you know?

In the mood for something in the classic vein? Vertical offers the 11th volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack.

Looking for a Japanese take on the comic strip? Tokyopop delivers the first volume of Kenji Sonishi’s Neko Ramen, about a cat who works in a noodle shop.

Wondering if Del Rey is still licensing manga? Well, there’s the debut of Fairy Navigator Runa, written by Miyoko Ikeda and illustrated by Michiyo Kikuta. It originally ran in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi shôjo magazine and is about one of those pesky magical girls.

I might not be finished with my Marvel spite purchases. After seeing some preview pages from the first issue of Secret Avengers, written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Mike Deodato, I have to say that the idea of the Black Widow and Valkyrie fighting side by side is very much to my theoretical taste, as I’ve always liked those two heroines a lot. I do think someone needs to get Deodato a subscription to Vogue as quickly as possible, as he’s been drawing the same “sexy evening dress” since before Heroes Reborn.

Oh, and speaking of Marvel purchases, non-spite category, I entirely agree with this review of the second issue of Girl Comics, particularly for the nice things said about the contributions by Faith Erin Hicks and Colleen Coover. On the whole, I found the second issue to be much stronger than the first. I do totally hate the fact that the Scarlet Witch is painted as the villainess on the cover, but I’m sure that’s an inadvertent jab at my deep, deep bitterness on the subject.

First Kang, then Gargamel

Up has kind of been down this week, and I ended up deciding to make a spite purchase outside of my normal boundaries. This would be the first issue of Marvel’s latest Avengers relaunch, written by Brian Michael Bendis, illustrated by John Romital, Jr., inked by Klaus Janson, colored by Dean White, and lettered by VC’s Cory Petit. (This is another reason I shifted over to manga: fewer creator credits.)

Sean T. Collins assured me that the comic wasn’t half-bad, and he’s right; it’s not. There are some funny bits that I really liked, and they were funny because they fit the characters that delivered them. But it’s still not what I’d describe as a particularly good Avengers comic for the same reasons the last major relaunch wasn’t a particularly good Avengers comic. It’s not really about people doing things that define them as Avengers; it’s about people talking about being defined as Avengers, and not in any qualitative way, even by this author’s tell-don’t-show standards. It’s even more insular, assuming sufficient previous knowledge so that they don’t even need to trot out any shorthand. The reader is being reassured that this is just as Avenger-y as anything they’d previously liked about the franchise, which indicates a certain degree of insecurity, and that insecurity isn’t unwarranted.

The scene where Steve Rogers, the former Captain America, tells everyone why they’re there, just killed me. It opens with this:

And then moves on to this, because maybe the reader couldn’t intuit this stuff on their own and need to be told:

First of all, where are the big office chairs with the trademarked character logos on the back? The only chair at all is that spindly Shaker thing under Hawkeye, though it kind of looks like Wolverine is also sitting down, though he could be on a chaise. I also love that Thor looks like Brittany from Glee – tall, blond, stupid and bored half to death. He looks like he’d be texting if he had his phone handy. But beyond those nitpicks, I’m totally reminded of another big cartoon franchise thanks to Steve’s insistence on reducing his team-mates to catch-phrases. I really couldn’t help but think of the Smurfs.

If you want a more in-depth and serious consideration of the comic, please read this entertaining round-table over at Comics Alliance. I’m going to get to work on my Unified Smurfette Theory of Super-Team Rosters.