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Schadenfreude

February 14, 2008 by

Now that I’ve got the sentimentality out of my system, it’s time to address the flip side of the Valentine’s Day equation. Some (and trust me, I’m sometimes among them) find the whole concept kind of nauseating. So if you’d really like to rip Cupid’s bow out of his hands and do some real damage, here are some comics that allow you to bask in the misery and misfortune of others.

Bambi and Her Pink Gun, by Kaneko Atsushi (DMP): Dystopia populated by creepy, violent societal parasites? Check. Unsympathetic protagonist who cuts a giddy swath through their ranks? Double check. DMP dropped this delightfully nasty series after only two volumes, but oh, those two volumes are filled with cheerful misanthropy. I miss Bambi.

Dragon Head, by Minetaro Mochizuki (Tokyopop): You’ve probably said it to yourself: “If I see one more school trip in a manga series, it had better end really badly.” This is the manga for you. In ten volumes of pretty much relentless terror, with occasional side trips to mere creepiness, a handful of survivors try and figure out what the heck happened to Japan while their train was passing through a tunnel.

The Drifting Classroom, by Kazuou Umezi (Viz): If you could harvest the terrified screams of children and use them as an alternative fuel source, you could probably use this book to power the Mid-Atlantic Region for a few months, at least. I know I shouldn’t admit that watching elementary school children meet grisly and varied ends is a real hoot for me, but it is.

MW, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical): Tezuka is generally an optimist, but that doesn’t mean he’s naïve, or that he can’t be downright depraved when the situation calls for it. MW calls for it over and over, and Tezuka doesn’t shrink from any of the lurid possibilities of kidnapping, mass murder, blackmail, illicit sex, and so on.

Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (Viz): “Uzumaki” means “spiral,” as in “downward.” The third volume of Viz’s re-release of this grimly imaginative horror series is probably already available in bookstores, or you can wait until next week when it’s due to show up at the comic shops.

Filed under: DMP, Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop, Vertical, Viz 9 Comments

Rom com

February 13, 2008 by

One of the things that was confirmed for me when I started reading manga in earnest was that I’m a big sucker for romance in the comic form. I’d always been more inclined to the soap operatic elements of super-hero comics than the adventure end of things, and many manga series allowed me to forego the flying fists entirely. With the imminent arrival of Valentine’s Day, here are some of my favorites:

Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (DMP): Okay, it’s more about coping with the challenges of adulthood in general than romance in particular, but I think Yoshinaga is at her funniest, sharpest, and most generous when she examines the bittersweet qualities of interpersonal relationships. It’s almost all sighs instead of swoons, but a story doesn’t have to offer anything resembling “happily ever after” to be romantic in its own way. All four volumes are available.

Emma, by Kaoru Mori (CMX): On the other hand, this one is all swoons, all the time, and it is glorious. It follows the fraught-with-obstacles romance of a housemaid and a member of the upper class (though tellingly, not the aristocracy), rendered with breathtaking emotional precision and lush, detailed illustrations. Only one more volume is due from this series.

Fake, by Sanami Matoh (Tokyopop): You’ve got to either embrace or ignore the wooly-headed stupidity of the police procedural aspects of this tale of detectives in lust, but it’s worth it. It’s a seven-volume pas de deux between bisexual Dee and undecided Ryo, fighting (snicker) crime and finding their way towards each other. Don’t think; just read.

Genshiken, by Kio Shimoku (Del Rey): Like Antique Bakery, this one isn’t a romance, per se, but some of the undercurrents kill me. Shimoku plays me like a fiddle with a will-they-won’t-they-probably-not subplot that runs throughout the nine volumes of the series.

Love Roma, by Minoru Toyoda (Del Rey): This one presents high-school romance in all of its goofy glory. This review at Sleep is for the Weak tells you everything you need to know about the book’s considerable virtues. All five volumes of its run are available.

Maison Ikkoku, by Rumiko Takahashi (Viz): Fifteen (thanks, Jun) volumes of romantic misunderstandings and near-misses should be exhausting, but it isn’t. Takahashi keeps her options open and populates her fictional boarding house with a likeable (and likeably awful) cast of characters that keeps things hopping. It’s heartfelt and funny in equal measure, a real classic.

Paradise Kiss, by Ai Yazawa (Tokyopop): Creative passion and young lust clash in this sexy soap about student designers and their muse, a gawky grind who discovers her inner supermodel (and lots of other stuff). If you’ve been enjoying Yazawa’s Nana (Viz), you owe it to yourself to give this one a look. (And if there was ever a series that begged for a glamorous, done-in-one omnibus treatment, it’s this one. Or maybe Antique Bakery. Or both.)

So what are your swoon-worthy choices?

Edited to add one more, because I can’t believe I forgot it:

Rica ‘tte Kanji!?, by Rica Takashima (ALC): This is perhaps the most adorable backlash comic ever. After growing seriously weary of the often tragic outcomes of most manga tales of lesbian love, Takashima decided to take a more lighthearted, positive approach. The result is this charming story of the budding romance between a young innocent and the not-much-older-but-certainly-wiser woman she meets in Tokyo’s gay district.

Filed under: ALC, CMX, Del Rey, DMP, Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop, Viz 14 Comments

Wild adapters

January 27, 2008 by

I was reading Yuu Asami’s A.I. Revolution (Go! Comi) yesterday, and it’s a very nice book. I’ll probably write about it in more detail later, but one of the things that really struck me was the sense that the translation and adaptation made for a very fluid, appropriate reading experience. Some scripts come off as inadvertently clunky from beginning to end, but translator Christine Schilling and adapter Brynne Chandler actually employ clunkiness in ways that serve the story. (Several of the characters are humanoid robots, so it makes sense that their evolving use of language would be stiff or inelegant, and Schilling and Chandler seem to consciously play with the counterpoint between robot and human speech.)

Anyway, that’s a long, inelegant introduction to a question: has anyone put together a web-based resource that lists translator/adapter credits? I think it would be useful. Maybe I should do it if there isn’t one already out there.

Filed under: Go! Comi, Quick Comic Comments 12 Comments

Random Thursday thoughts

January 10, 2008 by

I’m in one of those phases where reading comics and writing about them seem to have overtaken me a bit. There are three or four reviews I’ve got drafted in my head, two or three column ideas bouncing around up there, and feedback overload from all of the good “best of 2007” lists floating around. The best thing to do would be to just sit down with these various books and get to writing (after I read Rutu Mordan’s Exit Wounds again, because critical consensus has me feeling like I’m missing brilliance and just seeing general excellence), but I keep getting distracted by new comics that show up.

As expected, Nextwave: I Kick Your Face (Marvel) was very, very funny, and I’d love to see more of it (collected in paperback). There was one sequence that was kind of jarring, featuring some perhaps-too-astute parodies of the kinds of spandex stylings that normally exhaust me. I recovered, obviously.

I’m still not quite sure what to think of the preview copy of Hell Girl that Del Rey sent me. It’s shôjo comeuppance theater by Miyuki Eto where terrible things happen to horrible people after good people prone to immediate gratification consign their tormentors to hell with the help of an urban legend with a web site. I think I need to read more of this before I render any kind of verdict, but there are some really discordant things going on here.

And a whole bunch of Viz books I really like have come out lately. I like Naoki Urasawa’s Monster so much better when it doesn’t focus on plaster saint Tenma, and I’m constantly and pleasantly surprised by Urasawa’s ability to structure a thriller in surprising but entirely coherent ways. I sense a whole lot of Tenma on the immediate horizon, but the book’s pleasures will definitely outweigh the dullness of its protagonist. More Nana more often makes me happy, even when the story itself makes me very, very sad. I love how Ai Yazawa is playing with and rebalancing the naïve/worldly dynamic between her two leads. And the handy thing about having the kind of large, well-crafted cast that has assembled in Fullmetal Alchemist is that you can do an entire volume where one lead barely appears and the other doesn’t show up at all and it will still be riveting.

And now, some links:

  • Christopher Butcher takes a very thoughtful, well-informed, in-depth look at some of the items from my 2007 manga news round-up.
  • Johanna Draper Carlson rounds up some recent manga news items and offers her own thoughts. (Pop quiz: Does Dark Horse actually publish any shôjo, or just manga titles from other categories that people who like shôjo might enjoy?)
  • The Occasional Superheroine looks at Newsweek’s discovery of women who write comics and finds it wanting. (When I read the piece at Newsweek’s site, there was this horrible sidebar ad about some wrinkle cream showing a woman who had been retouched to look like something just this side of moldering, because physical representations of life experience are apparently to be fought with all the vigor science can muster. It seems to have been taken out of the page’s ad rotation, and while the replacements are surprisingly low-rent for an outfit like Newsweek, none seem to be actively thematically opposed to the page’s main content. Yay?)
    • Filed under: Dark Horse, Del Rey, Drawn & Quarterly, Linkblogging, Marvel, Media, Quick Comic Comments, Viz 1 Comment

    The year in fun (2007)

    January 1, 2008 by

    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.)

  • 10, 20, and 30, by Morim Kang (Netcomics): Korean josei, basically, following three women of different ages and temperaments as they manage romance (or the lack of it), work (or the lack of it) and family (or an excess of it).
  • Aya, by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie (Drawn & Quarterly): In my defense, this came out really early in 2007, so I must have been confused and thought it was on last year’s version of this list. Because seriously, it’s one of the best graphic novels of the year and delightfully fun to boot. A sensible, ambitious young woman in the prosperous Ivory Coast of late 1970s keeps her head as the people around her leap into amusing, romantic misalliances.
  • Azumanga Daioh Omnibus, by Kyohiko Azuma (ADV): It’s tough to pick which delights me more: the resumption of publication of Azuma’s Yotsuba&!, or this big fat bargain collection of his very funny comic strips about a group of high-school girls and their eccentric teachers.
  • Black Metal, by Rick Spears and Chuck BB (Oni): Antisocial metal-heads discover their secret destiny while playing old vinyl backwards. Very funny, with appropriately and appealingly crude visuals.
  • Bloody Benders, The, by Rick Geary (NBM): I should probably feel some kind of regret that Geary will never run out of gruesome tales to fuel his Treasury of Victorian Murder series. I don’t, because they’re consistently brilliant, informative, insightful, and unsettling. For the high-minded voyeur in all of us.
  • Empowered, by Adam Warren (Dark Horse): Warren is amazingly skilled at walking a thin, frayed tightrope between lurid spandex cheesecake and a witty repudiation of the same. Terrific characters and genuinely funny, imaginative takes on potentially repetitive scenarios make all the difference.
  • Flower of Life, by Fumi Yoshinaga (Digital Manga): When people bemoan the fact that so many manga titles center on the trials and tribulations of high school students, they can’t be talking about this one, can they? I’m just going to come right out and say it: it’s every bit as good as Antique Bakery, which means it’s absolutely great.
  • Gin Tama, by Hideaki Sorachi (Viz): This one’s all about attitude: coarse, goofy, hyperactive attitude. A fallen samurai takes odd jobs in a world that’s handed the keys to alien invaders. There’s enough canny satire to balance out the low-brow antics, making this book a very pleasant surprise.
  • Glister, by Andi Watson (Image): A really delightful combination of fantasy, manor-house comedy, and singularly British sensibility. This book manages to have a warm heart and a tounge planted firmly in its cheek.
  • Honey and Clover, by Chica Umino (Viz): Okay, so this goofy, romantic tale of students at an art college is still being serialized in Shojo Beat and hasn’t come out in individual volumes yet. It’s hilarious.
  • Johnny Hiro, by Fred Chao (AdHouse): In a year that offered more genre mash-up comics than I can count, this was probably my favorite for the underlying realism of the young couple at its center. Giant monsters and ninja sous-chefs are just part of the challenges urban life presents to Johnny and Mayumi.
  • Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Book Two, by Tove Jansson (Drawn & Quarterly): Everyone knows these strips are timeless, international treasures, right? And that Drawn & Quarterly deserves some kind of cultural prize for getting them back in print? Okay, just checking.
  • My Heavenly Hockey Club, by Ai Morinaga (Del Rey): Under the flimsiest pretext of sports manga lurks a goofy love letter to two of my favorite deadly sins, sloth and gluttony. Easily the best screwball comedy that came out last year.
  • Northwest Passage: The Annotated Collection, by Scott Chantler (Oni): A handsomely produced collection of one of my favorite comics of 2006, featuring treachery and adventure in colonial Canada.
  • Parasyte, by Hitoshi Iwaaki (Del Rey): Okay, so the art is dated and, well, frankly just plain bad in a lot of ways. (Many of the high-school girls in the cast look like they’re pushing 40.) But there’s just something about a boy and the shape-shifting parasite that’s taken over his hand that warms my heart.
  • The Professor’s Daughter, by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert (First Second): There are certainly better, beefier works by Sfar, but this is still charming, beautiful stuff, with Sfar’s endearingly cranky voice getting a lovely rendering from Guibert.
  • Re-Gifters, by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel (Minx): A snazzy little story of romance, martial arts and self-esteem that avoids every single Afterschool Special pitfall through solid characterization, tight storytelling and spiffy art.
  • Ride Home, The, by Joey Weiser (AdHouse): I have yet to find a gnome living in my car, but maybe it just knows I’m on to it thanks to this charming, all-ages adventure about embracing change.
  • Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni): This series of a young slacker in love just gets better and better, which hardly seems possible. Great characters, a spot-on kind of magical realism, and plenty of twists and turns to keep things fresh and moving.
  • Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, by Jeff Smith (DC): The Mary Marvel sequences are enough to put this on a Decade in Fun list, but Smith’s re-imagining of the origin of Captain Marvel is delightful from top to bottom.
  • Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly): Not all comics about whiny losers who are unable to sustain interpersonal relationships are intolerable. Some, like this one, are absolutely delightful and have what may be the year’s best dialogue.
  • Suppli, by Mari Okazaki (Tokyopop): Damnation, how did this one slip under my radar for so long? In this beautifully drawn josei title, an advertising executive throws herself into work after the end of her seven-year relationship. It’s exactly the kind of book tons of people have been begging for: funny, intelligent, moving and grown up.
  • Umbrella Academy, The: Apocalypse Suite, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá (Dark Horse): It’s hardly the first comic to portray the super-team as a dysfunctional family, or maybe even the 50th, but it’s a clever, fast-paced, wonderfully illustrated example all the same.
  • Venus in Love, by Yuki Nakaji (CMX): Aside from the novelty of its college setting (as opposed to the shôjo standard, high school), this book has ample low-key charm. A straight girl and a gay guy become friendly rivals when they realize they have a crush on the same classmate.
  • Welcome to the N.H.K., by Tatsuhiko Takimoto (Tokyopop): I can take or leave the manga this novel inspired, but the source material is tremendously appealing reading. It’s like if David Sedaris wrote a novel about straight, dysfunctional Japanese people.
  • Wild Adapter, by Kazuya Minekura (Tokyopop): Charismatic, emotionally damaged boys pose their way through the stations of the noir cross. Mostly style, but what style, and a reasonable amount of substance to keep you from feeling entirely frivolous. (If frivolity isn’t a worry, you can easily ignore the substance.)
    • Filed under: AdHouse, ADV, Awards and lists, CMX, Dark Horse, DC, Del Rey, DMP, Drawn & Quarterly, First Second, Image, Minx, NBM, Netcomics, Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop, Viz 2 Comments

    Quick comic comments: Wild Adapter vol. 3

    December 23, 2007 by

    Are Kazuya Minekura’s Saiyuki and Saiyuki Reload as insanely entertaining as Wild Adapter (Tokyopop)? If they are, I have a daunting amount of catching up to do. (Dear Tokyopop: All I want for Christmas is an inexpensive Saiyuki omnibus series.)

    The third volume of Wild Adapter offers everything I loved about the first two: improbably sexy characters posing through mostly outlandish scenarios, all of which manage to be unexpectedly involving beyond their considerable surface sheen. From time to time, it’s also hysterically, intentionally funny.

    There’s a bit in the third volume that I don’t want to spoil, but it made me laugh out loud. It combines everything that I love about the book: deft plotting, high style, and Minekura’s standing as one of manga’s premiere teases.

    Filed under: Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop 5 Comments

    Quick comic comments: Formulas

    December 20, 2007 by

    While Del Rey’s X-Men collaboration with Marvel is still a ways down the road, the manga publisher’s Psycho Busters (manga by Akinara Nao, story by Yuya Aoki) accomplishes roughly the same thing. A group of teen psychics is being hunted by a mysterious organization, and they seek out an otherwise average, geeky boy to help them. The most persuasive evidence of their psychic abilities is that they see potential in Kakeru, their dork savior.

    The runaways are all naturally occurring or “wild” psychics. Their pursuers seem to have been grown in captivity by their generically menacing overlords. Since this is shônen, first contact is made by the naked astral projection of the nubile telepath of the group. It’s the first example of some strangely halfhearted fan service that’s sprinkled throughout the book. On the bright side, the fan service is relatively equal opportunity. One foe is a naughty schoolgirl. Another is sexy street trash. You can tell they’re bad because both tend to do suggestive things with their tongues.

    Bits of Psycho Busters are quite appealing. After a thoroughly generic opening that even Kakeru identifies as by-the-numbers manga fodder, there are some interesting battle sequences. With no apparent psychic abilities, Kakeru has to improvise to keep up with his comrades and survive the attacks of the tongue people. On the whole, though, it’s pretty forgettable stuff. The most fun to be had is finding parallels to early Uncanny X-Men stories, and that only goes so far.

    *

    My mental jury is still out on Kazune Kawahara’s High School Debut (Viz – Shojo Beat). On the one hand, I’m naturally averse to stories about a girl whose life seems to revolve around finding a boyfriend. (It’s just as tiresome with the genders reversed.) But the girl in this case, former jock Haruna, is just so weird.

    After overdosing on shôjo manga, Haruna has decided to pursue romance with the same vigor and methodology she used to master softball. Her initial efforts are completely unsuccessful, so she seeks out a coach in the form of popular, ruthlessly blunt Yoh. It’s kind of a case of those who can’t do teaching; Yoh’s had a bunch of girlfriends, but he’s driven them all away with his excessive honesty. He reluctantly agrees to coach Haruna, provided she promises not to fall in love with him.

    The obvious conclusion is that she’ll break her promise, but I hope she doesn’t. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but Kawahara seems intent on derailing her own formula. Determination aside, Haruna seems impervious to the kind of improvement Yoh offers. She even finds a dorky soul mate all on her own, to Yoh’s consternation.

    This is where things get tricky. Logical conclusion demands a love match between coach and trainee, but as things stand, that would be utterly unsatisfying. The only way Yoh could emerge as a suitable alternative to Haruna’s other suitor is if the boy (an adorable goof) dies suddenly, to be honest. But I am curious as to where Kawahara is going with all this. If she takes the unexpected path, High School Debut could be a lot of fun.

    (Reviews based on complimentary copies provided by the publisher.)

    Filed under: Del Rey, Quick Comic Comments, Viz 3 Comments

    Quick comic comments: Shifts

    November 28, 2007 by

    I’m happy to report that Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! (Dark Horse) makes an exhilarating return to form with the ninth volume. Endo leaves the cartels and brothels of South America behind for a thrilling, multilayered hostage crisis in Asia. Rebels have occupied an oil facility owned by evil empire Propator. The facility itself is less meaningful to the rebels than shedding light on the plight of their people, who are the targets of systematic cultural assimilation. As Propator tries brutally to put a lid on the situation, other forces are working to broadcast the situation as widely as possible. In other words, the forces of money, politics and media are swirling around in the kind of crazily complex yet strangely humanistic way that Endo executes so very well.

    Endo folds in a number of new narrative elements and characters with apparent ease. I’m particularly impressed by the introduction of the rebel group. With so many outside forces pulling the strings, they could easily come across as idealistic dupes, but Endo gives them a much more layered portrayal. They know they’re out of their depth, and the knowledge sparks dissent over method and means. But they’re strangely admirable all the same, and it’s fascinating to watch their leader, Marihan, walk a tightrope of morality, influence and survival.

    On the other hand, there’s the fifth volume of Marley’s Dokebi Bride (Netcomics). I’ve always had the sense that Marley doesn’t have much of an attention span for the various plot threads she weaves together, but it’s usually part of the book’s charm. It generally seems more expansive than scattered.

    This time around, the shift in focus is rather jarring. Things open with a blistering, extremely effective confrontation between troubled Sunbi and a rival shaman. The fallout pushes Sunbi’s family situation from difficult to impossible, and she runs away. Suddenly we find ourselves in what I can only describe as an Afterschool Special produced by Lifetime. Sunbi winds up in a community of runaways and fades into the background as her new, emotionally damaged roomies suck up all the oxygen. If there was anything particularly surprising about their woes or if it all influenced Sunbi in the slightest, it might not have been a problem. Unfortunately, there wasn’t and it didn’t, so I found myself clinging to the brief glimpses of what was happening back at home with Sunbi’s endearingly bratty stepsister.

    Don’t get me wrong. I like Dokebi Bride a lot, particularly for Sunbi’s belligerence. (She’s earned it, to be honest.) I even like the general sense that it isn’t going anywhere in particular, or at least not very quickly. But with so many inviting side streets already on its narrative map, a big detour into social problem drama territory didn’t do the book any favors.

    Filed under: Dark Horse, Netcomics, Quick Comic Comments 3 Comments

    Quick comic comments: King of Thorn Vol. 2

    November 14, 2007 by

    The second volume of Yuji Iwahara’s King of Thorn (Tokyopop) offers more of exactly the same – a small handful of thawed-out survivors of a deadly disease navigate a now-monster-infested medical facility where they were cryogenically frozen until a cure could be found for their affliction.

    I’d write a proper review, but it would end up sounding just like the one I wrote about the first volume, only with increased impatience — exciting set pieces, great art, and flat characters. It’s probably an unfair comparison, but I think Mochizuki Minetaro gave Dragon Head (also Tokyopop) a much more effective launch. There were just as many thrills and chills, but Minetaro’s characters were instantly arresting and specific, in spite of the extremity of their circumstances.

    Has anyone read this series in Japanese or German or French? How long does it take for things to get weirder and more interesting, or at least more personal? I really want to like this series, because Iwahara’s Chikyu Misaki (CMX) is one of my favorite manga of all time, but I really need some reassurance that quirkier developments are coming.

    Filed under: Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop 5 Comments

    Quick comic comments: Road reading

    November 7, 2007 by

    There’s always plenty to do in Las Vegas, not least of which is compensating for the feeling of complicity in propping up a fundamentally unsustainable and wasteful human settlement. But a trip to Alternate Reality Comics always helps me forget the guilt, at least briefly, because it’s an awesome shop. It has a really great selection, and the staff is always helpful. And since it’s located between the airport and our hotel of choice, I was totally justified in stopping there before we checked in.

    I haven’t read all of my haul yet, and I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with what I’ve read so far.

    First were two second volumes of Fumi Yoshinaga series: Ichigenme… The First Class Is Civil Law (801) and The Moon and the Sandals (Juné). It’s Yoshinaga, so neither is anywhere close to bad, but it seems like she concentrated all of the heavy lifting in terms of character and nuance in the first volumes so she could concentrate on the hot couple action in the second rounds. And hey, at least she did that initial heavy lifting at all, which gives the action some welcome depth.

    Then there was Girl Genius: Agatha Heterodyne and the Golden Trilobite (Airship). Don’t get me wrong: I really enjoy this series and would strongly recommend it. It’s just that this volume focused more on the narrative spine of the series than its heart. In other words, Agatha got pushed to the sidelines, which served to escalate the tension in the story but left me disappointed. I like the supporting cast, many of whom were pressed into service to rescue Agatha, and it was nice to believe that a bunch of people would run around risking their lives for the lead. A lot of times, creators will try and pass their lead off as beloved without doing any of the set-up needed to make it credible. Phil and Kaja Foglio have earned this kind of development, though.

    Of course, it just reminds you that Agatha is terrific and plucky and smart and that you aren’t seeing very much of her in action. Which was a downer.

    Filed under: 801, Airship, Juné, Quick Comic Comments Leave a Comment
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