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Previews review March 2010

February 27, 2010 by

There’s plenty of interest in the new Previews catalog, as befits that Hallmark Holiday known as “Manga Month,” so let’s dive right in.

Dark Horse celebrates the month in style, though it passes on the Manga Month logo. Still, they’re releasing the first volume of their omnibus treatment of CLAMP’s beloved Cardcaptor Sakura, and this excites me immoderately. I thought Dark Horse did an absolutely beautiful job with their Clover omnibus, so this qualifies as the month’s “must buy.” (Page 51.)

CMX will release Miku Sakamoto’s Nadeshiko Club, a shôjo series from Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume, which is a well-known crack mine. (Personally, I find series from Hakusensha’s LaLa slightly crack-ier, but that’s just a matter of personal preference.) This one spins out of the possibly sexist premise of a girl getting dumped for being insufficiently feminine and joining her school’s home economics club to girl up. CMX has demonstrated excellent taste in shôjo, so this one goes right on the “to buy” list. Rando thought: Hakusensha’s trade dress is really boring. (Page 126.)

Hey, you like Adam Warren’s Empowered, right? He’s writing a one-shot for Marvel, Galacta: Daughter of Galactus, with interior art by Hector Sevilla Lujan and a cover by Warren. I’ll buy anything from Warren, but this does raise the question: who’s this girl’s mother? I really love Warren’s renderings of Marvel stalwarts from the cover image. (Marvel’s insert, page 31.)

Okay, so maybe Cardcaptor Sakura has some competition for book of the month, as Fanfare/Ponent Mon finally releases Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators. “Twelve insightful short graphic stories into the ‘Hermit Kingdom,’ six by European and six by indigenous creators,” the publisher notes. They’re also offering Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators again, so if you’re sick of hearing people recommend it and not being able to find a copy, now’s your chance. (Page 251.)

I’ve liked some comics written by Kathryn Immonen, and I think Stuart Immonen is a terrific artist. They collaborate to explore a potentially fascinating story in Moving Pictures (Top Shelf): “During World War II the Nazis pillaged much of Europe’s great art collections. Museum curator Ila Gardner and SS officer Rolf Hauptmann are forced by circumstances to play out an awkward and dangerous relationship in a public power struggle.” Sounds like a winner to me. (Page 292.)

Cats and comfort food sound like an extremely promising combination, so I’ll take a chance on the first volume of Kenji Sonishi’s Neko Ramen: Hey! Order Up! (Tokyopop). It’s about a “former kitten model” (an actual kitten, apparently, so be at ease) who leaves celebrity behind to become a ramen cook. The only possible down side to this is that it’s a manga based on an anime, which sometimes has mixed results. (Page 297.)

I don’t actually think Kumiko Suekane’s Afterschool Charisma is a good comic, but I find it addictively ridiculous. Viz has been serializing the tale of clones of famous historical figures on its SigIKKI site, and now it’s releasing a print version. It’s probably worth the price of purchase just for the thrill of watching the clone of Sigmund Freud torment his classmates. “Daddy. Daddy. Daddy!” (Page 303.)

You all already known how awesome librarians are, right? But did you know that there’s an action-packed shôjo manga that celebrates that awesomeness? It’s Kiiro Yumi’s Library Wars: Love and War, original concept by Hiro Arikawa, and Viz will release the first volume: “In the near future, the federal government creates a committee to rid society of books it deems unsuitable. The libraries vow to protect their collections, and with the help of local governments, form a military group to defend themselves – the Library Forces!” SOLD. This is an example of the crack-iness of Hakusensha’s LaLa anthology. See what I mean about the trade dress? (Page 305.)

If Cardcaptor Sakura isn’t quite enough CLAMP for you, Yen Press accommodates with the first two volumes of the super-group’s Kobato. It’s about a girl who tries to have a wish granted by mending the wounded hearts of people she meets and “fill a magical bottle with the suffering she has relieved.” This sounds like the kind of CLAMP manga that can be injected directly into a vein. (Page 308.)

Oh, and that Twilight graphic novel is due. (Page 309.)

And there are plenty of new volumes of noteworthy series:

  • 20th Century Boys vol. 9, written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa, Viz, page 303
  • Black Jack vol. 11, written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka, Vertical, page 300
  • Children of the Sea vol. 3, written and illustrated by Daisuke Igarashi, Viz, page 303
  • Detroit Metal City vol. 5, written and illustrated by Kiminori Wakasugi, page 303
  • The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service vol. 11, written by Eiji Otsuka, illustrated by Housui Yamazaki, Dark Horse, page 53
  • Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture vol. 2, written and illustrated by Masayuki Ishikawa, Del Rey, page 244
  • One Piece vols. 49-53, written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, Viz, page 305
    • Filed under: CMX, Dark Horse, Del Rey, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, Marvel, Previews, Tokyopop, Top Shelf, Vertical, Viz, Yen Press 12 Comments

    Letter head

    February 22, 2010 by

    I can’t really say that I’m a huge fan of Yun Kouga’s comics. Earthian (Blu) was one of the comics that cemented my opinion that love stories between angels are relentlessly dull, and Loveless (Tokyopop) struck me as too melodramatic and confusing. I do find her art lovely in an odd way, so I keep trying.

    I might have liked Crown of Love (Viz), a tale of romantically entangled pop idols, but there’s an obstacle. The font choices don’t make any sense to me.

    As you can see in the image above, all of the dialogue is printed in upper-case italics. Internal monologues and asides use sentence-case italics. There’s no distinction between present-moment font choices and flashback font choices, so it can be a little confusing to determine when the story shifts to explore past events.

    So my biggest issue with Crown of Love is with the way the words are presented. In my experience, upper-case italics are the font of meaningful flashbacks. Italicized text seems best applied to either shouting or internal musings as opposed to run-of-the-mill dialogue. So the consistent use of upper-case italics puts too much import on moments that should read as breezy and conversational. For contrast, here’s a page from the third volume of Ken Saito’s The Name of the Flower (CMX) that I think uses varied lettering extremely well:

    Gradations of emotion seem important in Crown of Love, as the story shifts from classroom banter to industry scheming to intense and sudden feelings of romance. But the lettering bleeds the dialogue of visual nuance. It renders it in monotone. You can read it into the dialogue, but, frankly, there’s not that much nuance to be mined, and it seems like an awful lot of work to invest in a fairly slight outing.

    There is promise here. Kouga’s illustrations are as attractive as always, and they’re cleaner and clearer than I remember them being in other titles. I like the agent character, Ikeshiba, who uses his charges’ intense emotions to get his way and move them forward in their careers. He’s so forthright in his manipulation, which is refreshing in contrast to the scheming, capricious old pervs agents often are in idol stories. And Kumi, the boy Ikeshiba is trying to sign by dangling a female starlet in front of him, has a domestic situation that’s grippingly unpleasant.

    But the sameness of the lettering, its artificial, often misplaced urgency, flattens so many of the little peaks and valleys that could have been more meaningful. Dave (Comics-and-More) Ferraro notes that “Equal weight is put on everything as the book progresses,” though he doesn’t specifically mention the lettering. So it’s entirely possible that I’m the only person who has this problem, which suggests that I’m nitpicking. Here are a couple of links to reviews by other people:

  • Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey
  • Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney

    • There’s always the possibility that my deeply ingrained association of italicized all-caps comes from another source:

    Filed under: Blu, CMX, From the stack, Marvel, Tokyopop, Viz 2 Comments

    Upcoming 1/6/2010

    January 5, 2010 by

    2010 hits the ground running, at least in ComicList terms. I hope you got cash for Christmas or are fit enough to supplement your income by shoveling the driveways of neighbors.

    It’s been available in English for a few years, but that doesn’t stop me from making the hardcover collector’s edition of Fumiyo Kouno’s glorious Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (Last Gasp) my pick of the week. In my opinion, this is still one of the finest comics from Japan ever to be licensed. Don’t believe me? Check out reviews from Lorena (i ♥ manga) Nava Ruggero and Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey.

    I only know what Drawn & Quarterly tells me about Imiri Sakabashira’s The Box Man, but I do know that they’ve got excellent taste in comics from Japan (and everywhere else). What does the publisher promise? An “absurdist tale in a seamless tapestry constructed of elements as seemingly disparate as Japanese folklore, pop culture, and surrealism. Within these panels, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the animate and the inanimate, the real and the imagined, a tension that adds a layer of complexity to this near-wordless psychedelic travelogue.”

    Quick, something a little more undemanding! CMX to the likely rescue! They debut The World I Create, written and illustrated by Ayami Kazama. It’s about students with the ability to create virtual realities, and it looks kind of charming.

    I was crazy about godly pantheons as a kid, particularly the Greek. It never translated into a particular love for comics versions of characters like Hercules, but I was always fascinated, probably because the mythology was so much like a soap opera with extra smiting. As I really admired George O’Connor’s abilities as a cartoonist in Journey into Mohawk Country as well, I’ll definitely give First Second’s Zeus: King of the Gods a good long look.

    I’m apparently not supposed to call them “pamphlets” any more, though I thought that was the preferred term over “floppies.” “Flimsies” it is. There are two such publications out this week that show much promise: the fourth issue of Brandon Graham’s King City (Image) and the second issue of Stumptown (Oni), written by Greg Rucka, illustrated by Matthew Southworth, and colored by Lee Loughridge. Thanks again for making my browser crash, Image.

    Now, for the costliest portion of our program: the new shôjo, which I will simply list in alphabetical order because there’s so much of it:

  • Happy Café vol. 1, written and illustrated by Kou Matsuzuki, Tokyopop: I love romantic comedies set in restaurants, so I’ll certainly pick this up at some point.
  • Nana vol. 20, written and illustrated by Ai Yazawa, Viz: More awesome rock-and-roll drama.
  • Natsume’s Book of Friends vol. 1, written and illustrated by Yuki Midorikawa: I thought this supernatural series got off to a strong start.
  • Sand Chronicles vol. 7, written and illustrated by Hinako Akihara: Oh, the beautiful ache of growing up.
  • V.B. Rose vol. 7, written and illustrated by Banri Hidaka, Tokyopop: Awesome stuff about wedding dress designers and their impulsive apprentice.

    • So what looks good to you?

    Update: I forgot to mention this one, but Marvel does a really quick turnaround on producing a trade paperback of its Marvel Divas mini-series, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and illustrated by Tonci Zonjic. I enjoyed it very much in flimsy form, though I’m sad to see that they apparently use that hideous J. Scott Campbell cover for the collection. You’ll understand if I don’t illustrate this paragraph with a thumbnail, won’t you?

    Filed under: CMX, ComicList, Drawn & Quarterly, First Second, Image, Last Gasp, Marvel, Oni, Tokyopop, Viz 2 Comments

    For your Eisner consideration

    December 20, 2009 by

    ‘Tis the season for lists of the best comics and graphic novels of 2009, an event I always enjoy more as a spectator than as a provider. I would feel comfortable listing my favorite comics of the year, but some pocket of insecurity blocks me from using the word “best.” Fortunately, ‘tis also the season to nominate titles for the 2010 Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards.

    As you might recall, there was some disgruntlement over the rather narrow field of manga nominees in last year’s Eisner slate. This came on after a couple of years where there was a healthy sprinkling of comics and creators from Japan throughout the roster. While complaining afterwards is always fun (it’s the peak pleasure of “Best of” season, after all), I thought it certainly couldn’t hurt to throw out some suggestions for various Eisner categories while it might still make a difference.

    Just looking at the aforementioned “Best of” lists, we can be reasonably certain that at least two titles are locks for some form of Eisner nomination: Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka (Viz) and Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarterly). They’re the two comics from Japan that have appeared most frequently on lists of the best comics and graphic novels of 2009. They’re fine choices and among my favorite new works from 2009, but their respective inevitability makes me disinclined to dwell on them too much, except to recommend that A Drifting Life be nominated in the Best Reality-Based Work category.

    I make that suggestion because 2009 saw a whole lot of extraordinary comics from Japan, so the real estate in the Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material – Japanese category will be costly indeed. To start, there’s Urasawa’s other series in current release, 20th Century Boys, which I actually prefer to Pluto. I’m not saying it’s a better comic point by point, but I enjoy reading it more. It may lack Pluto’s seriousness of purpose and craftsmanship, but it’s compulsively readable and friendlier. Perhaps the solution is to nominate Urasawa in the Best Writer/Artist – Drama category or to nominate Pluto in the Best New Series slate. Urasawa has popped up in a variety of categories in the past, and I see no reason for that trend to stop now.

    Of course, I would hope that there’s room in the Best Writer/Artist roster for Takehiko Inoue, who has three series currently in English release, all from Viz: samurai epic Vagabond, available in regular and VizBig editions; shônen hoops classic Slam Dunk; and the achingly good, criminally underappreciated Real, which examines the lives of wheelchair basketball players. If the judges can’t bring themselves to give Inoue a Writer/Artist slot, I urge them in the strongest possible terms to save a space in Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material – Japanese or Best Continuing Series for Real, because it’s one of the finest comics currently in release, magnificently drawn and faultlessly written.

    On the subject of magnificently drawn and beautifully written manga, this will be judges’ final opportunity to recognize Kaoru Mori’s breathtaking period drama, Emma (CMX). The tenth and final volume came out earlier this winter, offering a satisfying conclusion to the driving storyline and a sentimental farewell to the rich cast of supporting characters that made this series so rewarding. Intelligent, meticulously researched, emotionally resonant, and all-around glorious, a lot of people are going to miss this book terribly.

    In a rather different vein, one devoid of delicacy or refinement but brimming with genius, please don’t forget Junko Mizuno’s subversive Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu (Last Gasp). Mizuno is a household name, assuming that household name counts a hardcore comics omnivore among its residents. She should be more famous, with her inimitable aesthetic and subversive sensibilities, and Pelu could be the book that pushes her over the top. It’s a profane, hilarious look at the intersection of sex, love and obsession from the perspective of a sentient space ovary. It’s the comic equivalent of a hallucinogen mixed with an amphetamine, and it’s my favorite new manga of 2009. But I would also hope that there’s room for Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea (Viz), the first release in that publisher’s tremendously promising SigIKKI imprint of alternative manga. It’s a contemporary environmental fable with absolutely immersive artwork and subdued storytelling all around.

    Speaking of the SigIKKI iprint, I see nothing that would prevent anyone from nominating the SigIKKI site in the Best Anthology category. One of the great pleasures of 2009 has been the ability to read new chapters of around a dozen exciting, alternative manga titles each Thursday. Beyond the extraordinary quality of some of the comics in rotation (many of which will be likely Eisner candidates when they see print), the whole thing strikes me as a very forward-looking initiative, a smart and generous loss leader to build an audience for books with perhaps marginal commercial potential.

    Back on the subject of taking your last chance to recognize worthy work, judges might also do something really nervy and give a slot in the Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material – Japanese to Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop). Commercial success has never been a barrier to nomination in the past, and Fruits Basket is so much more than the piles and piles of money it made. It was a wrenching and lovely series throughout, and it ended with all of the grace and emotion its fans had every reason to expect. The Eisners haven’t nominated a shôjo title in this category since Fumi Yoshinaga’s Antique Bakery in 2007. (And while it’s not shôjo, nor is it explicitly for teens, keep an eye on Yoshinaga’s Ôoku from Viz for 2011. It’s off to a promising start, but I suspect it will hit its full stride next year.)

    Of course, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Fruits Basket was nominated in the Best Publication for Teens category, which manga could handily pack from top to bottom and still have partisans crying out at the injustice of some exclusion or another. I’ll limit myself to one suggestion for this category, Karuho Shiina’s Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You (Viz). It’s a hilarious romantic comedy about an outwardly creepy but inwardly sparkly girl trying to make friends on her own terms. It seesaws smartly between laughter and tears and speaks to the odd kid out.

    Moving down the age scale, someone really should recognize Yen Press for rescuing Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! from publishing limbo. It was nominated in 2008 in the Best Publication for Kids category (or whatever it was called back then), and another nomination is in order. It’s still one of the funniest, freshest comics around, following a green-haired girl as she experiences the world’s many wonders, from riding a bike to running errands. Of course, it wasn’t conceived for kids, but who cares? And if you, like me, don’t read as many comics for kids as you feel you should, you can always check out this marvelous list of the year’s best from Good Comics for Kids.

    Given that it’s so damned funny, Yotsuba&! might also sit comfortably in the Best Humor Publication category, but I have other plans there. The first involves a nomination for Kiminori Wakasugi’s hilariously distasteful Detroit Metal City (Viz), about a would-be emo-pop crooner forced to moonlight as a vile, death-metal front man. The second involves a nomination for Koji Kumeta’s dense satire, Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking (Del Rey). Beyond being a master class in the art and science of translation, this is a very funny book.

    Jiro Taniguchi is a good writer, and he’s a positively magnificent illustrator, so I would recommend he be nominated as Best Penciller for his work on The Summit of the Gods (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), written by Baku Yumemakura. For reinforcement, Taniguchi sturdily wrote and gorgeously drew A Distant Neighborhood (Fanfare/Ponent Mon).

    I can’t quite bring myself to recommend Inio Asano’s What a Wonderful World! (Viz) for a major category; there’s some outstanding work contained in these two volumes of short stories, but a goodly portion is merely very good. I’d have no reservations about suggesting “A Town of Many Hills” from the first volume for the Best Short Story prize, as it shows Asano at the peak of his considerable powers.

    I’m not really worried that Taiyo Matsumoto’s GoGo Monster (Viz) will be neglected. It’s just too good. The only question is in which categories it will be nominated. To my thinking, it’s eligible for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material – Japanese, Best Graphic Album – Reprint Material, and Best Publication Design. Judges may want to limit that last possibility to new designs rather than stateside reproductions, but the packaging is extraordinary.

    None of the Eisner categories will be easy to limit, but I suspect that Best Archival Collection will be particularly difficult. I’m not going to make it any easier. A year without a nomination for a work by Osamu Tezuka would just seem odd, and Vertical has been providing a valuable service (and really entertaining comics) by releasing a steady stream of Tezuka’s excellent medical melodrama Black Jack. At least some of the material in culinary classic Oishinbo (Viz), written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki, is 20 years old, and all of it is lively, informative, and enriches the scope of Japanese comics available in translation and available comics in general. If it doesn’t qualify for the archival award, put it in the Best Edition of Foreign Material – Japanese. Just put it somewhere. Beyond being very, very good on strictly qualitative terms, Susumu Katsumata’s Red Snow (Drawn and Quarterly) gives readers a glimpse of a different kind of gekiaga, a category of dramatic comics for grown-ups previously defined by the aforementioned Tatsumi.

    Entries for Eisner consideration are due March 8. Publishers, get cracking. Judges, get reading.

    Filed under: Awards and lists, CMX, Del Rey, Drawn & Quarterly, Last Gasp, Linkblogging, Tokyopop, Vertical, Viz, Yen Press 14 Comments

    Upcoming 11/25/2009

    November 24, 2009 by

    Time for a look at this week’s ComicList:

    CMX expands its line of endearing shôjo with the debut of Asuka Izumi’s The Lizard Prince. It’s about the complications that arise when a princess falls in love with a prince who occasionally turns into a lizard, and I really enjoyed the review copy that CMX sent. It’s one of those romantic series that’s more about sustaining a relationship in the face of obstacles than the advent of a romance. Strong-willed Princess Canary and softie Prince Sienna know they love each other; it’s just petty details like her reptile-averse mother, his mysterious background, and his not-entirely-controllable transformations that keep their happiness from being absolute. Part of the charm of the series is that Canary and Sienna really seem to enjoy tackling problems and working through them. Izumi’s art is very attractive, and she’s got a cheerful sense of humor that makes the stories breeze by.

    This one’s been in bookstores for over a month, but if you confine your graphic novel purchases to specialty shops, this is the week you can pick up Masayuki Ishikawa’s Moyasimon (Del Rey). Country boys Tadayasu and Kei enroll in agricultural college in the big city, where weirdness awaits. Tadayasu can see and speak to bacteria (or at least hear their chirpy prattle), making him an object of particular interest to the professor and handful of fellow students who know of his ability. Hard science and low comedy combine as Tadayasu and Kei learn about the power of bacteria and their sometimes disastrous impact on the digestive system. The series gets off to a solid if not riotous start, and I’ll certainly stick around to see how it develops. [Update: Johanna Draper Carlson has a theory on why it took so long for this book to reach shelves, along with a review.]

    Fanfare/Ponent Mon delivers two titles this week. There’s the second and final volume of Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood, which I reviewed here. It’s very likable stuff, beautifully drawn by Taniguchi.

    There’s also the English-language debut of Willy Linhout’s Years of the Elephant. It’s about the aftermath of a young man’s suicide and the devastating impact on his family. According to the publisher, “The book was initially intended as self therapy to help Linthout deal with the loss of his son however, the originally modest project unleashed a flood of reactions and therapists now use the book as a recognised aid for coping with grief.” I picked it up at SPX, and I will duly move it to the top of the pile of things to read.

    Tokyopop makes me really happy by continuing its slow-but-appreciated roll-out of new volumes of Ai Morinaga’s Your and My Secret, in this case the fifth, a license originally held by ADV then left to limbo. It’s more mistaken-identity comedy about a horrible girl and a meek boy who switch bodies and alternately recoil at or revel in the consequences. For bonus points, this volume features a school trip to Hokkaido, one of my very favorite settings for manga and a place I hope to visit someday.

    I’m intrigued by This Ugly Yet Beautiful World just based on its title. It’s a manga adaptation by Ashita Morimi of an apparently popular anime by Gainax/Konomini Project. It sounds like your standard “dweebs meet amnesiac space princess” fare, but it’s got a great title. (Seriously, does Japan have an agency that deals with amnesiac space princesses? They could use one.)

    Filed under: CMX, ComicList, Del Rey, Fanfare/Ponent Mon, Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop 3 Comments

    Quick comic comments

    November 23, 2009 by

    I had a fruitful trip to the bookstore the other day, so I thought I’d celebrate by cranking out a couple of quick reviews:

    Cat Paradise volume 2, written and illustrated by Yuji Iwahara, Yen Press: After a fairly straightforward introductory volume, I was a bit surprised at how meta things got this time around. As the student council and their loyal cats continue to protect the world from demonic forces, Iwahara focuses on council member Tsukasa, who is a creepy little dork. He likes girls a lot, but he likes them in a patronizing way. This allows that thing where a creator can sort of mock a character that leers and condescends and teases while still featuring the leering and condescension and teasing. The criticism of the character, if that’s actually the intent instead of just giving part of the demographic a gateway character, is pretty thickly veiled. So the fan service is at a higher level than it was the first time around, and there’s also an increase in what might be called irrevocable violence. (Soft-hearted cat lovers beware.) I’m also of two minds on heroine Yumi. On one hand, it’s believable that she’s not a warrior by inclination and that she’d find these dangerous situations terrifying. (And I like that her milder nature leads her to question the council’s decisions and methodology.) On the other, she has a tendency to simper that can be a little grating. Still, there’s a lot to like in the series, particularly Iwahara’s concept of napping as a super-power.

    V.B. Rose volume 4, written and illustrated by Banri Hidaka, Tokyopop: After three volumes told largely from heroine Ageha’s perspective, it’s nice to spend one getting the point of view of her love interest, wunderkind gown designer Yukari. In a lot of romantic fiction, you only get the protagonist’s point of view, and the feelings of the object of that character’s desire are left opaque. That’s a perfectly fair approach, as it allows the creator to increase reader identification with the protagonist. After all, that’s how we all approach romantic entanglements, wondering if our feelings are reciprocated until the moment when we find out for good or ill. While Ageha, with her exuberance and excitability, is more than character enough to carry the romantic tension, it’s nice to see Hidaka reveal that Yukari is almost as complicated and not just a love object. (I say “almost” because Ageha has enjoyed three volumes of focus, and it’s unfair to expect Yukari to catch up so quickly.) For bonus points, Hidaka gives us more scenes with Ageha’s frighteningly poised friend Mamoru and her deceptively adorable brother. This sibling dynamic isn’t anything new, but I always enjoy it. And nice as it is to have a well-developed central couple, it’s even better to have them in the middle of an engaging crowd of friends and family.

    Filed under: Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop, Yen Press 2 Comments

    Previews review November 2009

    November 12, 2009 by

    There aren’t very many debuts in the November 2009 Previews catalog, but there are plenty of new volumes of excellent ongoing series. Let’s start with the new arrivals, though:

    OkimonoKimonoDark Horse releases Okimono Kimoni, written and illustrated by Mokona with assistance from the rest of CLAMP. “a fun and lavishly illustrated book full of drawings and illustrations, interviews (including an interview with Ami of the J-pop duo Puffy AmiYumi!), and even short manga stories from the CLAMP artists.” So that’s your “eye-popping-ly pretty” alert for the month. (Page 43.)

    OlympiansZeusI like Greek Mythology, and I thought George O’Connor’s Journey Into Mohawk Country had a lot of strong points. So I’ll definitely give O’Connor’s Olympians Volume 1: Zeus, King of the Gods (First Second) a look. “In OLYMPIANS, O’Connor draws from primary documents to reconstruct and retell classic Greek myths. But these stories aren’t sedate, scholarly works. They’re action-packed, fast-paced, high-drama adventures, with monsters, romance, and not a few huge explosions.” (Page 232.)

    AliceCountryHearts1Alice in the Country of Hearts (Tokyopop), written by QuinRose and illustrated by Hoshino Soumei (Tokyopop) is triggering my “weird but crack-y” sensors: “Alice, who has fallen asleep in her garden, wakes up to find a white rabbit wearing clothes?! The rabbit forcefully drags Alice into the rabbit hole, where he turns into a young man with rabbit ears and leads her into a frightful world where the fairytale-like citizens wield dangerous weapons for an insidious cause… Unable to return home, will she be able to find happiness in a world full of danger and beautiful young men?” (Page 263.)

    bokuranoI can’t say that Mohiro Kitoh’s Bokurano: Ours is my favorite title in Viz’s SIGIKKI initiative, or even in the top five, but I’m always glad to see these titles see print, since it reassures me that the ones I really enjoy will follow sooner or later. “One summer, fifteen kids innocently wander into a nearby seaside cave. There they meet a strange man who invites them to play an exciting new video game. This game, he explains, pits one lone giant robot against a horde of alien invaders. To play the game, all they have to do is sign a simple contract. The game stops being fun when the kids find out the true purpose of their pact.” (Page 273.)

    Swan15And now for the new volumes and new editions:

  • Black Jack vol. 9, written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka, Vertical. (Page 272.)
  • Little Nothings Volume 3: Uneasy Happiness, written and illustrated by Lewis Trondheim, NBM. (Page 249.)
  • Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei vol. 5, written and illustrated by Koji Kumeta, Del Rey. (Page 222)
  • Swan vol. 15, written and illustrated by Kyoko Aryoshi, CMX. (Page 119.)
  • Hardcover edition of Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, written and illustrated by Fumiyo Kouno, Last Gasp. (Page 248)
    • Filed under: CMX, Dark Horse, Del Rey, First Second, Last Gasp, NBM, Previews, Tokyopop, Vertical, Viz 1 Comment

    Upcoming 10/28/2009

    October 27, 2009 by

    I’m not crazy about Diamond’s “and the rest” listing format, but the usual sources are being a little wonky, so let’s pop over to its roster of the week’s releases.

    redsnowDrawn & Quarterly returns to the gekiga well for Susumu Katsumata’s Red Snow, a collection of short stories set in “the pre-modern Japanese countryside of the author’s youth, a slightly magical world where ancestral traditions hold sway over a people in the full vigor of life, struggling to survive the harsh seasons and the difficult life of manual laborers and farmers.” The setting alone is enough to intrigue me, as is the fact that Red Snow sounds like it explores gekiga’s softer side. The stories were originally published in the late but legendary Garo, published from 1964 to 2002.

    It was published in French as Neige Rouge in 2008 by Editions Cornélius, whose web site is adorable but virtually impossible to navigate if you want to do anything so prosaic as find information about their books, so I’ll simply point you to the Amazon.Fr listing for the title. I was hoping to find some sample pages, but none seem to be available. It doesn’t even seem to have been pirated yet, but please don’t feel compelled to disabuse me of that happy notion.

    marveldivas4In an entirely different category altogether, Marvel releases the fourth and final issues of its Marvel Divas mini-series, which I’ve enjoyed. Here’s the summary: Firestar’s got cancer, the Black Cat can’t get a start-up loan, Photon is being wooed by a booty call who won’t take the hint, and Hellcat is chronicling it all for her next book when not fending off unwelcome visits from her ex-husband, the Son of Satan. The series isn’t everything it could be, but it takes its cast more seriously than they might have reasonably expected, and the chances of any last-act evisceration seem promisingly slim.

    aria5And in a belated but welcome development, Tokyopop releases the fifth volume of Kozue Amano’s elegant fantasy travelogue, Aria. (They published the fourth volume last December.) So either rail at the delay or revel in the return, your choice. I’m inclined toward cautious revelry, just because it seems like another small sign of Tokyopop’s stabilization after a very, very bad year or so.

    Update: In the comments, Travis McGee notes that one can find the catalog of Editions Cornélius “by clicking on the pig in the doghouse in the bottom right corner.”

    Filed under: ComicList, Drawn & Quarterly, Marvel, Tokyopop 5 Comments

    License request day: Vinland Saga

    October 9, 2009 by

    In honor of the fact that NASA tried to blow up the moon this morning and the fact that Kodansha staged its own Groundhog Day this week, I was going to pick Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon for today’s license request. I’ve reconsidered because it seems like such a foregone conclusion that Kodansha will reprint it at some point.

    But there is a lunar connection to today’s targeted title. Makoto Yukimura is the creator of Planetes, published in English by Tokyopop though effectively out of print as it was among the titles Kodansha retrieved from the publisher. I hope it doesn’t stay out of print long, as it’s still one of the best comics from Japan I’ve ever read. It’s an introspective, character-driven science-fiction story about space exploration, focusing on a group of orbital garbage haulers to take dangerous debris out of the spaceways. If you haven’t read it and can find copies, I strongly urge you to do so.

    VinlandSaga1Now, Yukimura has also done evidently exemplary work in a category that I’ve somewhat neglected: action seinen. It’s called Vinland Saga, a look at Viking conquest in the early 1000s. It combines actual history with some fictionalized additions, examining the Viking invasion of England and the early years of King Canute the Great.

    Let’s turn back the calendar and see what Ed Chavez had to say about the first volume:

    VinlandSaga2

    “One of the first things you notice when reading Vinland Saga is that it’s violent. Limbs, heads, and the like fly, arrows pierce men through their skulls, eyeballs are skewered like shish kebab, chains rip the hair and flesh from a man’s head. The action is plentiful, and its frenetic pace aids the feeling of barbaric combat that makes up much of the first volume. Having nothing like this to previously judge him by, Yukimura has shown that he is adept at scripting and executing action sequences. His drawings are fluid, and the staging and panel work is top-notch. He’s even included little touches that add to a sense of atmosphere, such as Frankish women collecting arrows from the dead bodies of the foes during a break in battle.”

    VinlandSaga3Now, fact-based head bashing doesn’t always fly off the shelves, but I have this suspicion that Vikings might be the next big thing in testosterone-driven docudrama. I could be wrong, and usually am, but if the Spartans could pull it off, who’s to say the Vikings can’t?

    The Vinland Saga was originally published in Kodansha’s Weekly Shônen Magazine but shifted to the monthly Afternoon, offering Yukimura a less arduous schedule and a slightly older audience. It’s still ongoing and has amassed eight volumes so far. There’s a slow-to-load but great-looking preview here. It’s being published in French by Kurokawa.

    What properties from Kodansha’s copious back catalog would you like to see licensed?

    Filed under: Kodansha Comics, License requests, Linkblogging, Tokyopop 9 Comments

    Quick pamphlet comments

    October 8, 2009 by

    I’m very pleased that Image and Tokyopop are reprinting Brandon Graham’s King City in pamphlet form. In spite of good reviews, I missed it in digest form. While I don’t have a basis for comparison, I suspect it’s better served in its new, full-sized format than it might have been in tankoubon size. There are lots of little thing to look at, and the bigger page size seems friendlier to that.

    Here’s an example of a layout that I really liked from the second issue.

    kingcityscan

    At this point, I know very little about the characters above, but that panel makes me really interested in both of them. Graham’s pages generally have interesting layouts, and there’s a nice sense of motion and bustle to a lot of them, but he also has a nice handle on little gradations of facial expression and body language. He really sells moments like these.

    As you would expect from the title, there’s also a nice sense of place. King City, the setting, evokes that kind of sleazy modernism that a lot of creators attempt but don’t necessarily achieve. I think that’s because Graham is judicious about the way he reveals things. He hasn’t front-loaded the city’s entire culture, choosing instead to put it out there a bit at a time, making me curious about what things mean and what they’ll amount to later. That’s probably another reason why it’s a good fit with pamphlet publication. An individual issue constitutes a satisfying chunk, a nice monthly visit to a weird place and the intriguing characters that live there.

    My purchase of two other comics – Marvel Divas and Models, Inc. – is driven by a combination of nostalgia and a reflexive desire to promote diversity. When I dropped Marvel comics entirely, there were no titles like this, lighthearted and driven by women characters. So my activist streak kicked in and I decided to give them at least one more sale.

    marveldivasscan

    I prefer Divas (written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, drawn and inked by Tonci Zonjic, and colored by Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic). It’s about four c-list super-heroines who hang out and support each other through their various woes. Pretty much every one of those woes has been portrayed in a more straightforward manner in episodes of Sex and the City, right down to cancer, but Aguirre-Sacasa finds nice spandex twists on the subject matter. And while I’ll never be convinced of the wisdom of mixing real-world illness in a setting where characters can banish it with a wave of their hand (or can’t, depending on the demands of the plot), there’s a surprising amount of nuance in the scenes where young heroine Firestar copes with her illness with the help of her more seasoned cast-mates. It’s not a great comic, and it doesn’t track with its own marketing even a little, but it’s got some solid, character-driven writing that doesn’t condescend to the characters. Aguirre-Sacasa creates a plausible, endearing support system among the four women, which is nice to see.

    Models, Inc. (written by Paul Tobin, drawn and inked by Vicenc Villagrasa, colored by Val Staples, and lettered by Dave Sharpe) is what is what might be known in the rag trade as “a hot mess.” It unfolds during Fashion Week, with one of Marvel’s model characters (Millie) accused of murder. It’s up to her friends (other Marvel model characters) to clear her of the crime. I like lighthearted mysteries as much as or more than the next person, but this one is hobbled by the fact that almost none of the characters make any specific impression. There are at least two models two many, and they seem to have been selected entirely for visual variety rather than anything specific they bring to the story. The closest thing to a breakout character would be bisexual Chili Storm, who at least gets to be a bit of a spitfire and isn’t limited to spouting exposition or being blandly supportive, though she also carries water from those wells.

    modelsincscan

    Another difficult is that the look of the book isn’t especially fashionable. I can’t say that I follow fashion beyond trying to catch episodes of Project Runway, but I get a distinctly dowdy and dated vibe from the cast’s wardrobe. I suspect Villagrasa is going for a detached, posing style in his compositions – as if the models are always at least a little aware that there’s a camera pointed at them – and it’s not a bad idea, but the execution doesn’t really work. (And yes, I know that the panels above show them actually posing, but what the hell are they wearing?) It doesn’t go far enough, so it ends up looking sort of weird.

    I did love the Tim Gunn back-up story in the first issue (written by Marc Sumerak, drawn by Jorge Molina). Runway mentor Gunn saves the day with style, which is what I was hoping for from the lead story. Alas, Models, Inc. is more a meeting of a catwalk Girl Scout troop.

    Filed under: Image, Marvel, Quick Comic Comments, Tokyopop 15 Comments
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