The Manga Curmudgeon

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

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Iwahara-rama

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I’m normally not a fan of swapping “tw-” for perfectly good consonants to create an unnecessary new word, but I’ve experienced a feeling I can only describe as “twuilt”: when something someone posts on Twitter shakes you out of your planned, need I add hard-earned, torpor and motivates you to write a manga column after all, even though you were planning on taking the week off.

Anyway, comics-loving librarian Eva Volin noted over the weekend that Yuji Iwahara’s Chikyu Misaki (CMX) is deeply under-appreciated, and while I’d been planning on writing something about Iwahara’s comics eventually, I moved the column ahead in the queue. So it’s now up over at The Comics Reporter.

Since I’m on the subject of the talented Iwahara, how about a poll?

If your favorite hasn’t been licensed yet, feel free to list it in the comments.

Upcoming 7/8/2009

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fb23I’ll begin my look at this week’s ComicList with a request. If you’ve never actually read a volume of Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), which concludes with its 23rd volume, I beg you to refrain from writing about the mega-hit in condescending, reductive terms. It’s not a cutesy romantic fantasy about people who turn into animals, or at least it hasn’t been since maybe its second or third volume. It’s actually a crushingly effective drama about breaking a generational cycle of emotional abuse and neglect, and it’s one of a very small handful of comics that has ever made me cry. It’s also a rare example of an extremely popular comic also being an absolutely brilliant comic, so in deference to the people who are going to miss new volumes rather terribly, please don’t call it “fluffy” or something equally inane.

catparadise1With that off my chest, I can look to the future, which includes a new series from Yuji Iwahara, Cat Paradise (Yen Press). CMX published Iwahara’s three-volume Chikyu Misaki, which still ranks for me as one of the most underappreciated manga ever to be published in English. It’s a terrific blend of fantasy and mystery with wonderful characters and unusual, eye-catching illustrations. Iwahara’s King of Thorn (Tokyopop), was less successful for me, though I found it to be a very competent survival drama. Of course, it was coming out at roughly the same time as Minetaro Mochizuki’s utterly genius survival drama, Dragon Head (Tokyopop), so it was bound to suffer in comparison. Anyway, Cat Paradise seems to be about students and their pets fighting against demonic forces or something like that, but describing Iwahara’s comics never really does them justice, and his work is always worth a look.

kp10I suspect the impact of its conclusion will be washed away in a sea of Fruits Basket tears, but I’ll also miss Kitchen Princess (Del Rey), written by Miyuki Kobayashi and illustrated by Natsumi Ando. It’s a cooking manga, which is enough to put it on my “read automatically” list, but it also became an increasingly effective melodrama as the series progressed. And there are recipes in the back. Try the Madeleine recipe. On the shônen front, Del Rey also offers a new volume of Hiro Mashima’s very entertaining Fairy Tail.

It’s also Viz’s week to remind me that I really need to hunker down and catch up with some series that I like very much: Hideaki Sorachi’s Gin Tama, Kazune Kawahara’s High School Debut, Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and Yuki Obata’s We Were There. In my defense, Viz keeps publishing great new manga, particularly in its Signature line, so it’s becoming increasingly impractical to keep up with ongoing series.

Previews review

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After a couple of months of overwhelmingly appealing product in Diamond’s June 2009 Previews catalog, the industry seems to take a bit of a breather. Here’s what caught my eye, mostly new volumes of entertaining, ongoing series.

taleThere are some debuts. I quite liked the first volume of Natsuna Kawase’s The Lapis Lazuli Crown (CMX), so I’ll certainly take a chance on the second volume (page 121) and the first volume of another Kawase series, A Tale of an Unknown Country Girl (also CMX, page 120), about a princess who goes undercover to see if her arranged fiancé is a total asshat.

Many people viewed Brandon Graham’s King City to be one of the great casualties of whichever Tokyopop meltdown put its future in peril. Those folks will be happy to see pages 138 and 139, which reveal that Image and Tokyopop will be presenting a floppy version of Graham’s comic. I find Image’s web site impossible to navigate, so I’ll just link to this Newsarama interview with Graham.

Two of Del Rey’s solicitations on page 237 catch my eye: the fifth volume of Ryotaro Iwanaga’s underrated postwar adventure, Pumpkin Scissors, and the third volume of Sayonara, Zetsubo-Sensei, a dark satire of school comedies that’s more heavily annotated than just about any book not edited by Carl Horn. Sayonara also has some of the tiniest print in the history of translated comics from Japan, and some fairly impenetrable humor, but enough of the jokes work for me to make it worth the eye strain.

Fanfare/Ponent Mon presents the second volume of Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood (page 245). You scrambled for the order form right after I typed the publisher’s name, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?

adI’ve enjoyed Josh Neufeld’s travel comics, though he tends to go places I would never personally consider for a vacation. My idea of roughing it is hotels with limited room service. But his A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge (Pantheon, page 273) promises to be one of the books of the year.

I thought IDW or someone had the CSI comic-book franchise. It isn’t exclusive apparently, as Tokyopop launches the two-part CSI: Interns, written by Sekou Hamilton and illustrated by Steven Cummings (page 283).

Viz Udon gets its sci-fi on with the return of Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius in an unflipped, all-new translation with restored color story pages (page 285). Trivia note: Asamiya was first introduced to many English-reading comics fans through the dubious distinction of illustrating some of the worst issues of Uncanny X-Men ever written.

If I’m going to be completely honest, I’m more intrigued by the Viz’s debut of Hiroyuki Asada’s Tegami Bachi (page 288), which I’ve seen described as being about postal workers called “Letter Bees” carrying the hearts of correspondents to their loved ones. I admit that most of my interest comes from the probably mistaken mental image of sacks full of human hearts and the shocked reactions of their recipients.

In the “new volume” category, Viz offers Oishinbo: Vegetables (written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki), the fourth volume of Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, and the second volume of Kiminori Wakasugi’s Detroit Metal City, which is sick and wrong and I think I’m in love with it (all listed on page 292).

Upcoming 5/13/2009

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What’s on deck with this week’s ComicList? Not The Lapis Lazuli Crown, as I misread, which actually comes out May 20, but CMX does offer the 14th volume of Kiyoko Ariyoshi’s classic ballet shôjo, Swan.

Brigid Alverson offered a preview review of the first volume of Sakae Esuno’s Future Diary (Tokyopop), and it sounds intriguing:

“Despite one cringe-inducing scene of violence toward the end, this is great escape reading, with plenty of action and an interestingly twisted premise.”

Fantagraphics offers a big hardcover collection starring one of my favorite characters from Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar stories, Luba. Here’s a bit of the solicitation:

“These ‘America’ stories — over 100 of them, ranging from quick one-page blackout sketches to bona fide graphic novellas — were originally published in a number of different comics and reprinted in a trilogy of oversized paperbacks. Luba finally collects in one compact, affordable hardcover the entirety of these tales, showcasing Gilbert Hernandez’s wicked wit, great compassion, and uncanny understanding of how human beings love, squabble, and ultimately find a way to make it through this life.”

Sitting in a tree

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In the discussion of that list of the 25 greatest super-hero romances over at Robot 6, Tom Spurgeon makes a good point about one of my favorites, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch:

“The initial Scarlet Witch romance worked for about 50 issues of subplots in some pretty good Avengers comics from back in that time, including the intrusion of the Swordsman’s hooker girlfriend, Mantis. I’m not sure anything about the marriage worked even a tenth as well as the initial “can you really fall in love with a robot” stuff did, though.”

I think that’s true for any couple in serial fiction, at least in serial fiction with no anticipated end point. It’s the same in daytime dramas; the build-up is always more interesting than the tear-down, and the tear-down is inevitable, I think. Happy couples are more sustainable in comedies than dramas. Serial fiction is a furnace that needs to be fed, and when that fiction is predicated partly or even wholly on romantic pairings, you can’t maintain a status quo for too long. It’s why soap characters marry and divorce so often, and why Spider-Man seems like such a player on the aforementioned list.

That’s one of the advantages of romantic pairings in manga, which generally has a designated end point. There are closing credits, and right before them, the couple can gaze into one another’s eyes and ponder their wonderful future together. Since it’s over, neither you nor the manga-ka need to dwell too much on the unpleasantness that can follow “happily ever after.”

Which brings me to my favorite manga romance, Yukari and George from Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss (Tokyopop), but I’ll save further discussion for after the jump, because I’m headed into spoiler territory.

Unlike many of their fictional peers, Yukari and George are pretty much doomed from the start, not because they’re incompatible but because they’re so very much in transition. Yukari is finally shaking off the good-girl expectations that have defined her life up until the beginning of the series. George is realizing the depth of his ambition and the scope of his creative abilities as a fashion designer. Yukari is his muse, and George is her mentor in independence and non-conformity. They exert a powerful influence over each other, but it isn’t sustainable.

And that’s the beauty of their relationship, at least for me. It’s as intense and mercurial as it is genuine, but Yazawa never really paints it as being about the rest of either character’s life. It will certainly influence the rest of both of their lives, and anyone who wants to be with either Yukari or George will have to accept that. But there’s no “happily ever after” factor; there’s barely a “happy right now” factor, to be honest. George is to narcissistic and Yukari too frantic to enjoy moments so much as be caught up in them. That feels absolutely true and right to me.

The Eisner ballot… of the FUTURE!

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Okay, the order forms from the current issue of Diamond’s Previews catalog were due yesterday. I apologize for the tardiness, but the day job has been rather distracting lately. (Not bad, just busy.) And there’s abundant genius being solicited, so maybe it’s not too late for you to nag your local comics shop, or at least pre-order online from some other vendor.

Eden: It’s an Endless World! Vol. 12 (Dark Horse): Hiroki Endo’s dense, absorbing science-fiction series continues. (Page 44.)

Emma, Vol. 9 (CMX): More glorious period soap opera from Kaoru Mori. (Page 124.)

Johnny Hiro Vol. 1 (AdHouse): The first three issues of Fred Chao’s very funny genre mash-up are collected here. (Page 186.)

Swallowing the Earth Vol. 1 (Digital Manga Publishing): It’s by Osamu Tezuka, which is really all you need to know. It’s also about a mysterious demigoddess “wielding her mysterious power over all men to exact revenge for their crimes against women since the beginning of time,” which sounds ceaselessly awesome. (Page 245.)

Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Vol. 4 (Drawn & Quarterly): So funny, so quirky, so sweet. It’s one of the few perfect things in the world. (Page 249.)

The Summit of the Gods Vol. 1 (Fanfare/Ponent Mon): Jiro Taniguchi heads back to the mountains, accompanied by Yumemakura Baku. The slope in question this time around is Mount Everest. (Page 251.)

A Treasury of 20th Century Murder Vol. 2: Famous Players (NBM): Rick Geary applies his unique and abundant cartooning skills to the case of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor. (Page 275.)

Salt Water Taffy Vol. 3: The Truth About Dr. True (Oni): More delightful adventures for all ages from Matthew Loux as the Putnam brothers discover weirdness in Chowder Bay. (Page 279.)

Fruits Basket Vol. 23 (Tokyopop): The mega-popular series from Natsuki Takaya comes to what will undoubtedly be an amazingly moving conclusion. (Page 288.)

Oishinbo: Fish, Sushi and Sashimi (Viz): Viz continues to offer highlights from Tetsu Kariya’s culinary manga masterpiece. (Page 298.)

Cirque du Freak Vol. 1 (Yen Press): I can’t honestly remember the context or the content, but I swear I heard something really extreme about Cirque du Freak, which makes me curious. (Page 302.)

Upcoming March 18, 2009

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I love a Wednesday that makes it rough to select a pick of the week. This week’s ComicList is a cornucopia of crack.

I thought Saika Kunieda’s Future Lovers (Deux Press) was a one-shot, which was pretty much the book’s only disappointing aspect. I was happily mistaken, and a second volume about a mismatched but devoted couple is due out Wednesday. I love comics about grown-up gay men in actual relationships.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Anything Fanfare/Ponent Mon releases in English is automatically a contender for the week’s best release, and My Mommy Is in America and She Met Buffalo Bill, by Jean Regnaud & Émille Bravo, will likely do nothing to buck that trend.

Tokyopop can’t be entirely sanguine about the release of the final penultimate volume of Natsuki Takaya’s uber-shôjo masterpiece, Fruits Basket. I can’t say I’m thrilled either, but I know that we’ll all get through this together. As to content, I would hazard a guess that, in this volume, all of the characters find their lives becoming less alienating and difficult to varying degrees. I would also hazard a guess that I will sob.

Viz picks up the baton of miserable adolescence with the launch of the VizBig edition of Miki Aihara’s Hot Gimmick. This book is emphatically not for everyone, and I don’t say that in a condescending “Your tastes might not be refined enough to enjoy this” kind of way. I say it in a “Really horrible, anti-feminist things happen in this book from beginning to end, and you will likely want to scrub your brain clean after reading it, but it’s addictively crafted” way.

On the Signature front, the second volume of Pluto, Naoiki Urasawa’s homage to Osamu Tezuka, arrives.

Upcoming and incoming for 1/28/2009

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A few quick links before we get to new arrivals from this week’s ComicList:

  • Deb Aoki posts results from the 2008 Best New Shonen readers’ poll at About.Com.
  • Johanna Draper Carlson shares a preview of Mijeong (NBM), another book from Byun Byung-Jun, the gifted creator of Run, Bong-Gu, Run!
  • GLAAD appreciates people who like us, who really, really like us.

    • Now, onto the Wednesday haul.

    Del Rey has three books that catch my eye: the fifth volume of Hiro Mashima’s fun, lively Fairy Tail, the second of Miwa Ueda’s twisted-sister drama Papillion, and the sixth of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s enduringly awesome Parasyte.

    HarperCollins delivers a second printing of Paul Gravett’s excellent Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know. It’s a terrific overview of a medium that’s tricky to summarize. Gravett pulled off a similar trick with his essential Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics.

    In a similar vein, Netcomics offers Manhwa 100: The New Era for Illustrated Comics, promising a compilation that represents the Korean comic book industry.

    Tokyopop’s big offering for the week is Benjamin’s full-color manhua Orange. Brigid Alverson shared a preview at MangaBlog, and Paul Gravett recently posted an interview with the creator conducted by Rebeca Fernandez. The other highlight from Tokyopop is the fourth volume of Ai Morinaga’s Your and My Secret, gender-bending comedy at its very best.

    2008 series conclusions

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    Here, in alphabetical order and without any real comment, are ten series that concluded in 2008 that I really enjoyed:

  • Cat-Eyed Boy, by Kazuo Umezu (Viz)
  • Dororo, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)
  • Dragon Head, by Minetaro Mochizuki (Tokyopop)
  • The Drifting Classroom, by Kazuo Umezu (Viz)
  • Emma, by Kaoru Mori (CMX)
  • ES: Eternal Sabbath, by Fuyumi Soryo (Del Rey)
  • Forest of the Gray City, by Uhm JungHyun (Yen Press)
  • Genshiken, by Kio Shimoku (Del Rey)
  • Monster, by Naoki Urasawa (Viz)
  • Train + Train, by Hideyuki Kurata and Tomomasa Takuma (Go! Comi)

    • I know there’s another volume of Emma coming out in 2009, but the core story concluded in 2008. Also, I warned you I would mention Dororo more than once. I could have done the same with Cat-Eyed Boy, but I liked Dororo better.