By pure coincidence, a recent chunk of my reading pile consisted of graphic novels with school settings. Looking at them back to back, it’s fun to see the different ways creators use their locations.

In Chigusa Kawai’s La Esperança (Digital Manga), the school campus is an elegant, thematically apt backdrop for the coming-of-age romantic melodrama. The unifying traits of her protagonists are guilt and redemption, so it’s only appropriate that the school is run by nuns. Innocent Georges has constructed an entire personality around not causing others pain in a misdirected attempt to atone for the sins of his family. Experienced Robert’s guilt over an unspecified incident manifests itself in provocation, particularly of painfully agreeable Georges. Robert wants to strip away what he thinks is Georges’s goody-two-shoes façade. Whether that’s out of projected self-loathing or envy, a romantic desire to liberate Georges from his self-restraint, boredom, or some other motive remains to be seen.

Their sparring plays out in the school’s majestic chapels, crumbling towers, and lush grounds. Classmates provide running commentary, first fascinated with brash (and older) newcomer Robert, then with bratty young royal Frederic. While a bit of a rich-kid stereotype, Frederic is a potent symbol of Georges’s self-imposed dilemma. Georges readily agrees to serve as Frederic’s “official friend,” subjecting himself to Frederic’s fits of mood and temper in the process. The student body keeps a close eye on their beloved, likeable Georges, shockingly in the thick of these polarizing new personalities. It makes the environment even more complex and organic.

Kawai takes advantage of the sense of place, but also the emotional intensity of the high-school experience. Everyone’s in transition, responding to their parents influence by trying to define themselves utterly independent of it. The hothouse environment of the private school is a really apt setting, beyond being beautifully rendered.

In The Dreaming (Tokyopop), Queenie Chan goes a bit further, making the boarding school setting a menacing character in its own right. Isolated and imposing, Greenwich Private College gives off an unsettling vibe, like Manderley in Rebecca. (It’s even got its own Mrs. Danvers in vice-principal Mrs. Skeener.) Unfortunately, twin transfer students Amber and Jeanie are particularly sensitive to bad vibes. Their lives become consumed in the mysteries of Greenwich, not least of which are the intermittent disappearances of students into the surrounding grounds.

I wonder if the sense of place and mood was established almost too effectively, as it tends to dwarf the impressions the characters might make. Twins Amber and Jeanie and their classmates are so focused on the mysteries of the school that I never really got a sense of them as individuals. Part of the successful balance of horror is giving the audience characters you can, well, mourn if something dreadful happens to them. The students of Greenwich aren’t defined much beyond their shared crisis, and while it’s natural for their school experience to be secondary to the driving plot, it might have created a higher level of investment to see more of them as regular students rather than sleuths and potential victims.

The Dreaming is lovely to look at, though. Chan has a solid, spooky handle on creating this kind of setting and conveying this kind of mood. Varied page composition and panel flow carry the reader along from waking life to the creepy nightmares the twins sometimes share.

In an entirely different neighborhood is dilapidated public institution Cromartie High School (ADV). This worst-of-the-worst temple of learning has a strangely abandoned feel. I don’t ever remember seeing a teacher, even in the background. It’s kind of like Peanuts; you know there must be grown-ups around somewhere, but they aren’t really relevant, and they’d probably only get in the way if they did show up.

CHS is a frequently whip-smart parody of frequently stupid manga, the battle genre where, somehow, an entire school has been conscripted into the service of brawling morons and their Byzantine system of one-upmanship.

But Eiji Nonaka has excised out the actual brawling, providing punchy, six-page treatises on delinquency. The brevity of the stories works in the book’s favor. Not all of the stories succeed, particularly in the first volume. (Nonaka really seemed to find his rhythm by the fourth, and I’m looking forward to seeing how things transition in the second and third.) But some of them are perfect little gems of parody. The structure gives Nonaka the liberty to throw in an idea simply because it seemed like it would be a hoot. If it isn’t, it doesn’t linger, and chances are good that the next three or four will work.

The cast is a cynically eclectic mix of morons and thugs, orbiting around profoundly out-of-place honors student Kamiyama. Nonaka makes good use of their comic possibilities individually and in the ways they interact. CHS is absurd, sometimes stupid, and very, very funny.

Dear non-profit organizations of the world,

During this joyous season of bulk-mail solicitations, I thought I should just clear up what seems to be a fairly common misconception. There is no “Mrs. David Welsh.” As I think back on the information I provided when I made the donation that put me on your mailing list in the first place, I gave you know indication whatsoever of my marital status.

So why didn’t you exercise the tiniest amount of caution in your correspondence? Because some donors might find your heterosexist assumptions the tiniest bit insulting when they live someplace where their life partnership isn’t recognized by law. Some donors might actually decide to never again send any financial support your way because you can’t seem to honor the way they’ve chosen to identify themselves. Some might even briefly wish they could retrieve the donations they’ve already made.

In fairness, you had no way of knowing I was gay and partnered based on the information that accompanied my donation. At the same time, you had no earthly reason to assume I was married, and even less reason to extrapolate that assumption into your database.

Cut it out. Seriously.

Also, to everyone who thinks singing “Jingle Bell Rock” will get more people to drop change into your kettle: You’re very, very wrong.

Warmest holiday wishes,

David

The Pulse has posted Diamond’s sales figures for November. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that Shojo Beat cracked the top 300 comics list at #274 (and just surprised that Shonen Jump didn’t make the cut). I’ve been wondering about sales on the anthology, and while comics specialty shops are a small piece of the overall pie, it’s nice to see it get a little bit of traction. (I can’t remember Jump ever coming in significantly higher in the rankings.)

I’m not surprised at all to see Fruits Basket Vol. 12 leading the top 50 manga list. There’s only one volume of Naruto on the list (#2), but maybe LCS shoppers catch up faster than bookstore customers. Twenty-two manga titles (from Tokyopop, Viz, Dark Horse, Del Rey, ADV, and – gasp! – CMX) cracked the top 100 graphic novels list.

I’m glad to see the debut volume of Eden and Genshiken Vol. 3 among the 22. (I think Genshiken gets stronger with each new installment.) I’m disappointed that Cromartie High School Vol. 4 didn’t make it, though it did place 32nd in terms of the month’s manga. (I came in late to CHS, but I’m enjoying catching up.)

Much of the weekend was devoted to Christmas shopping (because I’m either a procrastinator, a masochist, or both), but I did manage to work in some manga purchases, one being CHS Vol. 1. The other was the first volume of Sensual Phrase, because Johanna Draper Carlson has named it manga worth reading, and that’s good enough for me.

I got around to reading the latest volume in another book from that category, Hot Gimmick, and wow, was that a corker. Revelations! Earth-shattering decisions! Reversals! Comeuppance! And the continuing emergence of something that resembles a spine in our heroine, Hatsumi!

I’m always relieved to see someone like a title when they’ve purchased it partly on my recommendation. Tangonat has a positive review of Go! Comi’s excellent costume drama Cantarella.

Speaking of recommended reading, today’s offering in the Love Manga Advent Calendar is particularly choice, so go take a look and enter.

Technical difficulties will delay the posting of this week’s Flipped, but really, it’s not like it’s insulin or anything.

At this time of year, I’m always on the lookout for something a little caustic to cut the taste of artificial sweetener in the air. Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris is a reliable tonic, and I keep my fingers crossed that NPR will air the readings of the stories again so I can hear Julia Sweeney’s rendition of “Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family!”

Last week, the comics shop provided a couple of seasonal satires. One worked much better than the other.

I had a mixed reaction to Dan Slott’s GLA mini-series, feeling that it couldn’t quite decide if it was a satire of a grim super-hero comic or just a grim super-hero comic. But Slott’s GLX-mas Special (Marvel) is a real treat. It features the grade-Z super-team in stories that are alternately funny, wistful, barbed, and clever. Slott gives a hilarious spin to recent recruit Squirrel Girl with nice art by Matt Haley. Paul Grist’s pencils on the Doorman story are a welcome addition, and Ty Templeton does sturdy work on the continuing saga of poor Grasshopper. It’s a fun mix of styles and tones, with just enough sentiment to balance out the snark.

I’m less taken with Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle: The Fight Before Christmas (Dark Horse). Dini is one of the most reliably funny writers in comics, but these stories about Santa’s daughter fall a bit flat. In the lead tale, Jingle and feline rival Tashi put their differences aside to give their friends a moment in the spotlight. Then it deteriorates into a predictable catfight when a boy gets thrown into the mix. “Oh, Christmas Tree” doesn’t have much in the way of ambitious satire (Bush is a dimwit), and even an incontinent yak can’t quite bring the funny. My favorite of the stories was the sweet “Hot Rod Lemming,” largely for the psychedelic children’s book art of Jose Garibaldi.

For weeks, I’ve been tittering over the premise of Kimi Shiruya – Dost thou Know? (DMP). A yaoi title about rival (ahem) swordsmen? Please! How could I not?

But it’s quite good. It has solid characterization, and Satoru Ishihara does a particularly nice job illuminating the inner lives of her protagonists, working-class Katsuomi and rich boy Tsurugi. The art is solid, illustrating scenes of domesticity, romance, and kendo matches.

But if I was tittering, I get the impression that Ishihara was laughing out loud and possibly dislocating her eye through excessive winking. The quantity of visual and verbal double entendres is impressive, to say the least.

It starts gently enough:

“At the next tournament… I’m going to breach your defenses.”

But things ramp up:

“If I could, I’d like to cross swords with you one day… (throb) …using real blades.”

What are two gifted young kendo competitors to do? They’re drawn to each other, but they don’t want their skills to “become dulled.” But they come to realize:

“When you’re strong… I’m even happier.”

And then Katsuomi raises the stakes, showing Tsurugi “a real blade”:

“Wanna hold it?”

The kendo becomes a hilarious but unexpectedly effective contest to see who gets to be the seme and who will be the uke. It’s a weird balance between tawdry and touching, and I liked it a lot.

We’re back from New York. We had a great time, though I always find that 24 hours is just enough. It’s an amazing city, but it always makes me feel like I need a vacation to recover from my vacation.

I have no idea how people commute in and out of the city by car every day. Here’s hoping that the transit strike is averted, because that sounds like a recipe for city-wide madness, especially with countless tourists like me flooding the city. (I got the impression that the people who actually live and work in New York, while gracious to out-of-towners and resigned to the holiday flood, really would like their city back. I can’t blame them.)

*

The three most menacing things we faced in Manhattan:

1. Older, wealthy people bolting from hotels and chic restaurants to their limousines, heedless of other sidewalk users. Yes, it was cold, but if one more fur-wearing woman with over-processed hair had tried to knock me into a trash can to reach her Lexus, I might have caused an incident.
2. Absent-minded parents with strollers combining sightseeing during such activities as walking through crosswalks. When crossing in front of Saks, I actually did take a spill in the street because of a wheel to the ankle. “Be careful!” the stroller navigator shrieked. Thanks for the tip.
3. Frozen latte spills on the sidewalk. This is the urban black ice, slicker and a hundred times more deadly than any mere precipitation. Watch for it. Fear it.

*

Neither of us crazy about the plays of David Mamet, partly because they seem so manly and hostile and artificial. But it seems like we can’t go to Manhattan without overhearing the kind of conversations that must surely inspire Mamet’s dialogue.

Last year, it was a party of three at the next table at the Carnegie Deli having the kind of discussion that should theoretically make every woman within earshot rise up and crush them. This year, it was a pair of businessmen sucking down gin and tonics at a hotel bar in Midtown. It was like a deleted scene from Glengarry Glen Ross.

(It was also the most wonderfully lethal martini I’ve ever consumed – more Bombay Sapphire than it seemed possible for a glass to contain, frosty as could be. Well done, bartender.)

*

After a careful survey, I have to give the First Annual Best Department Store Holiday Window Design Award to Bergdorf Goodman. They’re beautiful and somewhat disturbing.

*

I’m not usually in favor of garments for dogs, but there were some mighty nifty hand-knit dog sweaters on display in the city. And the smaller breeds really needed the extra warmth.

*

If you’re wandering around Madison Avenue in the east 60s and feel frail, you might stop in Teuscher’s and get some of the dark chocolate champagne truffles. They start a little weird, and they’re kind of expensive, but the finish is awesome, and the sugar rush will carry you for blocks and blocks.

*

Once again, Jim Hanley’s Universe and Midtown Comics battle for my love. Hanley’s was having a sale and had a copy of the new Matt Madden book, but the store always leaves me feeling overwhelmed. Midtown looks like a Restoration Hardware and doesn’t have near Hanley’s selection, but they did have a copy of Times of Botchan. Torn between two lovers…

*

The main reason for the trip was to see the new revival of Sweeney Todd. I was a little nervous about it at first. The director, John Doyle, has stripped the bloody operetta down, staging it as an exercise in art therapy at a mental hospital. The cast of ten also functions as the orchestra.

The original production was a giant, music-hall monster, and I love it a lot. This version is sleek, small, and maybe one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen on a stage.

The minimalist approach doesn’t diminish the impact at all. It actually draws more focus to the story and the music, heightening their impact and giving everything eerie intensity. The play-within-a-play configuration works exceptionally well. Doyle doesn’t try and impose anything new on the piece, instead using the character dynamics of the asylum to inform everything that’s already there. It makes for some very haunting moments, and it gives added weight to just about every relationship in the play.

I’ve come to think of Patti Lupone as a Big F**king Star, the kind of performing personality who carries so much familiarity and baggage to everything she does that you have to be very careful in how you use her. But she falls into the ensemble with a complete lack of vanity, playing the xylophone, triangle, and tuba when she isn’t snarling out her distinctive version of meat-pie purveyor Mrs. Lovett.

But the whole cast is incredible, including Michael Cerveris as a sleek, frightening Sweeney and Manoel Feliciano as a Tobias who sings and plays the violin with equal lyricism. Most amazing was Lauren Molina as ingénue Johanna. That part of the piece never worked well for me in the original, but Molina is amazing as a disturbed young woman playing a disturbed young woman. The fluff is all gone, and the character is as funny, moving, and chilling as I think she was always meant to be.

You’d think the novelty of seeing actors as the orchestra would be distracting, and it is initially. But it all comes together because the piece is so carefully conceived. It’s also the end of “triple threat” as the highest compliment that can be paid to a Broadway performer. Sure, lots of people can sing, dance, and act, but can they play the cello or the tuba while they do it? Expect a monotonous repetition of the musical’s title during the Tony Award broadcast in the spring.

PBS did audiences a huge favor when they captured the original production on video. They should repeat the favor with this version. It’s just that good.

*

Lastly, an apology: if you were riding on the Broadway Local on Wednesday morning and got clocked by a couple of gay men with Zabar’s bags full of cheese and more rugelach than any two people should consume, that was us. We’re really sorry. It was an accident.

There was a flurry of mighty fine blogging over at Love Manga over the weekend. (Well, there’s always mighty fine blogging there, but you know what I mean.) David Taylor provides an astonishingly thorough look at Viz’s stranglehold on the Bookscan graphic novel chart. He also issues a challenge in the comments:

“Taking the last weeks releases from Tokyopop, what do you all recommend or feel could compete against Viz.”

Well, Fruits Basket Vol. 12, certainly.

Further on down, he provides analysis of and reaction to Liza Coppola’s lengthy interview at ICv2. In the comments, Adam Arnold makes good points about the challenges of shelving graphic novels.

Last but not least, the Advent Competition continues. Today’s offering is a personal favorite, the glorious Sexy Voice and Robo.

Speaking of holiday initiatives from bloggers named David, the Second Annual CBLDF Fund Drive continues at Yet Another Comics Blog. This is a great, generous effort on the part of Dave Carter.

Johanna Draper Carlson has moved her blogging efforts from Cognitive Dissonance onto her main site, Comics Worth Reading. (I like the color scheme.) Update your bookmarks and pop on over.

And, since it’s Monday, another installment of Flipped should pop up at Comics World News. (I’m liking the reorganization of the front page.) Today’s topic is Fanfare/Ponent Mon, how much I love Kinderbook and The Walking Man, and how I wish their product was a little easier to find.

We went to see a musical last night. It was one of those town-and-gown things where college students and community members join forces, and to be honest, our hopes weren’t very high.

It was staged very well, though. It was directed with energy and imagination. The designs were eye-catching and very functional for the demands of the show. The cast was uniformly good, especially the kids.

It was also one of the worst musicals I’ve ever seen. It was Seussical, and it must be stopped.

It’s one of those situations where you can see the thinking behind it – turn the aesthetic of a beloved children’s book author into a different kind of all-ages entertainment and wait for the cash to roll in as all the families who read Horton Hears a Who and The Cat in the Hat and the rest of Theodor Geisel’s classic stories line up for tickets.

But the reality of it is so pushy and shrill and antithetical to everything Geisel ever put on paper. When it tries to be sweet or reflective, it ends up being cloying or preachy. When it tries to be antic and playful, you end up feeling battered by the forced cheer of it all.

The songs are completely forgettable, thank heavens. I have a general memory of them sounding like a theme park revue, but none of them stuck in my head. You might expect a shred of whimsy or quirkiness in music intended to serve Geisel’s stories. Instead, it comes in two modes: perkiness and treacle.

The attempt to give the show an underlying narrative seems like a ghastly mistake, too. If they had decided to make it a sort of story-hour musical with loosely connected vignettes, like You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, it might have worked. But the conceivers were too clever by half, threading everything together and creating what I can only describe as a Seussian shared universe. Since Geisel was so careful and focused in his portrayal of themes, it becomes a huge muddle and nothing comes across.

Speaking of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, it apparently suffered a somewhat similar fate in its last major revival. The original production (and hundreds of community and school productions that followed) was a sweet, simple piece that nicely echoed the tone of Charles Schulz’s classic strip. When it was re-mounted for Broadway a few years ago, it was amped up and dumbed down beyond all recognition, notable only for unleashing Kristin Chenoweth on an unsuspecting public.

Seussical ran for six months on Broadway, which seems like a few months too long. It’s absolutely talent-proof, and if it comes to your town during this holiday season, please avoid it. Stay home and read the books or watch the animated versions.

This was one of my favorite pastimes from the good old days on Usenet soap opera groups, where forum visitors would take turns posting absurd, unfounded rumors in hopes that they would eventually materialize on their television screens. (Example: “Laurel Banning will mysteriously vanish from Pine Valley forever.”)

It came to mind when I heard the announcement that “VIZ Media manga titles swept ALL Top 10 placements in the (Dec. 4 Bookscan) Adult Fiction Graphic Novel category (actually VIZ titles dominated the Top 13). A list of the top selling titles follows below for your review:

“1. NARUTO Vol. 8
2. RUROUNI KENSHIN Vol. 21
3. BLEACH: VOLUME 10
4. FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: VOLUME 4
5. HANA-KIMI: VOL 9
6. HOT GIMMICK Vol. 10
7. NARUTO Vol. 2
8. NARUTO Vol. 7
9. NARUTO: VOL. 3
10. RUROUNI KENSHIN Vol. 20
11. NARUTO: VOL. 4
12. NARUTO: VOL. 1
13. DRAGON BALL Z: Vol. 23”

and recalled Liza Coppola’s comments on the Bookscan list at ICv2.

I would now like to announce that I will have the winning numbers for Saturday’s Powerball drawing.

In August, I read the first volume of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Antique Bakery (Digital Mang), and it was good. This week, I read the second volume, and it was much, much better.

I enjoyed many of the customer vignettes in the first installment, but Yoshinaga focuses more on her leads this time around. It results in charming workplace comedy that’s gentle, sexy, and sly.

Entrepreneur Tachibana, genius pastry chef Ono, and enthusiastic apprentice Kanada are joined by the mysterious Chikage, Tachibana’s devoted, hopelessly inept servant. It’s a nice way to reveal more of Tachibana’s background, and it gives Ono a different kind of love interest. (He even reigns in his “Gay Demonic Charm” in the face of Chikage’s guilelessness.) All of the leads get some revealing moments, particularly in a well choreographed sequence where they deal with the Christmas rush.

As with last time, Yoshinaga shows the perfect skill set as an illustrator to convey this material. Character design is excellent (especially with the varied masses buying holiday treats), and facial expressions and body language are often priceless. The food images aren’t as numerous this time around, but they’re still sumptuously detailed.

It’s official. Antique Bakery has gone from a book I like an awful lot to one I love.

(It’s also one of the titles featured in Tony Salvaggio’s latest Calling Manga Island column at Comic Book Resources, a nice run-down of the year in manga. Go, read, and find some new additions to your wish list.)