The December 2005 edition of Previews has landed with a shuddering thud, so it must be time to trawl through for first editions of the manga kind.

Dark Horse may have given the axe to Super Manga Blast, but it’s got plenty for the manga reader. Most notable is Crying Freeman (by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami, $14.95). Not quite in time for Valentine’s Day are Harlequin Pink: Idol Dreams (by Charlotte Lamb and Toko Hanabusa, $9.95) and Harlequin Violet: Holding on to Alex (by Margaret Way and Misao Hoshiai, $9.95). Nowhere near in time for Halloween are Ju-On: Video Side (by Miki Rinno, $9.95), Octopus Girl (by Toru Yamazaki, $12.95), and School Zone (by Kanako Inuki, $12.95), but horror fans should be in heaven.

Del Rey offers School Rumble (by Jim Kobayashi, $10.95), and the cover art looks adorable.

Digital Manga provides the oddity of the month with How to “Read” Manga: Gloom Party (by Yoshio Kawashima, $14.95). It features the “little dirty secrets in the manga of the early 90s. And all the perverse, male chauvinistic stuff Japan won’t admit today.” I am intrigued.

Ice Kunion releases Real Lies (by Si-Young Lee, $10.95), a collection of stand-alone stories set in alternate realities.

Marvel (you heard me) walks the manga-influenced road with I ♥ Marvel: Marvel AI (by C.B. Cebulski, Kei Kobayashi, and Tomoko Tamiguchi, $2.99) and New Mangaverse (by C.B. Cebulski and Tommy Ohtsuka, $2.99). Because I’m a sucker for the Vision and the Scarlet Witch (pre-… um… lots of people) and something less of a sucker for Medusa, I’m all over the former.

Okay, it’s cheating, but it’s my blog, damn it. Oni re-releases Bryan Lee O’Malley’s sublime Lost at Sea ($11.95). If you haven’t read this yet, what in the name of all that’s good and decent are you waiting for?

Tokyopop exhausts me once again, so it’s time to bust out the bullets:

• The Abandoned, by Ross Campbell, $9.99
• Battle Club, by Yuji Shiozaki, $9.99
• Gatcha Gatcha, by Yutaka Tachibana, $9.99
• Last Fantasy, by Yong-Wan Kwon, $9.99
• Made in Heaven: Kazemichi, by Ami Sakurai and Yukari Yashiki, $9.99
• Never Give Up, by Hiromu Mutou, $9.99
• Someday’s Dreamers, by Norie Yoshizuki, $9.99
• Gravitation novel, by Maki Murakami, $7.99

Viz has two debuts: Black Cat (by Kentaro Yabuki, $7.99) and Godchild (by Kaori Yuki, $8.99). As an aside, Godchild is the YuYu Hakusho of Shojo Beat, in my opinion. And by that, I mean that it’s agony.

Did I miss anything?

Oh, it’s nice to be back in my own home with a cat on my lap. A six-hour drive has left me incapable of anything but random thoughts, but I need to clear my head.

Once again, Turner Classic Movies was the saving grace of a few days in the sedate environment of the ancestral home. How could I have forgotten that Operation Petticoat is one of the most homoerotic movies ever made?

Every time I think I’ve worked at the worst daily newspapers in the world, I go home and read the holiday edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Simply awful.

I finally remembered to pick up a copy of Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 542 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. It’s about cooking and blogging. How could it go wrong? I admit I’m finding it a bit slow to start, because there are already several thousand books about late-20-somethings struggling through dead-end jobs in Manhattan, and the world isn’t exactly enriched by the addition of Powell’s experience to the genre. Enough with the urban angst and on with the aspic, already. (Graeme McMillan liked it, though, so I can certainly be patient.)

Bless Tony Salvaggio for explaining the aesthetic of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in the latest Calling Manga Island. The idea of people cosplaying these characters is absolutely terrifying to me, though I swear I’ve seen some of these outfits at leather bars on Halloween.

David Taylor offers his take on the PW Best of 2005, rightly adding Death Note to the list of the year’s most impressive debuts. (Would Fruits Basket count? Or did it have to premiere in 2005?) Johanna Draper Carlson offers some suggested additions to the list, following up on her excellent initial analysis. This is always my favorite part of Best Of Season, not so much the lists themselves, but the “But what about…” discussion that follows.

Publishers Weekly posted its finalized Best Comics of 2005 list in PW Comics Week. It’s an interesting list of books, but what’s the point of having a blog if not to nitpick?

I agree: I’m delighted to see some of my favorites included. The Rabbi’s Cat, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, WE3, Yotsuba&!, Salamander Dream, and Street Angel gave me a lot of reading pleasure this year.

I disagree (with alternative suggestions from the same publisher in some cases): In most cases, these are books I think are accomplished but not really exceptional.

Ex Machina can be very good, but it’s pretty uneven. The major plots are never as interesting as the background stuff. I preferred Andy Diggle’s Adam Strange, to be honest. Fables was also particularly strong in 2005.

There’s a lot to like about Genshiken, particularly the quality of the illustrations. Overall, it’s more of a mildly guilty pleasure than a highlight of the year. It also pales in comparison to Love Roma, the best book Del Rey published in 2005, and maybe the best book they’ve published so far.

It’s hard to fault the craft and ambition in Tricked, but I didn’t feel connected to the characters, which was sort of the point of the exercise. I’d have been more inclined to cite Owly: Just a Little Blue or Spiral-Bound, but I’m kind of a sap.

Dramacon showed that Svetlana Chmakova is a very talented creator, but some of her story choices left me cold. In the Tokyopop OEL category, I prefer Jen Lee Quick’s Off*Beat. That said, I don’t know that I’ve read anything from that niche that I’d classify as the Best of 2005. Based only on preview pages, The Dreaming could change that.

Astonishing X-Men Volume 1: Gifted struck me as very proficient, utterly forgettable franchise entertainment. Better in general (even in the category of comics from talented television writers and hot artists) was the first arc of Young Avengers.

No opinion: I haven’t read the rest of the titles on the list, though many are on my “to buy” list, like Night Fisher, King, and Gemma Bovery.

Omissions: Sexy Voice and Robo really took my breath away. I’ll be re-reading Capote in Kansas for years to come. And Fullmetal Alchemist is probably the year’s best example of the intersection between art and commerce.

It’s not on Diamond’s shipping list or ComicList, but for whatever reason, a paperback edition of the seventh volume of the Treasury of Victorian Murder series (NBM) will be winging its way to my shop tomorrow. And really, who cares why? I love this carefully researched, imaginatively illustrated, and amusingly grisly series.

Also due is the new issue of The Comics Journal (#272). Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #4 stumbles in, hung over, disheveled, and tardy, barely in time to hand things off to Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein. (Note to self: Dig out copy of Zatanna #3 to try and remember what happened last time.) There’s shockingly little in the way of manga (Viz doesn’t have any releases), but there’s a new copy of Tokyopop’s loss leader, Manga Magazine. (It’s about attitude, people.)

Wow! Paul Gravett has joined Team Comics!

Okay, not really, but his new book, Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life, is a handy entry point for those curious about but unfamiliar with that sector of the publishing industry. It’s a persuasive, intelligent, and well-organized introduction to the form for people who want to know more but might not really know where to start. Gravett covers plenty of the usual suspects, the widely accepted classic graphic novels, but he expands that list with a bunch of unexpected and interesting choices.

It’s also a really beautiful object, a coffee-table book in soft-cover, with loads of pages from graphic novels reproduced to give readers a taste of the titles under consideration. My partner may not have much use for graphic novels, but he loves good design, and this book got raves from him on that front.

One thing I really don’t understand is the book’s placement in stores. It’s generally in the graphic novel section, which doesn’t strike me as helping to achieve its aims. It’s certainly eye-catching enough to hold its own with, say, the gift book selections in your average chain store. And since it’s designed to be of use to a general audience, why hide it in the corner of the store they haven’t yet discovered?

This might not be the case every bookstore, though. I just think it would get into the hands of people who’d find it useful if it were parked up front with the other pretty, seasonal offerings. (Seriously, look at the gift book table. You can’t tell me that graphic novels are too much of a niche subject compared to some of the others covered in those titles.) And then you’d have more copies of the book moving and, hopefully, more traffic in your graphic novel section after they’d become curious about individual titles profiled. (It should be noted that I did really poorly in economics in college, so I might have no idea what I’m talking about.)

For more informed views on the bookstore market, you might pop over to the Ninth Art and take a look at Paul O’Brien’s latest column.

In the latest Flipped, I talk about another recent book about comics, Manga: Masters of the Art.

And while you’re over at Comics World News, why not take a look at the new contest that’s in progress? It’s easy to enter, and you could win a copy of the bumper edition of the very promising Elk’s Run.

Update: Want to double your chances of winning the Elk’s Run bumper? Swing by Mark Fossen’s Focused Totality and check out his inaugural give-away. And you can read Fossen’s review of the book here, if your appetite needs to be whetted.

Yes, I’m living like a member of the supporting cast from Genshiken this weekend. It happens.

***

I liked Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire very much, particularly the first half. It clicks along at a wonderfully brisk pace, and director Mike Newell and screenwriter Steven Kloves don’t burden themselves by retelling everything that’s happened in the previous three. It’s similar to the trust of the audience that Jog and Mark Fossen have found in All-Star Superman.

There’s also a very welcome conversational feel to the scenes with the students. The rhythm is much more natural, and the young cast seems a lot stronger as a result, especially Daniel Radcliffe as Harry. (Newell doesn’t force Radcliffe to gape in stupid wonder at every little magical flourish.)

Oddly enough, the action sequences are probably the slowest in the film. They’re accomplished and feature some impressive CGI work, but they almost stand apart as set pieces, breaking up the pace. Newell and Kloves made sensible cuts to translate the book into a movie, though they do result in marginalizing some of my favorite characters.

Still, it’s a fine way to spend a few hours, and it’s probably the best movie in the franchise so far.

**

After leaving the movie, we went game hunting. My heart leapt in geekish glee at news of the imminent arrival of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I’m sure the first release will be a nightmare of computer-freezing glitches, but I’ll buy it. I’m weak, and it seems like ages since I lost myself in a bleary-eyed RPG haze.

***

One of the highlights of Manga: Masters of the Art is the interview with hit-making hydra CLAMP, so I was motivated to pick up the second volume of xxxHolic. I loved the look of the first and liked the set-up, but I was put off by some of the elements that made it seem like a CLAMP catalog rather than a story.

While the first quarter of volume two is utterly incomprehensible to me (I’m not buying Tsubasa, Del Rey, so you can just get over it), thing improved immeasurably when xxxHolic got down to its own concerns. The characters are slowly but surely growing on me, even if Watanuki is a bit of an hysteric and a lot of a seinen dork (basically decent but hopelessly insecure and hapless).

There are some lovely sequences and a nice mix of spooky and funny elements. Someone once described the illustrations to me as “divine decadence,” and that’s certainly apt. Now, I just need to be reassured that the CLAMPovers are kept to a minimum in future volumes before I invest more time and money in the series. It seems like it has definite bathtub-reading potential.

***

This seems to be the year when I lose patience with a lot of reality shows I used to love (The Apprentice, The Amazing Race, Survivor). I’m really looking forward to the return of Project Runway, though, and I’m glad that Television Without Pity is catching up with the first season.

I have a pretty firm rule about not going to blockbuster movies on their opening weekends, because hell is other people, especially in local cinemas, but I might break it for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I liked the third installment because it actually seemed like a movie instead of a staged reading (and with Jim Dale doing such fine work with the audio books, why settle for Chris Columbus?), and the reviews indicate that that’s even more true this time around.

***

Okay, so the plot of Banana Sunday didn’t hold together perfectly from beginning to end. I’ll still read it over and over, because I would seriously consider hiring Go-Go as my life coach. “Donuts are friends! Friends!”

***

I sometimes forget that I’m not the only nerd in my relationship. We were sitting around reading, and my partner came to the end of one of the science-fiction paperbacks he favors (the second part of a trilogy), and he stood up and said, “We’re going to the bookstore now.” (Thank you, Karen Traviss.)

Since for once I didn’t initiate the trip, I decided I was allowed to indulge myself and got the new Paul Gravett book. Retail rationalization is one of my best events.

***

Did the first volume of Nana show up anywhere else? I thought I’d pre-ordered it through the comic shop, but it didn’t arrive, and it wasn’t on the shelf at the bookstore, either.

After reading Yuki Shimuzi’s Love Mode (Blu), I’m left to wonder just how some of these yaoi couples answer when people ask them how they met. I can just picture Love Mode’s Izumi and Takamiya on a double date with Hikaru and Shima from Shinobu Gotoh and Shoko Takaku’s Passion (DMP).

Takamiya: That’s a really funny story, actually.

Izumi: You tell it. I’m still kind of fuzzy on the details.

Takamiya: Well, you were really drunk. Anyway, I’d just moved back to Tokyo and was kind of lonely, so I hired an escort, and this guy’s working name was Izumi.

Shima: I see where this is going!

Takamiya: (Laughs.) Yup! So I was supposed to meet that Izumi in this park at the same time my Izumi was waiting to meet some hot girl.

Izumi: Who bailed, of course.

Takamiya: So I thought Izumi here was the escort, and he thought someone had played a joke on him by setting him up with me.

Hikaru: Wow, so it was like fate!

Takamiya: Well, eventually. So we went on our date, and we had a really nice time, but Izumi got really wasted, so I couldn’t really tell he was fighting me off when I had sex with him.

Shima: Coercive sex… boy, does that bring back memories!

Izumi: Hey, it could have been worse. Like those guys in the porn theatre bathroom. Or the rich punk at that party who shoved his –

Takamiya: Hon, don’t be rude. Shima was about to say something.

Izumi: Oops. Sorry!

Takamiya: You were saying, Shima?

Shima: Well, I met this little scamp when I was teaching at his high school.

Hikaru: (Blushing.) Oh, Sir.

Shima: During his senior year, he lured me into a classroom and forced himself on me.

Izumi: Wow, he must have really liked you!

Hikaru: (Grinning.) Guilty!

Takamiya: Literally! (All laugh.) Waitress, more sake!

Izumi: So did you guys start dating after that?

Hikaru: This is the best part!

Shima: Heh. See, I had some intimacy issues at the time, so I pretended to “punish” Hikaru by making him date me to make up for the rape thing.

Takamiya: Clever!

Shima: What about you guys?

Takamiya: Oh, I just stalked him for a while and got in good with his Mom.

File under “recurring genre tropes I could do without.”

There are lots of interesting perspectives on the Seven Seas policy change regarding creator ownership. Love Manga and Jog are among them, and Lea Hernandez has launched a new wave of discussion over at The Engine. Is it partly a public relations move by Seven Seas? Well, obviously, but I’ve always been a sucker for enlightened corporate self-interest. (And I admit it makes me more likely to look at the publisher’s product.)

Because my attention span is very frail, I keep forgetting to add Paul Gravett’s new web site to the sidebar. The recent release of Graphic Novels: Stories To Change Your Life gives me the appropriate kick in the pants. I admire the heck out of Gravett’s Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, so Graphic Novels is definitely going on the wish list. I’ve browsed through it, and it seems to feature an excellent mix of works from all over the place.

The invasion of Pokopen hops resolutely backwards in this week’s comics, with a re-release of Sgt. Frog vol. 4 from Tokyopop. Clearly this title is so staggeringly popular that Tokyopop must reprint to meet rabid demand. Oni has the final issue (sob!) of Banana Sunday (#4), and the first issue of Local, which has gotten lots of positive pre-release buzz.

Surprising me not at all, I flubbed some of the details in Diamond’s top 100 graphic novels. A kindly correspondent wrote to point out that there 22 manga titles in the top 100 graphic novel chart. I missed Alone In My Kings Harem (more yaoi from Digital Manga at #68), Push Man and Other Stories (Drawn and Quarterly at #89), and Ultimate Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cinemanga (Tokyopop at #75). (Can you blame me for missing that last one?) Also Del Rey had two titles in September’s chart Negima! vol.07 at #20 and Wallflower vol.05 at #98.

In a slightly related development, the nightmare that was Love Manga’s absence from the blogosphere is now over.

In another slightly related development, Digital Manga had to delay its scheduled October and November yaoi titles until December.

And now it’s time for the “Hell is other people” portion of the program. I had high hopes for a weekend trip up to Pittsburgh, hoping to do some comics shopping in a chic urban setting (all things being relative to West Virginia). A visit to a comic shop I’d really enjoyed several months ago was a bust, in part because of That Guy, the apocryphal comics-shop weirdo who provides a running commentary on any damned thing that comes into his head at any (and every) given moment.

Of course I felt like a total crank for being bothered, because he was having a great time and the shop employees were clearly enjoying the patter, but it was kind of like being in a very small room with a running leaf blower. I’m not looking for a Japanese tea ceremony when I walk into a comics shop, but some measure of serenity would have been welcome.

Add to this the fact that the floor show was parked right in front of the rack of new graphic novels (my primary reason for the visit) and that the remainder of the graphic novel stock had apparently been organized by a conspiracy theorist trying to scratch out some desperate code by his or her seemingly random arrangement of titles, and you have me bolting for light and air and hope. Or at least a nice Thai lunch.

If you’re ever in the Shadyside area of Pittsburgh and are craving this particular cuisine, look up My Thai. The food was really delicious, cheap, and the service was great. Everyone, from the owner to the bus person, apologized for the inconvenience of having a party of 35 in the adjacent room, but I never noticed any glitches in service.

Then there was the visit to Whole Foods. I love an extensive cheese department as much as the next person, but I’m also crazy about personal space. This didn’t seem to be a priority for the other customers. I did share their reluctance to dive into the wonderful world of spelt, though.

Desperate not to leave an urban area without making some comics purchases, I did some panic shopping at a Borders on the way home. While I don’t think this was designed specifically to irritate me, every title I was looking for was shelved in the wrong place. Death Note? Filed under S. Love Mode? Under M. Tenshi Ja Nai? I don’t even remember where I found that one. Maybe it was with the cookbooks.

Fortunately, my naturally sunny disposition returned in time to write this week’s Flipped, a gush-a-thon over the wonderful Sexy Voice and Robo.