In too many years reading comics, I’ve lost count of the time I’ve looked at heated exchanges between apparently heterosexual male characters and muttered, “Just kiss already.” In the second volume of Kio Shimoku’s Genshiken (Del Rey), a man and a woman actually inspire the response.

What is this phenomenon? Hetyay?

In this case, the simmering undercurrent comes from otaku-hating Saki and nerd plus ultra Madarame. They’re natural enemies, obviously, pretty and predatory versus marginal and obsessive (think snake and mongoose), but there’s something more. They take too much delight in needling each other and zeroing in on each other’s weak points for it to be anything but blistering, shameful attraction.

And now, before I start sounding too much like an otaku myself, I’ll move on to more general reactions.

With the characters largely established in the first volume, it’s time for the manga to set up something resembling a plot. Since most of its protagonists are more interested in buying things than doing things, plots are a bit marginal. The club runs the risk of being eliminated by the officious campus activities vice president, and the members aren’t exactly equipped to respond. This leaves most of the heavy lifting to Saki, and Shimoku does a reasonably good job of illustrating the reasons why she might actually help the club. He also manages to maintain enough of her ant-at-the-picnic persona for things to be credible. It’s nice, careful character work.

But Genshiken does meander. It’s more interested in subculture immersion than narrative drive, so readers looking for a story with urgency will be disappointed. It holds up as a gently weird, funny character study, though, and I’m still enjoying it.

Oh, Digital Manga, how you tease me. You have two books coming out this week, and the pre-release buzz has me all betwixt and between.

The description of Bambi and Her Pink Gun doesn’t do much for me, but the title is certainly catchy, and the sample art is intriguing. I usually avoid lowlifes and gunfights, but a really interesting cross-section of people have praised this book or are eagerly looking forward to it, so I feel like I should set my genre prejudices aside. (I’ll even ignore the deal-breaking adjective, “Tarantinoesque,” and the endorsement of Puffy AmiYumi.)

On paper, Antique Bakery sounds like a manga created by people who have eavesdropped on my subconscious. Lyle at Crocodile Caucus was somewhat ambivalent about the first volume, though, and our tastes in manga seem to overlap. It’s possible that I’ve raised my expectations dangerously high, though Dorian at Postmodern Barney has seen and liked a scanslation of the title.

I’m glad it’s a slow week otherwise, because these two books are consuming all my anticipatory attention.

I had a list of things I’d hoped to do over the weekend and was able to check off exactly one of them (writing this week’s Flipped). I’m not really disappointed, because nothing on the list was what you would call critical, and I managed to keep myself out of trouble all the same.

I didn’t have any luck finding a copy of Capote in Kansas (Oni) at either of the local bookstores, but I did finally cave in and pick up the first volume of Gravitation (Tokyopop). I had browsed through it ages ago and wasn’t particularly impressed, but after reading the Steven and Jillian Grant’s review in the latest Comics Journal, I wanted to give it another shot. Apparently in that first glance-through, I’d fixated on the moody, angry bits and had failed to notice how funny the title is. It’s always nice to come late to a title that has plenty of volumes to pick up at leisure.

The second volume of Yotsuba&! (ADV) was nowhere to be found either, though there was an empty space on the shelf where it might once have been. So off to the internet I went, ordering both of Frederick L. Schodt’s books on manga as well (bargain priced if ordered together). Belatedly wondering how I might finance all this, I finally put some of my old comics up for auction on EBay. Nothing particularly exciting, mind you… just some test auctions. It’s just the next step in finding More Money for Manga.

I wasn’t even ambitious in the kitchen. I’d meant to look through some cookbooks and try some new recipes, but I got distracted by basil and ripe hot peppers in the garden and made the same spicy tofu I do all the time.

And the dog got a bath, and the lawn got mowed, and the house is clean, so it’s not like I was an utterly self-indulgent slug.

The first line of dialogue from Giant-Size Spider-Woman 1:

“I’m a cheap slut. I am. When did that happen exactly?”

Doesn’t that just draw you in? Don’t you want to know more? And isn’t it so bracingly modern? Welcome to the comeback trail, Spider-Woman.

Your membership papers for the Order of Former Super-Heroines Turned Self-Loathing Private Investigators Named Jessica are being processed and will be delivered within seven to ten business days.

Greg Rucka has apologized to readers of DC’s The OMAC Project for being unable to contain such an epic to the six issues of that title. Mistakes were (kind of) made, and a plot twist integral to the coherence of that mini-series actually happened in the “Sacrifice” crossover that’s running through some other titles I don’t follow. (Except for one.)

“So instead of a six issue miniseries, you get a ten issue miniseries, and I won’t fault any reader for not picking it up. I’d still suggest them though, because they’re a good story and worth reading, but I’d suggest, if nothing else, you pick up Wonder Woman #219 at the very least – call it issue OMAC #3.5 if you must, because it sets up the events of OMAC #4.”

If I can make a quick stab at paraphrasing, “We tried to contain the artificiality and cynicism, but it took on a life of its own. Plus, Wonder Woman needs the sales bump. And I’m not really apologizing, because that would be stupid, because OMAC is Important, and you should be buying it if you hope to understand the next year’s worth of DC Comics. Doesn’t ‘trinity’ sound mythic?”

He’s also apologized to writers Gail Simone (Action Comics) and Mark Verheiden (Superman) for foisting the story on their barely-begun runs on those titles. “Sacrifice” could have been called “Taking One for the Team,” apparently. Rucka somehow neglects to apologize to himself, even though one of his own books, Wonder Woman, is utterly derailed by the crossover.

I’m not going to sit here and argue that Wonder Woman is a great title, but it has a lot going for it. I really enjoy Rucka’s treatment of the Mount Olympus crowd, and I think his original aim – showing where Diana and her mission fit into the DC Universe – is interesting (when it crops up). Sure, Veronica Cale is a badly motivated and hopelessly inept arch-nemesis. Sure, the whole blindness interlude was a pointless non-starter. But scheming Greek deities go a long way with me.

Now, all that build-up seems destined to be sidelined if not abandoned entirely for the sake of Diana’s function as Amazon ex machina in OMAC, which is incredibly irritating.

But, as Johanna notes, at least it came out on time.

After reading the second issue of Shojo Beat, I’ve decided I like the idea of the magazine better than the magazine itself.

That isn’t to say that I think Shojo Beat is bad. On the contrary, I think it has a lot of strengths in terms of concept and content, and I hope it fares as well in the market as Shonen Jump. But the second issue helped me realize that anthologies just aren’t my favorite manga delivery system.

I like the big, meaty chunks of story that come in tankoubons. And I think the titles I enjoy in Shojo Beat (like Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Mitsuba Takanashi’s Crimson Hero) would read better in that format. So far, Yû Watase’s Absolute Boyfriend seems to work well in monthly doses, but I don’t think it will lose anything in collection.

The other benefit of sticking to digests is to limit my exposure to manga I really don’t like. I don’t know about you, but what little capacity for frugality I have usually results in some weird kind of entertainment masochism. I can very rarely pay for a comic, book, or movie ticket and give up halfway through, no matter how awful I think it is. If I buy an anthology, I feel compelled to read all of it in service of the abstract notion of “getting my money’s worth.”

So that means I forced myself to read the second chapters of Taeko Watanabe’s Kaze Hikaru and Kaori Yuki’s Godchild. Kaze Hikaru makes a bit more sense this time around, but I still don’t find it very interesting. (It actually had a narcoleptic effect.) Godchild is pretty to look at, but the dialogue is agonizing:

“How many times do I have to tell you that I would never give my precious little sister to a guy whose parents disowned him, even though he’s the eldest son of the Gabriel Baroncy?! Do you have a Lolita complex?”

Since I haven’t found the plots to be great shakes, the clunky, anachronistic chatter is even more of an irritant.

I’m not really sure where Marimo Ragawa’s Baby & Me is going, though I do know that it’s shamelessly manipulative. That isn’t a criticism on its own, but the manipulation here is kind of crude. I worry about the toddler wandering into an elevator shaft, worry about the kid spending decades in therapy, and puzzle at the grown-ups who don’t seem to find the situation problematic. If it were a dark comedy, it might hold together for me. As it is, I don’t know what to make of it (and I’m not inclined to watch it too closely to find out).

I do love the concept of targeted anthologies, though. If the market could sustain them, I’d like to see more, especially if they were genre-based. It’s probably impractical (and would certainly be a huge investment), but what about anthologies focusing on science fiction, fantasy, mystery, sports, and other story types, or audience-focused collections of josei or yaoi? And since I’m clearly in a fantasy world at the moment, why not mix in some avant-garde stories and genre classics along with the popular, contemporary titles, just to test demand for translations of these neglected works?

Okay, that’s a weird request coming after my claim that I really don’t like reading manga in an anthology format. But with anthologies come the possibility of more digests, which I do like, so it’s a self-serving suggestion. So in summary, I would like for manga publishers to continue spending millions of dollars on publishing experiments that may or may not result in me buying a few more paperbacks. Yes, I’m just that narcissistic.

I’m not the only one who likes Fullmetal Alchemist (Viz). It got a very positive review in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times in a piece that also looked at Negima! (Del Rey) and Hunter X Hunter (Viz). It’s nice to see manga reviews in a major metropolitan daily.

***

At Reading Along, James Schee reviews Viz’s Shojo Beat Compilation, which collects sample chapters from the line’s tankoubon titles. I almost picked this up, but I couldn’t resist the call of Watase (and I’d already picked up the first volumes of Ultra Maniac and Tokyo Boys and Girls).

A couple of weeks ago, I was among those grumbling at the flood of Viz product that came out in a single week. After a trip to Barnes and Noble, I can sort of see the logic of it. If Viz puts out all of its Shojo Beat digests in a single week, bookstores are more likely to shelve them all in one of those nifty cardboard specialty displays. (I can’t imagine bookstore employees relishing the arrival of that much material any more than manga-friendly comic shop employees do, though.)

This week, the only things shipping from Viz are the latest issues of Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump, though SB 2 has been in bookstores for a couple of weeks. It’s that kind of time lapse between bookstore and comic shop ship dates that makes me less inclined to pre-order popular manga titles through Previews, because I’m very much about the instant gratification. It’s still useful for the more off-kilter stuff, though.

***

Speaking of which, I could have sworn this was the week for Antique Bakery and Bambi and Her Pink Gun from Digital Manga. Alas, this week’s arrivals begin and end with Yellow, a yaoi title that seems to feature gangsters rather heavily. I’ll wait for the pastry chefs. (Yaoi is one of those niches of the manga market that I almost always have to pre-order, by the way. I’ve never seen any of Digital Manga’s line in bookstores in town, though I have up in Pittsburgh.)

***

Del Rey has second volumes of Genshiken and Nodame Cantabile. I thought both titles started well, and I’ll probably pick these up at some point, if not tomorrow.

There’s also a new title from Othello creator Satomi Ikezawa, Guru Guru Pon-Chan. Inter-species romance? Well, Ikezawa has already done nice work with dissociative identity disorder, so who can say how it will work out?

***

At iComics, Greg McElhatton gives a glowing review to Capote in Kansas (Oni), by Andre Parks and Chris Samnee. This sounds really intriguing, and I’ve been having very good luck with Oni books lately, whether they’re about funny, talking primates, fur traders, or ambivalent fathers.

***

Get the children inside! Tape the windows and check the expiration dates on the canned goods! Did you stock up on bottled water?! The 11th volume of Fruits Basket is coming!

Actually, I finally got around to trying the second volume of this after being somewhat unimpressed with the first. I can sense it slowly creeping up on me, kind of like when people say that pot didn’t do a thing for them the first time they tried it, then they’re begging their optometrists to diagnose them with glaucoma so they can ingest it by prescription.

***

And even DC and Marvel will be making their contributions to the week in comics. I’m looking forward to seeing if Brian K. Vaughan can pull together the various story elements of his current arc in Runaways 6. And I’m always happy to see a new issue of Legion of Super-Heroes (8). Tense teens in turmoil!

While I bought the individual issues, it’s nice to see Marvel turn right around with a collection of Dan Slott’s delightful Spider-Man/Human Torch mini in an affordable digest format. Oooh, and it’s going to have a Paul Smith cover.

And lastly, while I seem to have fewer and fewer reasons to care about Marvel’s far-flung solicitations, the announcement of the October re-launch of She-Hulk fills me with delight. Even a Greg Horn cover can’t diminish my enthusiasm.

Looking through my reading stack, I’ve noticed a number of second installments of titles I’ve already reviewed. So, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be revisiting some of them to see how they’ve held up.

First up is Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist (Viz), which I reviewed in an installment of Flipped over at Comic World News. The first volume offered evidence that a comic could be very, very popular and very, very good at the same time. I’m happy to note that the second volume reinforces that theory.

(The following remarks contain SPOILERS for Fullmetal Alchemist Vol. 2.)

Arakawa builds on the strengths of the first installment, further fleshing out the world inhabited by gifted alchemist Edward Elric and his brother, Alphonse. In the culture of FMA, there’s a lot of ambivalence towards the use of alchemy. To some, it’s a godsend. To others, it’s an abomination. There are plenty of shadings between those two extremes, which makes for a surprisingly rich fictional world.

This time out, Edward and Alphonse have a disastrous run-in with someone from the abomination side of the fence, a deadly fanatic by the name of Scar. Scar is using the powers he abhors to eliminate high-profile alchemists like Edward, and Arakawa is canny enough to let readers wonder if he doesn’t have a point. Scar’s throw-down with the Elrics follows their encounter with a state alchemist who’s gone to horrifying extremes to hold onto his funding and status. (The sequence may not have intentionally gone for a “publish or perish” joke, but I’ll choose to read one into it anyways.)

After a narrow escape, the brothers begin a journey home to repair the damage Scar was able to inflict. The journey has its own perils and is closely monitored by a powerful group with a mysterious agenda. It’s a nice mix of emotionally complex A-stories, exciting set pieces, and slowly developing subplots.

There’s strong character work on display, too. Arakawa deepens the dynamic between Edward and Alphonse, playing up their guilt and determination amid the brotherly bickering. There’s a nice sprinkling of comedy, too, mostly in the form of military man Alex Louis Armstrong, who volunteers to accompany the Elrics on their trip. Physically imposing, Armstrong isn’t exactly a deep thinker, but he’s endearingly sentimental and an awful lot of fun.

Arakawa’s art is crisp and accomplished, and her character designs are particularly nice. Her storytelling is assured, and she juggles a number of different narrative elements with ease. FMA continues to please.

***

It’s Monday, and another edition of Flipped awaits. This one takes a look at the actual Shoujo Manga Issue, not some warped alternate-universe version I invented.

Birds of Prey 84 (DC): While I don’t miss certain things about Ed Benes’s pencils on this title (his fondness for cheesecake, primarily), I do agree with writer Gail Simone’s assertion that Benes has a real facility for portraying emotional states through facial expressions. Joe Bennett does very competent work and he’s less likely to point a camera thongward, but his faces don’t have the nuance that Benes might have given them. Given the emotionally charged exchanges that drive this issue, that shortcoming hampers its potential impact.

Defenders 1 (Marvel): Fond as I am of this creative team’s work on Formerly Known as the Justice League and the recent JLA: Classified arc, it’s nice to see them apply their comedy style to a straight super-hero story. It’s fun to watch Booster Gold do something stupid and the subsequent wackiness, but it’s just as pleasurable to see Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis inject humor into a legitimately threatening scenario. Looking at the bones, this is an absolutely standard Defenders story: Dr. Strange learns of a plot by scheming (and squabbling) siblings Dormammu and Umar and assembles his longtime allies to deal with the threat. I don’t think anyone has ever articulated the dysfunction of this group quite as well, driving it with character and taking it to comic extremes. The creative team doesn’t have to resort to artificially ridiculous scenarios to generate laughs when the cast’s prickly dynamics provide plenty of fodder. Kevin Maguire’s visuals are essential to this, and his rich repertoire of sneers, smirks, grimaces, and eye-rolls gets a wonderful workout. (My favorite has to be the blissfully vacant, doe-eyed expression on the Silver Surfer.)

Ex Machina 13 (Wildstorm): This week on Murder, She Wrote… Okay, it’s not quite that bad, but writer Brian K. Vaughan’s efforts to get Mayor Hundred into a particular jury deliberation room seem strenuous, to say the least. The subplots tick along, and new aspects of members of the cast emerge, but the strained mechanics of the A story overwhelm everything else. (Yes, I’m perfectly aware that I’m nitpicking plausibility in a comic about a super-hero mayor.)

GLA 4 (Marvel): I’m still not sure how well the tone of this mini-series holds together. As a parody of grim-and-gritty spandex stories, it’s seemed just as prone to indulge in certain dismal excesses as the stories it parodies. In this installment, writer Dan Slott is a bit more successful in giving the malaise the level of absurdity I think it needs. The cumulative effect still probably ends up in bummer comics territory. On the bright side, Paul Pelletier does pull off some of the best sight gags in comics.

Manhunter 12 (DC): As much as I enjoy this series, this issue is a serious stumble. There’s entirely too much going on, and none of it gets sufficient attention or clarity. While the “Manhunted” arc could be interesting, none of the other Manhunters have gotten an adequate introduction to give their fates any weight. While I’m delighted to see DEO Agent Cameron Chase appear and think she could provide an interesting perspective on the book’s various themes, her function in the story is poorly defined. She doesn’t bring anything distinct to the proceedings, even for someone who enjoyed her solo series. Throw in subplots on Kate’s menacing father and a potential threat to techie Dylan, and you’ve got a comic that’s all over the map. Momentum and coherence take the biggest hits. (You’re welcome, Brian.)

Comics described as “two-fisted” don’t usually pique my interest. I associate the descriptor with crooked cops, reluctantly heroic lowlifes, and dead hookers. Over time, “two-fisted” has acquired a kind of musky hyper-masculinity that sends me scurrying in the opposite direction.

I’ll happily excuse Oni Press’s use of the term to describe Scott Chantler’s Northwest Passage, because it gets a nostalgic, even old-fashioned application.

The book’s billing as a “two-fisted historical adventure” may sound ironic, but it isn’t. The comic is precisely that, though without either the soaking of testosterone or the museum-piece stuffiness the term might suggest.

Northwest Passage opens with the efforts of Eagle Eye, a Cree shaman, to reunite with his old friend and partner in exploration Charles Lord. Disturbing events and visions have led Eagle Eye to fear for Lord’s safety. As Eagle Eye encounters some deadly obstacles along his way, Lord is celebrating his retirement. He’s completing a stint as governor for a trading company outpost on the Hudson Bay in the heart of Rupert’s Land in 1750s Canada.

Lord’s efforts as an explorer have given him a legendary status in his native England, and his years as a bureaucrat haven’t quenched his thirst for adventure and discovery. In fact, he sees his retirement as an opportunity to resume his search for the Northwest Passage, an Atlantic-to-Pacific water route through the Arctic Circle. But before he can pursue that long-held dream, he must deal with the threat to the outpost that Eagle Eye has foretold.

The situation is complicated by the presence of Lord’s half-Cree son, Simon. There’s an unexplained emotional distance between the two, contrasted with the frank hero-worship of Lord’s nephew, Templeton Fletcher. An “Oxford dandy,” Fletcher is headed toward the outpost on the same ship as Lord’s replacement, Walter Hargrove. Fletcher is rebelling against the complacency of his businessman father in favor of an uncle he knows only by reputation.

All of this father-son, making-of-a-man stuff could get queasy, but Chantler resists the urge to overstate it. It’s an element of the larger adventure, not its heart. His restraint is best demonstrated in a terrific scene between Hargrove and Fletcher, where Hargrove takes a moment to shatter some of Fletcher’s more romantic illusions about outpost life and urge Fletcher to rein in some of his natural elitism. It reflects what I see as Chantler’s unwillingness to either romanticize or grub up the period he’s portraying.

And he really doesn’t need to do either. It’s a fascinating point in history where opportunity, adventure, and the unknown intersect. Embellishment isn’t really required when a creative assembly of mostly credible elements will do just fine. While that may lead to a story that isn’t uniquely imaginative, it’s still exciting and, for comics, unusual.

Chantler has done two other titles for Oni, Days Like This and Scandalous, working from scripts by J. Torres. He’s a marvelous illustrator with a fluid, friendly style. His work here picks up traits he’s demonstrated previously – a great sense of design, affecting facial expressions, strong layouts – and adds a real facility for action and suspense. Eagle Eye’s race to the outpost is imaginatively rendered, as is a grisly turn of events on Hargrove’s ship.

Northwest Passage is Chantler’s comics writing debut, and it’s nice to see that his strengths as a visual storyteller translate. He’s clever in establishing enough of the period and its circumstances without it ever seeming like a history lesson. The exposition is handled conversationally, and it almost never overwhelms the characters who deliver it. The cast is a consistently interesting group, each viewing the outpost experience through their own lens. And the plot has nice momentum and complexity.

I don’t know if I can say that Northwest Passage is a great comic. There isn’t that gasp of surprise that comes from something truly original. But I can say without hesitation that it’s a very, very good comic, carefully crafted and artistically accomplished. It’s a two-fisted historical adventure in ways that really, really work.