Yesterday’s manga ramblings sparked some interesting comments and questions, so I thought I would follow up with… well… more rambling.

Lyle from Crocodile Caucus reports:

“The Borders in Stonestown, SF has manga that has been worn out from browsing. For that reason, I could see them sealing up everything but the first volume and not be bothered.”

This seems like a good idea to me, if a retailer is determined to wrap their manga. It reminds me of the way many museum bookstores and similar shops shelve their coffee table volumes, leaving one unwrapped (and marked) as a browsing copy with the rest of the stock wrapped to spare them wear and tear. (I don’t think there’s quite the same level of concern about condition as it relates to a manga digest as it does to a $75 retrospective on John Singer Sargent, but it’s portable enough.) It seems like a good compromise, limiting but not eliminating a shopper’s ability to browse, preventing wear and tear, and still letting them get a sense of what they’re buying.

Tivome has another perspective on wear and tear:

“That’s why in Japan, all manga’s wrapped and the store owner has no qualm about
whacking you on the head with a stick if you break the plastic for a peek.”

That makes me wonder if browsing is less important to manga readers in Japan in part because they’ve already been able to sample titles relatively cheaply in anthologies. Digests are still largely the end product there, right? With serialization serving as the loss leader to drive digest sales? Maybe the anthologies already fill the role that in-store browsing serves here.

JennyN wonders:

“has the friend you mentioned awhile back tried out his idea of a readers’ corner in his store? If so, how’s it working?”

He has set up a space at the front of the shop where he puts out some reading copies of some lesser-known titles from smaller publishers, though he’s being cautious about it. That’s partly a function of time, because he’s had to spend a lot of time and resources expanding his graphic novel sections due to unexpectedly high demand. He’s upped his space for western graphic novels by about a third, and he’s almost doubled his shelf space for manga. He’s still committed to the idea and is dabbling in it, but other priorities have put it on the back burner.

JennyN also makes an excellent point that I meant to fold into the column (really!) if it hadn’t already been so bloody long:

“Dorian’s remark on postmodernbarney a while back that demand for a given manga will actually increase if scanlations have been previously available is also worth meditating.”

I completely agree, and I think scanlations are an entirely different kettle of fish than in-store browsing. I think they can be a very useful way of demonstrating potential demand in a web-friendly audience and indicating interest in publishers looking for their next successful property. It doesn’t seem like something a publisher would openly endorse, but it does seem like something they could use to see what’s on readers’ radar. (I could be wrong. I often am.)

And, stepping out of the comments section, David at Love Manga notes that many readers never even touch a manga before they buy it:

“It’s very hard to browse a book before buying when all your purchases are done online. (and I’m not talking about previews, I’m talking about physically flipping through a book in your hands.)”

So, sane people do buy manga sight unseen. Either that or David just likes to throw cold water on my hyperbole, either of which is cool.

Oh, and for those of you who thought I was exaggerating about my Yû Watase obsession, even Barnes & Noble knows about it and sent me a Watase update shortly after I published yesterday’s post. And yes, I am unnerved that computer tracking software knows me that well.

Lastly, a note for Shojo Beat: It is a cheap way to curry my favor by running an ad for Antique Bakery. It’s was successful, but that doesn’t minimize its cheapness.

There’s a new manga column at the Pulse, and it looks pretty terrific. The first installment of Manga Fan Service, by manga editor Jake Forbes, is informative and funny. Excuse me for a moment while I go weep salty tears of bitter envy, then break to rehydrate.

I’m in total agreement with Dave at Yet Another Comics Blog that the pick of the week is the first issue of Shojo Beat from Viz. Greg McElhatton reviews the anthology at iComics, and I definitely share his enthusiasm for Crimson Hero, though I thought the introduction to Absolute Boyfriend worked just fine. (This might be a side-effect of my Yû Watase fixation.)

Of course, one shouldn’t discount this week’s arrival of the 10th volume of Fruits Basket from Tokyopop, which I’m willing to swear has subliminal messages on every page. (Tohru’s wide eyes are actually some kind of hypnotic device compelling innocents to buy, buy, BUY.) Volume 9 is still selling strong, both in bookstores and in the Direct Market.

To the folks who read my review of Digital Manga’s Passion and suggested that Only the Ring Finger Knows is much, much better, you’re right, and thanks for the pointer. It was actually Lyle’s review at Crocodile Caucus that tipped the scales. (Well, Lyle’s review and a well-timed trip to a Borders up in Pittsburgh.)

If you read only one on-line manga column this week, make it the aforementioned Manga Fan Service. If you have time for two, there’s another Flipped up.

The graphic novel Drive (Frequency Press) asks the familiar question, “How stupid does a person have to be to try and steal drugs from the mob?” This begs the follow-up question, “How stupid can a protagonist be and still maintain an adequate level of audience sympathy?” The answer to both in this case is, “Just stupid enough.”

Writer Nate Southard manages this overlap by keeping Drive’s plot simple and moving quickly. Things kick off when Brian, a Las Vegas cab driver of marginal intelligence and limited prospects, gets carjacked by a gun-toting thug trying to abscond with a duffle bag full of narcotics. A tense and deadly car chase later, the thug is dead and Brian is left with a wrecked cab and a quantity of valuable drugs.

Rattled by the experience and encouraged by his even stupider friend Dalton, Brian decides to see if they can unload the drugs quickly and make off with the profits. (Dalton is the kind of moron who thinks he’s a player. He “knows people.”) Brian’s girlfriend Shelby is understandably dubious about the idea, but she hasn’t got the force of personality to overrule the plan and get the stash off of her coffee table. Even as Dalton begins making inquiries, some crooked police officers are tracking Brian with their own designs on early retirement.

There’s a strong feeling of immediacy to the proceedings; Brian doesn’t really have time to think about his actions, and the near-death experience seems to have left him feeling like negative odds don’t apply to him. (This is an area when Southard could have played up the setting; the Vegas economy is all but built on fostering that belief.)

At the same time, Southard doesn’t really seem to expect anyone to root for his protagonist. It’s not a story where the reader breathlessly wonders how Brian is going to pull this caper off. It’s more a case of wondering how badly damaged he’s going to be in the attempt. That’s a much more sensible approach than to try and overlay some Robin Hood nobility on a guy with a mullet.

I can’t say I’m crazy about the doofus noir genre. I’m not really interested in lowlife culture, and I’m a very hard sell when it comes to noble scumbags. But Southard does a nice job crafting his story. He keeps things to scale, which helps a lot, and plot holes are kept to a minimum as a result (provided one assumes the people of Las Vegas are pretty committed to looking the other way). If nothing particularly genre-expanding is going on, nothing pointlessly outlandish is either. It’s a coherent, well-constructed narrative.

Art by Shawn Richter shows a lot of potential. He has a nice sense of composition and does good work with backgrounds. Some of the body language is a bit stiff, but character acting is generally effective. The storytelling is very clear.

In the interest of full disclosure, Drive came to me as a review copy from Southard. It’s not a book I would have picked up on my own, mostly because of the aforementioned disinterest in the genre. That said, I think it’s a well-executed story, and it leaves me wanting to see more of Southard’s work in other types of stories. He’s got a real grasp of storytelling mechanics and is able to invest those mechanics with a fair amount of style.

We went to see Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith today. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the idea, but I’m still paying for dragging my partner to see Sideways, so that gives him quite a few picks before the bad-movie-choice balance is restored. (To his credit, he said he’d be fine with Batman Begins, too, but he almost always hates super-hero movies. I also can’t get past the fact that all of the promotional posters look like little Billy made a diorama for third grade using his Batman action figure.)

I honestly don’t remember the movie very well, because I got stuck on that disturbing Brawny Paper Towel commercial that ran before the previews. The one on television that looks like an audition reel for a boring gay porn video is bad enough, but this cinematic follow-up is just freakish beyond my wildest imaginings.

Who at Brawny thought it would be a good idea to promote their paper towels with a profoundly weird psycho-sexual death match between some hapless nebbish and a twink in a flannel shirt who likes to decorate cakes? They’re paper towels, for pity’s sake. You spill a brightly colored substance, you wipe up the brightly colored substance, and the suburban order is restored. How hard is that?

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering what I thought of SW:E3-RotS: Long it was. Nap I did.

And I knew it would come from Cunard. I would have been able to resist if he hadn’t thrown in a picture of napping puppies.

Sigh. Here we go:

If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why? (Assume you also get baseline superhero enhancements like moderately increased strength, endurance and agility.)

I would have to go with long-range teleportation, not for any particular crime-fighting usefulness but to allow me to go places I love cheaply and without having to pass through airport security. Forget all that great power/responsibility blah-blah. I just want to be able to pop down to New Orleans for Sunday brunch.

Which, if any, ‘existing’ superhero(es) do you fancy, and why?

I was going to pretend to be above this question, but then I remembered Hugh Jackman in a sleeveless t-shirt in the X-Men movie, and I became distracted and ashamed.

Which, if any, ‘existing’ superhero(es) do you hate?

Green Arrow. Creepy old hypocrite.

OK, here’s the tough one. What would your superhero name be? (No prefab porn-name formulas here, you have to make up the name you think you’d be proud to mask under.)

I would have to go with something vaguely pretentious but somewhat inscrutable, like “The Skeptic” or “Mister Spite.” I would insist it be spelled properly, with no kewl vowel substitutions.

For extra credit: Is there an ‘existing’ superhero with whom you identify/whom you would like to be?

This was a tough one. I wouldn’t wish the current emotional state of most super-heroes on my worst enemy. But if she counts, I very often feel like Agatha in Girl Genius: never entirely sure what exactly is going on, relying on improvisation to bluff through random unpleasantness, and at the mercy of ill-tempered felines who are nonetheless adorable. (I don’t wander around in my underwear nearly as often as Agatha does, which is probably for the best.)

There really isn’t one I’d want to be, because chances seem strong that my fate would ultimately be decided by either Geoff Johns or Brian Bendis, and those possibilities are utterly unacceptable.

Pass it on. Three people please, and why they’re the wind beneath your wings.

That’s okay. I can forgive others for meme-ing me, but I can’t bring myself to meme others.

For those of you who were worried, the Prankster Spirit of Comics Shipping decided to cut me a break and allowed the safe delivery of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Oni Press) into my greedy hands. I haven’t read it yet, because the idea of saving dessert for last has been drilled into my brain.

Yes, I’m one of those freaks who take the time to stack weekly purchases based on how much they expect to enjoy them. I try and hold off on the really good stuff to make sure my most recent memories of the week’s comics are pleasant. It helps to keep my naturally sunny and optimistic nature intact.

What?

Does anyone know if Lucifer (Vertigo) is going to end any time soon? Because it feels like it should have ended about six issues ago. It’s not bad by any means, but it seems awfully protracted. Maybe I should have stuck with the trades.

Usually at least one thing in Previews makes me mutter “Buh?” This time, it’s in the Tokyopop listings. The manga publisher spares no expense, gobbling up almost as many pages as Image. Listings feature what seem like very useful factoids for retailers, often including pointers towards a title’s likely audience.

In the promo for Off*Beat Vol. 1, Tokyopop suggests the shônen-ai title “will appeal to fans of Gravitation and Fake.” This helps me not at all, because I loved Fake and thought Gravitation was kind of annoying. It’s like saying a candy bar “will appeal to fans of Nutrageous and Almond Joy.”

Dear Prankster Spirit of Comics Shipping,

I know that it must be boring having such a narrow field of influence, and you’ve got to make your own fun within those confines. I’m sure you had a good chuckle fixing circumstances so that a copy of JLA written by Geoff Johns showed up in my pile of pre-orders last week. (Don’t worry. I can look back at this and laugh now, no matter what I might have said at the time.)

And I get that you need to occasional pet project. That’s probably why you’ve decided to create an inconsistency field around West Virginia that delays admission of titles published by Oni Press. Your ways are whimsical and not for my understanding, etc., etc.

But seriously, if you could lay off the mischief for a week and let my carefully pre-ordered copy of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World show up in the shop on Wednesday, I’d be eternally grateful. (I’ll even forgive you for putting my copy of Same Difference & Other Stories on back order last week.)

Hugs,

David

It’s actually a rather hefty Wednesday. There doesn’t seem to be much manga, but there’s plenty of compensation.

DC has Birds of Prey 83, Ex Machina 12, JLA Classified 8, Manhunter 11, Klarion the Witch Boy 2, and Vimanarama 3. DC also has something called Wildsiderz 0.

Dear Everyone in the World,

Please stop indicating plurals with a “z” in an effort to make yourselves look hip. It has the opposite result, and it drives me crazy. Please submit requests to use this technique ironically at least three months in advance. Lack of response should not be construed as permission.

Sternly,

David

Marvel has… well… Marvel has GLA 3. It hasn’t been my favorite work by Dan Slott, but heck, it’s Dan Slott.

It’s nice to find reading material that feels specifically designed for your pleasure. I almost always enjoy Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, but Witches Abroad seemed like Pratchett sat down and wondered, “Now how can I make this more to David’s tastes?” Of all of Pratchett’s character sets, I love the Lancre witches best, and the meta-dissection of the maiden-mother-crone triad in Witches Abroad is a real treat. The book is a triptych of various fantasy landscapes, and it’s consistently hilarious. (I’m still giggling over a throw-away jab at The Hobbit.) Pratchett is quite a juggler, balancing pointed genre parody, cultural commentary, and meta-examination of storytelling tropes, while still giving readers a wonderfully strong narrative filled with interesting and varied characters. It’s fun, satisfying stuff (and the footnotes help).

The travelogue elements also weakened my resistance to a new release, The Clumsiest People in Europe. It’s a collection of horribly xenophobic travel writing from a Victorian author of children’s books, Favell Lee Mortimer, edited by Todd Pruzan. (This might have been another case of NPR forcing me to buy a book if I hadn’t read last week’s review in The New York Times first.)

I also made a bit of a dent in the manga stack, checking out the second volume of Doubt!! and the first of Tuxedo Gin (the latter thanks to Rose and Steven).

Doubt!! still isn’t clicking very well for me. After reading the second volume, I think it’s because the protagonist, Ai, just doesn’t have the force of personality required to carry a manga or to pull off the kind of personal reinvention that drives the story. There’s more guilty-pleasure fun in the second volume than the first, but I still don’t think Kaneyoshi Izumi is taking enough advantage of the premise’s darkly comic possibilities. I will admit that Ai’s friend, the profoundly tan Mina, is a treat. A strangely forward-thinking mantrap, she steals every scene she’s in with her blunt observations and twisted emotional logic. Ai’s at her most interesting in scenes with Mina, too, much better than when she’s stuck with her bland shôjo prince suitors.

As for Tuxedo Gin, I’m surprised by how trite or potentially unpleasant manga scenarios can be substantially improved by the participation of an anthropomorphized penguin. Dim gang boys, drippy star-crossed lovers, creepy girl-in-peril scenarios… all of these become markedly more entertaining thanks to the presence of a penguin in a necktie. I know these elements aren’t actually any better than they would be normally, but there’s just something about penguins, I guess. File this one under “Pleasures, Guilty.” (Incidentally, I think this notion is portable. Many, many comics that I find offensive or stupid would get gentler treatment if they would feature characters reincarnated as or randomly transformed into penguins. Sue Dibny, Wolverine, Batman, Northstar… the possibilities are almost limitless.)

Last but certainly not least was Fullmetal Alchemist. After careful consideration, I’ve decided it’s pretty awesome. But I go into that at painful length in this week’s Flipped, which should show up sometime today.

Well, those ships have clearly sailed. I got a flier in the mail for my 20-year high school reunion yesterday.

This should make me feel either decrepit or nostalgic, but it doesn’t really do either. I spent most of high school imagining myself with a good 20 years of daylight between myself and that particular experience, so I guess I prepared early.

I have no memory of either of the people who are organizing it, who are married to each other. (I find the idea of forming a life partnership with someone who knew me when I was 16 totally unsettling. I would really question their judgment, if not their sanity.) The people I’m curious about either weren’t in my class or are about as likely as I am to attend this event. I’d like to find out if anyone really unexpected turned out to be gay, but I doubt they put that on the name tags.

What’s really weird is to realize that some of current favorite reading material and television shows are about teen-agers and that I probably would have avoided them like the plague when I actually was a teen-ager. (I was more likely to be checking pseudo-literary smut out of the public library, discretely burying copies of American Flagg amidst all the Uncanny X-Men and Avengers, or speculating on plot developments in upcoming episodes of Dynasty.)

So, thanks for the invite, former classmates, but I’ll pass. I’m given to morbid curiosity, but I think I can resist in this case.

Fictional fathers don’t come in very interesting flavors. More often than not, they’re well-intentioned boobs who can’t handle the smallest domestic or personal crisis without the intervention of their partner. Sometimes they’re defined by their emotional distance from the family, absorbed with providing instead of caring. Or they’re reduced to bland heroism, saving the family from a variety of perils (often making up for years of emotional neglect in the process).

One of the pleasures of Andi Watson’s Little Star (Oni Press) is that it isn’t really about fatherhood. It’s more about parenting, and the conflicting choices and feelings any parent might face as they weigh their needs against those of their child’s.

It’s told from the point of view of Simon, a part-time ceramic painter and primary caregiver for three-year-old Cassie. His wife, Meg, is a full-time teacher. They’ve put their house on the market to look for a larger place. Cassie goes to pre-school three days a week. Simon’s heard about a possible vacancy in his employer’s full-time design team, and he’s tempted by the opportunity.

As Watson tracks the day-to-day activities of caring for Cassie – baths, tantrums, juice boxes, play dates, stories – he looks at the little turning points that seem to be cropping up in Simon’s path. Simon contemplates the balance of his own needs with Cassie’s and Meg’s. He’d like to move forward professionally, but he wonders if it’s fair to Cassie. (He’s also a little bothered by how easily Cassie adjusted to pre-school.) As Cassie seems to need him less, Simon naturally starts contemplating what’s next.

Little Star is a collection of small, telling moments. Watson doesn’t seem to want to make any sweeping statements about the parent-child dynamic, which is a relief. He’s chosen instead to focus on the specific, entirely everyday concerns of Simon, Cassie, and Meg. But despite the slice-of-life aims, Little Star is anything but dull. The familiar choices and challenges matter enormously Watson’s cast, and he’s given them real depth and complexity.

As usual, Watson’s art is lovely in its minimalism and succinct expressiveness. Facial expressions matter a great deal, and Watson excels at them, capturing frustration, bemusement, contemplation, exhaustion, delight, and a host of others. They’re supported by the varied body language of the characters, always clear and specific. Backgrounds and varied shading help create a sense of place and give the visuals added depth. And the covers are lovely flights of fancy. (It’s the covers that convinced me to pick this up in single issues as opposed to waiting for the trade.)

Given the normalcy of the subject matter, the individual issues might seem a bit shapeless. There’s an arc to each chapter, but it’s developed very gently. This is actually supported by the book’s bi-monthly publishing schedule. There’s no cliffhanger urgency to be diluted by extra time between installments, though each issue leaves me wanting to return to the characters and their world because they’re so involving. (That said, I’m guessing the six-issue series will read extremely well in collection. As each new issue has come out, I find myself reading each issue over again.)

The other benefit to reading the individual issues, at least for me, is finding an oasis of believable emotions at the comics shop on a regular basis. With so many high-profile comics predicated on sketchy, even disturbing interpersonal dynamics, Watson’s world of average people and everyday challenges is a welcome respite. Little Star is a smart and sensitive alternative in a summer of histrionics.