(Edited because I’m kind of an idiot. Thanks, Kevin!)

I haven’t read a lot of shônen-ai or yaoi manga, but I did enjoy Sanami Matoh’s Fake (Tokyopop) a great deal. It made up for a rather bizarre portrait of detective work with charismatic characters involved in an engrossing romance. So when I ran across Matoh’s Until the Full Moon (Broccoli Books), I got my hopes up. Unfortunately, Until the Full Moon has flaws in common with Fake without sharing its strengths.

The story stars Marlo, son of a vampire father and werewolf mother. He seems not to have inherited either fangs or fur, but he does turn into a woman during a full moon. Marlo’s parents call upon an old friend, Dr. Vincent (a vampire), to see if there’s anything to be done for Marlo. Dr. Vincent can’t help with Marlo’s condition, but he does suggest that Marlo marry Dr. Vincent’s son David during “that time of the month.” Marlo and David had a close friendship has children but fell out of touch, particularly when Marlo failed to manifest any vampiric or lycanthropic tendencies during puberty.

With all of these monstrous archetypes mixing and mingling, you might expect some suspense. Unfortunately, Matoh seems no more interested in creating a consistent mythology for Until the Full Moon than she was in crafting a believable detective squad for Fake. I’m not going to argue that the world needs still another take on this particular kind of lore, but the fact that most of the characters are vampires seems irrelevant. Few of what I think of as the traditional elements are in evidence beyond the blood drinking, and even that’s fairly incidental, even genteel.

The vampires don’t really kill anyone so much as withdraw the occasional pint or two from a comely village maiden (off-panel, no less). There’s no indication that they’re viewed with distrust or fear, and they generally behave like well-mannered landed gentry with a tiny variation in dietary habits. Since they’ve been stripped of anything resembling menace, they lose a lot of the accompanying eroticism. They aren’t blood-sucking fiends so much as blood-sipping dilettantes. The werewolves get even less attention, except to note that gender change is a not-uncommon side effect, particularly during mating season. (Pause to listen to the sounds of heads scratching.)

So, with a somewhat baffling and (forgive me) defanged mythos cluttering up the works, that would theoretically leave the characters to make it worth the reader’s time. Sadly, complicated genetic heritage and gender bending aside, they’re as dull as they are pretty.

Marlo could be expected to have some real ambivalence about his situation. His life hasn’t turned out at all as he’d expected, everyone around him is making choices for him, and nobody’s listening to what he wants. But Marlo comes off as more petulant than sincerely upset or angry. He’s fond of David, but he worries that his betrothed is too fickle to trust. That’s pretty much as deep as Marlo’s angst goes.

If possible, David has even less going on in his pretty little head. He’s fine with his father’s proposed solution, because he claims to like Marlo either way, as boy or girl. I’m still not sure whether that’s because David values Marlo for the nobility of his/her soul or if he just thinks Marlo looks hot no matter which parts come standard. He’s dull either way you read it, so it isn’t like it matters. Together, they manage to be even less than the sum of their parts, lacking any real romantic chemistry.

That leaves looking at the pretty pictures, and Matoh certainly does some fine work. Unfortunately, despite the wealth of fairly dramatic transformations the cast can undergo, Matoh doesn’t really render any of the seriously mythological moments the story could include. It’s mostly well-dressed, undead nobility hanging around nicely decorated manor houses. It’s pretty stuff, but it’s fairly static.

Remember that scene from Victor/Victoria where James Garner tells Julie Andrews that he doesn’t care if she is a man, and then kisses her? And Julie Andrews gets misty because he’s all evolved and hot, but it’s bullshit, because James Garner already knows perfectly well that she’s a woman, so he’s talking out of his hat? The gender-switching in Until the Full Moon has kind of the same effect. David loves Marlo as either a man or a woman; Marlo cares for David in return. The gender shenanigans don’t really make any difference, and they probably wouldn’t even if the characters were more engaging.

In the final analysis Until the Full Moon is a miss. A talented manga-ka has taken an interesting premise, sanded all of the rough edges off of it, and left readers with something pretty, but pretty dull.

Nothing is quite as it seems in IWGP (Digital Manga Publishing). This is a good thing, since it doesn’t seem at first glance like a manga I’d particularly enjoy. But writer Ira Ishida has a way with the unexpected, taking what could be a standard story of aimless youth and turning it into a disturbing mystery.

The early chapters seem to promise a mildly edgy, punks-in-love tale, set in Ikebukuro West Gate Park. Trendy girls mix and mingle with delinquents as gangs lurk on the fringes. Makoto and Masa are two of the delinquents, and Hikaru and Rika are the sweet young things they meet on New Year’s Eve.

Makoto rescues Hikaru from some boys who have graduated from delinquent to thug. Rough-around-the-edges Makoto and innocent Hikaru spark immediately, but he winds up in bed with outgoing Rika instead. It’s here that the undercurrents emerge, as Ishada makes you wonder if Hikaru is as sweet and uncomplicated as she seems and starts to drop hints as to just how Rika keeps herself in microscopic skirts and platform boots.

There are darker forces at work in the park, too. A serial strangler is on the loose. The place is overrun with G Boys, an oddly surreal street gang led by quirky “king” Takashi. When one of the strangler’s victims dies, Makoto takes it hard and turns to the G Boys to help him track the killer.

Ishida, adapting the story from his award-winning mystery novel, borrows elements from noir and gang drama, but he avoids some of the pitfalls of those genres. IWGP, ably rendered by artist Sena Aritou, doesn’t have the artsy self-consciousness of some noir, and it doesn’t trot out the puffed-up, misplaced sense of honor many gang stories do.

It has an organic feel; events don’t necessarily move directly from point A to point B. The dialogue, translated well by Duane Johnson, comes in fits and starts at times. The characters aren’t flawlessly articulate people, but they have distinct voices. Happily, the talk doesn’t fall into the kind of fragmented naturalism that can be so grating.

The tone has significant shifts that are both shocking and perfectly logical. Those shifts are represented in the explicitness (both violent and sexual) of the material. A sequence depicting the G Boys’ interrogation of a strangler suspect is graphically, unexpectedly violent, even given the increasingly dark nature of the story. Another scene set in a couples’ tea house has an overt but empty sexuality that’s jarring. It points up the potential disconnect between intimacy and closeness that runs through the volume.

The effect of these severe moments is to drive home just how out of their depth the protagonists are. They’ve taken things at face value, running on the indestructibility of youth, and they get slapped in the face with just how ugly the world can be.

All of the characters are nicely developed, and all of them have secrets. Makoto is a fine focal point for the story. He’s a hedonist without much ambition, but he’s still able to be moved by innocence. He’s also got a capacity for guilt, and it’s triggered by the pivotal death that sets things spinning. While he manages to navigate the various forces shifting through the park (including the police), his impulsiveness gets him in trouble. He feels deeply, but he doesn’t think carefully.

As the first volume ends, new dangers crop up, characters’ true natures are called into question, and things that seemed resolved almost certainly aren’t over yet. Ishida and Aritou successfully create an air of menace and an intriguing cast to draw the reader to the next chapter. It’s violent, lurid, and out of my usual comfort zone, but damned if I don’t want to know what happens next.

(This review is based on a copy provided by Digital Manga Publishing.)

I finally got around to watching Spiderman 2, and boy, was that dour. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t avoid the conclusion that Peter Parker’s life is difficult… ceaselessly, grindingly difficult. Crack a joke already.

(Spoilers ahead, which is probably a superfluous warning, because if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you probably don’t have any plans to do so.)

I did laugh at one point, when Peter contended that he couldn’t be with Mary Jane because it would put her in danger. Um… more danger than she’s constantly in already? Danger Peter can’t generally do much to prevent because he’s distanced himself from her?

In fairness, all of this might have worked better with a different actress playing Mary Jane. I like Bring It On as much as anyone, but Kirsten Dunst simply does not meet any definition I have of “lively spitfire.” (Quick side note: you film-makers can just leave Oscar Wilde the hell out of it. Hasn’t he been through enough?)

And what a passive-aggressive little nit Mary Jane is! Sweet of her to pick the most humiliating moment possible to break things off with her fiance, who seemed like a nice enough fellow who was entirely undeserving of that kind of treatment. They could have at least added a shot of him sighing with relief and turning to make out with his best man. (Quick side note 2: maybe I’m the only viewer who would have appreciated that.)

During the closing credits, my partner turned to me and said, “I would have been so angry at you if you’d made me see that in a theater.” I wouldn’t have blamed him a bit.

Why dwell on the downers when there was so much fun to be found at the comics shop this week?

Someone must have left tiny footprints on my brain, because I didn’t have a problem disassociating JLA Classified: I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League from the recent unpleasantness. It’s got the same antic spirit as its predecessor mini-series, Formerly Known as the Justice League, and Kevin Maguire’s clean, comic art is always a pleasure. He does the best facial expressions in the business, which can turn a talking-head sequence into visual treat. Some of the jokes are a little bit labored (“We get paid?”), and Sue’s odd behavior seems contrived, but the book works more often than it stumbles. The character that arrives at the end of the issue is particularly welcome, as he’s such a reliable conflict generator. (I’m really looking forward to his first meeting with Mary Marvel.) It’s a solid beginning with the promise of real comic highs in subsequent issues.

Behold the power of the exclamation point: Marvel Next. Meh. Marvel Next! Let me get my wallet! Branding aside, Livewires makes a very positive first impression. Adam Warren’s script would be unbearably expository if it didn’t have such a nattering, stream-of-consciousness sweetness to it. He also provides a solid in-story justification for the chatter as he introduces his cast of “semi-autonomous artificially intelligent, limited-nanofunction humanform mecha constructs.” (Edgy acronyms be damned!) Artist Rick Mays makes the most of Warren’s nutty-idea-per-panel plot, and they build a solid cast, quasi-hip code names and all. The reveal at the end is predictable, but the execution is so amiable that it doesn’t really matter. This was the week’s most pleasant surprise for me.

Runaways returns for its second season, and the cast has a lot on its plate. They’re still dealing with the fallout of events from their first run (a villainous power vacuum in Los Angeles and avoiding Social Services and foster home placements) with some fresh portents of doom thrown in just for fun. I can’t honestly tell you if this would work for a new reader, as I read and loved the first 18 issues. But the exposition seems thorough enough, and it’s applied organically so as not to bore returning fans. Writer Brian K. Vaughan introduces a group of former teen heroes, Excelsior, who are forming a support group for peers who’ve left the spandex behind. (I don’t know if it’s intentional, but I picked up – and enjoyed – a sly satire of the ex-gay movement in some of Excelsior’s rhetoric.) Vaughan also does clever work putting a variety of plots in motion while pointing them towards future intersection. He also provides nice character moments for what could have been a dauntingly large cast. I like Adrian Alphona’s art, though the female characters all seem like they could use a sandwich or two.

She-Hulk goes full-frontal meta with the final issue of its first season right from the cover with its “The End” banner. Fortunately, nobody does meta quite like writer Dan Slott, folding it in perfectly with the blend of comedy and action that have made this book such a treat. He does a dandy job pulling together the various plot threads from his twelve-issue run. There’s so much to like about this book – the effortless comedy, the playful view of the Marvel universe, the solid characterization, the genuine affection for comics. The best part for me is Slott’s central argument, though: Jennifer Walters, the woman under the gamma-irradiated muscles, is a smart, resourceful, endlessly likable character in her own right, and her gradual realization of that over the course of twelve issues has been very, very satisfying. I can’t wait for the re-launch, and I hope it gets the buzz it deserves.

New to my blogroll, at least. I’ve added Love Manga, a team effort from Immelda Alty and David Taylor. It’s always to see another manga-centric blog, and Alty and Taylor have some great insights.

For instance, there’s Alty’s look at Fruit Basket‘s evil scheme to take over the publishing industry. (Okay, not really, but that book seems to print money.) She also sums up the latest Bookscan graphic novel numbers released at ICv2:

“Personally speaking I’m overjoyed with the fact that Manga is stunningly popular in Bookstores. We all know the images we like to see of bookshelves groaning under the weight of fresh new titles, but sometimes its good to have the figures to back that image up.”

(As an aside, only two non-manga titles in the top 50? OUCH.)

From Taylor, you get musings on Heidi MacDonald’s wonderful state-of-the-manga-industry overview at The Beat:

“Home-grown talent creating in the Manga style. Though my natural cynical self wonders if this is just a move to get those ‘I don’t read foreign crap’ readers onto manga. I’ve got a bit more to say on this point, so I’ll probably do a posting about it later. Does Manga even need a next new thing to keep itself going? The answer is probably a yes, but with the VAST, and I mean VAST untapped potential of licenses still awaiting translation from Japan and Korea for example, I would hope that they are not side lined in an attempt to keep pushing forward.”

Good stuff all around, and I look forward to seeing more from them.

Much as I like ongoing manga stories, I’ve always liked the short story form in both prose and comics. SOS (Viz) collects short shôjo stories by Hinako Ashihara, who makes great, varied use of the more contained structure. There’s real variety to the three tales here, but they’re connected by a strong observance of emotional nuance.

In the lead story, good-natured high school student Yû is close to the end of her romantic rope. All of her crushes seem to end with Yû setting the boy up with another girl. It leaves her with a large circle of grateful friends, but she’s frustrated with her role as everybody’s matchmaker. Handsome classmate Raku clues her in to the secret dating service he runs with pretty, chilly Nono, and Yû thinks her problems are solved. But Raku is approaching her as a potential co-worker, not a client.

Not surprisingly, Yû takes her work very seriously and becomes emotionally invested with the plights of her customers. Ashihara mixes things up nicely in a relatively short span of pages, blending comedy, romance, and some surprisingly dark undertones. She has a deft hand for balancing the different tones, though, and they all support the theme of interpersonal connection. Grant Morrison has described his current string of Vertigo mini-series (Seaguy, We3, and Vimanarama) as super-compressed. Think of this as super-compressed shôjo: it could easily have played out over a stack of digests, but Ashihara has contained it in a satisfying shorter form. She makes the most of a nifty premise while creating an appealing cast of distinct characters.

“That Sweet Organ Song” is probably my favorite of the trio of stories. It’s a bittersweet period story of romance, loss, and the unexpected ways that love can bloom and endure. Set in Kobe in the 1920s, it features shop girl Setsu and rich boy Shotaro. They meet cute when Shotaro puts one of Setsu’s terrible poems to music. The pair connects through their out-of-step dreams: Setsu wants to transcend her circumstances and become a teacher, and Shotaro wants to escape his family’s expectations to become a composer. Mutual support turns into romance, and a variety of cultural obstacles pop up in their path. To say any more would give away the touching, sad surprises that make this story special. Suffice to say that Ashihara shows a fine grasp of tone, using it to ultimately uplifting effect.

“The Easy Life” traces troubled times in a high-school romance between overly agreeable Mami and her thoughtless boyfriend Yohei. Spoiled-but-charming Yohei routinely takes Mami for granted to the point where she can’t ignore it any longer. She’s believably torn between maintaining the status quo (Yohei’s selfish, but he isn’t all bad) and protecting her self-respect. It’s a low-key, introspective story of people deciding what they want, what they’ll give up to get it, and what it says about them that they want it in the first place. It’s refreshingly free of screwball-comedy scheming, focusing instead on conflicting emotions. It’s got a nicely ambiguous ending, too.

Ashihara’s art serves the stories well. It isn’t exceptional for shôjo, but it’s nicely expressive. She’s got a good facility for character design, using it to highlight the distinctly emotional natures of her cast members. Varied backgrounds and camera angles help convey heightened feelings, too.

SOS is a nice introduction to Ashihara’s work, and it puts her on my list of manga-ka to watch. The short story form allows her to demonstrate an impressive range of tones and a real facility for character-driven writing. The book makes me eager for more short-form manga and for more offerings from this particular creator.

(This review is based on a preview copy provided by Viz. SOS is set for release in March.)

Dorian at Postmodern Barney nicely summarizes why killing Northstar is a bad idea:

“You see, I’m sure that Marvel thinks that by killing the most prominent gay character in the Marvel Universe that they’ve actually done something shocking and worthy of comment, but the fact of the matter is that all they’ve really managed to do is demonstrate how creatively bankrupt they are.”

Fanboy Rampage links to Mark Millar’s musings on the event, where he misrepresents the character’s profile (“but he’s a big part of X-Men history and was probably the most high-profile X-Man during the nineties when he was outed in the mainstream media”) to give the event anything approaching heft (and retroactively justify the “and a major X-Man dies” hype). He also boasts about how down with the gays he is:

“As someone who’s won two gay and lesbian awards for the treatment of Apollo and The Midnighter, had glowing reviews in a clutch of gay magazines, was all over the British tabloid press three years ago defending my use of gay superheroes (even when the cardinal of my own church described it as a disgrace) and introduced a gay Colossus into Ultimate X-Men, it just seems preposterous to assume this is bigoted in any way.”

The fallacy of “I’ve never written anything with anti-gay content before, so I certainly must not be now” aside, I actually don’t see any homophobia in Millar’s choice of victim. He needed a warm body of a certain stature (but not of sufficient stature as to make his or her absence in any way inconvenient to the X-line) that he could turn into a cold body. And while that’s cynical and plot-driven, it isn’t homophobic.

Now, Marvel considering the character disposable, in spite of his iconic status? That’s a whole different kettle of fish, but I’ll just point you again to Dorian’s remarks. He puts it better than I would.

At The Beat, Heidi MacDonald has a very level-headed analysis of recent shifts in the manga market. Don’t forget to read the comments, too, as they’re filled with all kinds of insightful remarks. One comes from JennyN:

“…something very similar happened to publishers of translated manga in France in the 1990s. Takeoff as of c.1992; boom period c.1996-98; speed wobbles, speed correction, some nasty upsets, strong drivers and good navigators back on track within the next couple of years.”

JennyN is one of the truly awesome regulars at the Flipped Forum. (For a probing look at manga stereotypes, check out the “East Versus West” thread.)

***

So I checked the chalkboard of the week’s releases in the window before stopping in the comic shop yesterday. I greeted my favorite clerk, the creator of Iron Fro.

“Noodle Fighter Miki?” I asked.
His mood darkened. “There aren’t any noodles in it. I checked.”
“She carries chopsticks,” the shop owner offered, as if that would mollify us.

So, after a fairly lengthy conversation about how noodles are comedy gold, chopsticks are too utilitarian to be comedy gold, and how you shouldn’t promise noodles and not deliver, the creator of Iron Fro and I moved on to our respective tasks. And yes, the shop owner was relieved.

First, Johanna Draper Carlson unveils the new look for Josie and the Pussycats. And it was bad.

Now, CBS News picks up on a Wall Street Journal story unveiling Warner Brothers’ new look for Bugs Bunny. And it is so… much… worse. Seriously, it’s like “The Dark Bunny Returns” or… I don’t even know what it’s like. (If you have the intestinal fortitude, you can find the clip from last night’s Evening News linked on the page referenced above.)

Sander Schwartz, the Warner Brothers exec interviewed for the story, says they want to make Bugs “contemporary, hip and cool for today’s kids.” (Open mouth, insert scotch.) In another interview, a child on a playground looked at a rendering and said, “That’s the evil Bugs Bunny.” I think Bugs is now being voiced over by edited audio clips taken from Wolverine tracks from one of the cartoon versions.

File under “signs of the apocalypse.”

Congratulations, Carlee. And, to all of Carlee’s worthy competitors. You’re all winners.

I’m a big believer in adopting mutts from the pound (I have two), but there’s just something about the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Sure, they’re overbred and some of the grooming choices make you wonder how they can leave the house in the morning. But… so many puppies having so much fun. I’m not made of stone, y’know.

It always fills my head with fantasies of being independently wealthy, owning a farm in Bucks County, and opening the doors to purebreds who’ve fallen on hard times.