I’m getting my car serviced tomorrow, and I always like to wash it before these little check-ups so the mechanics think I’m a concerned vehicle owner. I’m sure I’m not fooling them.

Anyway, the only time it’s rained here in the last two weeks were in the three minutes I was actually in the car wash bay. Seriously. I pulled in. A downpour started. I pulled out. It stopped. If I’d just parked there for a while and listened to my audio book, I wonder if I could have averted the drought.

It’s so hot.

Mingle² – Online Dating

Found via Mr. Hyacinth, whose first name I shall not use because the widget doesn’t seem to distinguish proper names. I’m sorely tempted to write something laden with misspelled profanities to see if I can beat the system.

…

Nah, I’m too mainstream for that.

I know it’s probably bad manners to link to my own blog, but I thought Matt Thorn’s summary of his Japanese students’ response to western comics was so interesting that I wanted to highlight it:

“Just as Americans are reluctant to watch foreign (non-English-language) films, Japanese are for the most part unwilling to read comics that are ‘backwards,’ in which the text is horizontal rather than vertical, which have a large amount of per page, and which, well, aren’t manga.”

John Jakala takes the recent instances of charwomen and tentacles to list his favorite comics created by women. I can’t resist a list, so I’ll throw in a few of my own (while noting that there’s a lot of crossover between John’s list and mine):

John offers some advice for readers who are increasingly frustrated by the shortcomings of the one, true category:

“While I understand that many female readers wish to continue reading superhero stories, only without the offensive depictions of women, perhaps it’s time to look at the overwhelming evidence on record and cut one’s losses. Why support publishers who seem to go out of their way to aggravate and alienate female readers? What incentive do those publishers have to change if you’re still buying their books?”

“Just dump(ing) the superhero comics already” paid off rather handsomely for me. After roughly a lifetime of following them, I finally gave up after the one-two punch of Marvel’s Avengers: Disassembled and DC’s Identity Crisis. The portrayal of long-running female characters in those stories certainly didn’t help, what with the Scarlet Witch suffering the most ridiculous case of post-partum depression in human history and Sue Dibny gruesomely repurposed for a big, theme-y murder mystery that fell apart before it even started. The underlying notion that watching these icons pay for their failures was more entertaining (or mature) than watching them achieve their benevolent aims didn’t help either. Between the two, it was as simple as following the emergency lights to the fire exit.

Would I recommend the strategy for everyone? Probably not. For readers whose interest in comics begins and ends with the Marvel and DC universes (and that’s not intended as any kind of criticism, because I was exactly that reader for ages, and I had a lot of fun), I don’t know if Ichigo or Naruto would actually present a satisfying alternative to Peter Parker. There’s a difference between wanting satisfying heroic adventure stories generally and wanting to see them built around a specific group of iconic characters.

And the cyclicality of super-hero comics suggests that change is inevitable and perhaps the pendulum will swing back in a direction that doesn’t make certain readers grind their teeth in frustration. (Heroes Reborn became Heroes Return, after all.) I think that possibility is kind of a tease, to be honest, but anything’s possible. I can understand the optimism, though, even in the face of a mounting pile of damning evidence that the optimism is misplaced.

I also think the concept of “It’s not for you” isn’t universally true. Though not created with me in mind, I’ve found plenty of shônen-ai and yaoi that fits right in with my sensibilities and genuinely delights me as a reader. I’m not a teen-aged girl, but it should be glaringly obvious that shôjo is my crack. People are distinct (and perverse) enough that they’ll like what they like irrespective of creator or publisher intent, and stubborn enough that diminishing returns can’t overcome the belief that things can get better, that there are diamonds among the coal.

Still, if your only emotional response to the spandex hobby is frustration, there’s no down side to trying something different. You might not intuitively consider Ichigo or Naruto or Canon or Aria or the Elric brothers or whoever else to be an adequate replacement for Batman or Spider-Man or Ms. Marvel or Wonder Woman, and it might end up being a failed experiment, but you never know. And it’s not that much of an investment to find out, especially if your local library has jumped on the graphic novel bandwagon.

Gosh, it’s getting so you can’t even use the phrase “the recent unpleasantness” with confidence, because there’s always something new. Aside from noting that I think the much-discussed Heroes for Hire cover is really grotesque, I think I’ll focus instead on things that don’t make me nauseous and do, in fact, bring joy, or at least the promise of future joy.

It didn’t take me long to realize that some manga titles sometimes have very little to do with their contents. Some are perfectly literal, obviously – Bambi and Her Pink Gun, Antique Bakery, Nana, etc. But some not only have little bearing on the series they represent, they actually suggest entirely different, perhaps equally or surpassingly entertaining alternatives.

Penguin Revolution: This one’s obvious. I love the series as it is, but I think the world is crying out for a comic that actually lives up to the promise of the title. I’m thinking something about a group of penguins who finally get sick of the research scientists and eco-tourists and cross-country para-skiers and decide to take back Antarctica… by any means necessary!

Ultra Maniac: Again, it’s a perfectly adorable story, but what the title has to do with the friendship between a popular schoolgirl and a magical exchange student is entirely beyond me. The title itself is versatile (or generic) enough to suggest any number of stories that practically write themselves, but I keep thinking “genetically modified, possibly bionic serial killer.”

Bleach: Slice-of-life drama set in an industrial laundry company. Or something about a private investigator with a really obvious dye-job. Or a combination of the two.

My partner and I were watching TV, and while I can’t even remember what prompted him to ask, he was wondering why there are so few great female villains – women who pursued power and wealth by evil or at least illegal or amoral means just because they wanted power and wealth.

And now I’m totally blanking. I can think of a handful of minor villainesses who kind of fit that category (Moonstone, Mystique and Ruby Thursday, and maybe a couple of others), but Ruby only had one major story before she became kind of a creepy joke, and aren’t Moonstone and Mystique mostly redeemed?

Before I could even suggest Catwoman (which I wasn’t prone to do anyways), he discounted her, partly because he views her as sad and crazy and avenging herself on evil men rather than possessing any tangible personal ambitions (based on the second Batman movie) or just using villainy as an excuse to flirt with the hero (based on the television series). Both of these apparently disqualify someone from A-list villainy, and I’d tend to agree.

So who am I forgetting? They don’t have to be confined to comic books.

Thanks to everyone who offered some shôjo recommendations in response to a previous post. For my own convenience and future reference, I thought I would put together a list of titles mentioned in the comments thread. I’ve listed them alphabetically by number of recommendations they received.

Three recommendations:

Two recommendations:

One recommendation:

Previews:

Scanlations:

I’m detecting a localized deficiency in my regular manga reading. There’s no want for quasi-supernatural episodic series, ass-kicking heroines, Fumi Yoshinaga, shônen adventures or tense dramas, but I don’t feel like I’ve got sufficient ridiculous shôjo comedies in the rotation. Sure, there’s Penguin Revolution and Beauty Pop, and I love them both, but new volumes only come out so often.

I had high hopes for Kitchen Princess, but it turned out to be too saccharine even for me. The first volume of Millennium Snow seems promising, and it’s got a talking bat with an absurd accent, but I suspect that the life-and-death stuff will gradually overwhelm the madcap elements. I liked the first volume of Skip Beat!, and Shaenon Garrity’s hilarious review in the Overlooked Manga Festival has placed it firmly on my watch list. My fondness for Meca Tanaka’s Omukae Desu suggests I’ll like Pearl Pink.

I’m not looking for sensitive meditations on growing up and first love. I want nonsense – extreme personalities in patently ludicrous situations, playing out stories so implausible that they actually cause mild disorientation. Any suggestions?

Is anyone else seeing Google ads on this site? They’ve been popping up intermittently this morning, and I’m not sure why.