Okay, not really, but life isn’t all manga reviews and unsuccessful satire.

I’ve confessed the love for Cartoon Network in the past, and those manipulative fiends keep reinforcing their stranglehold on my viewing habits. This time, they’ve done it with Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, more animated gold from Craig McCracken. (McCracken has already given the world The Powerpuff Girls after honing his craft on Dexter’s Laboratory.) Since I’m feeling lazy, I’ll just throw out a “what they said” to the reviews at the Hollywood Reporter and the New York Times. I will add that I’m totally smitten with Eduardo, the hopelessly insecure imaginary friend who looks like a refugee from a Maurice Sendak book. (Now, if CN would only revive Time Squad, I’d know their love is true.)

Come to think of it, Foster’s would adapt almost effortlessly into a terrific manga, if DC was looking for an all-ages entry for its CMX line. Actually, a lot of the CN line-up would translate well, and I’m guessing it might sell better than the licensed comics that come out currently. I could be wrong, though.

It’s Tuesday, so that must mean it’s time for another episode of The Amazing Race, the best reality show ever. If the contestants aren’t as interesting as they have been in past seasons, the locations make up for it (the Pyramids and St. Petersburg being two highlights so far). What really makes this show, though, is the editing. The crews assigned to each team of contestants never miss a critical moment (something Survivor could maybe try), and the editors do truly spectacular work with what must be hundreds of hours of footage per episode. A great way to catch up with the season so far is to check the recaps at Television Without Pity.

But enough TV talk. Must start writing manga reviews.

Um… This is embarrassing, but just to clarify… the previous posting contains sarcasm.

Disliking Identity Crisis is a tricky business, so I thought I would outline some misconceptions common among the book’s detractors. We can work through this misguided thinking together.

1. You find the events of IC misogynist: Just because the book routinely features acts of brutality directed at women doesn’t mean that it’s misogynist. It just means that vulnerable supporting characters are predominantly female. And where’s the misogyny in that? Stop being so politically correct. This line of argument leads inexorably to the unfortunate conclusion that…
2. You find the writer of IC misogynist: You might have thought you were focusing on the events of the title in question, but, really, let’s be honest with ourselves. Can you really separate the events of one piece of work from their creator, even if you’ve never read any of his other writing? Especially if you’ve never read any of his other writing? How can you possibly draw that conclusion about the writer if you haven’t read everything he’s ever written? This takes us to the fact that…
3. Brad Meltzer is a real writer: He’s written real books, not just comics. You can’t possibly evaluate his work based on the standards of the comic book medium. To do so would be to suggest that there’s just as much artistic merit in comics as there is in prose, and the New York Times doesn’t keep track of best-selling comics, now does it? And, since we’ve established that Brad Meltzer is a real writer, how can you possibly think that…
4. There are holes in the narrative, and the storytelling is badly constructed: Point three should address this, but if it hasn’t, let’s just expand on it a bit. Not only is Brad Meltzer a real writer, he’s a real writer who sells a lot of books. This is proven by the fact that his books – not comics – have been included in the New York Times Best-Seller List. Surely there’s no room in a listing of financially successful works of fiction for flawed storytelling, just like there’s no room in a listing of numerically successful works of non-fiction for flawed ideology or scholarship. That you found holes and flaws in the storytelling at all suggests that…
5. You’re trying to judge the comic based on individual chapters: Obviously, this is madness. Sure, DC is publishing IC in a monthly format, but that doesn’t entitle you to evaluate it on a chapter-by-chapter basis. The release schedule might lend itself to that and suggest that each individual chapter should be artistically successful in its own right, but doesn’t fairness demand that you purchase each and every issue before you judge? Even if you find the individual chapters flawed and distasteful? Be reasonable. Spend $4 a month, just in case it might make sense later. It’s the least you can do. Then, after you’ve shelled out $30, you can say how much you hate it. You’ll still be wrong, but you won’t be hamstrung in this manner.
6. IC is tonally inconsistent with its characters and fictional universe: Whoa, my fanboy alarm just went off! Sure, IC may heavily reference Silver Age stories and characters, but you can’t actually judge it in that context. The context is only a launching point for the real writer to go where he pleases, despite decades of expectations established by writers who, it must be stated, only write comics.
7. But I’m not a fanboy! I’m just working with the rules DC has established over decades of storytelling: This is just like when John Kerry resists being designated a liberal. Your voting record is there for everyone to see, and your denials only weaken your case. Sorry. (Snicker.) Fanboy.
8. Sue Dibny was a unique character who deserved a better fate: Nobody cares about what happens to Elongated Man’s wife. But – Nobody cares. I – Nobody cares about Woozy Winks, either. Next you’ll be saying that…
9. You find it difficult to believe these characters would behave in the ways the writer is suggesting: Capital “FAN”… lower-case “boy.” It’s the only explanation why you wouldn’t abandon decades of established characterization to embrace Meltzer’s bold and challenging vision. Which leads to the final point…
10. IC is contradicting my expectations of the DC Universe: Is it “contradicting your expectations” or is it “challenging your preconceptions”? Isn’t IC really shaking you out of your safe little fanboy torpor, and leading you into dangerous new philosophical territory? Maybe you don’t like IC because you’re not brave enough to like it. And isn’t that just a little sad?

With that said, you can still put forward negative opinions about IC. Here, for your convenience, is a sample critique for those of you who just can’t help finding fault:

“Boy, those Michael Turner covers sure suck!”

Hope this has helped.

I can certainly understand the position of those who have declared a blogatorium on Identity Crisis, but I’m weak. Sue me. The third issue is out, and now shall the Internet run with blood!

The 4th Rail‘s Don MacPherson is still on board, but the title has been demoted to the Quick Critiques section. Randy Lander didn’t review the book this week, which isn’t surprising. (He gave the second issue a 1 out of 10.)

Brian Hibbs has an wonderfully succinct review of the issue over at the Savage Critic. And, in true IC fashion, he couldn’t post it without paying a terrible price.

The posters at Newsarama are tearing into the issue with vigor. (And by “tearing into,” I don’t mean to imply any unanimity of critical opinion. Much of the chatter focuses on battle logistics as opposed to death, gender, and the inchoate nature of “good.”)

At the DC Comics Message Boards, my favorite thread title would have to be this. The boards also seem plagued by a poster who puts spoilers in thread titles in hopes of keeping people from buying the book. Beyond being ineffective, the tactic strikes me as pretty juvenile. I mean, hate IC all you want, but at least be civil about it.

It’s July all over again on Usenet. (Well, there is a rather startling Biblical analogy that I’m not sure I entirely understand.) There’s love, there’s hate, there’s ambivalence, there’s parsing, there’s spec… come for the furor. Stay for George Grattan.

It’s probably unfair, but I can’t evaluate Clamp School Detectives for what it is without thinking about what it could be.

The manga, by the Clamp studio, is sort of a cross between Richie Rich and Charlie’s Angels. Three comically perfect male students at the prestigious Clamp School dabble in detective work, dedicating themselves to “damsels in distress.” (No, it isn’t a period piece.)

Their ringleader is wealthy, brilliant, dandyish Nokoru Imonoyama, a sixth-grader with a sixth sense for women in peril. Noroku, chair of Clamp’s elementary division (the equivalent of student body president), is joined by secretary Suoh Takamura, a serious and responsible martial arts expert, and treasurer Akira Ijyuin, guilelessly charming and unwaveringly loyal to his senior officers.

They’re at the top of a school meritocracy, which is fine, because they’re all gifted and basically decent, and their intentions are good. But their perfection – generally idealized students each with his own set of unique talents – is presented without any counterbalancing foibles. If the Clamp creative team would ever take the air out of their heroes, things might be a bit more interesting.

Predictably, female students at the school are presented as little more than a ravening group of devoted fans. As one of the detectives’ largely anonymous admirers says, “You couldn’t even find guys that perfect in shojo manga!” It’s one of the moments when things seem to be heading towards satire, as is a caption, “They’re feminists. Who’d have guessed?” But the satire never develops any teeth.

Take, for example, the feminist joke. They aren’t so much feminist as they are chivalrous, and while those two qualities aren’t mutually exclusive, they aren’t synonymous, either. The detectives don’t really want to empower women so much as protect them, a state of mind that’s portrayed without a trace of irony. (And the trio doesn’t express any romantic interest in their admirers; the throng is pretty much viewed as a flattering inconvenience.)

Then there are the clients, a fairly sketchily developed group of stereotypes. There’s the old lady clinging to her memories who has to be protected from any harsh realities. There’s the benevolent but mysterious school administrator who needs to be spared embarrassment. Chapter three offers the sad, beautiful schoolgirl who has lost her pet and cries in the school gardens instead of doing anything constructive, like looking for it.

Even when you think Clamp might be offering something different, things snap back into formula. In the fourth chapter, readers finally run across a Clamp schoolgirl who doesn’t squeal with glee at the sight of the detectives. If you think this might be the introduction of a smart female foil for the protagonists, or a rival to give them some perspective, think again. Her hostility is a mask for something much blander.

The first time I read through this manga, it seemed like glossy good fun. I guess it is, provided you keep your expectations fairly low. The illustrations are beautiful, and the stories are weightless but well-constructed. But every time Clamp steps towards something more complex, something with comic bite, they take two quick steps backwards. It’s somehow more frustrating than if the series didn’t have anything on its mind at all.

Maybe I’m over-analyzing things, or I’m just unfamiliar with the Clamp house style. Anyone have any insights or contradictory impressions that might help me pin down my thinking?

There isn’t a ton of stuff that really lights my fire this week, but there is some good stuff coming out this week.

• Avengers Thunderbolts #6 (which, hopefully, will be a bit less chatty than #5)
• District X #4 (don’t let the presence of D-grade X-Man Bishop deter you)
• Emma Frost #14
• Fables #28
• Gotham Central #22

Hopefully, my copy of Runaways #18 will have shown up, too.

Powers #3 arrives. Is this book coming out with unusual frequency, or am I just getting tired of it?

While I won’t be buying Identity Crisis #3, I’m looking forward to the renewed flurry of analysis. (“Tastes great! Less filling!”) As others have said, the conversations about this title are more interesting than the title itself.

My 10-foot pole is in the shop, so there will be no X-Force #1 for me. I guess I’ll just have to get my fill of man-boobs and ponytails elsewhere.

Does anyone know where I can find an on-line listing of upcoming manga releases? My shop owner is sick of the sad little sigh I make when I look at the spot where I think a new volume of Sgt. Frog should be.

Creators have been making some vigorous efforts to promote their critically admired but low-selling titles. Peter David is trying his best to spread the word about FALLEN ANGEL, and Ed Brubaker is working hard to give SLEEPER a boost. It’s got me thinking about some of the books I liked but thought never got a fair shake in the marketplace.

Two of them in particular have resonance for the current state of both of the titles mentioned above. YOUNG HEROES IN LOVE and CHASE both stepped outside genre boundaries. YHIL was primarily a soap opera about superheroes, like NOBLE CAUSES but more tongue-in-cheek. CHASE had kind of an X-FILES feel, focusing on an investigator who monitored super-beings for a government agency. Both got reasonably good reviews, and neither made it much past a dozen issues.

I loved Gail Simone’s work on AGENT X, and I dropped it when Marvel revamped it with a new creative team. Happily, they ended the book’s run with a six-issue arc by the original creative team. Unhappily, it still ended.

There are two other titles by Peter David that fall into the “gosh, I miss that book” category. YOUNG JUSTICE got swept aside for the new TEEN TITANS and OUTSIDERS titles, as did the TITANS series at the time. Admittedly, TITANS was pretty weak, but YJ seemed to be plugging along just fine. To my thinking, it was a much better book about adolescent heroes than the frequently gruesome TT. (OUTSIDERS is preferable to TITANS, but any book that doesn’t feature a half-dozen “cute” kids to the exclusion of the title characters has an unfair advantage.)

From Marvel, there’s David’s CAPTAIN MARVEL. This is a more complicated case for me. I loved it prior to the re-launch, and I even liked the new take on the title for a while. But the “crazy Genis” story stretched out long past its expiration date. Still, it seemed to be moving back towards a direction and tone I liked.

I liked a lot of DC’s MARTIAN MANHUNTER ongoing, particularly the moody art by Tom Mandrake. Writer John Ostrander had a lot of interesting story ideas and didn’t confine himself to any particular genres. He mixed character studies, detective stories, and more traditional super-hero action in an effective way.

Did I have a point here? Other than, “Comics I like shouldn’t be cancelled?” Or am I just wallowing in nostalgia?

Well, BAM has given up on finding me a copy of Uzumaki Vol. 1, though there are other places I can search. At least the Love Fights trade and Planetes Vol. 2 are on the way.

In other manga reading, I checked out Vol. 2 of Eerie Queerie! It’s a bit darker than the first, and the storytelling isn’t quite as focused, somehow. It’s not bad, but it’s made me a bit cautious about picking up future volumes.

After hearing lots of good things about the CLAMP manga studio, I picked up Vol. 1 of CLAMP School Detectives and enjoyed it a lot. Three popular students (one rich and sophisticated, one athletic and serious, and one sweet and goofy) form a detective agency at the enormous CLAMP School, with the express purpose of helping “damsels in distress.” (I could do without that particular phrasing, honestly, but it’s probably just my kneejerk hostility to the heterosexist patriarchy. 😉 ) The stories are weightless fun, and the art is beautiful. I’ll comment in more detail in a review at some point.

Man, there’s a lot of fun to be found in ESSENTIAL AVENGERS 4, especially if you’re feeling a touch of malaise over the whole AVENGERS: DISASSEMBLED stunt currently in progress. The book collects AVENGERS 69-97 and HULK 140, part two of an early Marvel crossover.

One thing that surprised me was writer Roy Thomas’s portrayal of the Scarlet Witch. I had always attributed her romance with Vision and her growth as a heroine to Steve Englehart, who followed Thomas on the title. While Englehart significantly expanded on both, a lot of the credit for those developments has to go to Thomas.

His Wanda has definitely evolved past “the girl.” While her powers are still unpredictable and her mastery of them shaky, she’s as much of an Avenger as any of her male counterparts. She takes pride in what she does and counts herself as an equal among her teammates. (Heaven help anyone – ally or adversary – who suggests otherwise, or they get a dose of sharp-edged feminism, sometimes followed up with a devastating hex.)

And while I always regarded the Kree-Skrull War as an early and definitive space opera, I hadn’t really noticed how much of it was driven by character. The revelation of Wanda and Vision’s complicated feelings, Clint’s gradual progression from Goliath back to Hawkeye, and Quicksilver’s increasing hostility (dovetailing with the anti-alien paranoia in the plot) are all folded nicely into the twisty, interstellar action.

And wow, but these issues are crowded! The roster is fluid, variously featuring the Big Three (Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor), Hank Pym (as both Yellowjacket and Ant-Man), the Wasp, Goliath, the Black Panther, the Vision (who was clearly a Thomas favorite), and the return of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Black Knight officially joins in this run, and Captain Marvel and Rick Jones make frequent and pivotal guest appearances. (Come to think of it, Kurt Busiek took much the same approach in his run in Vol. 3 – a somewhat stable core with just enough change and visiting members to keep things humming.)

But the guest appearances don’t stop there. Future members Black Widow, Swordsman, and pre-Ms. Marvel Carol Danvers stop by, as do Daredevil, the Falcon, Nick Fury, the Hulk, most of the Fantastic Four, Professor X, several Inhumans, Nick Fury, and the Red Wolf. The Squadron Supreme make their first appearance (hot on the heels of their villainous equivalents, the Squadron Sinister), triggering the “first” Avengers-JLA crossover.

These are great, classic Avengers stories, even if some of them show their age. And it’s really the only significant patch of issues I’ve never read before, either in reprints or original issues. The Kree-Skrull issues have been reprinted frequently, but everything after Wanda and Pietro’s return (issues 75 and 76, if I remember correctly) hasn’t been readily available. (Marvel’s Triple Action and Super Action covered most of the early issues in glorious color, if you’re ever hunting through back issue bins.)

Because, gosh knows, what I need more than anything are more ways to waste time.

I just finished the expansion pack for Baldur’s Gate II (and enjoyed the heck out of it), and I’m biding my time with Painkiller until I can find something a little meatier. (I like a good run-and-shoot as much as the next person, but they’re always more of a palate-cleanser than a preference.)

So, any thoughts on good games for the PC platform? Here are some of my favorites, if it helps:

• The Elder Scrolls series
• No One Lives Forever I & II (great girl-power Bond parody)
• The Baldur’s Gate series
• Freedom Force (and another one’s coming out… um… sometime! Yay!)
• Alice

Any recommendations are welcome. I really like games that mix hack-and-slash with character bits, some humor, and a strong narrative. Puzzles to solve are another welcome addition, and player-determined alternatives (choosing peaceful solutions over ultra-violence, or options for stealth and guile) are always welcome.

Thanks!