In her look at this week’s comics, Kate Dacey delivers a succinct takedown of the latest example of that just-won’t-die-or-evolve artifact, the list of recommendations to help comics fans convince the ladies in their lives to share their hobby. I don’t really have anything to add, but I will just note that most of the women I know online who read manga are omnivores. They greet new romantic shôjo and new blood-and-guts seinen with equal enthusiasm. To my way of thinking, this makes the frequent exclusion of manga from these chick-bait graphic novel guides even more baffling.
Anyway, here’s what looks good to me on the latest ComicList:
I read a review copy of Tamio Baba’s Deka Kyoshi (CMX), about a detective going undercover as a teacher, joining forces with a mildly psychic student, and helping kids with their often dangerous problems. My reaction to the book tracks pretty much exactly with Brigid Alverson’s: “The stories are nice little self-contained dramas, but they never veer far from the predictable.”
It seems to be a week where publishers who’ve had something of a low profile lately deliver some new goods. There are new volumes from DrMaster, Seven Seas, and Go! Comi. I’m most enthusiastic about the Go! Comi offering, the fifth volume of Takako Shigematsu’s Ultimate Venus. It’s about an orphan who learns that she’s the granddaughter of a very wealthy, very formidable woman, and must prove her worth to inherit the family fortune. I can’t say I yet love it in the way that I loved Shigematsu’s Tenshi Ja Nai!!, but I loved that series a lot and heartily recommend it to people who like wacky, mean-spirited romantic comedy. Ultimate Venus is a bit tamer, but it’s still very enjoyable.
Viz finally rolls out a VizBig version of Rumiko Takahashi’s long-running, much-loved InuYasha, which is a welcome development for people who might enjoy the anime but be a bit daunted by the 42 existing volumes of the manga.
Of more specific interest to me is the third volume of Motoro Mase’s Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit, from Viz’s Signature line. Though I’m ambivalent about the series overall, I’ve liked it enough to review the first and second volumes of this series about a draconian government program that targets random people for death to help the remainder of the citizenry better appreciate life. A government functionary must notify these unlucky learning tools of their fate, and readers get to watch the victims flip out during their last hours. I still feel like it needs to go somewhere beyond episodic individual drama, but I’m intrigued enough to stick around. And the third volume has an awesome tag line: “Sometimes people do shoot the messenger.”
What if you could bring your cat to school? What if you and your cat were given amazing powers, and all you had to do in exchange was keep horrible demons at bay? These are the central questions addressed by Yuji Iwahara’s Cat Paradise (Yen Press). The second volume is due out on Wednesday and promises more mystery and adventure at a purportedly feline-friendly institute of learning.
One of my Borders purchases this weekend was 
Do you miss the days when Greg Rucka did creator-owned work? Well, there’s good news for you, as he returns to Oni (home to his Queen and Country and Whiteout) with a new detective series, 
Viz unleashes a thundering herd of titles, many of which I like very much, but I’ll fixate on one because it’s great and I feel like I’ve been neglecting it: Hikaru no Go, written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, which reaches 
The Comics Reporter notes that 
It’s tough to pick a book of the week, as there’s interesting material in varied formats, but I ultimately have to settle on 
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of the books in Viz’s Signature line and an admirer of the imprint in general. I honestly can’t think of one I don’t at least enjoy. That said I do question the wisdom of unleashing quite this much product on the market at once. In addition to the aforementioned volume of Real, there’s 
I enjoyed 
I’m always happy to see more of Adam Warren’s brilliant 
It’s always wise to keep an eye on CMX’s shôjo offerings, as they’re usually pretty charming. New this month is 
A few years back, the big blogosphere hit was Jim Rugg and Brian Marucca’s 
You may know 
I’m crazy about Rick Geary’s Treasury books, but I’m cheap so I wait for the paperback versions. Happily, NBM slates the soft-cover version Geary’s A Treasury of 20th Century Murder: Famous Players for publication. It examines the murder of early Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor. (Page 271.)
The gifted Hope Larson delivers her next work, 
Page 301 promises more goodness from Viz Signature. My poor, poor wallet, how you will weep. New to the imprint are Natsume Ono’s 
And, of course, Viz triggers squeals across the internet by offering more manga from Fumi Yoshinaga. It’s 
There are two arrivals that can be described as clever ideas executed extremely well. R. Sikoryak’s 
Viz releases many, many books this week, some of which will very likely show up on the Graphic Book Best Seller List over at The New York Times, but my attention is fixated on the second volume of 
In Vegetables, this kind of content is relatively minimal. And while I’ve enjoyed it in the past, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the relative absence of their caustic bickering. The volume starts with a multi-part but still relatively short cabbage battle that’s fairly standard for their showdowns, then moves on to what I can only describe as food pyramid comeuppance theatre. People often bemoan the lack of vegetables in the average diet (when they aren’t wondering how they can possibly consume as many of them as nutritionists recommend), but Kariya and Hanasaki take it to another plateau.
