Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them
by David Welsh
Well, really, after Jog and Chris Butcher have discussed it, what else is there to say? In my defense, I did not yet know that they’d both already gone over Solanin (Viz) when I wrote this week’s column.
And really, there’s only so much I could have written about the terrorist fist-bump in the eighth volume of Beauty Pop. I’m not fooled by you, seemingly innocent, would-be beauty experts.
by David Welsh
I’m in an easily confused state, so I’ll just note that the stuff on this week’s ComicList looks an awful lot like stuff that was on it the last couple of weeks. So click on the ComicList category and marvel at my prescience, or something.
I’m going to confine myself to a “pick of the week,” and that pick would be Asano Inio’s Solanin, arriving courtesy of Viz. I thought it looked promising when I first thought it was shipping, and I’ve actually read it in the intervening weeks thanks to a preview copy from the publisher. I don’t want to go into too much detail and rob myself of column fodder for next week, but I really liked Jog’s blurb about the book:
“Actually, it sounds just like Seiichi Hayashi’s 1970-71 lingering youths landmark Red Colored Elegy (in English this year from Drawn and Quarterly), although I’m sure this latter work is 7,000% more straightforward and contemporary mainstream-palatable. And Asano could certainly go places with it.”
If there was a highly conceptual costume partly, Solanin would kind of be like what you would get if Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad went dressed as Red Colored Elegy, had a little too much to drink and started getting sort of Method-actor about it all. That’s intended as a compliment. There are lots of stories about aimless 20-somethings in all kinds of media, but I would argue that there are only a handful of really good ones, and I think Solanin makes the cut.
by David Welsh
Returning to the ComicList, there are a few new volumes of ongoing series I wanted to point out:
First is the second volume of Rei Hiroe’s Black Lagoon (Viz), which I point out not really because I recommend it but because I finally got around to reading the first volume. It’s one of those books that depend on the reader finding the characters more engaging than the reader finds their vocation repellent, and I found myself just about even in terms of reaction. It focuses on a ragtag group of pirates sailing around on the titular PT boat, abetting corporate espionage and gang wars. They’re studiously neutral about the morality of their actions, though that doesn’t mean you have to be. While their “nothing personal, just earning a paycheck” attitude has its amusing moments, some of the aforementioned actions stretch things to the snapping point. (Selling a kid into slavery springs to mind, even if they did treat him to a soda.) On the bright side, the fan service, both weapon- and hot-chick-based, stays on the cheerfully cheesy side of the equation, and if you like watching a woman in a pair of Daisy Dukes and a tube top lock and load, it will probably be money well spent.
Fortunately, Viz offers a couple of action titles that are more to my taste. There’s Hiromu Arakawa’s perennial hit Fullmetal Alchemist, now up to its 17th volume and still improbably fresh and entertaining. And Naoki Urasawa’s Monster reaches the same milestone, which also happens to be its penultimate volume. It’s quite thrilling to watch Urasawa weave all of his threads together as the climax approaches.
In a more shamelessly sentimental vein is the eighth volume of Kitchen Princess (Del Rey), by Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi. It promises a “High Tea cook-off,” which further makes me wish that American school systems were more imaginative in their competitive events, because I could have lettered in that, I swear to you.
by David Welsh
This week’s ComicList has me wondering if there’s a comics equivalent of the movie industry’s Oscar Bait Season. Maybe a Ten Best List Season? Because there are a lot of potentially intriguing books coming out tomorrow.
Rutu Mordan’s Exit Wounds (Drawn & Quarterly) was easily one of the most warmly received books of 2007. I thought that book was really solid, though I wasn’t transported by it to the degree that a lot of other readers were. Anyway, Mordan’s follow-up, Jamilti and Other Stories, arrives tomorrow via D&Q.
I like Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods a lot, but I tend to be generally fond of reconfigured fairy tales. (Though oddly enough, the very idea of a musical version of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked makes me cringe, Kristin Chenoweth or no Kristin Chenoweth.) So I’m inclined to take a look at There’s a Wolf at the Door (First Second) written by Zoey Alley and beautifully illustrated by R.W. Alley. You know all those wolves in popular fairy tales? This book posits that all those stories happened to the same wolf.
NBM has become one of those publishers where I’m automatically inclined to pay attention to their releases, what with Rick Geary’s books and Glacial Period and Run, Bong-Gu, Run! This week’s eye-catcher is Dirk Schwieger’s Moresukine, which is based on Schwieger’s blog. “Assignment: Pod Hotel” is probably enough to get me to track it down, because the prospect of sleeping in a tube triggers all of my claustrophobic nightmares.
I was e-mailing back and forth with an editor at Viz about something entirely unrelated, and he made a point of talking up Asano Inio’s Solanin. It features a recent college graduate who “struggles with the feeling that she’s just not cut out to be a part of the real world.” (I hate to break it to her, but that feeling doesn’t go away with time.) A done-in-one josei series in a big fat package? Why yes, thank you, I’d love one.
by David Welsh
I’m never going to catch up with anything, obviously, and we’ve already passed the published deadline for Previews orders through Diamond, but if your shop allows any flexibility in this sort of thing, I wanted to point to two items that are well worth your consideration:
The Quest for the Missing Girl by Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon): If you’ve never treated yourself to any of Taniguchi’s work, you’re being needlessly stingy. The Walking Man (also from Fanfare) is always hovering near the top of my re-read list, and Benkei in New York (written by Jinpachi Mori, published by Viz, and apparently out of print) is good, pulpy fun and a fine precursor to The Quest.
Details aren’t available at Viz’s site yet, but they’ve solicited the first volume of Oishinbo, a cooking manga from Kariya Tetsu and Hanasaki Akira. Ed Chavez, of MangaCast and Otaku USA fame, is very exited, as all sensible people should be.
by David Welsh
Quick, general observation about this week’s ComicList: if I was a retailer and had to deal with the unholy crap-load of variant covers and repeat printings from Marvel, I think I’d just bag it all and convert my space into a Tim Hortons franchise.
I may have mentioned, just casually, in passing, that I’m kind of fond of Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare (Go! Comi). Or I may have mentioned it so often that your temples throb at the repetition. I’ll just note that the ninth volume arrives tomorrow, which leaves just one more, and the withdrawal process is going to be very ugly indeed. Gird yourselves.
But there’s always new crack arriving, and it’s always better when it’s classic Tezuka crack. I swear that the first volume of Black Jack (Vertical) has been on the ComicList three times now, but I don’t really care. Some things bear repeating, like the phrase “a genius surgeon who never acquired his license due to his clashes with the medical establishment.”
In composing the last two Flipped columns, I think I should be complimented for my restraint in highlighting only one goofy series about a school club and the surly girl who doesn’t really want to be a member. Of course, nothing’s to stop me from pointing towards Kiyoko Arai’s very funny Beauty Pop (Viz) in the confines of my own blog. The ninth volume of this makeover comedy arrives Wednesday.
And if I haven’t mentioned it lately, Hikaru No Go (Viz), written by Yumi Hotta and drawn by Takeshi Obata, is one of my very favorite shônen series, partly because it’s about a board game and is still riveting, partly because I love Obata’s illustrations, and partly because the characters are great. The thirteenth volume arrives Wednesday. (Is it weird or just coincidental that two of my favorite shônen series – Hikaru and Fullmetal Alchemist – are both written by women?)
by David Welsh
The demise of Minx gives me the chance to talk about some of my favorite comics in this week’s Flipped: shôjo that features real girls in the real world.
by David Welsh
Looking at the current ComicList, it’s an overwhelming week of new releases with quality titles from just about everyone pitched for just about every demographic. If I had to pick just one title to recommend, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even pick just one Viz title to recommend. I even find myself resorting to the bulleted list, so abundant is the quality on offer.
So, we’ve got low comedy, high adventure, coming-of-age angst, imaginative horror, lore and legend, and interpersonal drama. And that’s just in Dororo. (I kid, I kid. No I don’t, but you know what I mean.)
by David Welsh
An intriguing new arrival and a couple of old favorites are the highlights of this week’s ComicList, at least for me:
Del Rey breaks into new territory with the debut of Faust, an anthology of manga-inspired fiction. CLAMP and Takeshi Obata provide illustrations for two of the stories. Perhaps you may have heard of them.
There are only three volumes left of Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare (Go! Comi), and I’m going to miss it terribly when it’s done. The eighth installment of awesomely Freudian teen angst arrives Wednesday, promising “a mountain of new problems.” The thing about this series is that, when blurbs use words and phrases like “heartache” or “the breaking point” or “shocking,” it isn’t hyperbole. Mizushiro delivers.
There are only three (thanks, James!) volumes left of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster (Viz Signature), so I have a little more time to gird myself for the inevitable grief. It took a while for this series to work its way into my heart. The early going, dominated by saintly fugitive Dr. Tenma, was at times laughably simplistic in its moral framework. Over time, though, and as the supporting cast has emerged and evolved, it’s become a tense must-read for me, and I’ve even reached the point where the ensemble is more interesting to me because of the ways Tenma has influenced them. (I still think he’s a goody-goody stick, though.)
by David Welsh
You would think that the comics pick of the week would be a gimme. I mean, Fanfare/Ponent Mon is releasing Hideo Azuma’s Disappearance Diary. In fact, you generally only need to type “Fanfare/Ponent Mon is releasing…” to guarantee pick-of-the-week standing. And Disappearance Diary is an excellent, unusual comic book that’s absolutely well worth your time and money. (I reviewed the book here.) So it’s a lock, right? But…
It’s also generally true that you can begin a pick-of-the-week sentence with “NBM is releasing a new installment of Rick Geary’s Treasury of…” and feel reasonably confident that you won’t be easily contradicted. So we also have Geary’s Treasury of 20th Century Murder: The Lindbergh Child to greedily anticipate. (Seriously, if you haven’t treated yourself to any of Geary’s Treasury of Victorian Murder books, you need to be nicer to yourself. Much, much nicer.)
More often than not, you can begin a pick-of-the-week sentence with “New from First Second is…”, though not if that sentence finishes with “Life Sucks.” Eddie Campbell (collaborating with Dan Best) seems like a much safer bet, and I will certainly pick up a copy of The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard at some point.
Okay, moving on from the pick-of-the-week face-off, we reach the eye-catching oddity. First of all, Viz seems to be publishing its own Gantz equivalent, with Rei Hiroe’s Black Lagoon. I admit that the price point ($12.95) was what first caught my eye, because it made me think they’d added something to the Signature imprint. But no, it’s a rated-“Mature” book about mercenaries with characters named things like “Revy Two Hand,” which triggers both my curiosity and my Not for Me Alarm.
Lastly, a return to my comfort zone. I very much enjoyed the first volume of Uhm JungHyun’s Forest of the Gray City, originally from ICE Kunion. Yen Press has picked up the manhwa consortium’s catalog, and the second volume of Forest arrives Wednesday. It has a very josei feel to it, featuring a working woman who takes in a hunky male boarder to pay off some of her debts. It’s got lovely art and a smart, sexy vibe overall.