The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

We have winners!

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Nineteen people entered my Black Jack Preventative Medicine Giveaway to vie for six prize packages. I used the highly scientific approach of assigning each entry a number, writing them down on small pieces of paper, putting them in a cereal bowl, averting my eyes, and picking winner at random. I drew the Grand Prize winner first so everyone would have an equal shot at the deluxe editions.

The Grand Prize of deluxe hardcover editions goes to:

  • Jamie Coville!

    • The five soft-cover prize packages go to:

  • Rob McMonigal!
  • Francene Lewis!
  • Matthew J. Brady!
  • Johanna Draper Carlson!
  • ahavah22!

    • Thanks to everyone who entered, and watch this week for all entrants’ prescriptions for the comics industry.

    STAT!

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    The comics industry isn’t the only one in need of a prescription. I feel awful. Even Takehiko Inoue’s mind-bogglingly awesome Real (Viz) isn’t enough to bring the healing, though it sure came close.

    Anyway, you have until midnight tonight to enter my Black Jack giveaway, and look for the fascinating and varied entries over the next week.

    The Congresswoman from California

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    I always enjoy Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, and the last couple of weeks (Nov. 10 to 22) have been a real treat. Trudeau is digging into some of my favorite parts of the strip’s history, doing a mini-retrospective on the late, lamented Lacey Davenport, a Republican legislator from California. If I were ever to put together a list of Great Women Characters of Comic Strips, Lacey would be right at the top. She embodied a lot of the things I like about the series — its ability to be topical and personal at the same time, the philosophical diversity of its cast, the handling of the passage of time, and the way it always managed to mix and match a sprawling cast of characters for thoughtful comic effect.

    Here’s a great sequence of strips where liberal, newly minted lawyer Joanie Caucus (who campaigned for Lacey’s opponent) goes to work for Lacey.

    The crowded middle ground

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    Surprising me not at all, Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing (whose blog may or may not be safe for work, depending on where you work) neatly summarizes the implications of the unfortunate closure of Broccoli Books:

    “When one aims to appeal to a wide segment, be it through choice of licenses or a liberal number of imprints, it’s very difficult to develop enough of a personality to distinguish oneself in the market, especially one inhabited by some very dominant players.”

    Not that niche publishers are rolling in profits commensurate with the gratitude of the audiences they serve, but it does seem like there’s very little room to breathe on manga’s middle ground and that the best remaining opportunities are for specialists.

    So what’s going on with Kodansha’s self-directed North American publishing efforts?

    Upcoming, updates, upbraiding

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    I’m going to be lazy in my assessment of this week’s ComicList and just point you to stalwarts like Jog, Matthew J. Brady, and Chris Mautner and Kevin Melrose. I will just note that the soft-cover version of the second volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack (Vertical) seems to be due in comic shops.

    And with that lazy segue out of the way, I’ll move into a quick update on my Black Jack Preventative Medicine Giveaway, which is bustling right along. I’ve gotten some great entries so far, and I can’t wait to post people’s thoughts on how to make the comics industry healthier. Even with under a dozen entries so far, people are covering a lot of ground from a number of different perspectives.

    Thanks to everyone who’s linked to the contest. Well… almost everyone. I continue to be shocked by the number of sites and individuals who swipe content from hard-working bloggers like Brigid Alverson and post it as their own. Seriously, that just sucks. If you’re trying to generate content for your site, do it the old fashioned way and just write it, if you’re capable of such complex thinking. Cutting and pasting isn’t writing, and doing so without any kind of attribution is plain old plagiarism.

    Three from Deux

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    A while back, I asked for recommendations on yaoi titles that meet my impossibly picky standards. In this week’s Flipped, I talk about three books from Deux that I really liked, so thanks for all the feedback, and special thanks to Deb Aoki for passing along some yaoi bounty.

    Another Black Jack give-away!

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    As Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack demonstrates, surgery can have life-changing benefits and be super-cool to watch. We shouldn’t neglect preventative medicine, of course.

    So I’m asking you to offer your prescription for the comics industry. What steps can it take to ensure a healthy and productive future? Write as much or as little on the topic as you like, and send it to me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot com, and you will be entered in my Black Jack Preventative Medicine Giveaway!

    Five lucky winners will claim the first and second soft-cover volumes of Tezuka’s medical masterpiece, and one grand prize winner will claim the deluxe hard-cover editions. Winners will be chosen at random, and while all entries will be posted, five-page prescriptive essays will be given no more consideration than someone firing off a pithy “Take a big valium.”

    Deadline for entries is midnight Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008. Thanks to Vertical for providing the prizes and for publishing so much awesome Tezuka manga in the first place.