The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Upcoming 8/4/2008

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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.

  • Crayon Shinchan Vol. 4, by Yoshito Usui (CMX)
  • Dororo Vol. 3, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)
  • High School Debut Vol. 5, by Kazune Kawahara (Viz)
  • Honey and Clover Vol. 3, by Chica Umino (Viz)
  • The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 7, by Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki (Dark Horse)
  • Mushishi Vol. 5, by Yuki Urushibara (Del Rey)
  • Nana Vol. 12, by Ai Yazawa (Viz)
  • Sand Chronicles Vol. 3, by Hinako Ashihara (Viz)
  • Slam Dunk Vol. 1, by Takehiko Inoue (Viz)

    • 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.)

    There's something about her

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    I’m not saying I would ever, ever vote for her under any circumstances, but I have to admit that I kind of love Sarah Palin. And I kind of love her in exactly the same way I love emotionally unbalanced soap opera characters that scheme their way through every station on the soap-opera cross twice, maybe three times, and still end up pillars of their fictional communities. They steal, kill, kidnap, covet, wreck marriages, switch babies, plot corporate takeovers, and drug the punch at the annual Founders Day Festival with hallucinogenic aphrodisiacs, and still get elected Woman of the Year by the very people they’ve dedicated their adult lives to recklessly screwing.

    Now, I’m not saying that anything Palin has done in her bizarre public life reaches that level, but her resume is absolutely packed with eyebrow-raising moments. And while somewhere, Holly Hunter is probably composing her Emmy acceptance speech for the inevitable HBO original movie that will be based on Palin’s life, if there were any justice, Palin would be transplanted wholesale into Pine Valley or Lllanview, and she would be played by Robin Mattson.

    Deep discounts

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    Hey, Top Shelf is having its annual sale, offering some great books for $3.

    My strongest recommendation in the $3 category would be Andy Hartzell’s Fox Bunny Funny, a terrifically twisted allegory (which I reviewed here). While I didn’t enjoy Renée French’s Micrographica as much as I did The Ticking, $3 for a book by French? Please. You should be wearing a ski mask during that transaction. (And since you’re saving so much money, why not do yourself a favor and buy The Ticking as well?)

    He enjoys being a girl

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    Given that the first translated volume shipped four years ago, and that I’ve been intermittently pining for the second volume ever since, it was possible that Ai Morinaga’s Your and My Secret (now at Tokyopop) might not have lived up to expectations. Maybe it was just the fact that I couldn’t get my hands on a copy of the second volume that made me so eager?

    I’m happy to say that I liked the second volume slightly better than the first, and I liked the first a lot. It’s now my second favorite manga series that deals with jumbled gender issues among high-school students, and since first place for that category is owned now and for the foreseeable future by Setona Mizushiro’s addictive, disturbing After School Nightmare (Go! Comi), there’s no shame in taking the silver medal.

    But back to Secret: the awkwardness escalates slightly this time around as shy-guy Uehara and rose-with-thorns Momoi adapt to life in each other’s bodies. Morinaga builds on elements introduced in the first volume, particularly in the delightfully pansexual romantic quadrangle among Uehara in Momoi’s body, Momoi in Uehara’s, Momoi’s pretty best friend Shiina, and Uehara’s pal Senbongi. Momoi, loving life as a boy, has Shiina as a steady, and Uehara isn’t immune to Shiina’s charms either. Nor can Uehara ignore the persuasive wooing of Senbongi, much as Uehara might wish he could.

    Much as I enjoy the sitcom antics of Morinaga’s My Heavenly Hockey Club (Del Rey), the character-driven farce of Secret gives it the edge. There’s a constant emotional ebb and flow, with poor Uehara torn between his desire to get his own body and the nagging rightness of his current situation. Brash hypocrite Momoi continues to amuse, holding Uehara to standards she has no intention of upholding herself. And Morinaga manages to juggle a bunch of potential narrative trajectories and keep them just about equally likely. I’m never quite sure where the series is going, but all of the possibilities that Morinaga has teased are appealing.

    Circulatory systems

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    For no other reason than that I felt like it, here are five graphic novels that I think should be in libraries. (Disclaimer: they probably already are, and I’m not coming anywhere near saying that these are the only five graphic novels that would be essential to a well-rounded library collection, but these are the five that came to mind. Also, I’m focusing primarily on stand-alone books, or books that could stand alone even though subsequent volumes have come out, though I could easily do a similar list on series I think are deserving, and probably will at some point.)

    Aya, by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie (Drawn & Quarterly): A funny, vibrant look at life in the Ivory Coast of the late 1970s.

    Northwest Passage: The Annotated Collected Edition, by Scott Chantler (Oni Press): It’s a marvelous adventure story, wonderfully drawn and meticulously researched, and this sturdy package has some great extras.

    The Rabbi’s Cat, by Joann Sfar (Pantheon): Maybe I should just say that every library should have something by Joann Sfar, but this was my first encounter with his work, so it’s always had a special place in my heart. Also, it stars a largely amoral cat.

    Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, by Fumiyo Kouno (Last Gasp): Simply one of the most beautiful graphic novels I’ve ever read. It’s that weird alchemy of seemingly contradictory elements coming together in unexpectedly wonderful ways.

    Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Bloody Benders, by Rick Geary (NBM): Okay, I could have picked any of the books in Geary’s series, but this is the one I read most recently, so it’s the one I love the most at the moment. (I’m fickle.) Seriously, though, if a library has the budget, it should get all of Geary’s smart, gruesome looks at bygone crimes.

    So which make your list?

    Upcoming 8/20/2008

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    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.)

    Cutting the pie into more pieces

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    The New York Times looks at efforts by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing to get a cut of the profits generated by film adaptations of its properties. I’m kind of surprised it took them this long, and it will be interesting to see how complex deals for film rights become.

    “In exchange for a percentage of the revenues, Simon & Schuster may agree to publish a book long before it is written, based on an assurance from the Gotham Group that it has Hollywood potential.

    “Simon & Schuster will also receive money when its children’s books are turned into video games, comic books or other properties.”

    Is anyone else feeling that shiver running down the spine?

    Essay question

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    According to the Times Online, Britain is making its A-Level examinations more challenging by adding an independent research project. Oh, man, I would love to read the second one cited here:

    “Students will work on projects independently, but will be taught research skills by their teachers, who will supervise and mark the projects. Subjects chosen by the 1,700 students who have piloted the project include ‘Can science explain the nature of happiness?’ and ‘Cultural comparison of Japanese Manga and American super-hero comics’.”

    Post it, college-bound Brit! Post it now!

    Meritorious

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    Over at Sporadic Sequential, John Jakala is hosting a conversation about what comics possess literary merit. There are some fine suggestions, some you’d expect and some that you wouldn’t. For my own purposes, I’m going to focus on the coming-of-age novel. I know there are a ton of coming-of-age stories in graphic and prose media, and not all of them are even remotely literary, but three did come to mind as bumping up from entertainment (nothing wrong with that) to literature.

  • Genshiken, by Kio Shimoku (Del Rey): The lives and loves of a group of college geeks in a club that celebrates manga, anime, games, collectibles, and cosplay.
  • Paradise Kiss, by Ai Yazawa (Tokyopop): An unhappy grind finds herself through association with a group of oddball student designers.
  • Ohikkoshi, by Hiroaki Samura (Dark Horse): College students steadfastly avoid facing the future in the ways that college students do.

    • I think the shared element that gives these books a literary quality, at least by my standards, is the almost melancholy way the characters are nostalgic for their present station in life. They’re moving on to the next stage, but they’ve reached that transition point where they appreciate the current moment, partly because it’s about to end. There’s something lovely and wistful and thoughtful about that.