The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Upcoming 8/13/2008

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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.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes

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I’m really excited about the upcoming arrival of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack from Vertical, but I shouldn’t let that excitement lead me to neglect Dororo, another Tezuka title currently in release. I know it’s not Tezuka’s masterwork; it’s not even close. But there are a lot of things I really love about it that became even clearer as I read the second volume.

First (though not foremost) is Tezuka’s ability to render graphic violence in a way that’s exactly to my taste. When something horrible happens, which is fairly often, it’s undeniably horrible, but it isn’t exploitatively so. It’s like Tezuka’s tone dispenser is perfectly calibrated. (By “tone” I mean mood, not weird hexagonal eyeball screens.) Adventurous moments, ones featuring protagonist Hyakkimaru dishing out pointy, sharp-edged justice, are allowed to look cool. A group of hapless villagers being murdered is rendered with the appropriate tonal effects in mind – shock, disgust and sadness.

But that’s just a smaller reflection of the thing I really love about Tezuka – his ability to shift his highly stylized approach in illustration to suit a wide range of narrative beats but to still keep the visual feel of the book coherent. There’s the aforementioned violence and adventure, but there’s also low comedy, unspeakable cruelty, tense secrets, immense sadness, lush landscapes, and even moments of peace. There’s great visual variety, but it all fits together.

It’s not just in the visuals that seemingly incompatible elements can cohere. In Dororo, Tezuka hops back and forth between lively quest adventure and dysfunction and sorrow. Loss pervades the whole thing, and it isn’t trivialized. But it’s side by side with moments that are undeniably fun and exciting. And they fit.

I’m a little sad that there’s only one more volume. There’s a twist in the second volume that begs to be rendered at leisure, even in addition to the book’s basic premise. For those who have forgotten, Hyakkimaru is hunting the demons who claimed various parts of his body at birth. A supporting character suggests that limb recovery is all well and good, but it doesn’t really constitute a life’s purpose so much as a project. I was just amazed when I read that sequence, because it seems really audacious. A lot of shônen protagonists have essentially selfish motives, and to see one called on that in the midst of a perfectly sound shônen character arc was perfectly Tezuka to me.

(Comments based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Plus or minus?

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There’s been lots of interesting conversation about the first issue of Yen Plus and it’s cast-a-wide-net content. Now, Deb Aoki has set up a poll at About.Com, inviting readers to pick their hits and misses.

USA! USA! USA!

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I thought Tom Spurgeon had covered the latest Bookscan numbers quite nicely, until I saw the latest responses to Heidi MacDonald’s summary at The Beat:

“My headline would simply be ‘DC Comics Triumphant in GN Sales’ rather than using national/area/linguistic categories.”

Mine would be “Other media drive Bookscan bestsellers.” (I’m a whore for subdued alliteration.) What with a blockbuster movie, a not-quite-blockbuster movie that has Angelina Jolie in it, a blockbuster movie trailer (what the hell is that about?), several popular anime, a bestselling series of novels, and a video game that features Disney characters, there aren’t many properties that didn’t get a boost from outside of the field of graphic novels. And two of those have zombies in them.

By the way, does the All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder collection include the words “From the creator of Sin City and The 300” anywhere on the cover?

Upcoming 8/6/2008

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Some highlights from this week’s ComicList:

The one and only time I ever put on a pair of roller blades, a bee flew up my shirt. While nothing so dramatic resulted from previous encounters with ice or roller skates, I realized long ago that any attempt to increase locomotion via enhanced footwear would result only in comic relief for onlookers. It also led me to suspect that my center of gravity is actually located in another person’s body. That said, I’m still swayed by early praise for Hisaya Nakajo’s Sugar Princess: Skating to Win (Viz). Theoretically, figure-skating manga should have the gayest supporting cast ever, but I suspect I will be disappointed on this front.

In other princess news, this time involving actual sugar, Del Rey releases the seventh volume of Kitchen Princess by Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi. This series was as blandly unsatisfying as a Hostess Donette in the early going, but it’s gradually turned into wonderfully melodramatic shôjo crack over time. Plus, you get recipes in every volume.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m thrilled that Yen Press is carving out a mini-niche of four-panel comics. I thought Ume Aoki’s Sunshine Sketch was just okay; I’d probably have enjoyed it more in smaller doses, as it was originally published. On the other hand, I can’t wait for the second volume of Satoko Kiyuduki’s Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro. This week marks the arrival of S.S. ASTRO: Asashio Sogo Teachers’ Room by Negi Banno, which sounds like a lot of fun. The harried employees of Japan’s school systems are among my favorite supporting characters in manga, so I’m looking forward to seeing them get the spotlight.

Upcoming 7/30/2008

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Hey, why didn’t anyone tell me it was Weird Manga Week? At least that’s what it seems like after a quick glance at tomorrow’s ComicList.

Fortunately, this week’s Flipped at The Comics Reporter looks at the strangeness that is Akira Hiramoto’s Me and the Devil Blues (Del Rey). Weird enough for any week, you say? But wait! There’s more!

Del Rey also delivers the fourth volume of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte, for that tried-and-true, old-school manga weirdness.

And you can pretty much guess that anything released by Last Gasp is going to be at least a little bit unusual, and it will probably also be pretty great. At least that’s my theory about Yusaku Hanakuma’s Tokyo Zombies. And the title is apparently entirely accurate. And Ryan Sands, of Same Hat! Same Hat! fame translated it, and his credentials in the area of weird manga are absolutely impeccable.

Bookish

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NPR’s All Things Considered has a nice piece on librarians at Comic-Con International:

“The librarians at Comic-Con report that the manga shelves at their libraries are often nearly empty because the comics get checked out so quickly. Many manga storylines have multiple volumes, so kids come back to the library to keep up with the plot. Librarians select manga titles with staying power that they hope will attract new readers of different ages.”

It’s a nice alternative to “People wear costumes!”, “Hollywood courts nerds!” and “San Diego prefers medical conventions!”

Because we all know that super-heroes don't really die

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Writing for The New York Times, and serenely ignorant of the comics-and-movies key party underway on the other side of the country, A.O. Scott wonders if super-hero movies have said all they have to say:

“Instead the disappointment comes from the way the picture spells out lofty, serious themes and then … spells them out again. What kind of hero do we need? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? How much autonomy should we sacrifice in the name of security? Is the taking of innocent life ever justified? These are all fascinating, even urgent questions, but stating them, as nearly every character in ‘The Dark Knight’ does, sooner [or] later, is not the same as exploring them.”

I’m guessing he’ll make Manohla Dargis review Watchmen.

In fairness, I don’t think a lack of novelty or gravitas has ever hampered a genre to the degree that it kills the thing entirely. Over-saturation is a likelier culprit when it comes to putting a genre in a persistent vegetative state, as it did in the ‘80s with slasher films, a genre that got revived via ironic self-awareness in Scream, which triggered a wave of ironic, self-aware slasher movies, which is now over for a while, but probably not forever.