The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Choice cuts

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I meant to mention it yesterday, but ICv2 has a thorough, three-part interview with Jason Hoffs, Amblin-Dreamworks-Sony veteran who’s taken the helm of Viz Productions, the manga publisher’s new film arm. There are some really good bits.

From part one:

“Where I think manga is truly extraordinary (and I’m a fan, but a newcomer to your world—I’m not quite an otaku) is the level of characterization, which I think is exceptional. It typically exceeds the level of characterization, and in a way, sophistication, of many American graphic novels. I suspect one of the reasons for that is that these properties are initially serialized in magazines like Shonen Jump and in order for them to continue their readership they need to have these heightened, addictive characterizations.”

From part two:

“What I’m also finding at the studio level is that the executives that are 35 and under, or maybe more 32 and under, are very familiar with manga. The really young executives that are just coming up, and some of the agents too, they’re growing up with manga to some degree with a level of comfort and familiarity that almost equals their experience with American comics and graphic novels. At the chairman and head of production level, those people still need to be educated somewhat. If someone’s in their mid-50s, they’re unlikely to be an otaku.”

From part three:

“There are thousands of different manga titles that our corporate parents have published. I’m sure this is one of the largest pools of largely untapped—at least in the U.S.—international properties that exists in the world.”

Upcoming 7/23/2008

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In honor of Entertainment Weekly’s recent redesign, I’m going to start putting random phrases in boldfaced type. Okay, no, I’m not. Well, maybe just this once.

Now, on to this week’s ComicList:

Yen Press releases the first issue of its anthology, Yen Plus, featuring licensed work from Japan and Korea and original series from the likes of James Patterson and Svetlana Chmakova. (How often do you get to type phrases like that? Maybe I should bold it.) Is anyone else frightened by Pig Bride as a title? Outside of VH1’s slate of reality shows, how can a series live up to that name?

The thing about Rick Geary’s Treasury of Victorian Murder series (NBM) is that I’ll mention every book in the series every time it shows up on a shipping list, because Geary is just that good. This week’s re-release is the paperback version of The Murder of Abraham Lincoln, which I reviewed here.

Del Rey rolls out two new series this week. First up is Kasumi, written by Surt Lim and drawn by Hirofumi Sugimoto. It’s about a girl who can turn invisible, and Leroy Douresseaux liked a lot. Deb Aoki interviewed the creators for About.Com.

The other debut, Kujubiki Unbalance, created by Kio Shimoku and Koume Keito, is about as meta as it gets. Those who read Shimoku’s wonderful Genshiken will recognize the series as the oft-referenced touchstone property of a bunch of the characters in that book. (If you can’t be counted among those who read Genshiken, you might want to correct that.)

Last but not least is the second volume of Yuko Osada’s fun travel adventure, Toto. Sure, it’s got plucky ‘tweens with big dreams, but it also has an adorable, weaponized dog.

Purely theoretical

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This week’s Flipped is up, and since I’m a hopeless follower, I scan through the Comic-Con International programming for the manga highlights. It does look like I wouldn’t have any trouble filling my time, even beyond fending off panic attacks.

That said, a convention that would require me to spend hundreds of dollars on a plane ticket, additional hundreds of dollars on lodging, plus the hundreds of dollars I’d spend on stuff, plus the cost of the extra checked bag to get it all home… I don’t know. I’m not much for big, crowded events to begin with, and I’ve gotten really picky about how I spend my travel dollars. I either want natural splendor or rich culture, and while both certainly have their place in the comics medium, it’s still a convention center in a California city that isn’t San Francisco. I’ll go some year.

And a partridge in a pear tree

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The tenth volume of Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! (Dark Horse) offers the following diversions:

1. A desperate race to find a bomb planted by terrorists
2. A shocking double execution
3. A shocking single execution
4. A high-speed chase
5. The introduction of new characters
6. The return of old characters
7. Weighty discussion about the nature of life, sentience and evolution as they pertain to a creepy virus that turns people into crystal
8. Two big explosions
9. Inter-agency tensions in the criminal justice arena
10. Citizen protests
11. Subdued but affecting portrayals of grief
12. Mildly gratuitous nudity that manages not to seem exploitative or too forced, which is probably the best kind of gratuitous nudity
13. Giant robots

I think it’s fair to say that’s a whole lot of stuff to try and put into even 232 pages of comics, but Endo manages it with his customary confidence and force. I continue to be amazed at how he can weave from thread to thread and theme to theme and not lose me even a little. He’s clearly managed to craft characters with enough specificity and depth that I remember them even after a long absence, along with scenarios and arguments persuasive enough to linger and resonate as they propel the story in new directions.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend starting with volume 10, because you’d probably end up being impressed with Endo’s craft and Dark Horse’s production values but hopelessly lost by the story. I would recommend starting with volume 1 and enjoying the story as it progresses, demonstrating forbearance during the shockingly trite drugs-and-hookers mini-arc in the middle, and celebrating as the series returns to form after the pushers and pimps are dispatched.

Manga Yente

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As we near Comic-Con International, Variety has run a piece that reminds me strangely of an old-fashioned debutante announcement in a local paper. Film executives looking for your next super-hero franchise, meet Jason Hoffs:

“Hoffs will serve as a liaison between Japanese creative licensors and Hollywood, and the company will develop to produce some of the titles inhouse.”

Hoffs lists some of the more alluring properties, and, really, even if a live-action Hollywood version of Naruto flat-out sucks, it might still make its money back on its opening weekend.

And while the article never specifically says that Hoffs will be at SDCC, could the subtext be any clearer? Exploitable properties will be lined up like trust-fund babies at a private-school reunion, and an experienced movie executive is available to play matchmaker. And unlike publishers who have tried to line up movie pitches before they sent a single PDF to the printer, Viz has a catalog full of properties that people actually read.

Cold, Vulcan logic

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Tom Spurgeon, for the win:

“I’m baffled why it should take anything more than prominent people in the comics industry declaring they’re uncomfortable with a business this year to make folks consider with seriousness and respect the courtesy of a bare-minimum effort to patronize another place until the situation shakes out. Instead, the response from many people seems to be finding ways to justify continued patronage as if this were a very, very precious thing. In fact, most of the rationalizing being done on behalf of continued patronage not only invests it with importance, it seems to presume one’s decision to hang out and drink in a certain location comes as the fulfillment of an expectation for received business that no entity on earth should get to claim or have claimed on its behalf. The end result: no one simply disagrees. Rather, there seems to be a compulsion that one agree with the spirit of the objection being made and explain why they can’t do anything about it.”

No birds were harmed in the writing of this post

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Chris Butcher offers some excellent advice on nurturing the next phase of the manga industry:

“If you’ve got a store that believes in the material, and that keeps it in stock, not just makes it available for pre-order, then you can sell the material. In short, we have to invest in the industry we want, not just as retailers, but as journalists and pundits by covering the material we like, and as consumers by supporting the books we like with our dollars.

“That’s my prescription for the manga industry: let’s make the industry we want, do our best to convert fashion into function, and celebrate our successes where we find them rather than complain that we’re not quite successful enough.”

I’m all about combining errands, so here’s a possible way to kill two birds with one stone. (Sorry about the inherent animal cruelty of that phrase, but I haven’t had enough caffeine to recall a more benevolent alternative.) If you’re attending Comic-Con International and find some extra spending money in your pocket because you don’t feel like giving any to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, you could swing by the Fanfare/Ponent Mon booth (C04) and buy some of their lovely, lovely books. As Deb Aoki noted, Fanfare’s distribution system with Atlas isn’t quite 100% yet, so SDCC is probably your best chance to browse the publisher’s catalogue, gape in wonder at books like The Walking Man, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and Kinderbook, and to pick up a copy of Hideo Azuma’s nothing-else-like-it Disappearance Diary (which I reviewed here).

Now, as for “supporting the books we like with our dollars,” Brigid Alverson works in an excellent way to do that in a recent post at MangaBlog: ordering titles via your local bookstore, especially if they’re books that might not otherwise get shelved. This strikes me as a great way to put offbeat titles on a store’s radar, and I’ve heard from various people that many stores will order a couple of shelf copies of a title when they get a special order. Also, you don’t have to worry about potentially climbing shipping costs from online retailers, though you still have to pay for gas to get to the local big box.

At Comics Should Be Good, Danielle Leigh gives a fine example of “covering the material we like” with her latest Manga Before Flowers column on CMX, DC’s stealth manga division:

“But CMX made me a fan for life by bringing over really extraordinary titles that no one else ever has and published them on a very consistent schedule over the past few years (Even though three of four volumes of Eroica a year isn’t a lot, it is enough to make me happy).”

Reservations confirmation

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Chris Butcher points out that the owner of San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt made a substantial donation to efforts to pass Proposition 8, which would confine marriage in California to heterosexual couples. I guess that Hyatt property won’t be offering any honeymoon packages to same-sex couples either.

“The group’s message Thursday was to urge residents and tourists to stay at other hotels. The boycott call comes at the height of the summer and just one week before the start of the 2008 Gay Pride festivities in San Diego, during which 200,000 attendees are expected to attend, according to festival organizers.”

July is a good month for gay nerds in San Diego.

I’m not sure what I would do if I were going to the comic convention and had made a reservation at the Hyatt. I like to think I’d cancel my reservation and try to find other lodgings, but who knows if that’s even possible at this point? If at all possible, I try to do research in advance so I know that I’m not giving my money to a narrow-minded bigot. In this case, given the timing of the donation and the scarcity of lodging, I think I’d probably have to lump it. I know the climate in San Deigeo is supposed to be lovely, but I’m just not a camper.

Just out of curiosity, and knowing that the hospitality industry tends to be one of the gay-friendlier segments of the economy, I thought I’d see if I could dig up Hyatt’s non-discrimination policy:

“In addition, Hyatt abides by local equal employment opportunity policy to assure that all personnel related actions are administered without regard to race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, age, religion, mental or physical disability or any other group protected by law.”

And I looked into their domestic partner benefits policy, which is quite inclusive.

I wonder what corporate policy is in regards to franchisees and their business practices, and how stringently they expect individual hotel owners to adhere to corporate policy? I doubt it would apply to a private donation made by someone who just happens to be a franchise owner, but I can’t imagine Hyatt is happy with the publicity.

Upcoming 7/16/2008

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Just a couple of items jump out at me on this week’s ComicList:

I’m not generally part of the natural audience for competitive athletics, fictional or otherwise, but I won’t let that keep me from taking a look at Takehiko Inoue’s Real (Viz – Signature), about wheelchair basketball. At MangaBlog, Brigid Alverson picks up an intriguing press release from Viz about a joint PR venture to promote another Inoue hoops book, Slam Dunk. If there were a competition for “most athletic person at Comic-Con International,” there’d be a clear winner. I also wish there was a manga out about professional cheerleading so those poor Laker Girls could feel a bit more purposeful. (Have I mentioned that I can watch Bring It On as many times as it airs on television?)

Milestone alert! Our long, national disappointment is finally over as Tokyopop releases the second volume of Ai Morinaga’s Your and My Secret. Given the publisher’s ongoing cost-cutting measures, I suppose it’s possible that we may not see the third volume from them, but progress is progress. If only they’d gone with the alternate version of the title, My Barbaric Girlfriend.