The Manga Curmudgeon

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

The great big other shoe

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I don’t know exactly why I feel compelled to run the VIZBIG press release in its entirety, since it will probably show up everywhere before the day is out. I mean, I’m not even particularly interested in the specific titles being collected, but it is nice to see the omnibus trend get additional reinforcement. (And it gives me incentive to refine my mental wish list of omnibus editions that would fill my “more money for manga” heart with joy.)

Okay, so who’s going to be the first boys’-love/yaoi publisher to roll out an omnibus edition of one of their properties? Since the series tend to be relatively short and the audience is devoted, it seems inevitable, especially if the publisher threw in some extra bells and whistles to add value.

(Full press release after the jump.)

VIZ MEDIA BRINGS NEW PERSPECTIVE TO MANGA ARENA WITH DEBUT OF VIZBIG EDITION IMPRINT

New Imprint To Offer Omnibus Editions Of Popular Manga Series With New Cover Art, Color Pages And Bonus Content

San Francisco, CA, January 3, 2008 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, brings a new perspective to the manga marketplace with the launch of a new imprint called VIZBIG Edition. The new imprint will release omnibus editions of top-selling manga series in a larger 5-3/4 x 8-5/8 size (larger than the standard 5 x 7-1/2 manga) with special premium presentations including new cover art.

RUROUNI KENSHIN will be the first series to receive the VIZBIG Edition treatment this month, with DRAGON BALL and DRAGON BALL Z set for May release and Takehiko Inoue’s VAGABOND will follow in Fall of 2008. These VIZBIG Edition titles have an anticipated initial cover price of $17.99 and will be released quarterly. Several other titles are also presently being considered for future VIZBIG Edition publication.

Each debut VIZBIG Edition will contain the first three volumes of the original graphic novel series presented with larger trim size, bonus color pages and added content such as author interviews, updated text and character art. The new editions serve as ideal comprehensive introductions for new readers to some of manga’s best-known titles, and a great way for seasoned fans to see their favorite titles in a new perspective.

RUROUNI KENSHIN, the internationally bestselling series created by Nobuhiro Watsuki, depicts the adventures of Himura Kenshin, a “rurouni,” or wandering samurai, who was once an assassin of ferocious power but now fights to protect the honor and safety of those in need. The story, set during the Meiji era of Japan during the 1800s, has been adapted into a hit anime series, three films and several novels. This title was also the first manga to be placed on the notable USA TODAY top 150 list.

DRAGON BALL and DRAGON BALL Z, created by Akira Toriyama, are universally recognized as modern manga classics. With a unique blend of martial arts, science fiction and memorable characters, they update the classic Chinese legend of the Monkey King. DRAGON BALL follows the life of a monkey-tailed boy named Son Goku in a 16-volume series that has since become one of the most successful manga properties ever created. Goku’s life changes when he meets a girl named Bulma and sets out to help her gather all seven Dragon Balls, which are scattered all over the world. If all seven are gathered, a powerful dragon will appear and grant one wish. The 26-volume series sequel, DRAGON BALL Z, picks up when Goku has grown up. Earth’s ultimate warrior now has a son named Gohan who is even more powerful than his father. Together they use martial arts and other powers to battle time travelers, aliens, deities and the mighty Super Saiyans to save the universe. DRAGON BALL and DRAGON BALL Z together have sold more than 500,000 copies in North America and the 400+ episode anime series was a consistent ratings winner on Cartoon Network.

Also coming out in a VIZBIG Edition in September 2008, VAGABOND is an action-packed portrayal of the life and times of the quintessential warrior-philosopher—the most celebrated samurai of all time! Striving for enlightenment by way of the sword, Miyamoto Musashi is prepared to cut down anyone who stands in his way.

Alvin Lu, VIZ Media Vice President, Publishing, is excited about the debut, saying, “VIZBIG Editions are more than just an alternative format to read your favorite manga — with full color pages, eye-opening larger trim size, and a premium presentation – they change the very experience of reading manga. For fans of these series, they are a great opportunity to relive their favorite stories from a completely new perspective, and for new fans, this is a great way to jump in and quickly get up to speed on what everyone’s been talking about – the world-renowned stories and characters behind RUROUNI KENSHIN, DRAGON BALL, and DRAGON BALL Z.”

Filed Under: Viz

There's a rat in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?

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We watched Ratatouille last night, and I just wasn’t feeling it. I loved the setting, but a lot of things made me crazy about the movie as a whole.

1. I didn’t like either of the protagonists. I thought Linguini (the human) was irredeemably stupid, with phenomenally irritating voice work by Lou Romano, and Remy (the rat) was generally unsympathetic. I couldn’t root for either of them. [Edited because I’m sloppy and often incorrect. Sorry, Mr. Oswalt.]

2. I could root for Colette, the hard-working woman in a male-dominated kitchen, but I thought she got screwed and duped at every turn and ended up taking it all with a smile. Nice.

3. Just because you can do chase scenes really well doesn’t mean you have to do them quite so often. I would have preferred more frenzied cooking and less frenzied fleeing.

4. This is totally nitpicky of me, especially in a movie with rats running in and out of a professional kitchen, but working chefs don’t (or shouldn’t) taste food with the implements they’re using to prepare it. They have tasting spoons that they use once and set aside for the dishwasher, because they shouldn’t be seasoning their dishes with saliva. Or rat saliva.

5. There were too many subplots, and they didn’t come together well. Some good jokes about chef celebrity and nice bits about artistic innovation got bulldozed by a bunch of loud plot twists.

6. I’m sorry, but if it makes me a bad, closed-minded person if I don’t want a rat running around a restaurant kitchen, then I am a bad, closed-minded person.

7. That “I’ve got to be true to me” message really has some miles on it, doesn’t it?

It wasn’t all bad. There’s a scene at the end where a patron is transported by the power of really good food, and it’s beautifully and simply rendered. It’s a really thrilling moment of filmmaking, and it works perfectly. But the spirit of the moment is isolated in a movie that’s otherwise cluttered and shrill.

Saturation

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With all of the year-end round-ups and lists of favorite comics, a common corollary seems to be “(Insert title here) probably would have been on my list if I could have found a copy of it anywhere.” That got me to thinking about which of the smaller publishers – the ones that aren’t an arm of a big book house or that have a distribution deal with one – are faring best in terms of bookstore distribution.

In my purely anecdotal experience, I think I’d have to put Drawn & Quarterly at the top of the list, with Fantagraphics an extremely close second, if not actually tied. I’d probably put Top Shelf in third place. The thing that strikes me most about Drawn & Quarterly, and maybe it does so with buyers too, is that their books are almost always really sturdy, attractive objects, so maybe that’s part of the equation… that they look like books, in other words.

These kinds of publishers generally do better at Barnes & Noble stores than Borders, and since B&N has the closest big chain store, that’s kind of my biggest criteria. It’s actually kind of odd to me, but in my experience, Borders is much less interested in anything that isn’t super-heroes or manga. Maybe it’s just a regional thing and that there are better selections in other places?

As far as smaller manga publishers go, the winner is almost certainly Go! Comi, though I always spot a fair amount of product from Seven Seas and Netcomics as well. I’m kind of puzzled by Dark Horse. Their non-manga books usually have pretty good representation in graphic novel sections, but not so much with the licensed material. In general, it seems like it’s easier to find their manhwa in a bookstore than their manga.

Upcoming 1/4/2007

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For the first shipping day of 2008, it’s not especially auspicious in terms of debuts, but there are plenty of new installments of some of my favorite ongoing series.

Every time I see a mention of Kanako Inuki’s Presents (CMX), I think of John Jakala’s lovely phrase, “comeuppance theater.” The second volume of this kind of creepy, kind of funny, old-school horror series arrives Friday.

If you didn’t read it in hardcover or pick it up the first time it was released in paperback, NBM is giving you another shot at Rick Geary’s The Fatal Bullet, part of the Treasury of Victorian Murder series. This is one of my favorites, and it examines the assassination of James A. Garfield. It’s totally riveting, particularly for the gruesome coverage of medicine at the time.

Okay, so there is one auspicious debut, though it’s really more of a rescue re-release, but if Kozue Amano’s Aria is as pretty and soothing as Aqua (both from Tokyopop), it will be quite an arrival regardless of its pedigree. (I don’t need to worry about one being the prequel to the other, do I? I mean, it isn’t exactly rich in plot.)

In other Tokyopop, there’s a new volume of still-welcome-but-just-barely Sgt. Frog, and the fourth volume of Meca Tanaka’s Pearl Pink. I’m a big fan of Tanaka’s work on Omukae Desu (published by CMX), and I enjoyed the first volume of this, but I’ve fallen woefully behind.

Okay, so there are more debuts than I thought. Viz rolls out Kazune Kawahara’s High School Debut, and while I was a little uncertain based on the first volume, I’ve heard enough enthusiasm about the series from different sources to keep reading.

And oh my god, you guys, the first volume of Hinako Ashihara’s Sand Chronicles is here! When I started picking up Shojo Beat for Honey and Clover, I was stunned by how good and surprising this series is. It’s got real emotional punch.

And just to prove that my life isn’t entirely consumed by shôjo, I’m also excited by the imminent arrival of the fourth volume of Hideaki Sorachi’s Gin Tama and the eleventh of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata’s Hikaru no Go.

Okay, back to shôjo. I’m sure lots of people miss its monthly presence in Shojo Beat, but I’m so glad that Ai Yazawa’s Nana is out of rotation and that digests are coming more quickly.

The year in fun (2007)

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From a fun comics standpoint, 2007 was absolutely awesome. You know how I know? I had a hard time keeping the list below to 26 items. Okay, it’s an arbitrary number, and I could have just listed everything, but I thought I would make a stab at some pretense of discernment.

I’m not saying these are the best comics of 2007, though I’d put several in that category. I’m never entirely comfortable with that label, because I haven’t read everything and worry that my tastes are too narrow to make a reasonable stab at such a project anyways. But I have no trouble telling which comics I had a lot of fun reading, so here they are.

(Doesn’t the jump create a breathtaking level of suspense? Well, doesn’t it?)

(Updated because I can’t keep my years straight.)

  • 10, 20, and 30, by Morim Kang (Netcomics): Korean josei, basically, following three women of different ages and temperaments as they manage romance (or the lack of it), work (or the lack of it) and family (or an excess of it).
  • Aya, by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie (Drawn & Quarterly): In my defense, this came out really early in 2007, so I must have been confused and thought it was on last year’s version of this list. Because seriously, it’s one of the best graphic novels of the year and delightfully fun to boot. A sensible, ambitious young woman in the prosperous Ivory Coast of late 1970s keeps her head as the people around her leap into amusing, romantic misalliances.
  • Azumanga Daioh Omnibus, by Kyohiko Azuma (ADV): It’s tough to pick which delights me more: the resumption of publication of Azuma’s Yotsuba&!, or this big fat bargain collection of his very funny comic strips about a group of high-school girls and their eccentric teachers.
  • Black Metal, by Rick Spears and Chuck BB (Oni): Antisocial metal-heads discover their secret destiny while playing old vinyl backwards. Very funny, with appropriately and appealingly crude visuals.
  • Bloody Benders, The, by Rick Geary (NBM): I should probably feel some kind of regret that Geary will never run out of gruesome tales to fuel his Treasury of Victorian Murder series. I don’t, because they’re consistently brilliant, informative, insightful, and unsettling. For the high-minded voyeur in all of us.
  • Empowered, by Adam Warren (Dark Horse): Warren is amazingly skilled at walking a thin, frayed tightrope between lurid spandex cheesecake and a witty repudiation of the same. Terrific characters and genuinely funny, imaginative takes on potentially repetitive scenarios make all the difference.
  • Flower of Life, by Fumi Yoshinaga (Digital Manga): When people bemoan the fact that so many manga titles center on the trials and tribulations of high school students, they can’t be talking about this one, can they? I’m just going to come right out and say it: it’s every bit as good as Antique Bakery, which means it’s absolutely great.
  • Gin Tama, by Hideaki Sorachi (Viz): This one’s all about attitude: coarse, goofy, hyperactive attitude. A fallen samurai takes odd jobs in a world that’s handed the keys to alien invaders. There’s enough canny satire to balance out the low-brow antics, making this book a very pleasant surprise.
  • Glister, by Andi Watson (Image): A really delightful combination of fantasy, manor-house comedy, and singularly British sensibility. This book manages to have a warm heart and a tounge planted firmly in its cheek.
  • Honey and Clover, by Chica Umino (Viz): Okay, so this goofy, romantic tale of students at an art college is still being serialized in Shojo Beat and hasn’t come out in individual volumes yet. It’s hilarious.
  • Johnny Hiro, by Fred Chao (AdHouse): In a year that offered more genre mash-up comics than I can count, this was probably my favorite for the underlying realism of the young couple at its center. Giant monsters and ninja sous-chefs are just part of the challenges urban life presents to Johnny and Mayumi.
  • Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip Book Two, by Tove Jansson (Drawn & Quarterly): Everyone knows these strips are timeless, international treasures, right? And that Drawn & Quarterly deserves some kind of cultural prize for getting them back in print? Okay, just checking.
  • My Heavenly Hockey Club, by Ai Morinaga (Del Rey): Under the flimsiest pretext of sports manga lurks a goofy love letter to two of my favorite deadly sins, sloth and gluttony. Easily the best screwball comedy that came out last year.
  • Northwest Passage: The Annotated Collection, by Scott Chantler (Oni): A handsomely produced collection of one of my favorite comics of 2006, featuring treachery and adventure in colonial Canada.
  • Parasyte, by Hitoshi Iwaaki (Del Rey): Okay, so the art is dated and, well, frankly just plain bad in a lot of ways. (Many of the high-school girls in the cast look like they’re pushing 40.) But there’s just something about a boy and the shape-shifting parasite that’s taken over his hand that warms my heart.
  • The Professor’s Daughter, by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert (First Second): There are certainly better, beefier works by Sfar, but this is still charming, beautiful stuff, with Sfar’s endearingly cranky voice getting a lovely rendering from Guibert.
  • Re-Gifters, by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel (Minx): A snazzy little story of romance, martial arts and self-esteem that avoids every single Afterschool Special pitfall through solid characterization, tight storytelling and spiffy art.
  • Ride Home, The, by Joey Weiser (AdHouse): I have yet to find a gnome living in my car, but maybe it just knows I’m on to it thanks to this charming, all-ages adventure about embracing change.
  • Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni): This series of a young slacker in love just gets better and better, which hardly seems possible. Great characters, a spot-on kind of magical realism, and plenty of twists and turns to keep things fresh and moving.
  • Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, by Jeff Smith (DC): The Mary Marvel sequences are enough to put this on a Decade in Fun list, but Smith’s re-imagining of the origin of Captain Marvel is delightful from top to bottom.
  • Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly): Not all comics about whiny losers who are unable to sustain interpersonal relationships are intolerable. Some, like this one, are absolutely delightful and have what may be the year’s best dialogue.
  • Suppli, by Mari Okazaki (Tokyopop): Damnation, how did this one slip under my radar for so long? In this beautifully drawn josei title, an advertising executive throws herself into work after the end of her seven-year relationship. It’s exactly the kind of book tons of people have been begging for: funny, intelligent, moving and grown up.
  • Umbrella Academy, The: Apocalypse Suite, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá (Dark Horse): It’s hardly the first comic to portray the super-team as a dysfunctional family, or maybe even the 50th, but it’s a clever, fast-paced, wonderfully illustrated example all the same.
  • Venus in Love, by Yuki Nakaji (CMX): Aside from the novelty of its college setting (as opposed to the shôjo standard, high school), this book has ample low-key charm. A straight girl and a gay guy become friendly rivals when they realize they have a crush on the same classmate.
  • Welcome to the N.H.K., by Tatsuhiko Takimoto (Tokyopop): I can take or leave the manga this novel inspired, but the source material is tremendously appealing reading. It’s like if David Sedaris wrote a novel about straight, dysfunctional Japanese people.
  • Wild Adapter, by Kazuya Minekura (Tokyopop): Charismatic, emotionally damaged boys pose their way through the stations of the noir cross. Mostly style, but what style, and a reasonable amount of substance to keep you from feeling entirely frivolous. (If frivolity isn’t a worry, you can easily ignore the substance.)

    • More recommended reading

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    Part two of the Flipped round-up of underrated comics is up. Thanks to everyone who helped out.

    Here are the books that got a mention:

    Part one:

  • Duck Prince (ADV)
  • ES: Eternal Sabbath (Del Rey)
  • E’S (Broccoli)
  • Forest of Gray City (ICE Kunion/Yen Press)
  • Gunslinger Girl (ADV)
  • High School Girls (DrMaster)
  • The Last Call (Oni)
  • PX! A Girl and Her Panda (Image)
  • Super Spy (Top Shelf)
  • Zombies Calling (SLG Publishing)

    • Part two:

  • Cromartie High School (ADV)
  • The Demon Ororon (Tokyopop)
  • Kekkaishi (Viz)
  • Loveholic (Juné)
  • Mail (Dark Horse)
  • Sidescrollers (Oni)
  • Sugar Sugar Rune (Del Rey)
  • Train + Train (Go! Comi)
  • Vagabond (Viz)

    • The best graphic novel of 2007

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    In a comment, Huff expressed the opinion that the publication of Fumiyo Kouno’s Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms was one of the manga events of 2007. Huff goes on to regret the fact that not nearly enough people have read it, and I have to agree. While I can’t say definitively that it was the best graphic novel published in English in 2007 (as I haven’t read all of them and don’t have any intention to try), I can say without hesitation that it was the best graphic novel published in English in 2007 that I read.

    The book has gotten under my skin, and I’ve read it repeatedly since its publication in March. And while I really do try and avoid being one of those nags that pops a vein when I find out that people haven’t read this or that book, this one is so good that it’s sparked my generally suppressed comics activist tendencies. So, in the hopes of persuading more people to read Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, here are some examples of what people have said about it. (If you’ve read and written about it, please feel free to send me the link or post it in the comments, and I’ll update this entry.)

    New York Magazine’s Dan Kois names it one of the best comics of 2007.

    Jason Thompson discusses the book in Otaku USA:

    “As plot summaries, Kouno’s tales sound melodramatically sad: a struggling young woman lives with her mother in the shantytowns of 1955 Hiroshima; a young girl in modern-day Tokyo learns more about her family’s past. But Town of Evening Calm is not a predictable lesson about prejudice, or a weepy melodrama; the plot feels real. The romances between the characters are charming, fitting nicely with the sweet artwork. The scenes of daily life—sitting on a grassy riverbank, sewing, children playing—are welcoming. The antiwar message is unspoken, and comes naturally from the desire not to see the characters die. Only occasionally does it become explicit, as when a dying victim of radiation sickness asks bitterly, ‘I wonder what the people who built the bomb are thinking … ‘Hooray, got another one’?’”

    Nick Mullins reviews the book at nijomu blog:

    “This is a quiet little book that I can see easily slipping beneath most people’s radar. And that’d be a pity, because Kouno has given us such a wonderful reading experience. She is a master craftsperson with a keen eye on the strength and fragility of the human heart. Her kind of artistic honesty will always be needed, but seems especially poignant for people in the U.S. these days.”

    Shaenon K. Garrity features the book in an installment of her Overlooked Manga Festival:

    “Manga fans may be a little taken aback by Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. In stark contrast to the fast-paced, plot-driven approach of most mainstream manga—and, for that matter, a lot of alternative manga—it’s slow, casual, subtle, and largely plotless. Kouno invites you to spend some time with her characters and their city, and then she steps aside. But what a visit.”

    Katherine Dacey-Tsuei gives it an A+ at Manga Recon:

    “Kouno’s refusal to impose an obvious dramatic structure on either story, her deft manipulation of time, and her emphasis on small, everyday moments, inoculate Town of Evening Calm against sentimentality and mawkishness. The artwork is clean and simple, with enough background detail to bring the streets of Hiroshima to vivid life. Kouno’s character designs have a slightly rough, clumsy quality to them; the adults’ large heads and large feet seem to belong to bigger bodies. Yet these awkward proportions don’t detract from the beauty of the work; if anything, the illustrations make Kouno’s characters seem more vulnerable, more imperfect, more fragile—in short, more human and more believable. And that honest vulnerability, in turn, makes it possible for readers from all walks of life to enter sympathetically into Kouno’s haunting yet life-affirming story.”

    Dacey-Tsuei subsequently includes it in her list of favorite manga from 2007, also at Manga Recon.

    I beg readers to buy it in a Flipped column:

    “So, you should buy this book, because it’s good in every way that matters. Reading it will give you genuine pleasure, and that pleasure will only be enhanced by the worthiness of the subject matter and Kouno’s intelligence and sensitivity in dramatizing it.”

    Jog recommends it in his inimitable fashion at his blog:

    “In the end, this is a deeply affirmative book, one eager to seat the reader on its final image of a train barreling toward the future, unsatisfied with merely soaking in the miserable facts of life and collecting awards for it – this book wants to address the here and now as well, and confront issues of society through its beguiling style.”

    Christopher Butcher sings its praises:

    “This right here? This is one of those important manga that you hear about every once in a while. Two short stories about the after-effects of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, years after the blast. I’ve already had the good fortune to read this and it’s absolutely incredible.”

    The book is nominated for inclusion in the Young Adult Library Services Association’s list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens.

    The year that was

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    So what were the big manga news stories of 2007? I’m not talking about announcements of things to come so much as things that actually happened. (For example, I’m very happy about the prospect of an international anthology from Yen Press, but it’s not here yet. It’s very likely to be one of the stories of the year in which it does drop.)

    Here are some possibilities:

    Naruto Nation: I know, colossal “duh,” huh? Beyond being incredibly nervy of Viz to unload that much product from a single franchise in a relatively short time span is the shocking fact that it actually worked. Obviously, the popularity of that franchise was essential to the initiative’s success, and I don’t know that it could be replicated with just about any other property, but damn, they sold a lot of Naruto in the last three months of 2007.

    The Age of the Omnibus: Maybe I’m overstating the importance of this because I like the idea so much, but this is another somewhat unexpected idea that seemed to gain a lot of traction in 2007 and actually work, leading me to suspect that the trend will expand in 2008. I mean, there’s already a mix of high-end, collector’s collections and value-for-volume versions, which has to tell us something.

    The Autism Comic: As I indicated above, Yen Press has announced a number of nervy moves in 2007 – the promised anthology, acquiring ICE Kunion’s catalog, announcing a boys’-love line, etc. But in terms of actual, existing product, and ignoring their fairly generic-looking first wave of licensed shônen, the newcomer’s publication of Keiko Tobe’s With the Light, a meticulously researched comic about a family dealing with autism, is most noteworthy. And it’s apparently selling extremely well to demographics outside the norm for manga. (Of course, that demographic could possibly have just been terribly underserved in terms of intelligent fictional portrayals.) All the same, I find the publication of this book and its apparent commercial success terribly encouraging. (Soon, the way will be paved for agri-manga. Soon!)

    Manga: The Complete Guide: Nothing confirms the official arrival of an entertainment category like a comprehensive (at the time), general-audience guide to the available offerings, and this is a very good example of the form. There’s already some very good popular scholarship available about manga from the likes of Frederik Schodt and Paul Gravett, but a user-friendly guide like this seems particularly noteworthy. (I’m not about to call Jason Thompson the Roger Ebert of manga, because Ebert bugs me.)

    Tempted as I am to include that near-miss from Seven Seas just so I could use “No, no, Nympet” as a bullet tag, it doesn’t seem to quite make the cut. Neither do any of the “I’m shocked that my child could find this smut in a public library/chain bookstore and hence I must call the local newspaper/television station” dust-ups, not because there weren’t any but because they seemed so routine. New BL and yaoi imprints seem more like an expansion of big news from last year (or even 2005) than something specific to 2007, and yuri and josei still don’t have the kind of foothold they’d need to meet my admittedly undefined standard.

    So which manga happenings from the last year stick in your mind?

    Upcoming 12/28/2007

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    Friday is the last shipping day of 2007, but I learned last year that it’s not to be overlooked. (I posted my “Year in Fun” list, and then Glacial Period came out from NBM. Caution is the theme for this year.)

    And what have we here? The second in the series of graphic novel collaborations with The Louvre, The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert, by Marc-Antoine Mathieu. You won’t fool me again, NBM. I’m holding out in case of awesomeness.

    New volumes are due for a couple of series I really enjoy: the third of Kairi Fujiyama’s Dragon Eye (Del Rey) and the ninth of Minetaro Mochizuki’s Dragon Head (Tokyopop). Clearly, I would probably also like series called Dragon Nostril, Dragon Earlobe, and Dragon Epiglottis.

    Of course, having read the latest issue of Otaku USA, I realize I have some catching up to do on the Tokyopop front: there’s Mari Okazaki’s josei title, Suppli, and Yuki Nakaji’s Zig*Zag. I was very impressed with Nakaji’s Venus in Love from CMX, and I saw that they were doing a cross-promotion for the two Nakaji series, but what can I tell you? Something sparkly must have come into my range of vision and distracted me.