The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Fabulous prizes

by

The winners in Lambda Legal’s “Life Without Fair Courts” cartoon contest have been announced via a press release from Prism Comics. Entries can be viewed here. All of the finalists are solid, but I think I probably would have given the prize to Ted Rall.

The full press release is after the cut.

Lambda Legal Announces “Life Without Fair Courts” Cartoon Contest Winners!

New York, NY – The “Life Without Fair Courts ” cartoon contest was launched this spring together with Prism Comics and Diamond Comic Distributors, along with The Advocate as exclusive media sponsor. There were over 25 entries from all over the country, including two international entries from Poland. The finalists were chosen by a panel of judges including artist Mikhaela Reid who was commissioned by Lambda Legal to draw the “Life Without Fair Courts” cartoon series, DC Comics Editor Joan Hilty, freelance illustrator and comic book artist Phil Jimenez (Wonder Woman, Infinite Crisis), and Sean Kennedy, News Editor at The Advocate. Nearly 2,000 people voted to select the winners.

“The goal of our Courting Justice project, which designed and carried out the ‘Life Without Fair Courts’ cartoon contest, is to help the community better understand what our lives and the lives of all Americans would be like without a fair and impartial judicial system,” said Hector Vargas, Deputy Director of Education and Public Affairs at Lambda Legal. “The artists turned complex ideas into compelling graphic art in ways that make it easy to understand the impact of the court system on our everyday lives.”

Lambda Legal has announced the top three winners in the “Life Without Fair Courts” cartoon contest.

  • First Place: Greg Fox, “4 Reasons for Gays to Be Grateful”
  • Second Place: Ted Rall, “Explaining the Supreme Court”
  • Third Place: Matt Bors, “Future Courtroom Landmarks”

    • The First Place Winner, Greg Fox, best known for his current comic strip Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast, said he never intended on becoming a political cartoonist, but “Being a cartoonist, working at home I hear a lot of talk radio. You might say my entry in this contest was a response to all of that antigay rhetoric I’ve been subjected to on the airwaves.” The Second Place Winner, Ted Rall, named “the most controversial cartoonist in America” by Cartoon.com, was inspired to create his comic strip because, “instances of judicial unfairness and bias have made such a negative impact on our society that they demand outrage and ridicule.” The Third Place Winner Matt Bors said not having fair courts “could spell doom for much of the progress we’ve made in the last 50 years.”

    First prize in the contest is exposure in the current issue of The Advocate and on Advocate.com. Second and third prizes include donated shopping sprees from Diamond Comic Distributors. To see the winning entries, please go to www.lambdalegal.org/courtingjustice.

    Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work. For more information, please go to www.lambdalegal.org.

    More YALSA nods

    by

    One of the many nice things about the Young Adult Library Services Association is that they don’t compartmentalize graphic novels in their awards process. I took a quick look at the nominees for the 2008 round of Best Books for Young Adults and found the following:

  • Carey, Mike. Re-Gifters. 2007. DC Comics/minx, $9.99 (978-1-4012-0371-9).
  • De Crecy, Nicolas. Glacial Period. 2007. NBM Publishing/Comicslit, $16.95 (978-1-56163-483-5).
  • Lat. Town Boy. 2007. Roaring Brook/First Second, $16.95 (978-1-59643-331-1).
  • Lutes, Jason. Houdini: The Handcuff King. 2007. Hyperion, $16.99 (978-0-7868-3902-5).
  • Siegel, Siena Cherson. To Dance: A Ballerina’s Graphic Novel. September 2006. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum, $17.95 (978-0-689-86747-7).

    • I’m particularly happy to see Glacial Period in there, and I think Re-Gifters is the best of Minx’s initial offerings. Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese made the top 10 in last year’s Best Books list.

    Quick comic comments: Gin Tama vol. 2

    by

    I’m going to have to stop saying things like “I don’t like comics about dim-witted lowlifes,” because every time I do, something like Hideaki Sorachi’s Gin Tama (Viz – Shonen Jump Advanced) comes along to contradict me. In my defense, I think Gin Tama is an uncommonly good comic about dim-witted lowlifes.

    The second volume builds smartly on the virtues of the first. Gin and his cohorts run through another round of decidedly odd jobs that range from the weirdly romantic to the disturbingly creepy. Sorachi’s aggressive approach to comedy ties everything together, and his cast (disarmed samurai Gin, scolding four-eyes Shinpachi, and adorably violent alien Kagra) really start clicking as a unit. (Okay, they don’t function well as co-workers, but they make quite a comedy troupe.)

    It’s fairly episodic, but there are enough recurring elements and hinted-at secrets to give it a little more heft than it might otherwise have. Gin’s uneasy relationships with both the local cops and the hometown terrorist cell have lots of promise for future stories; both factions are about equally morally iffy, which is interesting in its own right.

    And it’s very, very funny. Underlying all of the low-brow antics is some real wit and perceptiveness. There’s a very high rate of return on even the throw-away gags. The art is just right for the material, too.

    About a third of the way through the second volume, I said to myself that this is one of the best new shônen series I’ve read all year. For a book whose kanji title can be read as “Testicles,” this is quite a surprise, though it’s certainly a pleasant one.

    (This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

    Upcoming 8/22

    by

    With a relatively lean week on our hands, you’d think it would be easy to single out a pick of the week, but it’s a tough call.

    Fond as I am of comics about food, I can’t wait to check out a comic starring food. In this case, it’s David Yurkovich’s Death By Chocolate – Redux (Top Shelf). I’ll just let the first sentence of the solicitation do the talking:

    “Agent Swete — an unlikely hero comprised of organic chocolate and a member of the FBI’s Food Crimes Division — and his sharp-tongued partner, Anderson, investigate a series of bizarre, food-inspired crimes.”

    Sold! (“Food Crimes Division” inspires a lot of unkind Sandra Lee jokes, but I’ll spare you.)

    I’m a sucker for both hype and manga that lives on the border of shôjo and josei, so I’ll have to pick up a copy of the new Shojo Beat from Viz. It includes the debut chapter of Chika Umino’s Honey and Clover, an eagerly anticipated Kodansha Award winner about a group of students at an art college. It sounds right up my alley.

    A new issue of Jimmy Gownley’s Amelia Rules! is always worth noting.

    Netcomics re-offers the first volume of Morim Kang’s 10, 20 and 30. Katherine Dacey-Tsuei has already made an extremely persuasive case for the book over in her latest Weekly Recon column, so I’ll just point you there.

    Oh, and it’s Viz Signature week at comic shops with new volumes about endangered elementary school students, saintly doctors and the serial killers who fixate on them, and ruinously endowed assassins. Choose your poison.

    Another round

    by

    The American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association has added some nominations to its roster for the next round of Great Graphic Novels for Teens. The inclusion of Yellow Tanabe’s Kekkaishi (Viz) should make someone very happy.

    Personally, I’m glad to see Yuji Iwahara’s King of Thorn (Tokyopop) and Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi (Del Rey) make the short list. It’s an interesting mix of mainstream and indie, manga, manhwa, global and lots of flavors of “other.” (I’ll become tense if the next round doesn’t include Fumi Yoshinaga’s Flower of Life from DMP. Just so you know.)

    If I were given to making predictions, I’d say that I suspect that Ai Morinaga’s My Heavenly Hockey Club (Del Rey), Tadashi Kawashima and Adachitoka’s Alive (Del Rey), Hideaki Sorachi’s Gin Tama (Viz), Satoru Akahori and Yukimaru Katsura’s Kashimashi (Seven Seas), and Kazuhiro Okomoto’s Translucent (Dark Horse) will show up before the nominations are over.

    From the stack: Good as Lily

    by

    I wish I could say that I liked Good as Lily, the final book in the first wave of books from DC’s Minx imprint. But I can’t, and I don’t think I can even say it’s very good.

    It’s written by Derek Kirk Kim, creator of the marvelous, deservedly award-winning Same Difference and Other Stories (Top Shelf). Maybe my appreciation for that book left my expectations unfairly high, but Good as Lily is clunky in just about every respect.

    It’s about an 18-year-old girl named Grace whose birthday is slightly marred by a conk on the head from a piñata. After she comes around, she finds herself surrounded by variously aged versions of herself at six, 29, and 70. How will she manage this wacky development and keep the school play alive?

    (Spoilers after the cut.)

    The answer is, “Blandly,” for the most part. One of the major problems is that Grace, though pleasant enough, doesn’t inspire you to wonder what she’ll be like years down the road, or to be curious about what she was like in the past. The other Graces are more types than characters, and it’s hard to determine precisely what 18-year-old Grace is supposed to be taking away from this strange encounter. She’s not at any particular crisis point, either anxious about the future or dwelling on the past.

    The let’s-put-on-a-show plot is rendered largely irrelevant by its predictability. When budget woes force the school district to cancel the school play, 29-year-old Grace convinces the troupe to fund it themselves. (As an aside, I don’t think plucky kids funding their own arts activities teaches school administrators anything other than that the arts will take care of themselves, and that individual passion will absolve them of the responsibility of providing varied activities.) Screwball mishaps ensue, mostly to give illustrator Jesse Hamm something lively to draw.

    And there’s a Mean Girl wedged into the narrative, mostly for the sake of having a Mean Girl on hand to get her comeuppance. If Minx wanted to be really daring, they’d write a book about a pretty, popular girl laboring under the tyranny of nerds.

    I’m left with the impression that Kim is writing down to his audience, which is unfortunate and unnecessary. There’s a distressing amount of expository dialogue to prop up slim characterization. People tell each other how wonderful and interesting they are, though there’s little in terms of action that lets them demonstrate those qualities.

    That’s not to say that there aren’t a couple of great-ish scenes in it. There’s a graveside memorial that hints at a much more interesting graphic novel (and explains the title). Another scene deftly portrays unintentional parental cruelty. Both of these sequences have real teeth; they’re challenging and layered. They’re also relatively incidental to the book as a whole, and they make the rest of it look worse.

    If you really want to give a teen a great graphic novel, track down a copy of Same Difference. It may not be written specifically for them, but I think they’ll find it a lot more satisfying.

    Flower power

    by

    As I said in Chris Mautner’s reviewer round-up, I don’t think posting images with reviews is essential, but I do appreciate it when someone does it as well as Shaenon K. Garrity. I appreciate it even more when she puts her skills in service of a book I absolutely love, in this case, Fumi Yoshinaga’s Flower of Life.

    I’m kind of disappointed that I rarely see this title on bookstore shelves. There’s almost always at least one copy of at least two volumes of Yoshinaga’s Antique Bakery (as it should be), but that’s rarely the case with Flower. (There is one awesome Borders in downtown DC that was like a Yoshinaga lover’s dream. They had everything.)

    Using John Jakala’s method of surveying, I notice that not a single copy of a single volume of the series is available in any of the Pittsburgh Barnes & Noble outlets. Things look better at the Pittsburgh Borders outlets. All five have copies of the first volume; four have the second in stock; only one has copies of the third.

    The lotion in the Basket

    by

    I needn’t have worried about the slackening plot momentum in Fruits Basket. As Adam Stephanides promised, volume 17 roars out of the gate with all kinds of crazy revelations and high drama.

    (Spoilers after the cut.)

    By Tezuka’s jaunty beret, that Sohma family is just plain creepy. I know this shouldn’t come as a revelation or anything, as there’s already ample evidence of their multifaceted dysfunction, but damnation, people!

    The major revelation of the volume is unsettling to me mostly for my reaction to it. The knowledge that Akito is a woman comes shortly before a significant shift in my sympathies regarding that character. While readers learn a number of other painful secrets about the head of the Sohma family, I’m left to wonder if my sympathies that easily swayed because I found out that this ghastly creature is a woman? Or was it just the cumulative effect of that revelation plus all of the startlingly horrible bits of new information I received? Or is Natsuki Takaya just that good that she can drop that many bombshells at once and still make it fluidly unsettling reading beyond surface shock?

    I do have to say that the flashback showing the various cursed Sohma children gathering tearfully around Akito’s unsuspecting mother was one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a manga in ages.

    And in a pleasant change of pace, the volume actually features plenty of page-space for the character who graces its cover. I love Hanajima, and I’m delighted that Takaya is keeping Tohru’s non-Sohma friends woven into the narrative. Her little brother is a treat too.

    I’m still not entirely persuaded by Rin as a character, but I’ve got plenty of reason to trust Takaya at this point.

    Upcoming 8/15

    by

    Just got back from some work travel, about which the less said the better. I checked in periodically to see if there was any blog spam in the filter, and it all apparently concealed itself for this morning. I tried to look through and see if there were any actual comments in there, but my eyes started to glaze over, so if I dumped anything inadvertently, I apologize.

    Now, on to today’s haul.

    The pick of the week for me is the sixth volume of the Foglios’ delightful web-to-print fantasy-adventure, Girl Genius: Angela Heterodyne and the Golden Trilobite, now available in softcover. The last volume ended on quite the cliffhanger, so I’m eager to see what happens next. (If you’re interested in the series and want a good starting point, Airship has an omnibus edition of the first three volumes.)

    Oni Press delivers the fourth issue of the very funny series Maintenance, written by Jim Massey and drawn by Robbi Rodriguez. It’s one of the few series I collect in floppy form, and it just got optioned by Warner Brothers. (I realize that lots of series get optioned, and that it’s no sign of quality whatever, but I think this property might make for fun viewing.)

    Tokyopop has three titles that interest me. The first is the 17th volume of Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket. The series seems to be in a bit of a holding pattern, and the last couple of volumes have only bruised my heart as opposed to ripping it clean out of my chest. I’m fairly confident that it will get back on form soon enough, but the plot really could use a bit of forward motion.

    I’ve seen various responses to Fumi Yoshinaga’s Truly Kindly, coming from the Blu imprint, though none of them have been what I’d call negative. I believe it’s been described as “weird,” and there’s nothing wrong with that.

    The title alone is enough to get me interested in Atelier Marie and Elie Zarlburg Alchemist by Yoshihiko Ochi, though I wouldn’t relish typing it very often.