Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them
by David Welsh
You would think one manga about teens facing mysterious, murderous parasites would be enough for a given publisher, but the more I read Alive, the more I realized there was plenty of room at Del Rey for both it and Parasyte.
And while it might not be one of CMX’s more newsworthy upcoming releases, I enjoyed The Key to the Kingdom a whole lot. (I might just be going through fantasy saga withdrawal, but I don’t think so.)
Anyway, I go into needless detail on both in this week’s Flipped.
by David Welsh
There’s plenty of joy in the latest Previews catalog, and while orders are due many places today, timeliness issues have never stopped me before.
ADV delivers the fifth volume of Kiyohiko Azuma’s absolutely wonderful Yotsuba&! (Page 215, AUG07 2389). I would link to the information on ADV’s web site, if such a wondrous thing existed in this day and age, so you’ll just have to settle for Amazon’s listing.
More Fumi Yoshinaga is always worth noting, and Digital Manga delivers with Garden of Dreams, a shôjo title set in Victorian England (Page 280, AUG07, 3580).
The easy pick of the month is the second volume of Moomin: The Complete Tove Jannson Comic Strip from Drawn & Quarterly (Page 286, AUG07, 3600). It’s glorious, timeless stuff, and it’s been beautifully packaged.
Lots of people loved Lat’s Kampung Boy, and :01 follows up with Town Boy (Page 289, AUG07 3662). If you missed out on Kampung Boy, that’s available for re-order as well (AUG07 3663).
If you aren’t already delirious, there’s more Andy Runton with the fourth volume of Owly: Don’t Be Afraid (or A Time to Be Brave) from Top Shelf (Page 354, AUG07 4028).
by David Welsh
There’s nothing like a good quest to drive a graphic novel, and the central plot in Joey Weiser’s The Ride Home (AdHouse Books) serves admirably. Nodo is a van gnome, happily occupying a family’s broken-down wheels until a fateful day when they take the cat to the vet. He escapes the keyed-up feline only to find himself lost and homeless in an urban landscape.
As in all stories of this type, he makes friends, foes and stumbles across the possibility of romance during his search for his misplaced home. Weiser populates the urban landscape with repurposed fantasy figures who’ve found their own niches in a modern setting. There’s a river dragon who’s relocated to run the city’s sewer system. A group of gnomes have set up housekeeping in the park and are appalled at Nodo’s modern ideas of habitation (and his hat), offering the sure-to-be-irresistible prospect of “righteous twelve-hour work days, and gnomish tradition.” Then there are the hungry junkyard trolls.
But there’s also Flora, a spunky gnome who lives in a station wagon. She offers Nodo shelter and assistance while he hunts down his red van, patching him up when his quest goes astray.
You don’t need a map to see where it’s all going, but Weiser is generous with wit and warmth, keeping the familiar from becoming stale and sprinkling in unexpected twists and turns. He resists the urge to overstate his story’s morals, letting them unfold in a cheerful, episodic fashion. It’s an extremely friendly book, but it never overdoses on sentiment or cuteness.
Weiser has got a clean, appealing style of illustration, focusing on charming character design and some exciting set pieces. My favorite intersection of both is probably the one involving a helpful herd of cows with a keen ear for pathos. (Just trust me on this one.)
While Weiser has several mini-comics under his belt and has contributed to some high-profile anthologies like the Flight books, The Ride Home seems to be his first full-length graphic novel. It’s an extremely accomplished debut, and more importantly, it’s an awful lot of fun.
(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)
by David Welsh
Okay, so the thing about this week’s Flipped is that… there isn’t one. Circumstances intervened, all of them my own fault, so apologies to anyone who’s particularly devastated by this. I’ll try and make the next few installments extra thrilling to compensate, maybe throwing in some sword fights.
by David Welsh
It’s a somewhat lean but interesting week of deliveries to comic shops, so let’s get right down to it.
Aurora’s Deux imprint launches with the first volume of Hate to Love You by Makoto Tateno. The manga-ka is already well known for series like Yellow and Hero Heel, but this was apparently her boys’-love debut.
The second issue of Otaku USA arrives in comic shops (though I’d imagine it’s already hit regular bookstores). I liked the first issue and found it quite readable, even the non-manga sections.
Black Metal arrives courtesy of Rick Spears, Chuck BB and Oni Press. I just reviewed this yesterday, so take a look and see if it sounds like the book will speak to you. Short version: energetic silliness about twin metal-heads with a demonic destiny.
by David Welsh
In an early sequence in Oni’s Black Metal, a cute girl is reading Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim. Brazen coat-tailing, you say? Possibly, but it doesn’t really matter, because Rick Spears and Chuck BB have built their own endearing world with a distinct set of materials. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Scott and company reading and liking the book.
Shawn and Sam are twin orphans with a love for the titular musical genre and contempt for just about everything else. They’ve earned an almost mythical reputation for antisocial misbehavior by the time they enroll in a new junior high school. When asked which twin is the evil one, their gleeful, unison answer is, “We both are.”
But they wouldn’t get in quite so much trouble if stupid, conventional people weren’t quite so provoking. Left to their own devices, they’d probably just find old vinyl, play it backwards in their garage, and head-bang until the break of dawn. Unfortunately, local laws and a well-meaning foster mother force them into contact with horrors like the cafeteria and the mall.
One trip to pre-fab, retail hell does yield interesting results, though. A Frost Axe album provides not only musical diversion but an actual quest for the surly siblings, leading them on an action-packed road trip. Will they feel more at home in capital-h Hell than they did in the suburban equivalent?
It’s a strangely endearing combination of high adventure and low comedy. I’m not a metal fan by any stretch of the imagination, but Shawn and Sam’s enthusiasm for it and the mythos around it is contagious. Spears makes these spooky little thugs very likable, and he surrounds them with a motley crew of friends and foes. BB’s illustrations are of the creepy-cute variety, and they really work for this material. The pages are laced with dark comedy and a weird kind of sweetness that’s right in step with the script.
Okay, so not everybody will be comfortable with a funny comic about kids embracing their satanic heritage. I think Black Metal is good-natured enough to make that a non-issue, though I recognize that mileage will certainly vary.
(Based on a complimentary preview provided by the publisher.)
by David Welsh
I saw a couple of movies this weekend, both of which got a lift from weird girls.
The first was Hairspray, which wasn’t bad. Parts of it were an awful lot of fun, though I thought it peaked with the “Welcome to the Sixties” number in the middle. (It must be the closer for act one of the stage version, right?) Overall, it was a little too sincere and not weird enough for me.
Amanda Bynes as Penny was plenty weird, though, and I absolutely loved her. She was so sweetly out of it, and who wouldn’t fall in love with Elijah Kelley’s Seaweed? I mean, she clearly couldn’t be a worse dancer, and I’m glad the producers didn’t try and pretend otherwise, but I was really smitten with her on the whole.
The second movie I saw was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I thought was awful. None of the other movies have seen quite so much as a study guide for the novel. The script and the editing were really clumsy, and the pacing was so off. When you have to make your characters spout painfully expository dialogue to explain what’s going on to people who haven’t read the books, you should probably go back and do a couple of rewrites.
I did very much like Evanna Lynch as Luna. I like to think my fondness for the character would leave me with extremely high expectations of the actress playing the role, and I think she did extremely well. She had to spit out a lot of story morals, and I think she was surprisingly convincing.
by David Welsh
NPR is really getting its geek on lately. First they do that piece on the Eisner Awards for All Things Considered, and then they cover not just anime, but a really specific niche of anime fandom on today’s Morning Edition.
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I know that it’s kind of irksome when a publisher is specifically created to be a movie property shop, but since Tokyopop established itself as a comic publisher first, I’ll give them a pass and not get too cynical about their new deal with the William Morris Agency.
And who would have ever guessed that Princess Ai would be one of their first in-development properties?
(I said I wouldn’t get too cynical. I didn’t say I wouldn’t get cynical at all.)
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It’s impossible for me to be cynical at all about the news of the strong sales for Drawn & Quarterly’s collection of Tove Jansson’s Moomin strips, because I love them. I also squealed a little bit when I saw the second volume listed in the current Previews catalog.
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It’s very kind of John Jakala to suggest coping strategies for people who will be a little discombobulated by the slower release schedule for Bleach. From a purely selfish perspective, this means it will be easier for me to catch up. (Has anyone else seen that tacky Cartoon Network commercial for the Bleach anime starring Orihime’s rack?)
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Regarding the next wave of Minx books, I’m so delighted to see that Joelle Jones is drawing one of them. I think she’s just incredibly talented. I’m also happy that Andi Watson is following up on his Clubbing character. (Is Josh Howard drawing it? If not, I won’t mind too much, as I thought his illustrations were kind of serviceable.)
Brian Wood isn’t the first creator that would come to my mind when lining up people to create for Minx, but that’s neither here nor there.
by David Welsh
With San Diego behind us all, it’s back to the weekly Wednesday routine.
Meca Tanaka’s funky, charming Omukae Desu (CMX) ends with its fifth volume. Will Aguma get over her crush on a dead guy? Will Madoka break through her veneer of hostility? What will the theme days be?
Debuting from CMX is Makoto Tateno’s King of Cards. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by game-based manga in the past, and the idea of a shôjo take on the subject is kind of interesting conceptually. That said, the preview didn’t grab me. Card-game enthusiasts might like it, though I have no idea if the game Tateno has invented bears any resemblance to actual games of this nature. I couldn’t really follow the rules, so dramatic reversals in matches might not be generating the proper level of excitement.
It’s a big week for Del Rey, with new volumes of lots of series and a debut, Alive, by Tadashi Kawashima and Adachitoka. Now this preview did grab me. After a somewhat shaky opening sequence, Kawashima gets down to business with a creepy tale of a suicide virus that cuts a chunk out of the population and leaves a group of schoolmates in terrible danger. The highlight here is the cinematic pacing, with tense cuts between simultaneous terrors. There’s also lots of mystery, a solid cast, and plenty of promising material to cover in future volumes.
My personal picks among the already-in-progress series are the second volume of Mushishi, a beautifully drawn supernatural travelogue of sorts, and the tenth volume of Nodame Cantabile, a quirky soap opera about music students.
In case you missed it the first time, NBM offers you another crack at Nicolas DeCrécy’s Glacial Period. I’ve run out of ways to summarize how unique and entertaining this book is, so I’ll just point you to this old review.
It’s not a huge week for Viz, but it is a fairly eclectic one, with new volumes of The Drifting Classroom (#7), Fullmetal Alchemist (#14), Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs (#4), and Naoki Urasawa’s Monster (#10). If I had to choose only one, I’d probably be in trouble, though I have to admit that I’d ultimately go with Fullmetal. Drifting is hyperactive and crazy, Inubaka is sweet, and Monster has its many odd charms, but Fullmetal is crack.
by David Welsh
John Jakala’s discovery of the Bleach musical, beyond being conceptually delightful for its own sake, fills me with cross-nerd wishes. (I love musicals, too.) And I can’t think of a likelier source for an evening of song and dance than the works of Fumi Yoshinaga.
Her stories, particularly Antique Bakery and Flower of Life, are practically musicals already. They’re packed with intriguing characters with distinct voices, they shift in tone from ballad to patter, and they have a quirky improbability that would make for an easy transition from one form to another.
I can’t really think of a composer/lyricist right off hand. Sondheim seems too dark, though if he were in A Little Night Music mode, he might be just right. (Speaking of that, how come we have 7,000 revivals of Gypsy and none for Night Music? Is it because the lead in Night Music doesn’t really need to sing?) The creative team from Avenue Q might be closer to the mark, if they could tone down their satirical tendencies and accentuate their warmer, more humanist tendencies.
Of course, Kaoru Mori’s Emma is at an advantage, already having dancing girls. But surely there’s room on Broadway for both. And you could probably produce about four of Yoshinaga’s contemporary pieces for the cost of a costume epic like Emma.
And you could hardly go wrong with the work of Ai Yazawa. Paradise Kiss has “pop opera” written all over it, and Nana could draw in the Wicked crowd with its strong female friendships, but with a rock score.