The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Pleasant diversions

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I love Joann Sfar’s solo comics – The Rabbi’s Cat (Pantheon), Klezmer: Tales of the Wild East, Vampire Loves (First Second). The Professor’s Daughter provides an appealing introduction to his collaborative work. Emmanuel Guibert illustrates Sfar’s grumpy, fanciful script with elegant watercolors that are both lively and lovely.

In the book, a pair of unlikely lovers (a less-proper-than-she-seems Victorian maiden and a 3,000-year-old royal mummy) struggle to keep their romance alive as forces conspire to drive them apart. If Sfar never lets seriousness of subject matter overwhelm his comedic instincts in books like Klezmer, he’s also too crusty to let the diverting fluff of The Professor’s Daughter prevent him from dosing the story with a thread of fatalism either. Guibert’s watercolors, which range from sweet and swirly to cheerfully antic, suit the script while providing just the right notes of counterpoint.

In other words, all of the pieces fit, but they do so in slightly unexpected ways. The Professor’s Daughter doesn’t offer the depth of pleasure of some of Sfar’s other works, but as imaginative trifles go, it’s tough to beat.

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Christian Slade’s Korgi (Top Shelf) reads a bit to me like a gorgeous, polished sketch book. Without words, Slade tracks the misadventures of a cute, woodland sprite and her full-on adorable canine companion, a helpful but excessively inquisitive young korgi named Sprout. Slade’s sketches are richly detailed and tremendously effective in conveying the simple story. If I were a kid, I’d probably immediately set about scripting it, and if I were a teacher, I’d be sorely tempted to turn it into a class project.

Since I’m neither, I occasionally found myself wishing that the tightly paneled illustrations had a little more room to breathe. There’s something about Slade’s style that makes me want to see it float in a bit of white space. Slade’s so adept at creating a lush fantasy landscape that I wanted more of a storybook presentation.

*

Bisco Hatori’s Millennium Snow (Viz – Shojo Beat) is one of the more easygoing comics about mortality that you’re likely to find. Chronically, probably terminally ill Chiyuki is trying to make the most of whatever is left of her tenuous existence. She finds diversion aplenty when she meets moody vampire Toya, who’s averse to drinking blood and unwilling to select a human partner to provide sustenance for a thousand years.

There isn’t a whisper of predation in Hatori’s approach to vampirism, which lies squarely in the land of the parasitic-romantic, depending on how you view it. Toya doesn’t want to subject an innocent to centuries as a food source. Chiyuki, entirely aside from not wanting to die young, doesn’t want Toya to have to spend his long, long life alone and unfulfilled. She likes him and says so; he likes her and doesn’t. It’s not the most novel of conundrums, but Hatori’s sincerity and quirky charms as a storyteller sell it.

The dying young person as inspirational life force usually results in the worst kind of sickly sentimentality, but Hatori manages to pull even that old saw off. There’s no treacle to Chiyuki’s optimism, and she’s funny and brave enough to carry the weight of the story on her own. She’s a winning combination of pragmatism and romantic fantasies, setting the tone for an endearing story that strikes a nice balance of light and dark.

(Review based on a complimentary copy provided by Viz.)

The next big things

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Brigid’s look at the latest chart-topping manga triggers some interesting discussion. MangaCast and Manga Recon’s Erin F. suggests that, while vampires certainly aren’t driving anyone away from Millennium Snow, it’s creator Bisco Hatori’s reputation for Ouran High School Host Club that’s doing more to feed Millennium’s success.

I’m always interested to see a new “name manga-ka” emerge. Clearly, several someones believe that Chika Shiomi will join the ranks of creators who might be able to move a title at least partly on reputation, what with Go! Comi, CMX and Viz adding her work to their rosters. Last year, You Higuri seemed to be the manga-ka everyone wanted to license.

Maybe it’s because series targeted at women tend to be shorter and there are consequently more available to license, but most of the name manga-ka I can think of are women: the CLAMP collective, Ai Yazawa, Yuu Watase, Fumi Yoshinaga, Moyoco Anno, among others.

Who are your no-question manga-ka, the ones whose work you’ll buy no matter the genre or subject matter?

Fabulous prizes

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ComiPress lists the winners of the 11th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Awards. One of them is Magnificent 49er Ryoko Yamagishi, who received the Grand Prize for Maihime Terepushikoora.

There’s depressingly little web-based information available on this group of influential manga-ka, but Yamagishi’s brief bio on Wikipedia still manages to whet my appetite, with titles like Tut-ankh-amen, Isis and Sphinx. I’m always up for fictionalizations of Ancient Egypt, if those titles do in fact tread that territory. (One never knows how tenuous the connection will be between title and content.)

In other awards news, MangaCast’s Ed Chavez takes a thorough look at this year’s winners of the 31st Kodansha Manga Awards and contemplates their licensing likelihood, providing a handy list of past licensed winners. (Kitchen Princess won last year? Seriously? I thought the first volume was really mediocre, but I thought that about the first volume of Fruits Basket too, so maybe I should give the series a second look.)

Blu funk

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It’s kind of a slim week on the ComicList, so I’m going to limit myself to three items that particularly catch my eye:

Blu continues the absolutely welcome wave of manga from Fumi Yoshinaga with Lovers in the Night, a collection of shorts that range from the French Revolution to feudal Japan to contemporary Seattle.

Anike Hage’s Gothic Sports (Tokyopop) has generated some very favorable pre-release buzz, and the preview pages look great.

The first volume of Meca Tanaka’s Pearl Pink (Tokyopop) didn’t quite reach the heights of Tanaka’s Omukae Desu (CMX), but I can always use a shôjo fix, and I’m becoming kind of a sucker for wacky, showbiz comedies. I’ll probably pick up the second volume sooner or later.

Other takes:

  • Chris Mautner and Kevin Melrose at Blog@Newsarama
  • Jog
  • The MangaCasters
  • Matt Blind at comicsnob

    • Awards watch

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    It looks like there are some new additions to the current roster of nominations for the list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens, assembled by the American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). (I say “looks like,” because my memory is far from perfect, so apologies if the books I’ve pegged as new nominations have been there for a while.)

    DC’s Minx line seems to be making a favorable impression on nominators, with Re-Gifters joining The Plain Janes. The current edition of Sequential Tart has the first part of an interesting insider’s view of the Minx line from Mariah Huehner, including this assessment of some of the imprint’s early sound bytes:

    “Its times like this I really wish marketing a product based solely on its own merits, of which the titles in MINX have a lot, was the preferred method. Putting down other kinds of books aimed at the same demographic doesn’t do much to elevate the medium. And anyway, wouldn’t it be better if teen girls were readings more of everyone’s titles? I don’t think it’s a choice between Manga and MINX. I think you’ll find a lot of crossover.”

    The first volume of Fumi Yoshinaga’s The Moon and Sandals (Juné) is an interesting choice, partly because Digital Manga has given it an age rating of 18+. It follows two couples, one adult and one teen-aged, and the older pair does reach a sexual milestone, though I’m blanking on how explicit that encounter was at the moment. I thought the book kind of dawdled in a perfectly likeable way, but it does end with an emotional gut-punch worthy of Natsuki Takaya at her most ruthlessly tear-jerking.

    The successful partnership between Tokyopop and HarperCollins (just look at the sales figures for Warriors) hasn’t stopped HC from publishing graphic novels on its own, and Mark Crilley’s Miki Falls books earn two slots on the YALSA list.

    As usual, the list also serves as a handy collection of recommended reading for me, with intriguing-sounding titles like Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age from Penguin/Viking:

    “A very unscientific poll recently revealed that 99.9% of all people who attended middle school hated it.”

    Yay! I’m in the majority! (Though 7th and 8th grades were classified as “junior high” back when I endured them, right around the popularization of the internal combustion engine.)

    And while it’s only kind of tangentially related, there’s a great interview with this year’s Eisner judges over at Bookslut, one of whom is Robin Brenner, one of the librarians who assemble the YALSA list. Some of my favorite quotes:

    “The shift from the collector market to the reader market has been incredibly significant, in terms of just where one can find comics and graphic novels today but also in terms of signifying the growing diversity of what’s out there and what people want to read. I feel the industry can only benefit from a concentration on attracting readers rather than collectors — so the story and artistry of the title is the most important thing.” (Brenner.)

    “The industry’s attempt to force-start another speculator glut, is, fortunately, somewhat of a miserable failure.” (Comics writer Chris Reilley.)

    “I would like to see a few less comics about zombies; they’re really overstaying their welcome in my opinion.” (Reilly, again.)

    Well, zombies do move rather slowly.

    Cleaning up

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    Remember the controversy in California over a library copy of Paul Gravett’s splendid Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics? The local paper, the Hesperia Star, does, because it won a regional award from the Society of Professional Journalists for an editorial on the situation:

    “If our libraries should be 100 percent sanitized by young children, then let’s get rid of Shakespeare, Chaucer and Hemingway. Let’s not take any chances. Burn the National Geographics before another adolescent sees them.”

    Funny how portable that sentiment is.

    Smoke-filled rooms

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    I bailed on local Free Comic Book Day activities on Saturday, which was very lazy of me. In my defense, the local shop invests as much as it can in the event, but I still end up feeling like I’m taking comics out of the hands of casual or potential readers. And since my interests run towards the comics intended for kids, I feel extra guilty.

    What I did instead:

  • Made naan for the first time, based on this recipe. The local Indian restaurant has closed, not for want of customers but because the owners’ kids graduated from college and none wanted to take over the family business. This has left a serious naan shortage in my diet, so I decided to give it a shot. The process doesn’t really play to any of my culinary strengths, so I’ll factor in some shortcuts next time I make it and hopefully not set off the smoke alarms. But it was really, really good.
  • Eagerly watched to see which of several hundred hats Queen Elizabeth would wear to the Kentucky Derby. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed.
  • Noted a strange flurry of birds I’d never seen at our feeders before (including the thrilling Indigo Bunting) and immediately attributed it to climate change.
  • Wrote what is surely a superfluous Flipped column, especially in light of Brigid Alverson’s excellent piece on Naruto Nation in last week’s PWCW. But Viz contacts had already gone to the trouble of tracking down sources and answering questions, so it seemed rude not to use them.

    • From the stack: Yurara Vol. 1

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    We’re in the midst of two mini-surges in licensed manga at the moment: series about people who see dead people, and series created by Chika Shiomi, specialist in beautiful, long-haired butt-kickers. Viz’s Shojo Beat imprint has joined CMX (Canon) and Go! Comi (Night of the Beasts) in the latter wave with Yurara, which offers Shiomi’s take on the former. I like Shiomi well enough, and I’m crazy for ghost-hunter manga, but Yurara gets off to something of a tepid start.

    In it, a meek young high-school student, Yurara, is plagued by ghostly sightings. She’s worried that she might be crazy, and almost equally concerned that her intense, seemingly out-of-context reactions to these experiences will result in another friendless school year. Then she meets a pair of handsome classmates who see ghosts too and offer more aggressive responses than freezing in terror or bursting into tears.

    Their confrontational approach brings out the long-haired butt-kicker in Yurara, a guardian spirit with the ability to help restless souls move on, or at least get out of Yurara’s assigned seat in class. She’s more benevolent than Mei, who favors burning pesky ghosts, or Yako, who uses water to bar them from their preferred haunting grounds. Her aggressive aspect is largely reserved for grabby, obnoxious Mei, and I can’t fault her for that.

    The ghosts the three (four?) youths encounter are pretty generic. They’re malevolent by way of central casting, mostly out of confusion and frustration than malice, and Yurara’s guardian spirit seems to have little difficulty in dispatching them. (This begs the question of why she didn’t start helping Yurara earlier. Maybe it took the knee-jerk, volatile presence of the two boys to actually put Yurara in sufficient danger?)

    Without more specific or threatening apparitions, there isn’t much in the way of suspense, and the episodic structure isn’t especially effective. In her other series currently available in English, Shiomi throws her heroines into long-form peril and keeps them at the center of the action. In spite of her titular status, Yurara spends most of her time on the sidelines, sometimes even in her own body. Without a driving supernatural narrative, that leaves the seedlings of an unpromising love triangle to keep the story moving. Neither aloof Yako nor outgoing (and jerky) Mei presents a particularly desirable alternative.

    Yurara has the ingredients of an entertaining series, but their current combination isn’t very effective. As things stand, readers have more engaging choices in the ghost-hunting genre and in Shiomi’s own catalogue.

    (This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. The first volume of Yurara is scheduled for release on June 5, 2007.)

    Drawing a blank

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    My partner and I were watching TV, and while I can’t even remember what prompted him to ask, he was wondering why there are so few great female villains – women who pursued power and wealth by evil or at least illegal or amoral means just because they wanted power and wealth.

    And now I’m totally blanking. I can think of a handful of minor villainesses who kind of fit that category (Moonstone, Mystique and Ruby Thursday, and maybe a couple of others), but Ruby only had one major story before she became kind of a creepy joke, and aren’t Moonstone and Mystique mostly redeemed?

    Before I could even suggest Catwoman (which I wasn’t prone to do anyways), he discounted her, partly because he views her as sad and crazy and avenging herself on evil men rather than possessing any tangible personal ambitions (based on the second Batman movie) or just using villainy as an excuse to flirt with the hero (based on the television series). Both of these apparently disqualify someone from A-list villainy, and I’d tend to agree.

    So who am I forgetting? They don’t have to be confined to comic books.