The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Another Hall of Fame?

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I’ve been trying to think of something else to say about this year’s Eisner nominations other than “Wow, that’s a really nice list of nominations, filled with books I like.” Since I’m at a loss to find much reason to nitpick, I’ll ask a question instead.

Wouldn’t it be kind of neat if there was a companion category for the Hall of Fame of creators that recognized really great individual works from the medium? Since the awards have only been around for about two decades, and since not everything is going to get a spiffy new archival treatment to qualify for a contemporary award, I think it might be a nice addition.

From the stack: Train + Train Vol. 2

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Before I got the chance to review the first volume of Train + Train (Go! Comi), Katherine Dacey-Tsuei said pretty much everything I had planned to say, but better:

“On the plus side, the series boasts action-movie pacing and a rogue’s gallery of characters that includes a nun with a bright future in the WWE, a dead ringer for Disney’s Beast, and a badass heroine with a bottomless appetite. On the down side, the art is unremarkable; the character designs are as forgettable as the sparsely sketched settings, and the action sequences fall flat.”

The second volume is an improvement on the first, in the sense that the strong elements are reinforced while the weak ones at least don’t experience a decline.

Writer Hideyuki Kurata shares illuminating bits background on tough, adventuresome runaway Arena Pendleton. I often find that a creator’s urge to explain a character’s more belligerent aspects has the tendency to minimize them. That’s not the case here; Arena’s still endearingly take-no-prisoners in her approach, and having a better sense of how she came by her disposition actually functions to make it more appealing.

Subplot development takes some steady steps forward, which is welcome. Members of the supporting cast get some additional roundness, and Reiichi (Arena’s unwilling traveling companion) begins to display the rudiments of a spine.

Art by Tomomasa Takuma is still resolutely competent, though. I don’t quite understand how a story about an allegedly white-knuckle world tour can look so drab. The first destination on the Special Train’s educational odyssey is pitched as a sci-fi Las Vegas, but visual interest is confined to a few fairly generic establishing shots, followed by page after page of nearly nonexistent backgrounds. The story all but begs for gonzo illustrations, but Takuma’s approach is too restrained by half.

But I do like Arena a lot, and the rest of the Special Train gang is growing on me at a satisfying rate. I sincerely hope Takuma demonstrates more artistic energy in the future. As it is, I’d be tempted to just read the novel that inspired the manga and fill in the pictures with my imagination.

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

Round-up round-up

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Aside from being mildly amused by the double standard inherent in the anatomically induced panic, I don’t really care that much about the brouhaha over that Alex Ross cover for JSA. (I’ve always found Ross’s figures to be a little cadaverous, to be honest, no matter what parts are protruding.)

But I have to lend my support to Blog@Newsarama’s Kevin Melrose and “The Great Junk Outcry of 2007.” In addition to offering a fine and succinct round-up of the discussion thus far, I can almost hear the tense Casio strains of the theme song, though I’ll refrain from speculating about possible accompanying graphics.

In more seemly discussion, Brigid Alverson offers a terrific round-up of early reaction to the Eisner nominations over at MangaBlog. And she does so in her 1,000th post! Congratulations!

Eisner nominations: Mangamania!

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The Eisner Award nominees have been announced, and there are some really phenomenal books and creators on the list. I’ll probably go into more detail on that later, but for now, here are the manga-centric nominations:

Best Continuing Series

  • Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, by Naoki Urasawa (Viz)

    • Best New Series

  • East Coast Rising, by Becky Cloonan (Tokyopop)

    • Best Anthology

  • Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, edited by Frédéric Boilet (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

    • Best Reality-Based Work

  • Project X Challengers: Cup Noodle, by Tadashi Katoh (Digital Manga)

    • Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books

  • Abandon the Old In Tokyo, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Drawn & Quarterly)
  • Ode to Kirihito, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical)

    • Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan

  • After School Nightmare, by Setona Mizushiro (Go! Comi)
  • Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (Digital Manga)
  • Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, by Naoki Urasawa (Viz)
  • Old Boy, by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi (Dark Horse Manga)
  • Walking Man, by Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

    • Special Recognition

  • Ross Campbell, Abandoned (Tokyopop); Wet Moon 2 (Oni)
  • Svetlana Chmakova, Dramacon (Tokyopop)

    • (Edited because I couldn’t have made the link to the nominations tinier if I’d put it on a comma.)

    Strip creep

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    King Features will be getting into the manga-influenced comic strip business, according to this piece at Editor and Publisher.

    “‘My Cage’ is co-created by manga graphic novelist Melissa DeJesus and her writing partner, Ed Power.

    “The strip — whose name spoofs the ‘MySpace’ social-networking site’s name — focuses on a group of mostly 20-something and 30-something anthropomorphized animals.”

    Here’s a link to the King Features press release, and here, appropriately enough, is the creators’ MySpace page. DeJesus was the illustrator for “fan-service spectacular” Sokora Refugees.

    Multimedia linkblogging

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    Did I miss this? Apparently, both live-action Death Note movies will be debuting at this year’s Newport Beach International Film Festival, according to a piece at Associated Content. A quick look at the festival’s schedule confirms it. I wonder who’s handling the U.S. distribution?

    Dirk Deppey is an early adopter of Chika Umino’s Honey and Clover, so he’s understandably excited that Viz will preview the anime version at an event in Cannes:

    “So what does this have to do with comics news? Well, there’s the little matter of anime/manga synergy; if Viz has acquired the animated version of this series, it may well be an indication that they have designs on the manga, as well. Could we be set to start reading one of the most entertaining soap-opera comics this side of Ai Yazawa’s Nana before the year’s out? If so, I can’t wait.”

    The full release on Viz’s plans for Cannes can be found at ComiPress.

    Speaking of josei, Publishers Weekly Comics Week’s Kai-Ming Cha interviews Mikako Ogata about new manga pub Aurora and its yaoi imprint, Deux. (How did they resist calling it Boyrealis?) The interview leads Simon Jones (whose blog is probably not safe for work) to ponder something that’s crossed my mind as well:

    “Wouldn’t it be crazy if it turned out that yaoi is the anchor, the perennial tentpole product supporting the entire manga market?”

    It certainly seems to be the most consistent performer of any of the various categories of manga, faring extremely well in the monthly Diamond figures and making its presence known in places like the Amazon bestsellers list.

    What about shôjo? Well, MangaBlog’s Brigid Alverson makes her PWCW debut with an article on the second anniversary of Viz’s Shojo Beat anthology, and it’s packed with plenty of interesting tidbits. The one that really catches my eye is news that the magazine will climb on the Osamu Tezuka Love Train, if only briefly:

    “Shojo Beat, Viz Media’s monthly shojo anthology magazine, will celebrate its second birthday in July with a special present for its readers: an excerpt from legendary manga-ka Osamu Tezuka’s 1954 manga Princess Knight, which has never been available in the U.S. before.”

    I’ve been dying for someone to translate even a little of this series. I don’t know if a full licensing effort would be commercially viable, but most available sources cite it as an inspiration for the creators who would go on to revolutionize shôjo manga.

    Oh, and speaking of girls and magazines, scholar Matt Thorn stopped by Anime News Network to comment on that Oricon survey of girls who read manga and their apparent love for shônen.

    Talking to myself

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    In the midst of my weekend bout of manganization, I had what I thought was a stroke of genius, but it was really just another reason why I should never be given a position of responsibility in manga publishing.

    I was looking at the cover of a volume of Death Note, and I got all indignant at the blurb that mentioned the book was by the same artist who illustrated Hikaru no Go. I thought to myself, “Well, what does that accomplish? Tons of people are already reading Death Note. They should put the blurb on the cover of Hikaru no Go.”

    Then I noticed that all of the books I was shelving had only their spines showing, and that people are much more likely to see a blurb for Hikaru on Death Note than the other way around. I can only attribute this exchange to the fumes from the composite wood products in the shelves I’d assembled.

    Another recent conversation with myself reveals that, in addition to spending too much time reading manga, I spend far too much time watching television. The transcription can be found in this week’s Flipped.

    Coming up

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    Some highlights from this week’s ComicList:

    If zombies were the new pirates, and princesses were the new zombies, are vampires the new princesses? Or do vampires have sufficient cultural currency that they’re exempt from the fad cycle? I have no idea, but CMX is headed to the blood bank with the release of Chika Shiomi’s Canon, the tale of a heroic teen bloodsucker looking to avenge her entire high-school class. I think it gets off to a solid start.

    Readers who loved Fumi Yoshinaga’s Antique Bakery (DMP) might want to take a look at The Flower of Life (Juné). Once again, Yoshinaga looks at a satisfying array of interpersonal relationships with warmth, intelligence, humor and her trademark quirkiness. The second volume ships Wednesday. I reviewed the first volume here.

    I mention the comic-shop arrival of Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes (Del Rey) only because it came up in this conversation at Comics Worth Reading, and I can use it as an opportunity to mention Nicolas De Crécy’s superb Glacial Period (NBM) again. I generally agree that sell-out announcements aren’t really news, but I’m going to side with commenter Joe Williams in this instance:

    “The fact that NBM will sell out of a 4000 print run for a foreign release where the author, as far as I know, has yet to be published in America and a book that deals with a French cultural institution is pretty impressive in my book.”

    Mine, too.

    Speaking of shouting from the rooftops (or any available setting, really), it’s time for the fifth volume of Kazuo Umezu’s The Drifting Classroom (Viz Signature). As always, things get worse for the stranded elementary school students. You wouldn’t think it would be possible, but they do.

    Addictive properties

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    I spent most of Sunday tidying up my completely disordered stacks of comics, which actually required the purchase and assembly of cheap shelving units. Sensible people would use this experience as an incentive to dedicate themselves to moderation, and it might ultimately have that effect. But in the short-term, it only prompted me to bask in the crack.

    Death Note Vol. 11: Maybe it’s the release frequency that causes this, but I always feel a little weary when I hand a new volume over to the cashier, as if I expect that this will be the installment where the series wears out its welcome. That weariness persists until I actually read it and become immersed in Tsugumi Ohba’s microscopically detailed plotting and Takeshi Obata’s amazing illustrations. Oddly enough, the weariness resumes shortly after I finish reading the most recent volume, and its sources are a mystery to me. Plot twist overdose, maybe?

    Fruits Basket Vol. 16: I find that I’m becoming increasingly impatient with the fluffy comedy sequences in this title, and I wonder what that says about me, because my impatience is driven by a thorough addiction to Natsuki Takaya’s transcendent ability to heap misery upon her cast. I don’t care about the stupid student council and their quirky high jinks. They get in the way of the profound emotional suffering! (When I was in middle school, my class did a big project on illegal drugs, and I really didn’t understand the appeal of depressants. I do now.)

    Fullmetal Alchemist Vol. 12: Last week, I was griping about the somewhat baffling, excessively enunciated mythology of Shakugan no Shana. Reading this volume of FMA reminded me that Hiromu Arakawa as achieved a kind of Platonic ideal of mapping out a fantasy landscape without derailing plot momentum or character development. She’s got a remarkably steady and generous hand with the elements essential to fantasy adventures, blending drama, comedy, suspense, horror and richly imaginative ideas as she propels things forward.