Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them
by David Welsh
So I’ve got a spiffy new title over at Comic World News. I’m now the “Manga Editor” for the site, though I haven’t yet figured out precisely how I’m going to abuse the awesome power of that position.
But, it seems as good a time as any to remind any publishers out there that press releases, tantalizing gossip and scathing appraisals of my priorities are always welcome and can be forwarded to DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com.
by David Welsh
The invaluable ComiPress has more details on the suspension of Monthly Shonen Jump (MSJ), via a translated letter from the publisher that was included in the latest issue of that anthology. People worried about the fate of some of the series featured in MSJ (particularly Claymore, currently being released in English by Viz) should be able to rest easier:
“As of this writing, several works currently serialized in Monthly Jump are already going to be carried over to the new magazine.
“As for Claymore, the anime adaptation of which just began airing, the manga will temporarily be serialized monthly on Weekly Shonen Jump, and later be taken over the new magazine.”
So the series with an anime tie-in isn’t going to miss a beat, and the more popular stuff from MSJ will likely be repackaged in the new magazine. Maybe the venerable MSJ was triggering unpleasant parental nostalgia? Moms and dads looking over the shoulders of the current generation of readers and wistfully noting how much they loved MSJ when they were kids?
Whatever the reason, it looks like the story isn’t quite as big as it initially seemed. It’s interesting, though, and I’ll be curious to hear details about the new anthology.
by David Welsh
Sad animal stories are my undoing. I can’t be in the room when a certain tenor of music or tone of narration kicks in on Animal Planet. I can watch dozens of expendable humans fall in the face of fictional mayhem, but damn it, if that loyal dog or cat doesn’t make it to the end of the movie or the last chapter of the novel, the book or movie is a wash.
So I viewed the imminent arrival of James Vining’s First in Space (Oni) with some trepidation. It has a fascinating premise – all about the chimpanzees sent into space to pave the way for NASA astronauts. But the prospect of a tale of animals being shot into space to further the curiosity and ambition of humans made me anxious.
I’m glad Oni sent me a preview copy, because Vining’s restrained, intelligent approach to the material gives it balance and sensitivity. The portrayal of chimpanzee Ham and the people who train him poses difficult questions, but Vining generally refrains from answering them.
The approach is similar to that used by George O’Connor in Journey into Mohawk Country (First Second), meticulously researching and documenting historical events. Like O’Connor, Vining barely imposes on the historical narrative, but Vining really doesn’t need to. It’s pretty much a “duh” statement to suggest that space chimps are naturally more dramatic than Dutch fur traders, and Vining’s editing of Ham’s story is funny, sad, suspenseful, and thought-provoking.
I think both Journey and First in Space could function similarly as teaching tools as well. Both provide snapshots of history and employ imaginative means of retelling it. First in Space has the added advantage of being a fine, mostly even-handed starting point for discussion and debate about the use of animals as research subjects.
And like O’Connor, Vining (who was awarded a grant from the Xeric Foundation) is a real find. His cartooning style is clean, lively and precise in its emotional effect. The material could lend itself to shameless heartstring tugging and Disney-esque anthropomorphism, but Vining plays it straight for the most part. He doesn’t push because, again, he doesn’t need to.
I’ll never be first in line for entertainments about animals in peril. It’s just not what I look for when I open a comic or novel or turn on a television. But First in Space avoids the cheap manipulations endemic to that category, simply telling a fascinating story and with sincerity and intelligence.
(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. First in Space ships on April 25.)
by David Welsh
The list of comics bestsellers for March in the current Publishers Weekly Comics Week shocks me by actually having something to say about one of the manga titles that made the top ten. Of course, it’s in reference to the 13th volume of Naruto (Viz – Shonen Jump), which is handy, because nobody’s really pondered that sales phenomenon yet. The other seven ranking manga titles, five of which have no anime or game tie-in to bolster sales, go without narrative. I’m too beset by the vapors to fill in the blanks myself.
300 (Dark Horse) showed up somewhere on the list, though an apparent coding problem keeps readers from knowing precisely where. It didn’t make the top 10, though. I’m not saying that it means anything, because 300 is currently ranked first in graphic novels and 39th in books overall at Amazon, and the first manga title to land is an as-yet-unpublished volume of Fruits Basket which doesn’t show up on graphic novels until 12th place and is at #1,067 in books overall. I’m just saying.
There’s also a nice, long interview with Alvin Lu, vice president of publishing at Viz. It’s a solid, informative piece about a company that doesn’t come under a lot of scrutiny, perhaps because they have such a consistent approach to publishing. They do their thing – licensed manga from Japan – without going out on too many limbs in the process. So it’s good to see a substantive discussion with Lu about what Viz tries to do and why. This quote pretty much sums it up:
“Although Viz has changed over the years, the focus hasn’t. Even when we were a much smaller company, the goal was always to bring manga to a mass audience as much as possible, replicating the readership in Japan with the one in America. I don’t know if that differentiates us from the other [manga publishers], but we have not wavered in our core mission. It’s made our business strategy straightforward. We want to bring to the U.S. a library of manga that is created for every walk of life.”
They still have a ways to go, what with the heavy focus on shônen and shôjo, but it’s nice to see that they have ambitions beyond that. It would make me happy if they accelerated up the timeline, but if they did, they probably wouldn’t be Viz.
Also, those preview pages from Christian Slade’s Korgi (Top Shelf) are absolutely breathtaking.
by David Welsh
Aside from some books that were scheduled to arrive last week but took some extra time to make it over the Appalachians or across the Monongahela or whatever, it’s a relatively manageable week on the ComicList.
The ranks (and variety) of manga princesses continue to swell, this time with Sekihiko Inui’s Murder Princess from Broccoli. I wasn’t crazy about what I’ve read of Inui’s Comic Party (Tokyopop), but the promise of “the strongest and most violent princess in the history of the kingdom” is kind of tempting. She’ll smash that glass slipper against the bar and gut you like a trout with the pointy heel!
Welcome to Tranquility (DC – Wildstorm) gets another opportunity to move off the bubble with its fifth issue. It’s one of those books where everything just about coheres but doesn’t quite, but I’m still intrigued enough by the premise and Gail Simone’s storytelling to stick around for a bit.
The third issue of Maintenance (Oni Press) promises more warped workplace comedy from Jim Massey and Robbi Rodriguez. Not to minimize the potential charms of this week’s arrival, but I’ve heard rumors that the fourth issue features zombie kitten attacks. Perhaps it’s wise that they’re holding off on that, as it will be hard to top.
by David Welsh
This week’s Flipped is up, in which I put on my secret shopper disguise and compare prices and shipping rates at some different on-line manga retailers. Actually, my secret shopper disguise consisted of pajamas. If it makes the reading more interesting to imagine me in sunglasses, a blond wig and a disfigured nasal prosthetic, don’t let me stop you.
I’m just glad I didn’t wind up carelessly ordering the same books over and over.
by David Welsh
At MangaCast, Ed Chavez looks at the imminent arrival of josei-centric manga publisher Aurora and wonders:
“Why? Well, honestly who has been successful with josei. Whether you call it ladies or shoujo or Passion Fruit or whatever this has not hit its audience in the US. Yen Press is going to give it a shot (we will talk about that later) but what makes Aurora unique is that their parent company Ohzora is basically a josei manga publisher.”
At The Beat, Heidi MacDonald shares Chavez’s skepticism on the category’s track record:
“Josei manga is the long-lost ‘missing link’ between ‘Harlequin romance comics’ and ‘Sex in the CIty comics’ for women. Understandably, the genre has had little success in the US, despite entries by such important manga-ka as Erica Sakurazawa and Moyocco Anno.”
I’m a little puzzled by the level of wariness. Nobody’s really made a concerted effort to focus on josei lately. It’s not like there’s a graveyard filled with the corpses of failed initiatives, and given the paucity of josei in print, it’s hard for me to be anything but enthusiastic at the prospect. Tokyopop’s done well with Tramps Like Us, and people greeted Antique Bakery with great enthusiasm (though that probably owed more to Fumi Yoshinaga’s reputation in yaoi).
It’s largely unexplored territory, and I’ve been waiting for someone to really give it a go, so I’m going to side with Dirk Deppey’s somewhat more optimistic appraisal in today’s Journalista entry:
“At this point, readers from those days [when Tokyopop tried unsuccessfully to sell the josei work of Erica Sakurazawa during the period when shôjo was still finding its footing — dpw] are starting to hit college-age, and might very well provide something resembling a stable market from which to grow over the long term.”
I’d add to that the often-repeated notion that kids, and girls in particular, read upwards of what’s targeted at their age group. I think it’s high time that someone started thinking about what the audience for shôjo might be looking to read next and actually start providing it, instead of ceding readers to other entertainments that might address their interests and attitudes more directly.
Deppey goes on to wonder if a replication of the Cartoon Network Effect might be helpful in heralding josei’s commercial arrival:
“I suspect that you won’t see the sort of stampede effect that other manga demographics have experienced until a good anime geared toward adult women shows up on afternoon/evening television and pushes readers toward an equally good manga series — Ai Yazawa’s Nana, Chika Umino’s Honey and Clover and Moyoco Anno’s Hataraki Man would each fit the bill nicely — but we shall see.”
It certainly couldn’t hurt. I don’t expect Oxygen or WE or Lifetime to announce a programming block any time soon, but stranger things have happened.
by David Welsh
I’m back from a quick trip to visit family in Columbus, and I just have to say (again) how great The Laughing Ogre is. It has such a terrific selection of everything — manga, super-heroes, art comics, comics for kids and young adults, comic-strip collections, and everything else — that it takes a great deal of restraint to escape without spending too much. It’s clean, airy, organized well, and has a really helpful staff.
And I finally tracked down a copy of the third volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service! And they had copies of the first two volumes on the shelf! I think this will be my new criteria for what constitutes a good comic shop. Well, one of them, at least.
by David Welsh
I usually try and do a run-down of what catches my eye in the latest issue of Diamond’s Previews, and I’ll get to that at some point, but I’ve been stopped cold by the preview pages of Masashi Tanaka’s Gon (CMX). That is some crazy gorgeous illustration going on, even beyond the pure pleasure of seeing a tiny dinosaur riding on the back of a vicious lion as it hunts a wildebeest.
I’m sure CMX will make some preview pages available on-line, because they’d be crazy not to. Here’s some background on Gon’s U.S. publishing history that ICv2 ran about a month ago. At the Casterman site, there are preview pages from each of the eight volumes they’ve published. Last Gasp has some of the Casterman editions available at its on-line store.
Prepare yourselves to be sick of me obsessing over Gon.
by David Welsh
I was glad to see this announcement at Comics Worth Reading about an upcoming collection of Tyler Page’s Nothing Better. It started as a self-published pamphlet, then moved to a web-to-print model. After a somewhat mixed reaction to the first issue, the story grew on me, but the promise of an eventual collection and a preference for comics I can hold kept me from sampling new chapters on-line. Now, Page is looking for pre-orders for a volume collecting the first seven chapters. I’ll be ordering one, and I hope the plan works out.
CWR also reminds me of another ill-fated floppy made good, Elk’s Run, by Joshua Hale Falkov and Noel Tuazon. It started out self-published, got picked up by short-lived Speakeasy, and, after Speakeasy’s implosion, seemed like it might be consigned to unfinished comics limbo until it got picked up for collected release by Random House’s Villard imprint. This is one of those books where I really wanted to know what happened next, so I’m looking forward to the arrival of the trade paperback.
Now, when am I going to see a new issue of Lackluster World from Eric Adams?
Updated with the happy answer: “Lackluster World #4 goes to the printer next week and will debut at SPACE on April 21 &22.”