The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Manga bestsellers

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Once again, Publishers Weekly Comics Week hasn’t come up with anything to say about the manga entries on its monthly Comics Bestsellers list, and since I don’t have anything better to do…

1. Bleach, Volume 17. Tite Kubo. Viz Media, $7.99 ISBN 978-1421510415. The “Cartoon Network Effect” reasserts itself, placing this supernatural adventure series at the top of the list. Bleach was well into its run and had built a solid audience by the time its anime adaptation debuted on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block, but the extra exposure has given it an extra bump.

2. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Volume 2. Shiro Amano. Tokyopop, $9.99 ISBN 978-1598166385. With tie-ins to both Disney characters and a popular video game franchise on its side, it’s not surprising to see Kingdom Hearts properties moving extremely well.

3. Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 3. Yuu Watase. Viz Media, $8.99 ISBN 978-1421510033. Watase has earned reader (and retailer) loyalty with hits like Ceres: Celestial Legend and Fushigi Yûgi. While she hasn’t scaled the sales heights of Natsuki (Fruits Basket) Takaya, Watase is right near the top of the list of commercially successful shôjo manga-ka.

4. Tsubasa, Volume 12. CLAMP. Del Rey, $10.95 ISBN 978-0345485328. Along the same lines, there’s generally little risk in licensing a CLAMP title, particularly when it’s a sequel to a perennially popular work like Cardcaptor Sakura.

6. Loveless, Volume 4. Yun Kouga. Tokyopop, $9.99 ISBN 978-1598162240. The highest-ranked boys’ love title for March is also one of the bestselling boys’ love titles period. While the branding a boys’-love or yaoi imprint generally results in strong comic-shop sales, Loveless has succeeded without any marker, both in comic shops and bookstores.

8. Buso Renkin!, Volume 4. Nobuhiro Watsuki. Viz Media, $7.99 ISBN 978-1421508405. The recent conclusion of Watsuki’s Rurouni Kenshin apparently hasn’t quelled appetites for Watsuki’s work.

9. Full Metal Alchemist, Volume 11. Hiromu Arakawa. Viz Media, $9.99 978-1421508382. The placement of this mega-hit manga initially seems surprisingly low until you realize that it ranked second among last month’s bestsellers. The sales powerhouse is cited as one of the chief agents in the demise of Monthly Shonen Jump, having driven sales of Square Enix’s rival anthology, and it promises to be an evergreen seller here.

The shipping news

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It promises to be another crowded Wednesday of comics arrivals.

The second issue of Jeff Smith’s Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil arrives from DC, as does the fifth issue of the second volume of Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting from Fantagraphics. Part of me feels like both of these would read better in collection, but that part is shouted down by the heftier portion that doesn’t want to wait.

I enjoyed reading the back and forth between comics retailer Alex Cox and Tom Spurgeon over at The Comics Reporter on the Shazam book’s appeal to young attendees of the New York Comic Con, and young readers in general, as it touches on a lot of questions that have been floating through my head. The first involved whether or not the per-issue cost of the series would be prohibitive for younger readers. The second centered on what quantity of casual readers made it into NYCC given the fact that tickets for some days sold out before the event began. (It’s probably incorrect, but I tend to place kids in the category of casual readers, in spite of how obsessed I was with comics from about age six and up. Maybe I just hope I was abnormal at that age and that other people have a healthier range of interests.)

Anyway, back to the ComicList.

The second-to-last volume of Chigusa Kawai’s subtle and surprising La Esperança ships via Juné. Maybe someone will hold hands with someone else in a non-platonic fashion this time around? It probably won’t matter to me if they don’t.

Viz has tons of stuff set to arrive. The battle of the stylists continues in the third volume of Beauty Pop. Suspense among obsessive sales figure watchers mounts as both vol. 10 of Death Note and vol. 13 of Naruto arrive on the same day. Which will emerge victorious in Diamond’s graphic novel sales for March? The first volume of The Gentlemen’s Alliance ┼ brings one of the weirdest casts I’ve ever seen in a shôjo manga set in a high school, which I find to be an unquestionably good thing.

Last and perhaps least from Viz is the fourth volume of Yakitate!! Japan. Don’t get me wrong. I like it in the way I like most quirky, young-men-with-a-dream shônen that has perhaps a bit more fan service than I like. But I’m starting to wonder if the bread-baking is making me overlook the fact that it’s… kind of average. (For those of you who’d like a shot at securing all four volumes in one easy shot, ChunHyang has thrown them all into an auction lot, along with some other tempting combinations.)

Weekend update

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Barnes & Noble was mobbed yesterday, which I found strangely reassuring. I don’t like wading through crowds to get to the cash register, but I do like to see people buying books, and they were buying lots of them. There were no children sprawled on the floor in the manga section; they were all clustered over in the game guides.

And those new collections of the Love & Rockets stories were there, and they are indeed quite handsome and a crazy value at $14.95. I went with Heartbreak Soup to start. I thought about getting both, but To Terra… beckoned.

We watched For Your Consideration yesterday. I always like Christopher Guest’s movies, and this one was no exception, but I’m glad we waited for it to come out on DVD instead of seeing it in a movie theatre. It just didn’t seem up to the standard of the others. The only really uproarious parts came from Jane Lynch playing, as near as I could figure, the reanimated corpse of Mary Hart. She was awesome.

And I’ve really got to break the habit of finding an author I really like and obsessively reading everything they’ve written to date. I should pace myself, or I’ll quickly run out of Nevada Barr novels to read. But they’re grisly mysteries set in national parks with a surly but likable woman of a certain age as protagonist! How can I resist? Ill Wind has the unfortunate side effect of making me want to be in the Southwest a whole lot.

Quick manga links

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At MangaBlog, Brigid chats with Yen Press guru Kurt Hassler about the imprint’s possible manga magazine and other schemes so crazy they just might work.

TangognaT is celebrating the fourth anniversary of her blog by giving away some awesome books.

The Beat points to T. Campbell’s sum-up of the webcomics panel at the New York Comic Con, with plenty of focus on Netcomics and its business model. The recently announced Netcomics/Yaoi Press partnership is one of the things that has (not safe for work) Simon Jones wondering if digital delivery’s time has finally come.

Boy, I categorized the hell out of this one, didn’t I? Fear my flagrant abuse of WordPress functionalities!

Mayo clinic

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From time to time, I’ve wondered what the food desk at The New York Times thinks of the celebrity chefs of The Food Network.

Mario Batali could probably open a hot dog stand and get at least two stars, but he seems to have moved out of the network’s harsher glare. I don’t know if they’re still producing new episodes of Molto Mario or not, though he is an Iron Chef. Nigella Lawson used to contribute a delightful column to the Times food pages, and her relationship to the network seems limited to rebroadcasts of her charming BBC programs. (I can’t see her taking a gig as a guest judge on Food Network Showdown: Puddings!)

The Times takes the occasion of the imminent publication of Paula Deen’s autobiography to fry her up in a stick of butter. (Free registration may be required.)

“‘Now I’m done fightin’ and I’m done hidin’,’ she said last week, gazing raptly into a mound of ham salad as if it might contain an offer to be a guest host on ‘The View.’”

The whole article is characterized by bemused, horrified admiration. If you’ve seen Deen flailing her grandchild at you from the cover of her lifestyle magazine, you can’t help but sympathize with writer Julia Moskin’s perspective.

And Deen isn’t the only target of Moskin’s questionably affectionate contempt:

“Rachael Ray, who is hardly known for hermit-like tendencies, conducted her 2005 wedding off-camera; not so Ms. Deen, who married for the second time in 2004 with a Food Network crew filming every moment from bridal shower to prenuptial spray tan.”

“Like her Food Network colleague Sandra Lee, Ms. Deen is an unabashed fan of cake mix and instant pudding.”

I admit to liking Deen initially, before The Food Network machine decided that, if a little Paula was good, a lot of Paula was better. But she has become the queen of the over-share, going so far beyond merely communicating a culinary technique that it’s hard to remember anything she’s actually cooked.

At the same time, Deen seems like the celebrity chef least likely to be bothered by this kind of derision. Heck, she could probably make a special out of it.

Love, Weekly

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Entertainment Weekly extended some warm fuzzies to comics in its March 2 issue. It’s a particularly good day for Eric Wright and Tokyopop; My Dead Girlfriend made “The Must List.” (Dear EW: Everyone knows what Paul Reubens looks like. Next time, run a cover shot of the just-released graphic novel so people know what to look for at the bookstore.)

While I think Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra… (Vertical) deserves at least an A- instead of a B+, and I think EW miffed a plot point, it’s nice to see the book get some praise from such a mainstream source.

Other blurbs:

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home: A-
  • Scalped: B
  • The Living and the Dead: B+

    • Elephantine

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    When people talk about comics, they can mean a lot of different things. They can be referring to super-heroes or manga or Art Spiegelman or Doonesbury or webcomics or any of a seemingly limitless list of niches or combinations of niches. Heck, talking about manga alone doesn’t guarantee any common frame of reference. They could be talking about any one or more of a number of patches within the landscape of that term.

    So when I read that much–discussed item from the Mercury-News, I just assumed that it was missing some key modifiers. Insert “super-hero” before “comics” or “published by Marvel and DC” after, and it holds up a lot better.

    Of course, mentally inserting those modifiers doesn’t guarantee you’ll buy the article’s central argument – that the audience for super-hero comics is graying and that the comics themselves are actively unfriendly to younger readers. The American Library Association didn’t have any trouble finding items from Marvel and DC’s catalogs to recommend to younger readers, and none of their recommendations bore the “Marvel Adventures” or “Johnny DC” stamp. Whether that suggests kids read up or that Marvel and DC’s comics themselves aren’t all that mature in spite of the trappings of some of their content is another debate entirely.

    Whenever one of these discussions comes up, I’m always reminded of this parable, but especially so in this case because of J.K. Parkin at Blog@Newsarama. (Again, argument could ensue over the comparison. Who wants to be the snake-like tail or the leathery hide when you could be the big, floppy ears or the oh-so-useful trunk or the big, stompy feet?) It’s bound to rankle when someone purports to be talking about comics in general while maintaining a death grip on only one of its body parts, whether it’s this article’s conflations or a publisher blithely suggesting that no one has effectively targeted the young female demographic or what have you.

    It doesn’t mean the average reader has to interest themselves in the whole elephant. But placing the parts in context is always nice, even if you aren’t trying to say anything about the whole.

    (Edited to correct a misattribution in one of the links.)

    Mark your calendars

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    It’s Manga Month again in Diamond’s Previews, and while that’s not all the volume has to offer, there’s plenty of noteworthy new stuff from all over.

    Del Rey debuts the first volume of Ai Morinaga’s My Heavenly Hockey Club. I keep hoping someone will pick up the rest of Your and My Secret, which vanished after one volume from ADV. Maybe this will provide a satisfying, substitute Morinaga fix. (Page 269.)

    None of this month’s listings jump out at me, but it’s really nice to see Drama Queen’s offerings on the pages of Previews. (Page 288.)

    The Comics Journal #284 (Fantagraphics) will include an interview with Gene (American Born Chinese) Yang, and interviews with Yang are always worth reading. (Page 292.)

    :01 First Second unveils their spring season highlight (for me, at least): Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert’s The Professor’s Daughter, a Victorian romance between a young lady and a mummy. (Page 294.)

    I know printing money actually involves specialized plates and paper with cloth fiber and patent-protected inks, but it seems like there could be a variation involving delicately handsome priests at war with an army of zombies. Go! Comi will find out (as will we all) when they release the first volume of Toma Maeda’s Black Sun, Silver Moon. (Page 298.)

    Last Gasp promises “catfights, alien safari adventures, evil experiments, and a girl who dreams of becoming a pop idol singer” in its re-release of Junko Mizuno’s Pure Trance. Since its Mizuno, I’m sure that description doesn’t even begin to describe the adorable, revolting weirdness. (Page 313.)

    Mike Carey’s work as a comics writer is hit and miss for me. I’ve loved some of it, and found other stories to be pretty tedious. One of my favorite examples is My Faith in Frankie (Vertigo), illustrated by Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel. So I’m inclined to give the creative team’s Re-Gifters (Minx) a try. (Page 109.)

    Pantheon releases a soft-cover version of Joann Sfar’s sublime The Rabbi’s Cat. This was my first exposure to Sfar’s work, and I’ve loved it ever since. And in some cultures, the release of a soft-cover means a hard-cover volume of new material might be on the way, which would make me deliriously happy. (Page 324.)

    The Tokyopop-HarperCollins collaboration bears fruit with the release of Meg Cabot’s Avalon High: Coronation Vol. 1: The Merlin Prophecy. The solicitation doesn’t include an illustrator credit, which is an unfortunate slip, and neither does the publisher’s web site. Maybe Cabot drew it herself? (Page 333.)

    I’ve been hoping to see more work from Yuji Iwahara since CMX published Chikyu Misaki. Tokyopop comes through with Iwahara’s King of Thorn. (Page 335.)

    Top Shelf offered some all-ages delights last month, which made me happy, and presents a new (I think?) volume of work from Renée (The Ticking) French. Micrographica is a collection of French’s online strip of the same name and offers “pure weirdness.” I don’t doubt it will deliver in a lovely, haunting way. (Page 352.)

    Vertical rolls out another classic from Osamu Tezuka, Apollo’s Song, displaying the God of Manga’s “more literate and adult side.” For readers wanting something a little more contemporary, there’s Aranzi Aronzo’s Aranzi Machine Gun, featuring plush mascots on a tear. How can I choose? Why should I? (Page 355.)

    I can’t read every series about people who see dead people. I just can’t. I wouldn’t have any money left for food. But Viz ignores my attempts at restraint by offering Chika Shiomi’s Yurarara in its Shojo Beat line. Shiomi is enjoying quite the day in the licensed sun, with Night of the Beasts (Go! Comi) and Canon (CMX) in circulation. (Page 372.)

    And here’s an oddity, but an intriguing one: edu-manga from Singapore. YoungJin Singapore PTE LTD (you’ll forgive me if I hold off on adding a category) releases manga biographies of Einstein and Gandhi and adaptations of Little Women and Treasure Island. (Page 375.)

    Shipping, shopping

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    There’s ample interesting reading arriving via Diamond this week, from classics to award-winners to fresh installments of favorites.

    I got Aya (Drawn & Quarterly) last week and reviewed it here. It’s got charm to spare, and I’m glad to hear (via Jog) that a sequel has already been published in France.

    Vertical unleashes the first volume of its translation of Keiko Takemiya’s science-fiction classic To Terra… I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read so far, and I can’t wait to see the finished product.

    New volumes of two of my favorite Del Rey series arrive: the fifth of quirky romantic comedy Love Roma and the fourth of intelligent, character-driven sci-fi ES: Eternal Sabbath.

    The demented scholars at Evil Twin keep coming up with great names for installments in their Action Philosophers series. Number eight answers to Senseless Violence Spectacular.

    And The Comics Journal delivers its “Best of 2006” edition, which is always worth a look.