The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Times-liness

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At No Flying, No Tights, Jen ponders censorship and stereotypes evident in some recent coverage of comics and librarians. Particularly interesting are thoughts on a recent piece in The New York Times about Susan Patron’s The High Power of Lucky, an award-winning novel for young adults with the word “scrotum” on the first page. I particularly like Jen’s sum-up:

“Yet librarians doom themselves when they base their collection decisions on fear… I’m more worried that the people who flip out over a single word will make it impossible for librarians to buy anything that pushes the envelope…what would they say if they knew I put Same-Cell Organism in my library’s young adult collection?”

Edited: The original Times article on the controversy is here (and thanks to Dave Carter for sending the link), and there are several letters to the editor available for perusal.

At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon takes a comics-centric approach to another Times topic, discussing books you haven’t yet read:

“In comics, saying you haven’t caught up with something yet has the regular advantage of letting the person who just spoke know that what they brought up is of interest, and the added advantage of flattering the art form in terms of there being so many things out there to explore.”

And if you haven’t had enough linkblogging from me, I basically devote all of this week’s Flipped to it, doing a drive-by of some recent events in the manga realm.

Target locked

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It’s not easy identifying a target audience, is it? Be too specific and you run the risk of excluding people outside of your base or even alienating the base by reducing them to a stereotype.

Here’s DC’s Karen Berger at the “Capturing the Female Reader” panel at the New York Comic Con:

“Berger said Minx was being positioned ‘to the left of manga and to the right of YA’ and called Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis a ‘watershed book’ for young female comics readers. She also cited Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series and described the ideal Minx reader as a girl who is not interested in young adult novels that are either overly girlie or guy-centric, ‘a smart girl interested in different stuff.’”

So, Minx is the graphic novel line for non-conformist centrists? I’ve heard worse.

(If you’re looking for the passage on the panel, it’s right next to the picture of the girl with the whip and the one in the belly shirt.)

Faking it

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The question of how comics fans can get their wives and girlfriends to share their interest has come up again recently, but what about those poor targets of hobby evangelism? Why doesn’t anyone offer any strategic advice to guide their responses to this unsolicited knock at the door from believers bearing pamphlets? What should they do when the men in their lives give them a Fables trade for their three-month anniversary?

Perhaps the answer will come from France. A Parisian literature professor has developed a methodology that might help: just pretend you’re better-read than you really are.

The New York Times talks with Pierre Bayard (free registration required) about his not-yet-available-in-English primer, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read?

“Domestic life is another potentially hazardous zone. People often want their spouses and partners to share their love of a particular book. And when this happens, Mr. Bayard said, they can both inhabit a ‘secret universe.’ But if only one has read the book, silent empathy may offer the best way out.”

From the stack: Aya

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My best memories of high school are populated by people like the title character of Aya (Drawn & Quarterly): smart, strong-willed young women with a healthy skepticism of the more conventional obsessions of the people around them. Consequently, I find Aya enormously likable, even if the book that bears her name is kind of a trifle.

In spite of her many charms, Aya is just too sensible to get into the kind of mischief that can really drive a narrative. That’s good and bad – good because her character is admirable and endearing from beginning to end, and bad because she ends up being incidental to the action.

Fortunately, she’s surrounded by people who don’t share her grounded quality. Her best friends Adjoua and Bintou are as boy-crazy and fashion-forward as Aya is level-headed, and they’re surrounded by suitors who are just as dedicated to living in the moment. Their flirtations are marked by a recognizable mixture of playfulness and cynicism that can be very funny, though it’s hard to get too invested in any of the potential outcomes.

Aya is a conscientious objector in the battle of the sexes. She’ll reluctantly help her friends out of a jam, but she’s too ambitious to waste much time or consideration on the slackers in her circle. Her indifference marks her as an oddity in the 1970s Ivory Coast society portrayed here; almost everyone just expects her to marry, and she’s routinely criticized for being too studious when there are boys to date and style to maintain.

She generally resists the urge to return the criticism in kind, though illustrator Clément Oubrerie gives her ample hooded glances and rolling of the eyes. And writer Marguerite Abouet smartly resists the urge to make her a paragon. When Aya’s patience runs too thin, she delivers common sense with blistering directness, as in a scene where she subjects herself to a decoy date on a friend’s behalf.

But for my taste, there’s not enough of her. There are charms in watching the foibles of decent but flawed people look for love (or just fun) in all the wrong places, but Aya is so captivating that she makes the rest of the crowd seem trivial by comparison. It’s not the worst flaw a story can suffer, but it makes me want to read a story that’s actually about Aya to a greater degree than the one I’ve actually got in my hands.

It’s very likable, though. Abouet’s writing combines sharp observation and generous spirit, and I’d love to see more of her stories. Oubrerie is a talented illustrator, matching Abouet’s script note for note and mining plenty of comedy and warmth out of familiar scenarios.

So, how about a sequel? Aya did say she wants to be a doctor.

Low blow

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It seems to me that the marketing meme of positioning manga as an empty-calorie gateway for “real comics” is getting a little out of control. It’s like manga is nothing but mashed peas or strained apricots, perfectly fine until you have all of your teeth and can start enjoying solids, but nothing a person of discernment would ever favor, provided they knew what else was out there.

The latest example comes from a surprising source. Towards the end of the piece on the resurgence of comics for kids in this week’s PWCW, there’s a quote from First Second’s Mark Siegel that really annoyed me:

“Manga indeed remains a force to be reckoned with, but if fans find themselves wanting something more substantial, the new wave of titles will be waiting for them. Siegel said the design aesthetic and quality control at First Second is consciously aimed at rising above the quality bar set by manga. ‘We want children in the young section of graphic novels to be able to reach for something that isn’t just junk food,’ he said. ‘A lot of the manga is just that, and it does very well, but it’s disposable. Our books are meant to be for keeps.’”

In terms of production quality, yes, First Second sets a very high standard, superior to the average manga paperback. But is that all Siegel is talking about here?

I hope so, because in the imprint’s relatively short history, Siegel has managed to concentrate of the quality of First Second’s output without denigrating the output of other publishers, even by implication. I admired that position, because I don’t generally find that bashing the competition says anything constructive about the basher’s own product. (I remember being sorely and similarly annoyed by a Progresso campaign that focused entirely on the deficiencies of Campbell’s, even though I generally preferred the former when spending my canned-soup dollars.)

I’m not immune to the behavior, obviously, because I do have very clear preferences in what I like to read (which includes both manga and a lot of books published by First Second). It’s natural to look at the proverbial eighty-pound gorilla and be tempted to kick it in some sensitive spot. Hell, one of my favorite songs from Avenue Q is “Schadenfreude.”

But it seems really counterproductive to insult the very audience you’re trying to lure.

World travel Wednesday

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I don’t know why Drawn & Quarterly’s Aya is showing up in West Virginia today when it doesn’t seem to be on Diamond’s shipping list for this week. All I know is that it was listed in the local shop’s “What’s due Wednesday” e-mail, and that this makes me very happy.

This book alone would make the week a memorable one, but there’s also the debut of Hope Larson’s Tulip Tree Press via Rebecca Kratz’s House of Sugar, a thoughtful and funny collection of strips.

Fantagraphics unveils its repackaged Love and Rockets books, Heartbreak Soup and Maggie the Mechanic. I’ll probably add them into my next Amazon order instead of picking them up at the shop, but I’m glad that the publisher has provided a clear, affordable, portable entry point for the material.

I no longer know what from Viz is arriving when in my neck of the woods. The fifth volume of Nana still hasn’t shown up, and I’m starting to twitch. I did get a review copy of The Drifting Classroom vol. 4 from the publisher. JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!

That month of the time again

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The new edition of Previews doesn’t arrive in comic shops until tomorrow, but you can get a look at the Manga Month 2007 Checklist here.

And what will you see when you get there? Pretty much everything manga-related that’s shipping, but condensed into a nice, two-page PDF. Look closely and you’ll see that Last Gasp will be striking again, with a re-release of Junko Mizuno: Pure Trance.

January manga numbers

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The January graphic novel sales figures are in at ICv2. Twenty-four manga titles made the top 100, with the highest (Death Note vol. 9) placing at #15.

1 (15) DEATH NOTE VOL 9 TP (VIZ)
2 (16) FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST VOL 11 TP (VIZ)
3 (25) TRIGUN MAXIMUM VOL 11 TP (DAR)
4 (27) BLADE O/T IMMORTAL SHORTCUT VOL 16 TP (MR) (DAR)
5 (31) TSUBASA VOL 12 GN (RAN)
6 (37) INU YASHA VOL 28 TP (VIZ)
7 (38) KARE KANO VOL 21 GN (Of 21) (TKP)
8 (44) BATTLE CLUB VOL 3 GN (Of 4) (MR) (TKP)
9 (49) AI YORI AOSHI VOL 15 GN (Of 17) (MR) (TKP)
10 (55) ONE PIECE VOL 13 TP (VIZ)
11 (67) GTO EARLY YEARS SHONAN JUNAI GUMI VOL 3 GN (Of 15) (MR) (TKP)
12 (69) OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB VOL 8 TP (VIZ)
13 (75) SAMURAI DEEPER KYO VOL 21 GN (Of 38) (MR) (TKP)
14 (76) SHAMAN WARRIOR VOL 1 TP (DAR)
15 (77) OUR KINGDOM VOL 5 GN (MR) (DIG)
16 (80) VAMPIRE KNIGHT VOL 1 TP (VIZ)
17 (85) TENJHO TENGE VOL 11 (DC)
18 (87) SHAMAN KING VOL 11 TP (VIZ)
19 (88) SEVEN GN (MR) (DIG)
20 (89) GORGEOUS CARAT VOL 4 GN (Of 4) (MR) (TKP)
21 (91) RIN VOL 2 GN (MR) (DIG)
22 (92) FLOWER O/LIFE VOL 1 GN (MR) (DIG)
23 (95) BLACK CAT VOL 6 TP (VIZ)
24 (99) WELCOME TO NHK VOL 2 GN (Of 5) (MR) (TKP)

Death Note actually managed to pass anime-fueled, BookScan chart-topper Fullmetal Alchemist (vol. 11), though both showed increases in orders. In November, Death Note vol. 8 scored 3,736 orders compared to January’s 3,958. Fullmetal’s November figure of 3,849 bumped up slightly to 3,915 in January.

Viz led in terms of the number of entries with eight, followed by Tokyopop with seven, one of which came from Blu. Digital Manga (or more specifically Juné) followed with four, Dark Horse had three, and Del Rey and CMX both had one.

A couple of interesting debuts made the list: Dark Horse’s Shaman Warrior, one of its new manhwa titles, took 14th place; Vampire Knight, a new Shojo Beat offering from Viz, came in at 16th. The eighth volume of Ouran High School Host Club was the leading Shojo Beat title at 12th place in its first placement on the chart.

Elementary

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Another reason to bookmark Kevin Melrose’s Comics, Covered: he does interviews, this time with versatile comics creator Andi Watson. Watson’s “Princess at Midnight” was one of the highlights of The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, and Paris was one of my favorite comics of last year. And because I’ll take any opportunity to praise Paris artist Simon Gane, I’ll pull this quote from Watson:

“I think Simon was hoping to get away from the detail-oriented stuff he’d done before but I kept throwing the full-pagers at him because he does them so well, the research and attention to detail, the way he’ll dress a set, dress the characters and then have them interact, gush, gush, gush. So it’s fulfilling, but in a different way. It’s like Christmas every time I get pages in from someone like Simon. I can’t wait to open up all the files and see what amazing work he’s done.

“It’s also kind of depressing as an artist because you know you’re not as good.”

Watson goes on to note that a collection of Paris is due out from Slave Labor in July, complete with new illustrations from Gane. I don’t usually buy collections of comics I already own, but I’m sorely tempted.

Endocritiquery

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I’ve really been enjoying Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! (Dark Horse), though I don’t think the most recent volume is one of the strongest in the series. It detours from the larger narrative into worthy but very familiar territory. (It seems that prostitution can be a dangerous profession, especially when drug addiction is thrown into the mix.) It’s executed well, and by the end, things seem to be moving back into the story’s larger context, so I can’t complain all that much.

Still, it was nice to have the first volume of Endo’s Tanpenshu (also from Dark Horse) lying around to provide some examples of the creator at his best. It also provided fodder for half of this week’s Flipped. The other half is spent in probably pointless meditation on the ICv2 Guide #39 which, it must be noted, is created for comics retailers and not nerdy pseudo-pundits with laminated membership cards in Team Manga.

Anyway, back to Tanpenshu. I’m not the only one contemplating its many wonders. Greg McElhatton at Read About Comics and Dave Ferraro at Comics-and-More have reviewed it as well.