I haven’t made it very far into the latest volume of Monster (Viz – Signature), but I’m already kind of loving it. Saintly Tenma’s former fiancé is swanning around in lingerie, snarling at underlings in a way that would make Donna Mills and Joan Collins weep with pride if they weren’t wearing two pounds of make-up on each eye.

“You watch too many soaps,” she sneers at a man she’s playing. So does Naoki Urasawa, if we’re going to be entirely honest about it. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing by any means, because Monster is good, trashy fun.

I had a little flash of defensiveness when Dave Intermittent described Ian McEwan’s novels as “well-written trash,” but the more I think about it, the more I realize he’s right. Listening to McEwan’s Saturday during recent long drives was the nail in the coffin.

It’s taken me a while to realize that McEwan’s pet theme – punishing well-to-do intellectuals for being too self-absorbed – is one that I find really irritating. The construction of his novels is almost always flawless (though Saturday isn’t), and the characters are unusually sympathetic for this genre. (I hated the characters in The Corrections so much that I abandoned the book about a third of the way in.)

But he is capable of writing really entertaining, artful trash, so I’m sure I’ll read more of his books. I’ll just space them out.

(And speaking of entertaining trash, I really thought Jeffrey should have won the latest challenge on Project Runway. I can’t stand him, but that dress was amazing.)

One of the more unsavory aspects of my job is annual attendance at the state fair to schmooze and (hopefully) recruit students. It’s kind of a long haul, to be honest, sitting in a tent for however many days and trying not to laugh at the mullets, which are on display in shocking number and variety. (I find the she-mullet, or demi-poodle, to be the most disturbing. Your mileage may vary.) You also have to keep yourself from leaping up in outrage when some parent says something along the lines of “You ain’t never goin’ to no college anyways.”

So I always reward myself with a trip to one of the better restaurants in the area and eat lots and drink wine and generally relax with a book, because they know how to deal with single patrons and not make them feel like they’ve got some kind of communicable virus that might infect the other happy diners with despair. The book is key, because it indicates seriousness of purpose, that you don’t feel like being rushed, and that you’re capable of entertaining yourself without a companion.

This year I forgot the book. Never again.

There was another single diner seated near me, and he couldn’t have been nicer, but he obviously had heard the despair virus rumor, so he kept trying to engage me in conversation. And, to be honest, the whole trip down here has been about cheerfully engaging strangers in conversation, which is not my best event under any circumstances, so I wasn’t in a rush to contaminate my reward dinner with more of the same.

But what am I supposed to do? Be some icy bastard with this guy who’s really friendly and has the best of intentions? It’s not like I’m on-line, for pity’s sake.

So chat I did, but he had this weird timing, in that he’d ask a question right when I was biting into something, and he’d be really loud and jovial, and it would startle me, so I bit my tongue about four times. I bit my tongue really, really hard, and it definitely affected the flavor or my dinner choices.

Never forget the book.

I’m really enjoying Kevin Melrose and Stacie Ponder’s delightful web-comic, Fenton and Fenton, Boy Detectives, over at Blog@Newsarama. It’s like a tipsy Encyclopedia Brown story with lots of cute gags. I also really love Ponder’s stick-figure character designs and great facial expressions. And I think “Creepies!” will become the new “Jinkies!”

Since I was a big fan of mystery series as a kid (and still am now), I’m predisposed to like anything that makes an affectionate hash of them. My favorites of this type are by Mabel Maney, who did tone-perfect takes on teen detectives like Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys, with the slight variation that everyone in the stories is gay.

The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse, The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend, and A Ghost in the Closet are all cheerful, revisionist fun. They stick very closely to the structure and style of the originals (as I remember them), taking their subtext to its glorious conclusion.

I should dig them out and re-read them during this week’s travel for work, but I got a big stack of books at the library yesterday. (I’d hoped to have an Amazon order on hand, but I’m too cheap to pass on the super-saver shipping, so they’ll be waiting for me when I get back.)

One of the library choices is a Terry Pratchett (Going Postal), and I hadn’t really noticed that he’s published mostly with HarperCollins. Dorian mentioned that there had been some comics adaptations of Pratchett’s work before, but the HC/Tokyopop deal seems like a perfect opportunity for a new round. (I’ve stuck entirely with his Discworld books, but I should really give his young adult and children’s books a look.)

Pratchett’s books would probably be tough to translate, as they’ve got more jokes per page than most comic novels have per chapter. But even if only a fraction of the comedy made the cut, they’d still be pretty delightful.

And on the subject of library books, does anyone else have a cat who’s obsessed with them? One of mine is, and while she finds pretty much any reading material worthy of examination (including a totally perplexing hatred of bookmarks), nothing draws her attention as much as books from the library. Maybe it’s because they smell like other people?

There’s movement among noted Bleach fans, and I’ve updated the sidebar to reflect it.

Greg McElhatton has started a new site, Read About Comics, which imports a ton of his reviews from iComics. I like the new site’s layout a lot.

John Jakala, creator of the late, great Grotesque Anatomy (still one of the best blog names ever) and contributor at The Low Road, has started another blog, Sporadic Sequential. I believe the appropriate sentiment for this situation is, “Yay!”

I don’t see any indication that Robin Brenner is a Bleach fan, but there are a lot of graphic novels out there, and Brenner does a great job covering the ones that are good reads for teens and kids at the No Flying, No Tights family of sites.

Like David Taylor, I keep hoping for a different manga title to surge to dominance. It’s not that I have anything against Naruto, but it’s not the only game in town. Looking at MangaCast’s latest report of sales rankings in Japan, maybe there’s hope that Bleach can at least join Naruto in the hit parade? (Both David and John Jakala are big Bleach fans, so it’s well past time for me to give the book a look.)

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Speaking of the hit parade, Brigid finds a Time Magazine interview with Natsuki Takaya, creator of the wonderful Fruits Basket. This article is much more to my liking than Time’s previous foray into manga coverage, but it has a much more specific focus this time around. (Also, I’m a big Fruits Basket junkie.)

“TIME: Fruits Basket has quite a following in the U.S. What do you think are the reasons for its popularity?
“NT: That definitely flatters and pleases me. Thank you very much. As for a reason, I can’t clearly distinguish one, but if people read it and think ‘I like this’ then that alone is enough to bring me joy.”

Yay! I’ve brought Natsuki Takaya joy! It seems only fair, though.

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The undiscovered gems keep coming at Yet Another Comics Blog. Send in yours, and win comics!

Since I’m in a manga frame of mind today, I would offer Chikyu Misaki and Off*Beat as two delightful but under-the-radar titles.

Of all the happy, smiley childhood illusions that have fallen away over time, I find myself disproportionately distressed by this look into the almost scientific underbelly of Sesame Street in The New York Times. (Free registration required.) I guess I never really thought about how things work at the Children’s Television Workshop, but I never imagined that there were focus groups lurking behind every trash can.

It’s undeniably weird to think of a program as benevolent and inclusive as Sesame Street as struggling with one of the same issues that seems to confound superhero comics publishers – developing a popular marquee character who also happens to be female:

“But it’s not just a high-minded interest in gender equality that drove the search for a strong female character. The success of ‘Dora the Explorer,’ a show built around a strong female lead, has not gone unnoticed by its competitors at ‘Sesame Street.’ ‘ “Sesame Street” is living in an increasingly competitive market,’ Ms. Nealon said. ‘We used to be the only game in town, and now we’re having more conversations about where are all the points of appeal of our cast. We’re trying to be as absolutely broad-based as we can be.’”

Illuminating and strangely depressing reading.

Recommendations are starting to come in via Dave Carter’s 100 Comics Giveaway Contest at Yet Another Comics Blog. I might have to enter just so I can suggest books like the terrific Lackluster World, self-published by Eric Adams, or Nothing Better by Tyler Page. (I hope there’s a print collection of NB soon, as it’s really grown on me over time.)

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Comic Foundry’s Tim Leong not only subjects himself to an issue of Wizard, he does so on camera, which sounds kind of like a Fear Factor stunt. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for Wizard to push the boundaries of bad taste any further, but turning some poor guy’s death into a weak lead for an article on Mighty Avengers makes me think I’ve underestimated the magazine’s editorial ambition.

Seriously, I’ve written some tacky stuff in my time, not even factoring in the first drafts that never see the light of web, but this… I mean, someone wrote it, then someone edited it, then someone at Marvel probably signed off on it, then someone else edited it for layout, and nobody thought it was a bad idea to make fun of a dead person who just happened to have the misfortune of passing away near one of the creators?

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I’m a bit slow to note it, but I’ve really enjoyed Rivkah’s tutorial pieces on paneling, pacing and layout. What I like about them is that they seem like part of a tool box instead of a style sheet, if that makes any sense.

One thing that I’ve noticed as this season of Project Runway progresses is that the designers who have the strongest set of basic design skills – they can sew, they can sketch, they understand color theory and pattern-making, etc. – are best able to articulate a personal aesthetic vision. Even if they’re breaking rules, their cognizance of those rules and the understanding of them as fundamentals lend authority and polish to their work.

I think something of the same thing is going on with Rivkah’s pieces. She’s not really telling anyone how to draw so much as indicating how someone’s choices can lead the eye and to be aware of whether or not they’re heading in the desired direction.

There’s a fascinating piece over at Bill Flanagan’s blog at the Translation Dojo on the rise of the $10, unflipped manga digest:

“From and editorial standpoint, it was a difficult change. Producing pamphlet manga meant that each graphic novel was coming out once every 6 months. A switch to quarterly graphic novels meant that production was doubled.”

Maybe they did teach us how to love. But seriously, go read it. It’s great.

And over at comics.212.net, Chris Butcher brings his inimitable perspective to the yaoi discourse.

One of the side points in all of the recent talk about yaoi was the timidity of the bulk of titles currently in translation. Where’s all the really sexy stuff?

At the recent Otakon, Digital Manga Publishing, often cited as one of the leading purveyors of the starry-eyed and tepid, gave hope to fans itching for something a little more hardcore. Kai-Ming Cha shared some new details on DMP’s 801 Media imprint in this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week (in the paragraph next to a picture of the coolest cosplayers I’ve ever seen):

“801 Media titles will be available only at online retailers, independent bookstores and comics shops. ‘You won’t find [801 Media books] in Borders or Barnes & Noble,’ said Rachel Livingston of DMP’s PR department. Livingston explained that while 801 Media is working with distributors, the books will not have a wide level of distribution because of their explicit content. She added that fans will be able to special order the books through Walden or retail chain stores. ‘We’re letting retailers know we’re not giving them inappropriate material while giving readers what they want and supporting online retailers,’ Livingston said.”

That’s a very interesting approach, and it neatly and preemptively skirts some potential problems. It doesn’t sound like anyone’s going to accidentally stumble across an 801 book. And DMP has done surprisingly well in the Direct Market, just judging by sources like the top 50 manga lists from Comic Book Resources. Every time DMP has new Juné books for readers, you can bet they’ll show up in the top 50 or even crack the top 100 graphic novels roster.

I’m also fascinated (and just a little horrified) by DMP’s other initiative:

“DMP also announced a bishonen (boys’ love) tour organized through Pop Japan, a travel agency owned by DMP that does tours to Japan for American otaku. The junket includes a shopping trip to Tokyo’s Otome Road for boys’ love merchandise and paraphernalia, and will feature a female take on maid cafes, which cater to men—there will be afternoon tea at a ‘butler cafe,’ where attractive young men dressed in traditional butler uniforms wait on the patrons.”

Now that, Tokyopop, is a publisher embracing the manga lifestyle, or at least a niche of it. Will DMP end up marketing a “Fangirls Gone Wild” video produced during the tour?

Dave Carter strikes again with another cool contest at Yet Another Comics Blog. It’s multi-level generosity:

“Simply email [Dave] your recommendation of a comic that you think is worthwhile, but that you don’t think that very many people have read. What [Dave would] like to do through this contest is give you all the opportunity to share an undiscovered gem with the rest of the comics Intraweb. Thoughout the next week until the end of the contest on the 15th [he]’ll be posting [t]here on YACB the picks that you send [him].”

Click here for more details.