I’m generally not a big fan of post-apocalypse fiction, but I found a lot to like in the preview of Wasteland that Oni sent my way. Antony Johnston has done some creative world-building, and Chris Mitten is proving to be a very talented and versatile illustrator. I really liked his work on Past Lies as well.

(If dystopian adventure isn’t your thing either, Oni gives you another chance to get a copy of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s really splendid Lost at Sea. And yes, I will mention this book every time it’s solicited, and probably on several occasions when it isn’t, because it’s just that good.)

The first issue of Mouse Guard (Archaia Studios) goes into its third printing, and it’s kind of thrilling that a really excellent, unusual book can attract this much attention. Never underestimate the appeal of mice in capes with swords.

It’s a big week for Digital Manga. The final volume of the lovely Antique Bakery arrives, which is almost certain to leave me smiling wistfully and wanting a piece of cake. No one would ever put Café Kichijouji De at the same level, but it’s slight, silly fun. Have you ever wondered about the secret origin of Cup Noodle? Wonder no more thanks to the latest installment of the Project X series. Only the Ring Finger Knows was easily one of the best shônen-ai titles to come out of DMP, so I’m curious about the novels that tie into the series. And since I’m a complete sucker for works by You Higuri, you could say that I’m not indifferent to the arrival of Gorgeous Carat Galaxy. Pace yourself, DMP, I beg you.

I was really taken with the Free Comic Book Day offering from Drawn & Quarterly, but I wish it had come out before Get a Life was solicited so I could have pre-ordered a copy. Ah, well. That’s what Amazon is for.

Tokyopop’s offerings for the week seem to be missing from the New Releases List, but two eagerly-awaited OGM titles are due to drop in bookstores this week: Mail Order Ninja and Fool’s Gold. David Taylor is particularly excited about the latter, which is always a good sign. There are threads on The Engine for each title.

(Edited to correct the spelling of Mr. Johnston’s first name.)

At Blog@Newsarama, Michael May pegs Jodi Picoult as a Hero of the Week for signing on for a short stint writing Wonder Woman. It’s unlikely that I’ll be picking up WW any time soon, as I’ve successfully purged just about everything from Marvel and DC from my shopping list, but I’m extremely suggestible when it comes to authors.

So when Picoult’s run was announced, her name went on the list of “authors to sample.” Conveniently enough, there was an audio version of My Sister’s Keeper at the library. The book is built around an interesting emotional dilemma. Parents of a desperately ill child have another to provide a source of transfusion and transplant material to keep their older child alive. The younger daughter, who has been harvested for stem cells, marrow, and platelets roughly since birth, decides enough is enough when it looks like she’ll have to give up a kidney. She sues her parents for medical emancipation.

Picoult tells the story from a variety of perspectives – the spare-parts daughter, her parents, her alienated older brother, her lawyer. The idea is to create a complex moral landscape where everyone’s point of view is understandable if not entirely sympathetic, depending on your personal beliefs. But aside from the topicality of the plot, there’s not much to distinguish Picoult’s writing from a John Grisham or a Mary Higgins Clark. (If it helps, Stephen King listed her among the Academy of the Underappreciated he praised in his acceptance speech for – choke – his Distinguished Contribution to American Letters recognition at the National Book Awards.)

Picoult is given to flat pronouncements and tortured analogies, and she fails spectacularly in making some characters even remotely sympathetic. Her idea of moral complexity isn’t dissimilar to Brad Meltzer’s, another best-selling author snapped up by DC to write some comics. Instead of weighing between competing (and hopefully equally compelling) ethical perspectives, the reader is left to weed through them to find the least objectionable, if they can be bothered. (I’m a lot more tolerant of audio books than paper versions, so I’ll probably stick it out.) It’s potboiler stuff that carries the sheen of respectability because of the controversy of the subject matter.

Does that make her an unsuitable writer for WW? No, not really, and she certainly fits in with the editorial direction the company had been taking the last time I looked. Still, it’s always a little depressing to see another writer invested with quasi-legitimacy because they write books, whether or not the books are any good.

Kevin Melrose of Blog@Newsarama points to the best Manga 101 article ever. It’s written by Brigid Alverson of MangaBlog fame, so it’s no surprise that the piece is excellent. She hits all of the highlights in an entertaining, well-organized fashion, and she gets some great quotes from her wide variety of sources. My favorite is from a young fan on her personal ethics for fan fiction:

“When a manga is really, really good I’ll refuse to write or read fan fiction on it, because I’m afraid it will ruin it, but ’Naruto’ is not very good.”

It’s wonderful work by Brigid, who manages to cover a lot of territory thoroughly and engagingly.

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Just in time for the fourth volume to come out in comics shops, Greg McElhatton reviews the wonderful Antique Bakery over at iComics.

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And in this week’s Flipped, I take a moment to talk about some of my favorite shôjo heroines. And yes, some of them are clumsy, boy-crazy schoolgirls.

Bill Flanagan, organizer of the Lost in Translation panel at the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con, gives a wonderfully thorough behind-the-scenes account of how the panel is assembled over at his blog at The Translation Dojo. (Looking back, the remark that prompted the explanation could be said to fall into the “needlessly snarky” category. Try and contain your shock.)

Speaking of Nerd Vegas, I’m working on a Flipped column that tries to highlight all of the manga action at this year’s con. I used SDCC’s exhibitor list as a starting point for contacts, but if your company isn’t listed or if you’re taking part in a panel or setting up shop in artists’ alley, drop me a line at DavidPWelsh at yahoo dot com by Friday, July 14, and I’ll do my best to make sure you’re included.

Brigid has done a terrific job tracking Anime Expo wrap-ups at MangaBlog. One of my favorites has to be Steven Grant’s latest Permanent Damage column at Comic Book Resources. Grant measures the mood of the crowd:

“I noted this when I last attended, a couple of years ago. It has only amplified. If one element overwhelms you at Anime Expo, it’s the sense of community, and union. Fan and professional alike go there with the same attitude, and often the same obsessions: while companies hawk their specific wares with gusto, there’s also an underlying promotion of anime and manga across the board. The convention isn’t simply about selling, but about bonding.”

Given how closely they fall to each other on the calendar, comparisons with the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con are probably inevitable. Grant notes that Anime Expo’s current vibe is not unlike SDCC’s was before it became what Tom Spurgeon delightfully calls “Nerd Vegas.” But what about San Diego now?

“It’s still the place to go each summer if you love comics, but there’s no longer a broad sense of community permeating the place. It’s factionalized, fragmented, serving many masters. But beyond the question of whether Hollywood or gaming or whatever is now too dominant a presence, what the big companies at Anime Expo seemed to share was a view that their fans … were valued allies, not marks, and that attitude hasn’t been widely seen among American comics publishers since the early ’90s.”

The tendency to compare and contrast the two events made me want to take a look at SDCC’s schedule of events. Broccoli, CMX, and Del Rey have panels planned, and Tokyopop is participating in a session on mobile comics. The daunting list of exhibitors is filled with manga publishers, artists, and anime outlets as well. Interestingly enough, Viz seems to be concentrating on screenings of live-action and animated films at the con, including the much-discussed Train Man: Denasha Otoko.

(Speaking of Train Man, Kai-Ming Cha provides a very lucid overview of the phenomenon over at Publishers Weekly Comics Week. I tend to share the optimism of the various publishers who are angling for a piece of the Train Man pie. Manga fans seem more than happy to embrace different portrayals of their favorite stories and characters, from comics to anime to live-action movies to novels. If the three versions on the schedule are distinct enough, they should make for interesting side-by-side reading.)

I can’t find it on the con’s official schedule, but Bill Flanagan mentions a “Lost in Translation” panel over at The Engine that will feature Flanagan (who works on XxxHOLic for Del Rey), Jonathan Tarbox, and Jake Forbes, among others. (No women though, which strikes me as odd. Based on a quick scan of the titles on my shelves, at least half of the translators working in manga are women. Maybe they all devoted their travel budget to Anime Expo? Tarbox and Forbes should guarantee a lively hour, though.)

I doubt that much new in the way of manga announcements will come out of SDCC, though some publishers probably saved a few nuggets. As Grant notes, the con is huge and serves many masters, one of which is undoubtedly manga.

Sure, rave reviews in The New York Times are nice, and cracking the BookScan list is always a good sign, but I’ve got incontrovertible evidence that Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin) has achieved cultural critical mass.

My partner mentioned it to me.

He was driving home from Ohio and heard an interview with Bechdel on NPR, and he wanted to make sure I knew about it, which was sweet. His usual response to graphic novels is to stack them neatly somewhere out of sight or resignedly suggest that we need more bookshelves. I felt kind of guilty that I’d already ordered it, and since it was due to arrive in less than 24 hours, I really couldn’t pretend that this was the first I’d heard of it.

But seriously, that’s some impressive saturation. And it’s a really good book, too.

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We went to see The Devil Wears Prada yesterday, and it was worth it for Meryl Streep’s performance. It’s kind of an icky downward-mobility comedy, where real-life glamorous, wealthy celebrities ridicule fictional (or mostly fictional) glamorous, wealthy celebrities. A.O. Scott at The New York Times has it exactly right when he notes that Streep’s Miranda isn’t anything near a cartoon monster:

“With her silver hair and pale skin, her whispery diction as perfect as her posture, Ms. Streep’s Miranda inspires both terror and a measure of awe. No longer simply the incarnation of evil, she is now a vision of aristocratic, purposeful and surprisingly human grace.”

Anne Hathaway is fine, but she doesn’t really have any choice but to cede the movie not only to Streep but to Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt as well. She does so with good grace, and she at least gets to outshine the poor, stranded actors who have to play her love interests.

There’s just something really likeable about Hathaway. She seems smart, has good comic timing and goofy charm, and is probably one of only a handful of actresses who could make this character appealing. (Picture it with Kate Hudson. I dare you.)

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Like everyone else, I’m relying on Pata at Irresponsible Pictures for reports from Anime Expo. But I’m also enjoying comments on the announcements from David Taylor at Love Manga and Brigid at MangaBlog.

The highlight for me so far has been the announcement of Go! Comi’s new titles, if only because I know they’ll do such a good job producing and packaging the translations. The publisher seems to be expanding into new genre areas.

And yay! A Paradise Kiss anime is on the way from Geneon Entertainment!

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Do new comics arrive today or tomorrow? I’m confused. I’m even more confused because most of the stuff slated to show up this week actually arrived here last Wednesday. Anyway, regardless of when it gets here, there’s plenty of good stuff:

Someday I’m going to have to catch up with the Flight anthologies. The third comes from Ballantine this week. I enjoyed Paul Sizer’s Moped Army, which probably means I should give the Little White Mouse Omnibus Edition (Café Digital Press) a look.

The third volume of Love Roma (Del Rey) is delightful, and I’m not going to complain about it arriving early. A new offering from Fanfare/Ponent Mon is always worth considering, though as usual, the price point on Oda Hideji’s A Patch of Dreams is a little daunting at $22.99. (And when is The Building Opposite ever going to show up? It feels like it’s about a year late.)

Tokyopop rolls out a Gravitation novel. Viz has new volumes of Death Note and Hikaru No Go.

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Last but not least, it’s been a while since I plugged the MangaTrade Yahoo Group, so consider it plugged. There’s been a nice flurry of activity there lately, and I’ve really got to hit the post office today to ship off some books.

I finally got around to watching Kinsey, and it’s a pretty good movie. It frequently feels like it was directed by several different people, but it’s never bad, and it’s often inspired.

And it’s also a chance to see Laura Linney give another brilliant performance. Her role as Clara McMillen Kinsey seems underwritten, but Linney invests it with so much intelligence and wit and warmth that it’s rescued from the kind of supportive wife hell that might have resulted with a lesser actor.

I have no idea why Linney isn’t a huge star. If there was any justice in the world, she would have won an Academy Award for You Can Count on Me, but she didn’t. (At least she was nominated.) Mystic River was terrible (another example of Clint Eastwood stomping all over an entertaining novel), and it’s a testament to Linney’s abilities that she was nominated for an Oscar for a role that one could kindly call inconsistent.

Now she seems to be in some kind of supporting actor limbo, where she can get a juicy role in a small film like The Squid and the Whale or try and elevate something that will probably awful, like the upcoming Nanny Diaries, where she gets to play a horrible, rich-bitch mother. Her stage career, which runs concurrently with her film work, is probably a lot more rewarding, and New Yorkers seem to greet her performances with the kind of delight and reverence they no doubt deserve. But I don’t live in or near New York, so I’m stuck filtering through her movie career.

She really needs to do an intelligent, low-budget comedy that suits her skills. She seems like one of the smartest actresses currently working, and I’d particularly like to see her co-star with Lauren Graham, another marvelous actress whose film career has been much more dire than her talent seems to merit.

Back to Kinsey, though. It’s nice to watch Peter Sarsgaard‘s career evolve. He and Linney seem to have a lot of the same resources as performers — intelligence, an ability to commit to a character, and a sly sense of humor. He was really great in Shattered Glass, and he’s almost as good as Linney in Kinsey. The upcoming Mysteries of Pittsburgh should be interesting; he seems like a natural fit for a Michael Chabon character, like he could fall into the tone of Chabon’s works with no difficulty at all.

As for the rest of the cast, well, Liam Neeson is weirdly mesmerizing, though not as arresting as Linney or Sarsgaard. (Their characters seem like they’re laughing behind Kinsey’s back during their wonderful scenes together.) John Lithgow, Oliver Platt and Tim Curry are like a Honeybaked trifecta, chewing whatever piece of scenery is closest to mouth. And Chris O’Donnell always feels like he should have “as Himself” included every time his name appears in credits. It’s weird how he can be inoffensive and bland but still prove to be a jarring presence at the same time.

Okay, America’s Independence Day is coming up, but tomorrow is Canada Day, and since Canadians have given me so many reasons for delight, I’ve just got to put together a quick (and by no means complete) list of some of my favorite Canadian contributions to popular culture.

• Catherine O’Hara, for so many reasons, but particularly for her sterling performances in the movies of Christopher Guest. (Note to self: watch Waiting for Guffman for the thousandth time this weekend.)
• Bryan Lee O’Malley, for Scott Pilgrim and Lost at Sea and just generally being delightful.
• Canadian-by-marriage Hope Larson, for Gray Horses and Salamander Dream and She’s From Away.
• The Beguiling, for being the most reliable purveyor I’ve found of books from Fanfare/Ponent Mon. Also, Chris Butcher works there.
• Scott Chantler’s Northwest Passage.
• Fametracker.
• Half-Canadian Brendan Frasier. Shut up. I love the Mummy movies, all right? And he was really good in Gods and Monsters.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation, which is very often like crack.

As I said, the list is hardly complete, but I couldn’t let the day go by without at least making a weak stab at gratitude.

Mely at Scoffing at Gravity gives a wonderfully thorough and insightful report on her visit to the Shojo Manga: Girl Power! show at the Pratt Institute.

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Digital Manga and Borders are hosting an autograph session with Izumi (Enchanter) Kawachi at the Block and Orange Borders in Orange, CA, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, July 1.

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Viz has announced its plans for this weekend’s Anime Expo in Anaheim July 1-4. Digital Manga’s schedule is here. FUNimation, Del Rey, and Tokyopop will be sponsoring CLAMP’s first visit to the United States. Most importantly, Pata has run down some of the programming highlights at Irresponsible Pictures.

The Los Angeles Times has a preview piece that notes, “Though it’s called Anime Expo, the driving force behind the projected growth at this year’s convention is not Japanese animation, but manga.”

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The march towards omnimedia dominance continues as Viz movies into live-action movies and Tokyopop cracks the downloadable music business.