The Manga Curmudgeon

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

From the stack: A LATE FREEZE

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I knew Danica Novgorodoff was a talented designer based on her work on the First Second fall catalog. She’s also a wonderful comics creator in her own right, as illustrated by her mini-comic, A Late Freeze.

Novgorodoff combines a marvelous design sensibility with equal portions of absurdity and romance in this short tale of love between a bear and a robot. With the exception of a few well-chosen captions and bits of dialogue, images tell the story here.

They’re incredibly varied in style and tone. They show wintry natural landscapes, tawdry commercial sprawl, tense action, and tender moments of connection, but they always feel linked and of a piece. Novgorodoff informs them all with warmth and a decidedly quirky sense of humor.

A Late Freeze is a really marvelous example of an illustrated narrative. All of its elements come together to serve Novgorodoff’s unlikely love story. I’d offer more specifics about the plot, but a significant portion of the pleasure is watching it unfold, and I’m disinclined to spoil it for anyone.

And if you need any additional persuasion, A Late Freeze won the Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics over the weekend.

(You can view preview images and purchase A Late Freeze at Novgorodoff’s web site.)

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One of my favorite blogs, Crocodile Caucus, is relocating to http://www.crocodilecaucus.com/wordpress/. Update your bookmarks.

Lyle was among the first to note that a Xanadu stage musical was in development. I find myself more excited by the prospect of a Nine to Five stage musical, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton. (Parton mentioned it on one of the morning shows today while stupid anchroids were asking her about whether twisters had destroyed Dollywood. You have to love her ability to focus. And I was only watching because it happened to be on the TV at the gym, so don’t judge me because I watched Fox & Friends Saturday. I didn’t remember to bring a book.)

If I’m going to be completely honest, I’ll admit that what I like most about Nine to Five is the cast and how much fun they seemed to have combining their very different styles and talents. I don’t really have any interest in the stage version of Thoroughly Modern Millie because I suspect it would have been a thoroughly terrible movie without the charisma and talent of Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Channing and Beatrice Lillie.

But really, my most pressing concern is whether or not to buy Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion now or wait for an official patch to come out, because you know it will need one. Or five.

From the stack: GIRL GENIUS Vol. 4

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Is it too late to make another recommendation for the American Library Association’s list of Great Graphic Novels for Teens? Because Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius (Airship Entertainment) really belongs on that list.

To be honest, I think it belongs on a list of Great Graphic Novels for Just About Anyone, but its combination of high and low comedy, adventure and invention make it especially perfect for that category.

A new Girl Genius trade paperback came out on Wednesday, Agatha Heterodyne and the Circus of Dreams, and it has all the virtues of the three installments that preceded it. It’s funny, action-packed and features an ever-expanding cast of memorable characters.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Girl Genius, it stars Agatha Clay. She’s a “spark,” a person with an almost magical gift for invention and engineering. Over the course of a series of mishaps, she’s learned that she’s a member of the Heterodyne clan, a family of sparks whose adventures have become legend. They concealed Angela’s identity and abilities to protect her, but now the secret is out, and a variety of competing forces are trying to track her down for their own purposes.

But Agatha’s on the loose with a talking cat and a great big gun, and she isn’t very interested in being used. She finally has full reign of her inventive abilities, but circumstances demand that she keep a low profile until she can get a handle on the situation. Her family’s predisposition for leaping into danger runs as strongly through her as its mad engineering genius, though, so a low profile often goes out the window.

Things happen fast in Girl Genius. No sooner has Agatha escaped the city-sized dirigible of Baron Wulfenbach than she runs across a traveling circus filled with appealing oddballs. She and her companion, Krosp, an irascible feline destined to be the King of Cats, fit right in, but the circus has its own secrets to keep and is reluctant to compromise its safety. As is customary in this charming book, circumstances conspire to keep Agatha on the road with the group.

In the process, Agatha finds friends, an outlet for her abilities, and a mentor in the form of Zeetha, a warrior woman who’s been separated from her homeland. As Zeetha takes a tough-love approach to bringing Agatha’s adventuring skills up to scratch, the last Heterodyne learns some of her family history. (The circus specializes in retellings of various Heterodyne adventures.) It’s a fun and inventive way for Agatha to embrace her legacy.

I’m constantly impressed by the steady stream of appealing new characters the Foglios introduce to the narrative. The cast is absolutely sprawling, but each character is distinct and appealing in his or her way, even the antagonists. Even better, each cast member makes his or her own unique contribution to the world that the Foglios are building.

It’s an eye-popping world, too. Phil Foglio’s illustrations are always appealing, whether the scene in question is comic, reflective, or gruesome. It’s a flexible style that suits the material perfectly. In the fun creator bios, Laurie E. Smith is described as conducting “experiments with blasphemous color theory,” which is exactly correct. Her palette helps give Folgio’s drawings bright, rich life.

The Foglios describe Girl Genius as “A Gaslamp Fantasy with Adventure, Romance & Mad Sciences,” which is also exactly correct. This book is great fun, a modern myth in the making that seems to get better with each new chapter.

(The fourth volume also includes a charming back-up story, “Fan Fiction,” written by Shaenon Garrity in which a young woman inserts herself into the Heterodyne adventures as she retells them to her younger siblings. Garrity does a very nice job capturing the appeal of taking ownership of legends, making a gentle case for the Mary Sue even as she pokes fun. Garrity’s story can be viewed here, and you can also sample Girl Genius from the beginning.)

Huddled masses?

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I was reading Tania Del Rio’s latest Read This Way column over at Buzzscope when something jumped out at me:

“I won’t comment on the distribution agreement between TOKYOPOP and HarperCollins, since I’m not so knowledgeable about that sort of thing, but I can only hope it will bring manga out of the obscure sci-fi corner in the back of the store and into the front, with more visibility.”

Is that still really common, for graphic novels to be shunted into dark bookstore corners? I’m running through the bookstores I frequent, and I can’t think of one that doesn’t have that section in a highly visible, high-traffic area.

At the local Barnes and Noble, the graphic novels and manga occupy two large banks of shelves with spinner racks and a display table between them. It’s adjacent to the fiction and literature section on one side and the art books and hobbies shelves on the other. There’s also a permanent rack-end installation of discounted new releases next to the information desk, and they’ve started to stack manga titles on their new paperbacks table up front.

At the local Books-a-Million, the graphic novels are positioned opposite the periodicals in a wide, well-lit aisle with benches that encourage browsing. The local WaldenBooks shelves them along the wall next to the register and has a permanent rack-end installation with new releases as well. This is fairly standard in my experience with WaldenBooks and Borders Express outlets, though some have free-standing shelf units that face the registers instead of wall units.

One of the Borders I go to up in Pittsburgh has two stories with a balcony from the main floor that looks down on the lower area. Manga and graphic novels run the length of two sides of the balcony, running past new releases, mystery, and science fiction and following the overflow pattern of the register area. There’s also a large free-standing unit of new releases at the top of the escalator down to the lower level and rack-end installations featuring new releases.

Whenever I visit my parents in Cincinnati, I always stop by the Kenwood Barnes and Noble. The last time I visited, their graphic novels were facing the café, adjacent to the music section on one side and the information desk on the other, with spinner racks floating about.

So I’m left to wonder if I’ve been living in some manga utopia and never realized it. Are West Virginia, Ohio, and southwestern Pennsylvania some hub of graphic novel retail innovation? Are graphic novels still routinely huddled in the sci-fi ghetto, waiting for Tokyopop to set them free? I thought manga was giving bookstores the biggest boost they’d had in years, not languishing in the far-off corners.

That darn cat

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My mind is reeling over the Eisner nominations for so many reasons, but the only one I can focus on at the moment is that wily feline, The Rabbi’s Cat.

When Chris Tamarri did his poll of comics bloggers, I remember wondering precisely which category would be most appropriate for this work (and lots of manga titles). It’s a collection of three installments that were published individually, and it’s an English translation, but, as NBC used to say during re-run season, “It’s new to you!”

Apparently the Eisner committee couldn’t decide either, as Sfar’s lovely book is nominated in both Best Graphic Album – New and Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material. I wouldn’t think that a book could be eligible for both of those, to be honest. I could certainly see how The Rabbi’s Cat might be eligible for, say, Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material and Best Publication Design, with an additional nomination for Sfar in the Best Writer/Artist or Best Writer/Artist – Humor categories, though.

But, as I said, the mind reels. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about the Sfar love. This just seems like something getting nominated for Best Play and Best Revival Tony Awards during the same season.

Oh, and I’ll just register myself as not being surprised at all that Cromartie High School got a nomination in the Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material category. It’s very entertaining in a sneakily low-brow way, but it’s also the kind of manga title that seems to have a special appeal for western comics aficionados. It has the cultural cachet of being manga without being either too conventional in style or structure or taking its subject matter at all seriously. It’s post-modern without being nouvelle, so it ultimately seems like a very safe choice.

Arts and sciences

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I can’t believe I forgot to mention this yesterday. I can only chalk it up to the terrifying prospect of today’s comic shop bill and Digital Manga’s culpability in it.

Anyway, in addition to everything else they’re dumping on readers today, there’s also the first volume of Project X: Datsun Fairlady Z. Yes, it’s a manga biography about a car company.

I’ve been dying for more non-fiction manga to make it into translation since I first learned about it, so I hope this lives up to my expectations.

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Speaking of non-fiction graphic novels, G.T. Labs is conducting an on-line survey and giving out books to ten lucky participants. Jim Ottaviani talks about the survey and provides a link in this Engine thread. I really enjoyed Dignifying Science (especially the Rosalind Franklin story), and I keep meaning to pick up more of Ottaviani’s books.

Yays and a nay

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Once again, Entertainment Weekly has surprised me by providing a useful piece of information. I had no idea there was a new autobiography of the late, deeply lamented Julia Child, much less one that focused on her time in France. Anyway, My Life in France, written with Alex Prud’Homme, is due in bookstores today. Given my well-documented love for culinary memoirs, Child, and stories with a strong sense of place, I think I know how my next Borders Rewards coupon will be used.

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I first saw this mentioned at Brigid’s MangaBlog, and now news of Go! Comi’s round of second printings of first volumes has shown up on ICv2. This news delights me probably more than it should, but I’m really glad to see Go! Comi succeed. I think they’ve been really smart in their first year – a small initial list of titles, excellent production values and extras, and strong licensing choices. I think what’s most heartening is that they don’t seem to have assumed that publishing manga is a license to print money, concentrating on quality over volume. I’m glad to see that it’s worked out for them.

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I’ve confined myself to digests as far as Shojo Beat titles go, but I think I’ll have to pick up the current issue for the interview with Keiko Takemiya. I can always skip the titles I don’t want to spoil and laugh at the god-awful Godchild script.

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I’m really looking forward to Wednesday’s trip to the comic shop. There’s a new volume of Girl Genius at long last, Agatha Heterodyne & the Circus of Dreams, and I know I could be reading it online, but it’s just not my preferred delivery system. Sue me.

It’s also a big week for Digital Manga Publishing with new volumes of Antique Bakery, Café Kichijouji de, How to “Read” Manga: Gloom Party, and La Esperança. Pace yourself, DMP.

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And now, I must once again bitterly mourn the loss of the drop-down menus on Tokyopop’s web site. As a blogger who always tries to link to title information whenever possible or relevant, this adds all kinds of pesky layers to the process. Those menus made Tokyopop’s site my hands-down favorite of any manga publisher because it was so easy to find what I needed. (It still loads more quickly than Viz’s site, though.)

From the stack: DEOGRATIAS: A Tale of Rwanda

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Jean-Philippe Stassen’s Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda (:01 Books) is a very small story about a gaping wound in human history. Stassen follows an utterly average person through extraordinarily horrifying circumstances.

Stassen centers his story on Deogratias, a young Hutu. We see him before the genocide – prankish but basically decent beneath his bluster – and after – utterly shattered, almost feral. Past and present intersect, as Deogratias remembers more peaceful times with agonizing clarity.

He had friends, two Tutsi sisters — scholarly, spirited Benina and gentle, devout Apollinaria. He did odd jobs for the Belgian clergymen who were kind to him. He had a kid’s preoccupations – sex, beer, and talking big. He isn’t particularly noble or strong, but he rejects the worst of the ambient, anti-Tutsi racism that pervades the classroom, the radio waves, and really every aspect of daily life.

But that was Deogratias then, before many Hutus seized an opportunity to slaughter every Tutsi they could. Now, years later, he wanders the streets filthy and ragged, begging for food Urwagwa, the local beer. People from those appalling days of genocide are drifting back into Rwanda, sparking a new round of tragedy that’s smaller in scale but no less devastating.

Stassen also populates the book with competing perspectives. Venetia, Benina and Apollinaria’s mother, has been reduced to trading sex for favors to secure a better life for her daughters. In light of the restrictions of the culture, her choices have real moral force. Benina, the chief beneficiary of Venetia’s efforts, is torn between the opportunities afforded by her education and simmering outrage at the racial constructs that govern her life (and the condescension of the white Europeans she works for). Augustine is a highly educated member of a third ethnic group, the Twa, who has found he can make more money as a groundskeeper for those Europeans than he can by using his numerous academic degrees. Everyone is getting by as best they can in a society where a legacy of artificial differences makes it extraordinarily difficult. (Translator Alexis Siegel provides a well-written introduction covering Rwanda’s turbulent history.)

Stassen’s visuals are impressive. His script jumps through time, and the illustrations support that perfectly. Characters age credibly and organically, placing the individual sequences along the timeline of the story while creating investment in their journeys. He also renders Deogratias’s deteriorating mental state with care and imagination. His color work is very effective in establishing shifts in mood. Night and shadow take on different meanings, and even a sky full of stars can be menacing. Still, given the sensationalistic potential of the material, Stassen’s approach is ultimately very restrained. He never resorts to gore, letting the reader’s imagination fill in those horrible blanks.

Stassen’s aim seems to be understanding. He doesn’t want you to forgive people like Deogratias who were drawn into the tide of violence. Even Brother Philip, the jovial Belgian priest, can’t seem to manage that. But you can get inside those people and see events from their perspective.

Often, when artists approach these scarring moments of human history, they do so from the perspective of the heroic member of the majority who goes against the destructive tide of public sentiment to protect and rescue the victimized minority. Those stories are instructive and uplifting, but I think Stassen’s approach has a chilling value of its own.

(This review was based on a complimentary copy provided by :01 Books. Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda will be released in May.)

From the stack: DMP boys

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Every genre of graphic novel has its standard elements and tropes, but most at least try to transcend them and cook up something new and specific from familiar ingredients. When they don’t, you get something like Yukine Honami and Serubo Suzuki’s Sweet Revolution (Digital Manga Publishing).

It’s a generic bit of yaoi about two pretty boys from another dimension who decide to attend high school on Earth. Tatsuki is the seme, and Ohta is the uke. Not only is that all you need to know, it’s just about all there is to know.

Tatsuki is the prince of a mystical realm, and Ohta is a diffident and devoted spirit who handily recharges Tatsuki’s chi with sex. Classmate Kouhei doesn’t really care for Tatsuki, and who can blame him? Tatsuki is cold and entitled, and Kouhei sees his domineering behavior towards Ohta as abusive. It is, but the pair manages to convince Kouhei that it’s what they both want, and the potential triangle dissolves as Kouhei vanishes from the narrative.

This is just shy of the halfway point, so the story moves on to Tatsuki’s family troubles. Tatsuki’s royal father’s health is failing, and he wants his son to return home and marry so he can assume leadership of the kingdom. Tatsuki doesn’t want to, because he’s not prepared to give up Ohta, though he still isn’t very considerate of the sprite.

And then things are resolved. No, really. A friend of Tatsuki’s father points out that dad’s being a selfish hypocrite, and Tatsuki gets his way. The end.

The characters are dull, the premise is flimsy, and the art is attractive but unexceptional. It’s like soup without any seasoning.

Kyoki Negishi and Yuki Miyamoto’s Café Kichijouji de (DMP) isn’t much more ambitious, but it’s a lot more entertaining. It’s a fluffy workplace comedy about the wacky staff of the title eatery, and it doesn’t really have anything on its mind but entertaining the readers. It succeeds.

The cast is an appealing mix of personalities. There’s officious supervisor Kurihara, defensively boyish Ichinomiya, ladies’ man Okubo, and goofball Tokumi. Spooky Minagawa runs the kitchen, and owner Mitaka just tries to stay sane and keep his crew from driving him out of business.

They squabble, flirt with customers, and land themselves in a variety of absurd misadventures. That’s all, really, but it’s plenty, because Negishi and Miyamoto pile on plenty of quirky charm and keep things bustling along. It’s like a perfectly good sitcom that you might not specifically set out to watch, but you’re happy to catch it when you’re idly surfing channels.

All that said it’s a bit slight for $12.95. It would be an ideal library choice, a lucky swap, or an excellent selection for a “get one free” bookstore deal.

(The Café Kichijouji de review was based on a complimentary copy from DMP.)