One of the weirder collections of comics you’ll ever see arrives on Wednesday. It’s Essential Avengers Volume 5, and it’s quite a snapshot of a book in transition. The Kree-Skrull War is over, and Steve Englehart’s reign of weirdness begins.

Of particular interest is material that establishes Hawkeye as the least desirable man in the Marvel Universe. In the collected issues (Avengers 98-126, Daredevil 99, Defenders 8-11, Captain Marvel 33, and Giant-Size Avengers 1), Hawkeye’s romantic advances are spurned by the Scarlet Witch, the Black Widow, and Valkyrie. If Marvel had a sense of humor, they would come up with a cover image of his personal ad with a big red X through it.

But that’s not all. There’s also a Harlan Ellison story, the introduction of suicide bombers into the Marvel Universe, the Avengers-Defenders War, Black Widow officially joining the team (for about a day), Swordsman joining for a slightly longer period, the arrival of Mantis (who would become the most hated woman in Marvel Comics, entirely by design), and a quantity of guest-stars that boggles the mind.

It’s not Englehart’s best work on the book (that would come later with the Celestial Madonna story and even more in the Serpent Crown arc). But as a curiosity, this collection is pretty darned curious.

Also arriving tomorrow is Yuri Monogatari Volume 3 from ALC Publishing. It promises “manga by some of today’s hottest yuri artists and writers in this 100% yuri original English-language manga anthology.” I’ve only read one of ALC’s books so far (Rica ‘tte Kanji!, which I liked a lot), so an anthology seemed like a good way to sample various takes on the genre.

Poor little Case Closed Volume 9 seems kind of run-of-the-mill compared to the other two, but it’s a reliably entertaining mystery manga with a cute premise. (The book is always better when the Junior Detective League is in action, but I can’t seem to find any solicitation information for this installment, so I don’t know if they’ll be around.) As Johanna Draper Carlson put it, it’s “the equivalent of watching a decent sitcom, a bit of entertainment to distract you temporarily with goofy events.”

Cleverly waiting until everyone was sick to death of year-end wrap-ups, I take a look back at 2005 in this week’s Flipped.

Okay, maybe not, but I do remember her mentioning this.

I submitted my ballot for Chris Tamarri’s Comic Bloggers’ Poll 2005, and a question came up over Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat. I put it in the Best Collection of Previously Printed Material category, because I remembered JennyN mentioning that it had originally been released as three individual comics (and that a fourth installment had just been released).

Can anyone help clear this up?

I liked Peter David’s Madrox mini-series, so I picked up the first issue of his new X-Factor series. It’s a lot of fun, and I decided to make the title an exception to my fewer-floppies rule. The second issue reinforced my decision, because it introduces Monet, a refugee from Generation X and a profoundly unpleasant young woman.

Does anyone write well-intentioned misanthropes better than Peter David? Take this bit of dialogue from Monet:

“I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic… Not that I am sympathetic. I’m not. I just wish I hid it better.”

And with that, I’m in love.

This isn’t the first time David has taken one of the surlier residents of the Marvel Universe to a slightly different, more entertaining place. In his run on a previous version of X-Factor, it was Quicksilver, who had gone from hero to villain and back, with several stops at jerk along the way.

In one of the best issues of David’s run on the series, the team goes through psychological debriefings. During Quicksilver’s session, he succinctly describes the reason for his aggressive unpleasantness: the nature of his mutation makes it seem like everyone around him his moving at a crawl. They can’t possibly keep up, and crankiness just naturally ensues.

It’s a great bit of characterization, not excusing so much as explaining. Quicksilver is still a jerk, but he isn’t an irredeemable one. (Unfortunately, just as David’s take on the character was gelling, Quicksilver got swiped by Bob Harras to mope around as a noble cuckold over in Avengers.)

David did something similar with Moondragon in the first chunk of his run on Captain Marvel. Even more than Quicksilver, Moondragon had always been portrayed as the ant at the picnic – difficult, conceited, manipulative, and, from time to time, outright evil. The shifts always seemed rather utilitarian, though. As a C-list dragon lady, Moondragon tended to serve at the whim of the story, so her contradictions never really cohered into a character.

David took a more focused approach, finding ways to portray Moondragon that were consistent with previous portrayals but were more specific. She was still unpleasant and controlling, but David managed to highlight some of her vulnerabilities without undermining her authority, for lack of a better word. She was a person who had been plucked from her life, trained to be a paragon of physical and mental perfection (to no end, ultimately, as she was just a back-up), and jerked around by forces beyond her control. She could be excused for being a little bitter.

But she wasn’t completely, corrosively so in Captain Marvel. Under her self-imposed purpose (training the clueless novice super-hero) was a desire to learn how to connect with people in more normal ways. She wasn’t very good at it, but the layers were welcome. (Again unfortunately, David sidelined her and most of the supporting cast when he revamped the series, taking the protagonist from hapless to crazy in the space of an issue. I didn’t think it made the Captain any more interesting, and it washed a lot of the color out of the book.)

And now David has added snide little rich girl Monet to X-Factor to spike the punch with her honeyed meanness. (She’s the Cordelia, if you will.) I’m looking forward to seeing more of her.

One of the recurring agonies of watching soap operas was the certainty that a smart, mean, funny character was destined for one of two depressing fates: they would become so evil that their usefulness on the canvas would run out and they’d be dumped to the nuthouse, prison, or morgue, or their rough edges would be sanded off in some brutal way to make them sympathetic. As the Witch put it in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, “You’re so nice./You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice.”

I’m glad to see that David still has a fondness for the jerks and can portray them in imaginative, entertaining ways.

In this week’s Flipped, Bryan Lee O’Malley mentioned Dragon Head as a title he’d love to see in translation. Shortly after the interview went live, we realized that Tokyopop had released the first volume this week. Behold the power of O’Malley! (Now do Japan Tengu Party Illustrated and Otherworld Barbara!)

Speaking of Dragon Head, Rose Curtin takes a look at that title and Viz’s excellent Death Note over at Peiratikos. So yes, I will be swinging by the store at some point this weekend to buy Dragon Head.

From a purely selfish perspective, MangaTrade is going quite well so far. I’ve already arranged to swap two volumes of Negima! for X-Day and an extra copy Genshiken for an Iron Wok Jan! X-Day wasn’t a title I had on my want list, but it’s one of those books that’s been buzzing around the margins since I read about it in Paul Gravett’s Manga book. I think I’m going to be much more inclined to try books on a whim for a couple of bucks of postage than for the cover price. Thanks to everyone who’s joined so far, and to everyone who’s mentioned it on their blogs.

Now, on to the unpleasant topic of comics I’ll actually be purchasing. Once again, I’m forced to ponder the mysteries of the Diamond shipping list with regards to Viz’s monthly output. It’s enough to know that new volumes of Death Note and Ultra Maniac will be showing up sometime this month, though precisely when is anyone’s guess. (Seeing those titles side by side fills me with all kinds of horrible crossover ideas, but they’re best left unspoken.) The second issue of Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein shows up today. I really enjoyed the first. (DC’s site says it comes out next week. Diamond says it’s today.)

Speaking further of manga, which apparently is a natural side effect of my sexual orientation, David Taylor has a wonderfully thorough and interesting look at ICv2’s Manga Awards. Some quick reactions:

• I agree wholeheartedly with David that a Top New Manga Publisher of the Year Award would have been welcome. While Go! Comi is still very new, I would probably have sent the award their way just for the quality of their product. (And really, Del Rey didn’t have that many titles in circulation when they won last year’s award.)
• I’m actually a bit surprised that Fullmetal Alchemist beat Naruto for Manga Release of the Year. I like Fullmetal better, but Naruto seemed more like a phenomenon.
• As impressive, even insidious, as Tokyopop’s marketing for its OEL titles has been, I have to wonder when it’s going to help generate a hit title.
• It’s kind of unsettling how easily Tokyopop and Viz have replaced Marvel and DC when I think “Big Two.” That isn’t necessarily a good thing for either of them.
• Viz is a logical choice for Manga Publisher of the Year for the reasons stated and for the launch of its Shojo Beat anthology and line. Even if this line doesn’t achieve the level of success of Shonen Jump (home of Naruto), it’s still noteworthy. (More stories by Ai Yazawa and Yû Watase? Viz wins.)

I’m a little unnerved at the moment. It has to do with the column at Buzzscope where Ronée Garcia Bourgeois relates a tale of sexual assault perpetrated by someone in a leadership position at “[a] fine upstanding group which works diligently to help creators in need.”

At the request of the victim, who has reported the incident to the police and approached the organization in question with her story, Garcia Bourgeois has related the tale without naming any of the parties involved. This has led to some heated discussion in the comments thread following the article and at Chris Butcher’s blog.

The burning question seems to be whether or not an anonymous retelling of this incident has value. Garcia Bourgeois explains her decision in the column:

“I just want this organization and the man behind all of this to be warned. This WILL come out and I am gunning for him.”

She adds in the subsequent comments:

“Just know that steps ARE being taken by this person to hold the man accountable and things are under investigation. I wrote this to hopefully force the organizations hand on firing the asshole. As soon as I know me running my mouth won’t ruin the investigation I shall sing like a canary, with a vendetta. trust that.”

I’m unnerved because, nobility of intentions aside, I think Garcia Bourgeois’s warning shot fires too widely and has the potential to strike innocent bystanders.

There’s more than one “fine upstanding group which works diligently to help [comics] creators in need.” By writing about this before receiving permission to identify any of the parties involved, Garcia Bourgeois does more than just put the squeeze on one organization. She casts a pall over any number of perfectly blameless groups that need and deserve public support to do their work.

I’m sure that isn’t her intention. She wants to drive the bad organization towards transparency and action, which is noble, and her column may well have that effect. But I just wrote a check to a “fine upstanding group” like this a couple of weeks ago. And I can’t help but wonder if I wrote it to the wrong one.

That’s where I think Garcia Bourgeois’s efforts falter. Not in her desire to cast light on an awful set of circumstances that may reflect a depressingly pervasive attitude in the comics industry. I’m entirely behind that kind of discussion. I just worry that, in trying to squeeze decency out of one group, she’s put undeserved pressure on all of them. And that’s counter-productive.

And, if I look back a couple of weeks, I find I’m guilty of it myself. That non-profit organization I mentioned who made unwarranted assumptions about my marital status in their mailings? It’s the Humane Society. And they never did sufficiently address my concerns regarding their assumptions, so they probably won’t get any money from me in the future.

This week’s Flipped is unusual in that it’s an interview. I hope to work more of these into the schedule, and I’m very, very, very grateful to Bryan Lee O’Malley for being interesting, articulate, and funny enough to make up for my shortcomings.

Now, this is a day off. There’s a steady rain falling. We have absolutely no place that we need to go. It’s chilly enough for a fire. And we found a big slab of leftover lasagna in the freezer.

It’s also a perfect day to plow through some of the books I got as Christmas presents. And if my first pick wasn’t all that great, it was at least reasonably good company.

I like Gregory Maguire’s revisionist fairy tales (Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister), and Son of a Witch is one of his better recent efforts. (I couldn’t make it through Mirror Mirror. All of the narrative voices sounded the same.)

It’s a sequel to Wicked, Maguire’s retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the Witch’s point of view. The riveting Elphaba has been dispatched by Dorothy, and Maguire’s focus turns to Liir, a mysterious boy who may or may not be the Witch’s son. It feels less like a sequel than the second part of a trilogy, to be honest. It’s a place-holder, building up Elphaba’s legend and using Liir’s wanderings to study the continuing political and cultural evolution of Oz and its environs.

Really, Maguire describes the book best through one of Liir’s reflective moments:

“Everything else that had happened in his short adult life had been frothy and meaningless, ultimately. Passionate, yes – yes, that, indeed. Passionately felt, but without shapeliness or worthy outcome.”

In other words, Son of a Witch is diverting but not particularly memorable. As fascinating and contrary a character as Elphaba was, it’s considerably less exciting to watch people talk about her for 300-plus pages. There are some nice set pieces, though, and Maguire is very handy in developing his sprawling supporting cast.

And now there’s P.D. James’s The Lighthouse waiting with the promise of a smart British locked-room mystery. Now that should be rainy-day reading.

I’ve started a new Yahoo Group called MangaTrade. As the name suggests, the group is intended to provide a forum for people to exchange manga they own and don’t want for manga they don’t own and do want.

I’ve tried to keep the mechanics as simple as possible:

1. Join.
2. Post a list of the manga you have to trade and want to receive in return, in the form of a message and a listing in the Files section.
3. Search through messages and the lists of other members to try and find a match.
4. Contact that person and try and set up an exchange.

I guess you could call it a corollary to my More Money for Manga mantra, though it would probably have to be called More Manga for Less Money. I hope it works out and that it’s a convenient place for people to clear some space on their shelves, sample new titles with less expense, and complete runs of series they enjoy.

In preparation, I spent part of this long weekend organizing my manga collection. It involved a trip to Target, new shelves, power tools, and various brushes with injury that all of those activities invite. (To the shopper who walked off with my cart while I was hauling a bulky shelving kit down the aisle, Happy Damned New Year to you. I’m glad you didn’t have to tote those marked-down seasonal guest bathroom hand towels around without wheels.)

While that kind of housekeeping is never fun, it did make me realize that I have a lot of manga titles that I really enjoy and that I plan to reread over the years. It also made me take a hard look at some books that I liked but probably won’t pick up again (except maybe the next time I organize my collection) and some books that just aren’t to my taste. And with so much manga available and new titles coming out every month, I’m sure there are lots of people in the same position. Hence, the group.

There are some people I’d like to thank for helping me put this together:

To Russ Lee at Sequential Swap: Thanks for the great advice and for not minding that I’ve shamelessly appropriated your idea to meet my own ends.

To David Taylor at Love Manga: Thanks for the suggestions and encouragement. (His theory that this is all a complicated effort to rid myself of the first volume of Tenjho Tenge is only partly true. It’s not like I can donate it to the library, though.)

To Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading: Thanks for the suggestions, encouragement, and for agreeing to help moderate.

To my legion of Bad Idea Bears: Thanks for the beta testing and helping work through some of the bugs.

So, that’s the drill. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.