It’s Previews time, and I thought I’d go through and see what new manga, manhwa, and manga-esque titles were debuting in December. There are lots of them, particularly from Tokyopop.

Dark Horse has Blood: The Last Vampire – Night of the Beasts, by Mamoru Oshii ($8.95), another entry in the manga-to-novel wave. There’s also Gunrave Anime Manga, based on the anime created by Yasuhiro Nightow ($14.95), and Space Pinchy: Pleased Ta Meetya, by Tony Takezaki ($3.95).

Moon Child, by Shimizu Reiko, debuts at CMX ($9.99). Del Rey launches Pastel, by Tashihiko Kobayashi ($10.95). Digital Manga Publishing rolls out another yaoi title, Beyond My Touch, by Tomo Maeda ($12.95). Raina Telgemeier’s adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club arrives from Graphix ($16.99).

Ice Kunion has two new manhwa titles: Cynical Orange by Yun JiUn ($10.95), and One Thousand & One Nights, story by Jeon JinSeok and art by Han SeungHee ($10.95). Viz publishes the first volume of Taeko Watanabe’s Kaze Hikaru, which is being serialized in Shojo Beat.

And lastly, Tokyopop. I’m going to have to just list these:

• Juror 13, by D.J. Milky and Makoto Nakatsuka, $9.99
• Roadsong, by Allan Gross and Joanna Estep, $9.99
• Sea Princess Azuri, by Erica Reis, $4.99
• Idiotz, by Gary Greenfield, John and Jason Waltrip, $9.99
• Yonen Buzz, by Christina Plaka, $9.99
• Dragon Head, by Minetaro Mochizuki, $9.99
• Flower of Eden, by Yuki Suetsugu, $9.99
• Dazzle, by Minari Endo, $9.99
• Sengoku Nights, by Kaoru Ohashi and Kei Kusunoki, $9.99
• Smuggler, by Shohei Manabe, $9.99
• Ultra Cute, by Nami Akimoto, $9.99
• Chicken Little Cine-Manga, based on the Disney Film, $7.99

That’s a lot of new product.

Update: As Mely predicted, Flower of Eden has been pulled by Tokyopop. Details are available at Love Manga.

Zombies and gangsters? Two genres that leave me ice cold come together in Eric Powell’s The Goon (Dark Horse). But a few things made me inclined to give last week’s 25-cent edition a try. The Pickytarian loves it. It won a couple of 2005 Eisner Awards (not a guarantee of quality, obviously, but not a “must avoid” warning like a Wizard Fan Award would be). And it cost a quarter. (My shop was giving it away for free, so the risk-return equation became absolutely irrelevant. The only time I’ve ever thought a free comic cost too much was a B.A.B.E. Force atrocity that came out on Free Comic Book Day a couple of years ago.)

The title character is muscle for the Labrazio crime family. The Goon keeps a rival gang of zombies, spawned and controlled by the Nameless Priest, in check, between other acts of enforcement, protection, and debt collection. In the 25-cent issue, the Nameless Priest is trying to extract the location of the Labrazio don from the head of a murdered FBI agent. The Priest learns an even more damning secret in the process, putting the Goon in a very different light.

It’s obviously a significant turning-point for the title, but there’s no indication of where it comes in the series. The comic doesn’t cite what issue was reprinted, so it’s hard to get a sense of the impact of these events in the larger context. So that leaves me to evaluate the book strictly on the quality of Powell’s storytelling. (There isn’t anything wrong with that, but some citations might have made me more interested in the overall narrative.)

Powell has a lot of strengths. He constructs his story very well, and he has a solid grasp on the mechanics of comedy. I don’t know if I’m entirely convinced that the content of the story and subject of the jokes lives up to Powell’s abilities, though.

Take the case of the inflatable chicken. It first appears in the context of an interrupted conversation between the Goon and his sidekick, Franky. The bug-eyed flunky is vigorously denying some salacious charge involving blow-up poultry. (The interrupted conversation is employed again a few pages later. “Did they ever find the squirrel?”) The inflatable chicken returns as a sight gag in a fight sequence. Then there’s the final rim-shot, a coda of a joke where it’s referred to as “a rubber chicken.”

The Rule of Three is executed with some variety and imagination, but… it’s an inflatable chicken. The cleverness of construction is undermined by the underlined quality of the object itself. It’s like there’s a studio sign flashing “LAUGH!” at the reader. The counterpoint between sophistication and vaudeville doesn’t quite come off. (Powell uses some other comedy shortcuts. Apparently, it’s always funny when someone says “groin.”)

Counterpoint is used to better effect elsewhere. The Nameless Priest has summoned a bog lurk as the vessel for his decapitated FBI agent, and the shambling monster gets some funny, unexpected bits.

I like Powell’s illustrations a lot. Character designs are great, incorporating genre standards while giving them a cartoon energy and feeling of surprise. Again, the bog lurk stands out as the best example. Powell’s plot takes the creature through a number of states, and each is rendered distinctly and effectively while making up a consistent visual.

Again, though, the question of context comes up. After reading Jog’s review of The Goon #14, it becomes clear that Powell has made a significant stylistic change since this material was originally published. Jog also brings up the range of storytelling tones Powell employs, which makes me wonder just where this material (broad comedy) fits into the bigger picture.

As a result, it’s hard to conclude anything about the series based on this low-cost sampler. It’s got strengths, but they’re undermined by some fairly pedestrian humor. If this material is representative of the series as a whole, or even of its current style and tone, I’m only mildly curious about future issues. And if it isn’t representative of the title’s current standing, I’m not sure why Dark Horse chose it as bait for prospective readers.

I went to Books-a-Million over the weekend and picked up Death Note (creepy!) and the latest volume of Fruits Basket (weepy!). At the register, the cashier got all excited by the Furuba. “I haven’t read this one yet!” She immediately started flipping through it, then stopped herself, not because it was about to become someone else’s property but because she didn’t want to spoil things for herself. I really wouldn’t have cared if she’d read it on the spot. I wasn’t in any hurry, and the encounter made my day.

While that’s a fondly remembered personal experience, I have no illusions about its universality or that it says anything about Furuba’s gender-neutral allure or the potential implications for the manga market. It’s an anecdote.

Anyway, Johanna Stokes has written another installment of Girl in the Clubhouse at Comic Book Resources. According to the blurb, “[Stokes] checked out some very different comic shops in LA and shared her experiences shopping at them as a woman.” After reading her column, I now suspect that I’m a woman. Like Stokes, I don’t like dingy, badly organized retail spaces. I also find life-sized super-hero statues unsettling. And I don’t like unfriendly, unhelpful clerks. Apparently these are gender-specific objections. This is something of a revelation to me, because I’ve been harboring them for years.

Seriously, how ridiculous is this Comics Everywoman posture that seems part and parcel of Girl in the Clubhouse? It would be like if I started a column purporting to speak for all pushing-40 gay men who read comics.

***

Anecdotes are put to much better use in Lea Hernandez’s new column, I’m Hurting Comics, over at Hero Realm. Just as last week’s thread at The Engine seems to have wound down, Lea takes a long look at the benefits of creator ownership and some of the drawbacks for those who didn’t hold out for it. (I’m going to be keeping an eye on this Engine thread.)

***

The average quality of reviews at Manga Life improved by an order of magnitude when MangaBlog’s Brigid Alverson started writing for the site. She’s making her way through all of the volumes of Fruits Basket, among other titles, and it’s fun to see where our opinions intersect and diverge.

Over at her blog, Brigid wonders about the age ratings on some manga titles. If you’re familiar with them, pop by and let her know what “Older Teens” might mean in the cases of Alice 19th, Imadoki!, Kill Me Kiss Me, and W Juliet.

***

And I don’t care how much a comic shop may or may not suck. If it’s the only place to buy Banana Sunday #3 and She-Hulk #2.1 this week, then it’s a small price to pay. (The addition of a new volume of Kindaichi Case Files makes the week an embarrassment of riches.)

If you’re like me, you’re a little down over the last day of Fanboy Rampage. If you’re like me, you find shopping a handy tonic for bouts of malaise.

Top Shelf Productions is having its annual giant web sale through Oct. 25. Right off the top of my head, some recommended titles include:

• Spiral-Bound, by Aaron Renier
• Owly: The Way Home, by Andy Runton
• Owly: Just a Little Blue, by Andy Runton
• Same Difference & Other Stories, by Derek Kirk Kim
• and while it’s not on sale this year, I bought and loved Big Clay Pot by Scott Mills during last year’s blow-out

Go. Browse. Heal.

I couldn’t let the sad day go by without mentioning how much I’ve enjoyed Graeme McMillan’s Fanboy Rampage since I’ve been blog-watching.

Beyond being consistently entertaining (even if the entertainment sometimes takes an “I know I should look away, but I can’t” form), I think the blog has provided some very valuable investigative journalism. Developments that might have gone unnoticed (or under-noticed) have come under fuller scrutiny thanks to Graeme’s efforts, and scarcely a week goes by without FBR sparking some very useful discussion.

It’s too bad The Comics Journal couldn’t add one more installment to their on-line comics journalism series, because I think FBR counts in its surreptitious way. In fact, I’d say it counts as much as or more than many of the sites they did cover.

Beyond those valuable contributions, I also like to think Graeme’s remorseless scrutiny of message-board stupidity might have actually made some people more inclined to be civil. If even a handful of people thought before they wrote because they were afraid of looking like a nitwit on FBR, it will have all been worth it.

So thanks, Graeme, for two years of subjecting yourself to some of the worst that the comics internet has to offer and putting it in an entertaining package. I’ll miss FBR a lot.

I know it’s a waste of energy, but I’ve developed a grudge against Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman. It’s my own fault for sticking with the book for as long as I did, but Rucka talked such a good game back in the beginning. He seemed to be bursting with interesting ideas for the character — her beliefs, her various roles as cultural ambassador and adventurer, her inner life, and how people viewed her — that it was particularly disappointing to watch the issues pile up without ever fulfilling the promise of those ideas.

What I got instead were interesting, well-developed bits mixed in with less successful material, none of it ever really blending into anything coherent. None of the various story threads ever gained enough momentum or got enough focus to pay off.

It’s not that there was too much going on; it’s more that it all was inadequately managed or tracked. Diana seemed to be yanked from thread to thread, whether via the machinations of the pantheon, the badly motivated schemes of would-be arch-nemesis Veronica Cale (who seems to have mercifully vanished), or a variety of other influences.

All of these external forces seemed to care intensely about what Wonder Woman stood for without ever actually articulating what that was or why it was so important to them. There was a sort of assumed Amazonian philosophy that never really reached the page. (Early on, Diana wrote a book that articulated her positions, but readers never really saw much of it… only the subsequent uproar.) It had the effect of making the title character fairly irrelevant to her own adventures, and that’s never a good thing.

And now, she’s become something of a utility player for Infinite Crisis and its various feeder plots. I don’t find any of the recent portrayals of the character to be inconsistent or unbelievable. They fit well enough with previous portrayals. But the OMAC-related events don’t really have anything to do with the dozens of issues that have gone before. Diana’s actions and subsequent behavior are plausible, but they’re jarring at the same time, because they were dropped into the book from out of nowhere (at least for people who aren’t following a variety of unrelated mini-series, but I guess nothing is really unrelated at this point).

But really, the neck-snapping and Rift in the Trinity stuff are really just a convenient last straw. It’s been evident for a while that the book was never going to live up to its early promise and Rucka’s interesting ideas for the character. So, more money for manga.

On a somewhat related note, I’m really disappointed to see that Gail Simone’s run on Action Comics will be so short. She’s done nice work with the characters and had pulled off some of the more graceful tie-in issues in the Countdown flurry. I guess it’s a relief that she didn’t have much time to lay down any significant subplots, as it won’t be too difficult to wrap them up, but I’ll miss her take on Metropolis.

It’s just more evidence that there’s no profit for me in investing anything in Superman titles, no matter how much I admire the creators. Since it’s really only creators who draw me to the franchise, I’m inevitably disappointed when their momentum gets derailed by crossovers, editorial mandates, and musical chairs.

The discussion over Tokyopop’s contracts for OEL creators is barreling along. It’s still going at The Engine, where it all started, with some speculation on the potential consequences of partial creator ownership that would keep me awake at night if I were a creator. As a follow-up of sorts, Warren Ellis starts a thread on the Creator’s Bill of Rights. In it, Neil Kleid brings up an interesting possibility:

“Some folks at SPX were talking about illustrating this as a minicomic (apparently they’ve already done the Comics Code).”

I’d love to see this, at least partly because I’m fascinated with the idea of educational and public-service manga (comics about the economy, public health, and other issues that have been published in Japan). I’m not really holding my breath for translated versions to show up, though.

At Comics.212.net, Christopher Butcher reports that Dirk Deppey is turning the considerable journalistic intelligence of The Comics Journal on the issue.

In his latest column for Komikwerks, Jog takes an allegorical approach to the whole issue. It’s kind of like if Planetes were about creators’ rights instead of orbital garbage collectors, and it’s incredible.

Tony Salvaggio looks at one of the creative outcomes of OEL in his latest installment of Calling Manga Island, interviewing Ben Roman, illustrator for I Luv Halloween (working with writer Keith Giffen), then reviewing the book.

The result of all this is to leave me wondering what the hell I’m going to write about for next week. “I feel like I should say something about… oh, wait… Jog just did it better than I ever could. Well, I’ve been meaning to review… damnit, Salvaggio!” At the moment, I’m seriously considering a “Who’d win?” throwdown between Tohru Honda and Hatsumi Narita.

Be afraid.

No, come to think of it, don’t. Hoke would never let me get away with it.

Yay! A reasonably inexpensive week of new comics arrivals! (For me, at least.) More money for manga! I can finally catch up on the most recent volumes of Fruits Basket and weep openly! (I browsed through the eleventh at Target the other day, and I’m fairly sure a full reading will kill me.)

Gail Simone will only be making me sacrifice my principles once this week, with a new issue of Villains United. (Action Comics is being written by Abnett and Lanning, and I still haven’t quite gotten over their Legion of Super-Heroes run. Plus, the issue seems to be a Day of Vengeance tie-in. Pass.) A new story arc starts in Fables, blissfully unencumbered by anything but its own back story.

A new issue of The Comics Journal (#271) hits the stands.

Over at Marvel, the very pleasant Gravity mini-series concludes. Looking back, I probably could have waited for the collection and enjoyed it a bit more, because the individual issues can seem a bit thin. I’m glad I didn’t wait for the trade of Livewires (which arrives in digest form tomorrow), because the thought of that tiny print reproduced at an even smaller size is enough to make my eyes cross permanently. If you aren’t given to spontaneous retinal detachment, you might give it a look. And since it’s relatively cheap, you can use the savings on a jeweler’s loupe.

The most recent issue of Amelia Rules (#14) seemed to veer into After-School Special territory. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because Jimmy Gownley has a really versatile handle on different tones. Still, it will be interesting to see how things proceed in #15.

It might be time for a little on-line shopping. I’m unlikely ever to see a copy of The Push Man and Other Stories (Drawn and Quarterly) on a shelf here in town, and I still haven’t been able to find a copy of Death Note. That’s bizarre to me, because it’s been published by Shonen Jump Advanced. If there’s one thing I can usually count on, it’s the ready availability of SJ titles in local bookstores.

Last week, David Taylor assembled a list of OEL titles over at Love Manga. This led Warren Ellis to ask for a roll call of OEL creators over at The Engine. This has led to a spirited discussion of the nature of contracts for said creators and whether Tokyopop is taking more than its fair share. Leading the charge is Lea “I’m Hurting Comics” Hernandez:

“I hate that good creators think not-so-equitable contracts are the best they can get because they’re new. Oni doesn’t take ownership from new creators. Dark Horse doesn’t. TPop is not publishing you out of the goodness of their hearts. Their risk is not huge—it’s calculated. Publishers (not shrewd ones, anyway) don’t take on projects that aren’t going to sell.”

It should be fun to watch that one develop.

In other points of art-commerce intersection, Paul O’Brien of the X-Axis finds the advertisements in last week’s comics so intrusive that he can barely manage to review them:

“Seriously, Marvel. Don’t you have any pride? Don’t you have any self-respect? Don’t you care about putting out a quality product? Don’t you even care about your reputation for quality? And if you do, why are there 22 pages of adverts cluttering up the 24 page story that I have paid my hard-earned money to read?”

O’Brien also looks at Diamond’s new policies over in his Ninth Art column and mentions Carla Speed McNeill’s move from monthlies to web-to-trade distribution with Finder. I keep wishing people would mention the fact that the Foglios did this with Girl Genius months ago. In his Things to Come column, Greg McElhatton sings the praises of the Foglios’ funny, quirky comic, among other worthy December offerings.

I was talking to John Jakala recently about his Two-Volume Theory of Manga. Basically, John’s position is that you can’t always determine a title’s quality from a single digest.

I’ve had some reading experiences that back that up. Fruits Basket didn’t really kick in until the second installment. Eerie Queerie seemed sensitive and intelligent in the first volume, then went hideously off the rails in the second.

This weekend’s reading stack has offered some interesting variations on the Two-Volume Theory. Take the second volume of Wataru Yoshizumi’s Ultra Maniac. I liked the first one a lot for its magical slapstick and the Lucy-and-Ethel dynamic of its leads, Ayu and Nina. I like the second, too, though for very different reasons.

Yoshizumi downplays the supernatural antics, focusing instead on the characters’ relationships. Ayu and Nina’s suitors, including a new arrival from Nina’s magical dimension, get some interesting layers. Yoshizumi also deepens the friendship of the two leads. When they realize they have a crush on the same boy, the stage is set for some predictable rivalry and antagonism, but Yoshizumi has the girls pick friendship over romance. It’s a refreshing development, and it’s executed well.

Funny farce in the first, effective interpersonal stuff in the second. Who knows where the third volume will go?

I picked up the first volume of Del Rey’s Ghost Hunt pretty much on a whim. With Halloween around the corner, I was looking for supernatural titles for a possible Flipped column, and it’s an adaptation of a series of young-adult novels, which follows up on last week’s installment.

Honestly, Ghost Hunt didn’t do very much for me. Shiho Inada has done some nice work in adapting Fuyumi Ono’s novel, but not quite enough. The manga follows a group of spiritualists as they investigate a potential haunting on a high school campus. Leading the pack is Kazuya, a teen-aged ghost hunter who uses science to investigate spiritual phenomena. He’s joined by a sarcastic hipster monk, a sexy temple priestess, a boyish Australian priest, a psychic schoolgirl (you can tell because she has thick glasses and lank, dark hair), and a popular TV fortune teller. They’re an interesting bunch, and it’s kind of fun to watch them squabble over whose approach is best.

Kazuya also conscripts ghost-story-loving schoolgirl Mai into the investigation when she accidentally damages some equipment (and Kazuya’s usual assistant). Mai is the gateway character, the pair of fresh eyes providing untrained, down-to-earth perspective on the case. Unfortunately, she’s also an exposition generator, asking question after question so the experts can explain what’s going on. It wears thin, as does Kazuya’s Henry Higgins treatment of Mai. He’s incredibly condescending to her, to the point that she nicknames him “Naru-kun” (short for narcissist). She crushes on him of course, though I’m not quite convinced his dreaminess outweighs his obnoxiousness.

The story itself isn’t very scary and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Lots of things happen, but very few of them turn out to be relevant in the end. Inada also tends to draw big red circles around the few useful clues, which undermines suspense.

That said, I’m still curious about where the series will go. I’m not sure if all of Ono’s novels follow the same character set or if it varies from book to book. And then there’s the estimable Mr. Jakala’s theory, which always leaves open the possibility for improvement. We’ll see.