Heidi MacDonald follows up on the 7-11 story she broke at The Beat, kicking so much ass that I’m surprised she didn’t lose her shoes in the process. I’m particularly taken with her thoughts on the mad scheme to produce comics kids might actually enjoy reading:

“Every day we read about someone launching a line of educational comics for kids. Everyday we hear about librarians unable to keep comics on the shelves in kids sections. Every day we read that manga paperbacks aimed at kids sell 10-60k copies. This has been going on for years. People aren’t doing it because of some insane gamble that has only a prayer of paying off. It’s solid business sense. It isn’t rocket science. KIDS LIKE COMICS. That’s a fact.”

And if that wasn’t good sense enough, she follows it up with this:

“Marvel knows they have to escape from Skull Island. They’ve got to get back to the mainland, because everyone is running out of coconuts.”

Amen.

I’m apparently not the only person who gets nostalgic at the thought of comics in convenience stores (or drugs stores or grocery stores or wherever). And I’m interested to watch the same pattern emerge in many people’s experience: 1) pick up comics casually someplace where comics aren’t the only attraction; 2) become more dedicated to the hobby as your disposable income increases; 3) find specialty shop so you don’t have to rely on spinner racks in the carry-out.

It seems weird to me that this wasn’t just happening with me as a comics reader, or with a bunch of other comics readers, but that it seemed to be happening to an entire industry. Comics moved out of the places where everyone could buy them, further and further into an isolated, ever-more costly niche industry. It’s nice to see a concentrated effort to reverse that, and I hope Marvel and DC can commit the resources needed to put some quality, all-ages material in places where all ages are already shopping.

And sure, it’s old hat to compare the current state of affairs to the apparent comics utopia that is Japan, but sometimes it merits repeating. By all accounts, comics have always been widely available and inexpensive in Japan. And there are stories for all ages, which allows readers to keep reading, not out of a sense of nostalgia, but because there’s material that speaks to them, whether their in elementary school or riding the train to the office. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Geez, I go to lunch and all kinds of good stuff pops up around the comics sites and blogs. Much of it deals with ways the comics industry might make buying their product a more convenient, pleasant, cost-effective experience.

At Comic World News, Shawn Hoke takes a look at local comic retailers, good and bad. Shawn makes a lot of good points, as do folks talking about the column at Fanboy Rampage.

As I’ve mentioned, I don’t live in a major metropolitan area, but I still have two comic shops to choose from in town. One has a friendly staff, a front-of-Previews selection, a reluctance to stretch beyond it, and a decidedly unpleasant ambiance. It’s not that the people aren’t nice; it’s that the shop is dingy and dark and smells funny. Boob-a-licious art is all over the walls, and it’s cramped, with every available flat surface covered with something, from Elektra busts to eight-sided dice to whatever.

The other shop has a friendly staff, a slightly more diverse selection, real interest in what’s out there that they might not be familiar with, genuine eagerness to help you track down a book if they don’t have it immediately in stock, a decent selection of manga, a great selection of trades (including a fair amount of indie stuff), and an appealing, well-organized retail space. The shop is clean, brightly lit, doesn’t smell like anything it shouldn’t, and would make just about any customer, from diehard comics nerd to parents with young children, feel comfortable shopping there.

And this is my pet peeve about some comic shops. Clean your space already. Make it an appealing place to spend money. I can’t imagine you’ll lose any of your existing clientele (unless they like the smelly, dark, cramped, creepy version because it gives them giddy, porn-store sense memories), and new kinds of customers might actually be inclined to shop there more than once, if they could actually muster the courage to stay long enough to make a purchase the first time. I’m watching right now what happens when these two kinds of stores directly compete with each other. The dirty, dank one gets its ass kicked.

Elsewhere, Dave Carter at Yet Another Comics Blog wonders about the potential of the comics anthology. For a success story, he cites Shonen Jump with its high page count, lower print quality, and crazy low per-page price. It’s something I’d love to see Marvel or DC try, though I’d want to see a mix of current material along with the reprints Dave suggests (though many of his ideas for themed anthologies sound really, really cool). Kind of like a Marvel or DC “Sampler.” Then, of course, I try and contemplate what exactly they’d be able to include in such an athology that isn’t too insular or too “mature” for general audiences and still features the kind of marquee character who would lead a kid to pick it up.

I also wonder about the likelihood of a major publisher willingly lowering the quality of their print stock for a concurrent reprint, even if it’s for a potential loss leader. And that would be the most sensible reason to do an anthology like that. While I’m sure some profit could be made off of the anthology itself, there wouldn’t be much point if the ultimate goal wasn’t to use it as a gateway for the publisher’s regular product, the monthly floppies and collections.

Last but not least, Heidi MacDonald at The Beat has broken news of Marvel’s brave re-entry into the convenience store. And that story pushes soooooo many nostalgia buttons for me, as the carry-out was my primary source for comics as a kid. They were pretty much my only source of exercise, too, as I would travel on foot from one to the other to find all of the comics I wanted. It’s weird to think that Marvel actually has to decide to go back into a 7-11, because up to a certain point, I never really thought of comics as being anywhere else. They were at the drug store and the UDF and the Convenient next to the library.

I mean, it’s nice that they’re branching into other outlets, but it makes me kind of sad that they have to consciously decide to start doing something that was pretty much a given during my formative comics years. Great. Now I feel really old.

I haven’t been to many comics events. The ones that sound interesting (or at least morbidly fascinating from a “you should experience it at least once” perspective) would also demand a fair amount of travel and expense to attend. Generally, I like to reserve my travel budget to go to a destination with plenty to do rather than one specific event. Timing usually keeps me from going to things that are closer at hand. (And my partner’s eyes flint with fight-or-flight instinct at the very mention of a comics convention.)

But, man, is the Toronto Comic Arts Festival a temptation. First of all, Toronto has always been on my list of potential urban destinations. Second, it would let me go to The Beguiling and spend too much money. Third, they have an absolutely crazy roster of guests. Jeff Smith, Darwyn Cooke, James Jean, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Cameron Stewart, J. Torres, Jim Rugg, Andy Runton… it seems almost unsafe to have that much talent in one place.

Insidious Canadians, luring me north and tempting me to be fiscally irresponsible.

So I’m looking through the release list for the week and thinking I’m going to get off fairly cheaply. Then I hit the manga publishers. Surely that isn’t all coming out tomorrow, is it? I know Tokyopop tends to list its monthly releases up front, but Viz usually breaks things down week by week. And if all of that is arriving at the same time, I’m going to need to pop by the plasma bank on the way to the shop.

Tokyopop actually isn’t so bad: just the seventh volume of Sgt. Frog. (I know… “Just?”)

Viz, on the other hand… Case Closed Vol. 4, Imadoki! Vol. 5, the debut of Times Two, Whistle! Vol. 4… plus a bunch of other titles and some of the new shojo rolling out… Ye gods.

Ah, and Oni has the second volume of Love as a Foreign Language. I liked the first installment and plan to review the title at some point, but I feel like I need to read more of it before I do.

Speaking of Oni, did I miss the second volume of Scott Pilgrim? I remember pre-ordering it from the February Previews, along with the re-issue of Lost at Sea, and neither seems to have shown up. Not that I’m begging for the extra expense this week, and I’ll be perfectly happy to get them whenever they ship. I just want to make sure I haven’t missed them and need to start backtracking.

I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve gone from loving awards shows to being unable to stand them (with the exception of the Tony Awards). I like to know who’s nominated and who wins, and I loves me some Tom the Dog for his wondrous recaps, but whenever I actually see a red carpet on my television screen, I grab the remote.

So what did I watch instead? One of last year’s nominees, Lost in Translation, and I really enjoyed it. I thought the editing could have been tighter at certain points, but it was lovely. If it hadn’t been coronation year for Peter Jackson (which I’m not quibbling with), I think Sofia Coppola could easily have won the Best Director Oscar in addition to her Best Original Screenplay award.

I always like Bill Murray, but Scarlett Johansson really took me by surprise. I thought she was good (if not particularly remarkable) in Ghost World, and I wasn’t expecting too much from her here. But, wow, she has such a gift for facial expressions; I couldn’t believe how much she was able to communicate without words and how much intelligence seemed to inform her choices. I do think she could use some vocal training to help her invest her line readings with some more variety. Still, she was only 18 when the movie was made, so she’s got plenty of time.

In other “what took you so long” news, I picked up the great big book of Bone over the weekend. It wasn’t reliably available to me during its single-issue days, so it’s sat on the “I’ll try it in trades someday” list. The format made it irresistably easy to do so. Now I’ve just got to resist the urge to lock myself in a room and read it cover to cover in a sitting. Just delightful stuff, bound to become a personal favorite.

On Usenet, Paul O’Brien has posted his analysis of Marvel’s numbers for January. I’m particularly interested in how The Pulse has done in light of its Secret War crossover:

“45. PULSE
Feb Pulse #1 – 51,130 (+81.8%)
Mar Pulse #2 – 45,479 (-11.1%)
Apr n/a
May Pulse #3 – 43,655 ( -4.0%)
Jun n/a
Jul Pulse #4 – 39,883 ( -8.6%)
Aug n/a
Sep Pulse #5 – 37,812 ( -5.2%)
Oct n/a
Nov Pulse #6 – 40,895 ( +8.2%)
Dec n/a
Jan Pulse #7 – 34,779 (-15.0%)
6 mnth (-12.8%)

Back to normal numbers after the SECRET WARS tie-in. The title doesn’t seem to be holding on to its readers all that well. The bimonthly format may not be helping.”

Hm. Not much of a bump from the crossover (even with Wolverine on the cover!), then sheds what seems to be all of its new readers and a fair chunk of its existing audience (about an 8% drop from the September figure). I dropped it because of the crossover after enjoying the first arc, and I noticed a number of other bloggers did the same. Seems like we’re not alone. Of course, some might have switched over to trades or plan to pick it back up after the tie-in is done. (Must… mask… unseemly… schadenfreude.)

Y’know, if Marvel’s new content ratings are good for nothing else, they’ve at least provided fodder for online comedy. First, Scott at Polite Dissent riffed on the possibilities. Now, Jog (of the Blog) has been driven to heights of preventive abbreviation in his latest Komikwerks column. His test case is Wolverine 25:

“An X-Man, you see, would be dead by the end of that issue, and I was afraid my grief would drive me over the edge. And just imagine a child, a dear child gazing upon such an awful scenario! Unspeakable. Every flag in the United States of Jog flies at half-mast when an X-Man dies, and I spend weeks recovering.”

Good times.

There was lots of sneaking around going on in this week’s comics. And since the alternative is to consider the thick-as-flies Identity Crisis references in some of DC’s books, I’m happy to have the espionage theme to work with.

(Comments contain spoilers.)

Black Widow (Marvel) concludes with its sixth issue, resolving some of the mini’s major plot elements while (somewhat surprisingly) leaving things open for a promised sequel by writer Richard K. Morgan. This is an “everything you know is wrong” story, which normally isn’t to my taste. But Black Widow is an excellent choice for this kind of tale. Morgan re-imagines Natasha’s origins in a way that’s both creative and logical. At the same time, he paints a much more violent and ruthless portrait of the Widow, while implying that this is the character that’s been there all along, modulating her behavior to suit her spandex surroundings. It hasn’t been a perfect mini, what with Natasha condemning marketing assaults on womanhood while stuffing herself into a bustier, but the good stuff has outweighed the more iffy elements. (Am I the only one who’s kind of enjoying the recent trend of playing Nick Fury as a manipulative bastard?) I’m looking forward to the second volume.

What’s Legion of Super-Heroes 3 (DC) doing in a survey of sneakiness? Writer Mark Waid starts building dissent in the ranks in this issue. It seems like there isn’t as much unanimity of purpose to the youth movement as there’s been in previous incarnations. Given the strong and distinct personalities Waid is establishing, this makes perfect sense and sets up a nice subplot to drive things along. He also manages to give Triplicate Girl a fascinating character make-over, letting her abilities inform her identity in clever, creative ways as he did with Dream Girl last issue. Artist Barry Kitson does a nice job with the subtler character moments, which is good to see. I’ve found his work technically proficient but a bit cold in the past, so this is a promising development.

The Pickytarian does a splendid job talking about Losers 21 (DC/Vertigo), particularly the work of artist Jock, so go there and read it. I would just add that I’m finding this arc a little hard to follow. This title seems like it would work better for me in trade paperback format, without the lapsed time between issues. (Details get lost in my tiny, sieve-like brain over the intervening weeks.) It’s undeniably good stuff, but it seems stronger in big chunks. We’ll see.

Mystique (Marvel) wrapped up its 24-issue run this week, and I’ll miss this book. Writer Sean McKeever has done a nice job using a morally ambiguous character as a versatile protagonist. There are plenty of twists in this concluding chapter, and some of them seem to stem from events earlier in the run (which I didn’t read). Slight clarity issues aside, the story has a lot of momentum and surprise. McKeever also manages to put Mystique back where the series found her, informed by the events of the title but in an entirely usable state for other writers. (I can’t resist giving extra points for being a good citizen of a shared fictional universe.) This was one of the throng of mutant titles that seemed to have real potential and a distinct point of view. Too bad it didn’t make it.

I hate it when writers don’t respect my need for denial. I’ve been convincing myself that Sleeper (DC/Wildstorm) exists in its own little world and I don’t really need to know anything about comics I haven’t read and don’t plan to read. So when Ed Brubaker plops someone named Grifter smack in the middle of Sleeper 9, I get irked that my pristine reading enjoyment is marred by some too-kewl 1990s gunslinger. Brubaker gives readers information about who Grifter is, but the character’s presence is still a distraction. Either Brubaker’s character work on Grifter is fairly minimalist, or Grifter just isn’t very interesting. Grifter’s presence serves a narrative purpose, providing a useful distraction to allow the regular cast to engage in sneaky maneuvering. At the same time, it serves as a different kind of distraction for readers who viewed the book as a self-contained reading experience. (Maybe it’s just me and I’m annoyed out of all proportion.) Anyway, the issue ends with a nicely ambiguous twist that moves things forward, as it almost always does. Many readers are disappointed that this title will be ending, but I think it’s the kind of story that begs for closure. I’m looking forward to seeing how Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips wrap things up.

After reading the latest Tilting at Windmills at Newsarama and learning about how manga moves (or doesn’t) at the shop owned by columnist Brian Hibbs, I thought it might be interesting to hear from other comics retailers on the topic of manga for a future installment of Flipped.

Does it sell? Does it sit? Do your super-hero readers dabble? Have any manga-only customers started to show up? Do you market your shop as selling manga? Have you decided against adding manga to your stock? Do you wish publishers would take a break with all the new releases?

Any perspectives are welcome. I know whatever I put together would be entirely anecdotal, but, in my world, “comprehensive” is a synonym for “too much work,” and Ed Cunard promised me I could be as lazy as I wanted. And Ed, as a person with dogs, knows that promises are not to be made lightly.

So, if you feel like it, drop me a line at DavidPWelsh at yahoo dot com, and let fly. (Also, please feel free to tell me if this topic has been broached several hundred times before by minds much wiser than I, and that I should really, really reconsider.) Thanks!

Flush with the excitement of a new set of content ratings from Marvel, Scott at Polite Dissent offers some helpful suggestions. Parents may not find them particularly useful, but I know I’d rely on them.

Dorian at Postmodern Barney rattles off 100 annoying things about comics. The love shines through all the same.

At The Great Curve, Brian Cronin looks super-heroic death in the eye.

David Taylor at Love Manga looks at ICv2’s graphic novel numbers for January. Good stuff, and I particularly like his wrap-up remarks:

“The new audience that Manga is currently attracting, are not always your average comic readers, and the chance (however minute) that they may crossover into other non-manga graphic novels must surely be a good thing, for both us comic readers and comic publishers.”

In the latest installment of Past the Front Racks at Comic World News, Shawn Hoke wants more people to give The Comics Journal a try:

“If you email me (shawnhoke at gmail dot com) your reason for not trying TCJ yet in 500 words or less, I’ll enter your name in a drawing (I’ll pick the entry that entertains me the most) for my copy of the Bendis issue. That’s right, I’m giving away my copy of this issue, and creating a gaping hole in my Journal run, just so you, Mr. or Mrs. Non Journal Reader, can be exposed to the magic for free.”

Further details and regulations are at the end of Shawn’s column.

I’m just not sure about Doubt!! (Viz). After repeated readings (and over-thinking the heck out of it), I still can’t decide if it’s artful, deadpan satire or slight romantic comedy with a somewhat unfortunate world view.

At the outset, Ai Maekawa is grinding through the last days of a miserable junior high experience. She’s a typical jimi, plain and shy, and when she isn’t invisible to her classmates, they’re picking on her. After a humiliating low point, she vows to go to a high school where nobody knows her and become popular by any means necessary.

After a break devoted to starvation diets, gallons of zit cream, and expensive cosmetics (those pillars of female empowerment), she’s a stunner by her first day of high school. Equal parts artifice and Art of War, she’s determined to make a splash. Ai instantly draws the attention of popular, handsome Sô, who helps her become Head Girl of her class.

Unfortunately, she alienates her female classmates in the process. And while she’s got the looks for popularity, she doesn’t have the psychology. She’s constantly worried that her jimi past will be revealed, and her low self-esteem and residual outcast’s anger bubble up at the worst possible moments.

In one sense, Ai is a terrific protagonist for a screwball comedy like this. She’s obsessively determined to achieve her goals, acutely emotional, and just crafty enough to get herself in plenty of trouble. In other words, she’s her own worst enemy, which can be a real wellspring for comedy.

In another sense, she’s kind of sad. She may be popular, but she doesn’t seem any happier. Popularity is a tricky proposition, and it’s an awful lot of work for rewards that aren’t immediately apparent. Then there’s the question of whether her goals are worth pursuing in the first place. They’re shallow and transitory, but she’s too busy holding on to status to really think about what she gets out of it or what she might be giving up.

And that’s a tough conundrum for me as a reader. I know it’s a natural dilemma for people that age, but there’s something unsettling about the way it’s portrayed here. Creator Kaneyoshi Izumi uses a fairly light touch on material that might benefit from a somewhat sharper edge. If the intent is to poke holes in this kind of image-obsessed social climbing, it’s not entirely apparent. If that isn’t the intent, it’s too blithe an approach to subject matter that I think has kind of an ugly side.

As far as the mechanics of storytelling go, Izumi has real flair. She sets up screwball comedy nicely, and she uses character to drive it. Insecure Ai winds up in a range of sticky situations, and Izumi finds inventive, varied ways to resolve them. The comic set pieces also end up being pretty revealing, showing new sides of Ai’s classmates.

Those classmates are a pretty appealing bunch, by the way. Sô is a blend of pretty-boy entitlement, mischievousness, and a modicum of decency. Yuichiro, Sô’s “faithful assistant,” fills the role of level-headed foil nicely. Aggressive Mina is an amusingly pragmatic, would-be temptress. They provide a nice backdrop to Ai’s highly strung shenanigans.

I’ve seen Izumi’s art likened to that of Hot Gimmick’s Miki Aihara, and it’s an apt comparison. Izumi delivers clean, clear storytelling while stylishly conveying the story’s heightened emotions. While a bit less polished than Aihara’s work, it’s lovely to look at.

But even with all these strengths in its favor, I still can’t pin down exactly how Doubt!! feels about its subject matter. On another level, I’m wondering if I’m bringing too many politically correct expectations to the table or over-personalizing things with my own not-so-fond memories of high school social politics.

So I guess I ultimately have to ask if I want to know what happens in next. Izumi has displayed plenty of craft and inventiveness as a storyteller, and that goes a long way. And I do want to know how things progress. It’s not the same kind of “what happens next” feeling I get with Hot Gimmick or Imadoki!, where I’m swept up in the story, but it’s enough to keep me on board.

(This review is based on a preview copy provided by Viz. Doubt!! is set for release in March.)