What’s in the water of the comics web lately? Seems like I can’t turn around without running smack into genitalia, metaphorically speaking. Blog entries, column titles, lead paragraphs… all exhort readers to contemplate the evocative power of manbits and the various ways with which they can be… um… interfaced.

I realize now that there’s just nowhere I can safely go with this subject. I’ll stop before I truly humiliate myself.

I’ve been watching early reviews of Peter Carey’s anime-and-manga travelogue, Wrong About Japan, trying to decide if it will make the buy list or the borrow list. Marcel Theroux writes a puzzling commentary in Sunday’s New York Times (free registration required) that makes me throw up my hands and wait until the book reaches my local library.

The bottom line seems to be that as a writer of non-fiction, Carey is a great novelist. And there’s nothing wrong with that, provided nobody had any scholarly or journalistic expectations for the book. Still, it seems like something I’d rather read for free. (Part of this may be my growing disappointment with the last hardcover I bought, Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs. After really enjoying his first two autobiographical pieces, Running With Scissors and Dry, this seems like David Sedaris Lite.)

There is one passage in Theroux’s review that stopped me flat:

“By the end of the book, you feel you’ve witnessed a series of rather moving encounters between the author and one of the more baffling cultures of our time: one that combines technological sophistication and inscrutable inwardness; a culture largely impenetrable to outsiders, yet which remains unignorable — not least because of its economic power.”

Initially, I thought Theroux was talking specifically about manga/anime culture. (If it’s so baffling, why is it so popular in so many places?) Then I realized he was talking about Japanese culture as a whole, which strikes me as much, much worse. It’s like Theroux is saying, “They’re weird, but they’re rich, so what can you do?”

Now, I used “inscrutable” in this week’s Flipped, but I did so with tongue in cheek (and, yowza, do I hope it came across that way). I honestly never expected to find this kind of “mysterious east” stuff presented without irony in the New York Times.

(For those who don’t get the post title reference, have you still not listened to the soundtrack to Avenue Q? What are you waiting for?)

The latest Flipped is up at Comics World News. It’s the column that will have you asking, “Why did he bother to construct an elaborate lead-in when all he wanted to do was crush on some of his favorite shojo titles?”

Why? Because black coffee is my writing coach.

Just be thankful I managed to strangle the impulse to suggest a bunch of terrible pun headlines that play off of Yu Watase’s first name. In fact, I should post this before that impulse rallies for another bout.

Yay! Shawn Fumo is back and blogging at Worlds Within Worlds! In a nice companion to the manga meme summary at Cognitive Dissonance, he offers up a vote tally from the forums at Anime on DVD.

The Great Curve is a really enjoyable and informative group blog that has interesting and distinctive voices in the chorus. There’s a lot to like, but I particularly appreciated their thorough look at the Travels With Buster flap.

The Legion of Blogging Curmudgeons has expanded with the addition of The Comics Curmudgeon, who reads daily comic strips so we don’t have to. Bless you, Josh! I share his hope for “a great wave of carnage on the comics pages.” Come on, who doesn’t want to see a cage match between Blondie and Dagwood and the Lockhorns? Four go in… two or fewer come out!

So I bought the first volume of Love as a Foreign Language this week. And, dork that I am, I immediately went to the last page and tried to read it backwards. Sigh.

Behavioral glitches aside, I’m finally getting around to sampling more of Oni’s output. I’ll definitely get the next volume of LaaFL, as it’s got me curious about where things are headed. I love the supporting cast and the smaller moments of cultural disconnect. J. Torres does a nice job with the comic potential of alienation, and I really like Derek Kim’s clean, expressive art.

Scandalous was enjoyable if strangely slight. I’ve always been interested by the overlap between celebrity and politics, and the era explored here offers a lot of meaty material. Torres has constructed an interesting snapshot of the Red Scare’s fallout in Hollywood and the power and perils of gossip, but I think the story could have easily been twice as long. Or maybe I just wanted twice as many pages of Scott Chantler’s snappy, stylish illustrations.

I had some misgivings about the first volume of Love Fights, but enough people whose opinions I trust have convinced me to invest in the second. It’s on the way. And February is going to be Bryan Lee O’Malley month, with a re-release of Lost at Sea and the second volume of Scott Pilgrim headed my way.

By the way, does anyone know what’s going on with Everest? I liked the preview that came out on Free Comic Book Day. Did I miss it (likely), or has it been postponed?

Or maybe not. Depends on your perspective, I guess, but two of Marvel’s solicitations give me pause.

First, there’s this little treasure. As much as I love Dan Slott, I’m starting to worry that Marvel is using him as a weird kind of apologist for their big event books. Hate Avengers: Disassembled? You can always read She-Hulk. “Sins Past” has left a bad taste in your mouth? Cleanse your palate with Spider-Man and the Human Torch.

And now, G.L.A., the Great Lakes Avengers. If anyone can get comic mileage out of a throw-away concept from John Byrne while deflating the New Avengers hype, it’s Slott. (Actually, Joe Kelly did a pretty nice job with the G.L.A. during his much-loved run on Deadpool.) But Slott seems to be wedged into a bit of a corner, getting all the “You will create the illusion that Marvel has a sense of humor about itself” books. I love those books, so it isn’t a problem for me. At some point, though, I’d like to see what Slott can do with different types of material.

But wait! Someone is stepping on Slott’s turf! And it’s… Frank Tieri? Wow. I don’t ever remember him trying to write a comic that was intentionally funny. (Okay, I’m wrong: view the results through the eyes of Paul O’Brien here.) But, long before Chuck Austen, Tieri was Marvel’s go-to writer for the laughably bad. Now that Austen has left Marvel behind, will Tieri reclaim the throne?

I can’t quite articulate yet how much I loved We3, so maybe you should go read the excellent and thoughtful reviews posted at Jog – The Blog and The Brill Building. A certain constituency in my household is prepared to talk about the mini-series, though, and the companion animals have written a group letter to Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly:

Dear Sirs:

While we don’t read comics ourselves, we enjoy sitting on or near David while he does. Sure, sometimes they make him irritable, but on balance, it’s a pretty restful activity. Yesterday, he read the third issue of your comic, We3, and we’ve noticed some changes in his behavior.

Restrictions on our activity have become a dim memory. Treats are falling like rain. He even made bacon for the dogs and opened a packet of tuna for the cats. The good kind of tuna. He compulsively fluffs our beds, and he gets misty when the cats run off with a necktie. Our status in the household, never a cause for complaint, has risen to unprecedented levels. Sure, it’s little creepy when he looks meaningfully into our eyes and says, “You know I’d kill to keep you safe and happy, don’t you?” But the sentiment is much appreciated.

In conclusion, please write a sequel at your earliest convenience. We’re living like union bosses here.

Sincerely,

The Curmudgeonly Critters.

(This review contains spoilers.)

I was disappointed in the first issue of the latest launch of Legion of Super-Heroes. I found the tone to be arch and the attempts to convey the coolness of its premise strenuous. The second installment is much more effective, focusing on character while putting the premise into a specific context.

It opens with a small subset of the Legion preventing an assassination of United Planets Delegates. The beats of the mission are fairly standard, with some slightly shrill tension between teen-of-action Karate Kid and the more contemplative Element Lad. This isn’t a problem, as the sequence is window dressing to establish a much more interesting conflict that drives the rest of the story.

Brainiac 5 is frustrated. He uses his massive intellect to meticulously evaluate cause and effect to identify emergencies and prepare his team-mates for action. It’s his thing, and he does it well. Unfortunately, Dream Girl often does precisely the same thing through seemingly effortless intuition. Brainiac bristles at what he sees as the precognitive’s lack of intellectual rigor and flagrant disrespect for the scientific method.

It’s a funny, believable point of contention between two well-developed characters, and it plays nicely into the comic’s A-plot. On Dream Girl’s home world of Naltor, the authorities are inflicting sleep deprivation on their teen-aged citizens. Dream Girl, Brainiac, Karate Kid, and Shadow Lass travel to Naltor to find out why, and Mark Waid takes the opportunity to explore the practicalities and morality of a race that can see the future.

The rigor-versus-intuition argument runs throughout the issue, and Waid manages to strike a balance that highlights the value of each without being too obvious. He also places the larger issues alongside some smart, smaller demonstrations of the practical applications of precognition. I particularly liked the notion of law enforcers concentrating on short-term predictions to give them a combative edge. It makes for some fun sequences, and it helps paint Dream Girl as a formidable heroine who can make varied use of her specific abilities.

That element is critical to a strong Legion title, I think. It’s nice to see Waid articulate the ways individual members contribute. He really seems to have thought out how they’ve been defined by their abilities and cultures. Given the size of the cast, it’s the kind of story construct that could drive the comic for some time without growing stale.

I’m not as enthusiastic about art by Barry Kitson. It’s lovely, but I find it a bit static. He has a very strong hand for composition, but there isn’t much of a sense of motion. It creates the feeling of a sequence of video stills for me. The panels are attractive and polished, but they don’t flow the way I’d like. I also find a lack of variety to characters’ faces and body types, aside from some differences in height and hairstyle. That said the visuals don’t actively detract from the story. They just don’t tell it with the kind of energy and specificity that would really make it jump off of the page.

Still, this issue makes me extremely optimistic about Waid’s work on the title. It’s smart, funny, and imaginative in ways both big and small. I’ll definitely be sticking around.

Unless one is leaving them in the 1950s, apparently.

The United States Secretary of Education has pulled funding from a PBS show for children (Postcards from Buster) for writing an episode that features lesbian characters. PBS has pulled the episode in question.

If you find this revolting, why not drop Secretary Spellings a line? (She’s probably just upset that Spongebob gets his hoyay on in the private sector, and she’s acting out.) Then, you could swing by PBS and express your opinion.

Found via Cognitive Dissonance, here are my current favorite manga titles:

• Case Closed
• Hikaru No Go
• Hot Gimmick
• Imadoki!
• Sgt. Frog

Because I’m a big cheater, I’ll throw in favorites titles that have completed their runs:

• Alice 19th
• Fake

And, since I’ve already abused the meme, I’ll list some runners-up:

• Iron Wok Jan!
• Kindaichi Case Files
• Maison Ikkoku