It’s antithetical to my usual way of thinking, but I’m happy the weekend is over. It was pretty crappy all in all, a stream of irritating, energy-sapping chores that couldn’t be avoided. Fortunately, the ick was mitigated with some really interesting manga reading. And gin, but that’s a different post.

Given my usual aversion to violent and shocking comics, you’d think I would have hated Battle Royale. That wasn’t the case, and I found this grisly, twist-a-minute comic really compelling. As with Planetes, it’s not hard to imagine how the particular future portrayed in this story might come to pass. As a result, the violence is justified by the narrative circumstances, and the sociological implications are much more interesting. (I guess I’m going to have to qualify my previous thinking: I don’t mind violence and shock when they actually serve the story instead of try to distract you from how empty it is.) I definitely want to read more of this, though it doesn’t seem like it should be consumed in large doses.

I did consume a large dose of Iron Wok Jan! over the weekend, thanks to a sale at DollarManga. I’m quite smitten with Celine Yang, the Asian-French upstart from Kobe who brings her Nouvelle Chinoise stylings into the mix. I think it’s really smart of creator Shinji Saijyo to keep a balance between volatile, obnoxious Jan and dutiful, customer-focused Kiriko. Their rivalry is still engaging because their philosophies are so different. (Jan may be more inspired and technically proficient than Kiriko, but that doesn’t help if everyone hates you.) One point of concern extends to both Celine and Kiriko: these girls are stacked, and if they’re going to spend their working lives standing at a stove, they are facing a world of back problems beyond the litany of physical ailments that typically plague professional chefs.

Othello is an engrossing shojo title that demonstrates what can happen when a teen sticks too closely to societal norms. Protagonist Yaya has struggled so hard to fit in that she’s repressed almost every natural impulse she has. Her desire to avoid conflict has left her stuck with two venomous bitches as “best friends,” too, which compounds her problems. Enter Nana, Yaya’s aggressive split personality, who emerges to right the wrongs committed against her other self. A question lurks around the story’s edges: is Nana’s aggression really any better than Yaya’s passivity? This manga seems to be heading in a fairly complex direction, not just as wish-fulfillment or revenge fantasy.

Junji Ito’s Tomie is another unsettling offering from this creator. In Uzumaki, Ito presented a fairly sympathetic cast of protagonists stuck in circumstances beyond their control. In Tomie, everyone’s a little bit guilty of something. It adds a nice edge to the proceedings and creates an interesting level of reader ambivalence. I can’t really say much more about this manga without giving away too many unpleasant surprises, but I can say that it demonstrates Ito’s ability to find profoundly creepy imagery in the mundane.

Let me tell you, comics shops are not the place to come to grips with your mortality, even slightly.

The shop in town absorbed a collection and was clearing out some of it with a 50-cent sale. As I’m looking through the long boxes, snarking to myself on this person’s taste (lots of Liefeld, Byrne, and Claremont — even a full run of Sovereign Seven), it hits me. Someone’s going to be doing this with my long boxes someday.

Somewhere down the road, geeks like me will be dismissing my choice in reading material, muttering things like, “Well, somebody sure liked The Defenders,” and “The Chapmions? Who the hell are The Champions?” and, worst of all, “He bought the full run of the Heroes Reborn Avengers! How sad is that?”

It was jarring. I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up Captain America in: The Return of Asthma Man. (Though I reserve the right to go back later and see if it’s still there.)

But, it has made me wonder if I shouldn’t be more tolerant to the reading preferences of others, just in some kind of pay-it-forward bid for posthumous charity.

The newlyweds at Peiratikos have just returned from their honeymoon, and they’ve got me thinking about my favorite places.

They picked New Orleans as a destination, a city I love for many reasons. My first trip was in high school, taking the bus down with the marching band for a Mardi Gras parade. It was 90% awful, as one might expect, but those hours when we ditched our chaperone to scurry around the French Quarter definitely made an impression. I’ve been back a couple of times since, and I hope to go back many more times in the future. The food is incredible. I can honestly say we’ve never had a bad meal while there. The sense of equal-opportunity debauchery is wonderfully disorienting, and I love how it manages to be beautiful and historic and seedy at the same time. If you go, take the streetcar out to the Commander’s Palace for brunch. The prix fixe menu is an amazing way to sample incredible food cheaply, and the Bloody Mary’s are not to be believed. (They top them off with more vodka after you’ve had a couple of sips.) Warning: obituary cocktails have not been named whimsically.

While there’s something really artificial about the debauchery of Las Vegas, I’ve still had a great time there. The people-watching alone is worth the trip, and the gaudy horror of it all is really awe-inspiring. It also lends itself to weird and unexpected experiences (like taking part in a CBS market survey for three awful, now-dead programs… still, it was a nice break from the slots). I’m not crazy about getting around Las Vegas, as a rental car is kind of a necessity unless you want to trap yourself on the Strip. And if you do that, your dining is at the mercy of the casinos. You don’t want to put yourself in that position, as celebrity chefs have invaded without trying too hard, which means ridiculously high prices for mediocre food. My recommendation is to spend most of your food dollars in Chinatown, where meals are delicious and incredibly cheap. And if you have a thing for glorious hotel room bathrooms, Mandalay Bay is your residence of choice.

I’ve tagged along with my partner on a few work trips to Chicago, and it feeds my window shopping habit fairly nicely. Ahh, Marshall Field… how do I love thee? And seeing so many beautiful impressionist canvases at the Art Institute is something you really shouldn’t skip.

New York City has had mixed results. We’ve had great trips (like the most recent one) and terrible trips (do some serious research on your lodgings, or nothing else that happens will overcome the horror of where you’re staying). Still, the energy of the place is undeniably exciting, and the sheer variety of it all nicely purges any nasty West Virginia build-up for a while.

I really want to go back to London. I went there to visit family years ago, which kind of limited my freedom of movement. (I spent a lot of time dragging strollers up and down escalators when I’d rather have been doing a pub-by-pub comparison of gin and tonics or having shopgasms at Harrods.) We keep talking about a return trip, but we always seem to be lured back to…

…the Four Corners region. It’s so spectacularly beautiful, even when the landscapes are terrifying. There’s a household difference of opinion: the hubby loves the Grand Canyon, but I’m partial to Zion National Park. The Grand Canyon looks like it would happily kill you, which is an exciting feature, but I feel much more secure in Zion, where you stay at the bottom instead of on the edge. Still, either is an amazing experience. (If you’ve been to the Grand Canyon but have never stayed on the North Rim, I really recommend it. The view isn’t as spectacular, but the crowds are a lot thinner, and there are many wonderful hikes.) The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado are fascinating, too.

My favorite American city and one of our most frequent trips is Washington. It’s an easy and beautiful drive for us through western Maryland, and it’s one of the most walkable cities we’ve visited. I think it’s really underestimated as a cultural destination in terms of the range and quality of fine and modern art you can see. As food cities go, it holds its own nicely (though we always go to City Lights of China in Dupont Circle, no matter how much we vow to be more adventuresome). As gays living in W.Va., we love opportunities to be in the majority (or at least the larger minority), so Dupont Circle is almost always our base of operations. DC has probably my favorite public transportation system in the world; the Metro system is a real gem. The design of the city is a wonder, too. There’s just nothing I don’t like about it, and a visit always recharges my batteries.

Okay, enough travel babble.

Lord have mercy, the comment sections at Fanboy Rampage are on fire today. I can’t even single one out, but it’s like there’s some kind of contest for personal best in snark going on.

Also, the latest installment of Flipped is up at Comic World News. Math is hard!

The shop forgot to pull my copy of Case Closed Vol. 3, which makes me sad. Sgt. Frog Vol. 6 showed up unexpectedly, which makes me happy. (You all read Scott’s excellent medical reviews over at Polite Dissent, right? Now he’s delved into the tricky area of alien amphibian health care.)

The ad for Peach Fuzz in SF makes me really, really want to try it. “The epic story of a ferret who defied her cage.” It’s hard not to root for a ferret.

My order of crazy cheap manga from DollarManga arrived, filled with lots of Iron Wok Jan! and Tomie. Glad to hear that IWJ! will continue, now that I’ve managed to snap up a big chunk of the run.

Have I mentioned that I really love Maison Ikkoku? I don’t know why I put off trying this for so long, but it’s won me over. What I really love about it is that it manages to create romantic misunderstandings without making its character look stupid (for a counter-example, see Three’s Company). Rumiko Takahashi has accomplished this by filling the boarding house with eccentric pot-stirrers. They’re addicted to gossip and drama, but they’re quirky and oddly sweet enough to be sympathetic. The physical comedy is very funny but low-key. And the central characters, charming widow Kyoko and hapless student Godai, are really winning both individually and as a couple.

I’m not much of a Captain America fan. I’ve never picked up his solo title for long and found him kind of irritating in the context of the Avengers. (That’s not always a bad thing; some writers have used his disruptively inflexible presence to good effect.) So I’m really surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed the first two issues of the re-launch of Captain America.

I say I’m surprised because I find the character fairly creator-proof. There are writers whose work I routinely enjoy on other titles who just can’t make Cap work for me. But Ed Brubaker seems to have a very solid direction for the character, where he’s an uneasy player in a noirish world of espionage. I think it works for Cap as a character while opening up some interesting thematic possibilities. This take on Cap responding to these kinds of circumstances… it works for me. And he hasn’t given a single inspiring speech yet, thank God. (I love the art by Steve Epting, too, and there was the added bonus of pages by Michael Lark in #2.)

And, as much as I enjoyed the actual comic, I loved the fan letter from Kurt Busiek. His thoughts on writing for a shared universe are always worth reading, and this isn’t an exception:

“And what we value isn’t the consistency of it all, but the vision. The runs that stand out are those where a creator (or a team) had such a strong vision that they took the character someplace distinctive and exciting, someplace fresh — and the stuff we dismiss is the stuff that doesn’t have that kind of vision, when a series just sort of meanders about in between those good and memorable runs.”

It’s interesting to see him phrase it that way, as I think he’s a writer who has erred on the side of consistency. I’m not saying I didn’t have fun with the high-energy nostalgia of his run on Avengers, particularly those issues done with George Perez. I just think that, in a shared universe, he can get a little too reverent. Of course, I think that also contributes to his reliability as a craftsman of quality, readable super-hero fiction, so it’s not exactly a huge liability. (I wish I didn’t have such a viscerally negative reaction to the art in JLA, but I can’t quite get past it to pick up the book.)

Let me put it this way: if I were forced to choose between never reading his Avengers run again and never reading Arrowsmith again, it wouldn’t even be a contest. When he’s working from zero — no continuity, no franchises — on something like Arrowsmith or Shockrockets, he makes the jump from highly-skilled craftsman to real storytelling artist. Both flavors are worth reading; one is just more deeply satisfying for me.

It’s almost the reverse with Brubaker. I actually prefer his shared-universe stuff (Catwoman, Gotham Central) to his own creations (Sleeper). Though, as with Busiek, it’s a fairly fine distinction between loving a comic and liking it a whole lot.

(Unrelated gushing: I think Kurt Busiek should hold some kind of professional development course on how to interact with fandom. He’s unfailingly polite, though he sets reasonable limits if someone really insists on being a wad. He graciously accepts compliments and constructive criticism, provides clarification where relevant, and has a reservoir of comics trivia locked in his head that would daunt the entire cast of Desk Set, including the computer.)

Have I devoted too much mental energy to a comic I never intended to read in the first place? Obviously. But, when I come across two pieces on Orson Scott Card, future scribe of Ultimate Iron Man, in one day, I can’t possibly pass up cheap synergy. (Schadenfreude may be my drug, but thematic coincidence is the chaser that mellows the buzz.)

At Prism Comics, Scott Anderson makes me slightly uncomfortable:

“We didn’t know he was this way [referring to Card’s well-publicized anti-gay sentiments], but now we do, so what do we do? While I wouldn’t suggest that he be censured in a meaningful way, I would suggest that we don’t help him, that we don’t give him a platform from which to speak or resources to finance his macabre views or the prestige to give them credibility.”

Now, this presumes that Card’s beliefs will automatically influence his creative outpout, and there’s really no way of knowing that. And, if they do, I would find it much more rewarding if the market self-selected the dumbass out on its own. At the same time, I would significantly downgrade my opinion of Marvel (get a shovel) if they looked at Card’s story bible and said, “Hey, Tony Stark endorses the Federal Marriage Amendment! Score!”

Much more to my liking is Paul O’Brien’s assessment over at The Ninth Art:

“None of which is to say that liberals should put aside their distaste and rush out and buy an Orson Scott Card publication. The entertainment possibilities of spending an evening in the company of his personality, albeit mediated through his writing, strike me as slim.”

I really can’t argue with that. Still, all things considered… Ultimate Iron Man? Pass.

The New York Times Arts page (well, the virtual one, at least) is a study in contradictions today.

In her review of the new season of Alias, Virginia Heffernan offers the following:

“In the second view, “Alias,” whose fourth season has its two-hour premiere on ABC tonight, is nothing more than a pretentious comic strip: static, allegorical, a pleasure only to addicts, but also headache-inducingly difficult to criticize in these times when American comics have become, through male nostalgia and the canonization of the graphic novel, sacrosanct.”

Using a definition of comics narrow enough to suit her argument (“Many of us don’t like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys.”), Heffernan goes on to deride one entertainment by likening it to another. (I’m not defending either; I don’t watch Alias, and super-hero comics are losing their glow by the day.)

She couldn’t have possibly known, of course, that her piece would be listed two doors down from the obituary for comics legend Will Eisner. It’s got to be purely coincidence that she’s rolling her eyes at the “canonization of the graphic novel” right below a tribute to the man who gave the graphic novel its name.

Bad timing, though.

Not much going on in the comic shop tomorrow, as others have observed. Still, I’ll definitely take a look at Proof of Concept from AiT/Planet Lar. Peter David returns to Incredible Hulk with #77. David wrote the only take on the character that interested me in the slightest, so that gets a shot. Lastly, there’s another volume of Case Closed from Viz, which is certainly on my list.

By the way, when exactly does Hero Squared (tantalizingly reviewed here) ship? Have I missed it? I lose all sense of time when I have to change years writing checks.

Actually, he made it a while ago, but I wanted to heartily second Lyle’s suggestion that Fake is a worthy contender for a GLAAD Media Award. The ongoing portrayal of a relationship of equals is smart, funny, sexy, and heartfelt and never lapses into a sociology lesson. A comic about two adults forging a romance, facing believable obstacles and false starts along the way, shouldn’t be revolutionary, but it still is in this context. As for the mainstream/independent impact issue, I would argue that Tokyopop is just as mainstream as Marvel and DC.

On the subject of men who like men in manga, Johanna has reviewed Legal Drug at Comics Worth Reading. I read this digest over the weekend and had much the same reaction. It seems like “less of the same,” if that makes any sense.

On the subject of ducks who don’t like men in comics, I’ll leave all comment to Dorian.

And, found via Thought Balloons, Beckett Publications gets its shojo working with today’s release of the new magazine, Anime for Girls. I hope they aren’t kidding about that “other major retailers” bit, because I won’t set foot in a Wal-Mart.