The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

Upcoming 4/14/2010

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It’s time for another perusal of the week’s ComicList, which has a decidedly all-ages flair.

Yes, I know that Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! was originally published in a magazine for adult men, Dengeki Daioh. I’d still display no reluctance in recommending the series, now up to its eighth volume, to children and their caregivers, as it’s adorable and hilarious. This time around, Azuma will bring fresh mirth and charm to those old manga standbys, the school and community festivals.

On the home-grown front, there are two original graphic novels from Simon & Schuster’s Atheneum imprint for young adults. First, there’s a new collection of Jimmy Gownley’s terrific Amelia Rules! The Tweenage Guide to Not Being Unpopular is available in hardcover and paperback. I suspect this will be a nice comic-book follow up to the return of Glee. You can check out a preview trailer here.

A new graphic novel from Hope Larson is always cause for celebration. This time around, Mercury (also available in hardcover and paperback) offers a multi-generational mystery set in a family estate in Nova Scotia. Simon & Schuster informs me that the book “weaves together history, romance, and a touch of her trademark magical realism in this remarkable graphic novel of how the past haunts a teenage girl’s present.” I can believe that with no difficulty.

Ken Saito’s moody, moving The Name of the Flower (CMX) concludes with its fourth volume. I’ll be lazy and quote Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey, who says that “Saito’s elegant, understated art is the perfect complement to this delicate drama, making good use of floral imagery to underscore the heroine’s emotional state. For my money, the best new shojo manga of 2009.” In case you’re curious, the series originally ran in Hakusensha’s LaLaDX. Hakusensha rules.

And swinging back to Yen Press, we have the third volume of Svetlana Chmakova’s Nightschool: The Weirn Books, which I’ve enjoyed a whole lot. It’s a supernatural mystery about a powerful girl who must enroll in a school for magic-users and monsters to figure out why her sister disappeared. There are tons of subplots and a big cast of adversarial forces, but Chmakova handles them well and keeps things moving at an appealing clip without neglecting character development or humor.

Ono, oh, no

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Congratulations to Sean (Kleefeld on Comics) Kleefeld for winning two books by Natsume Ono!

“As for one person’s output that I’ve seen at both ends of the spectrum, I’m going to call out Bruce Jones. He’s not especially a favorite author of mine, but I do generally like his work overall. I was especially taken with Somerset Holmes (from Pacific Comics) back in the day, and I believe that was the first time I had encountered his work. It’s been more than a few years since I’ve gone back to see if it still holds up, but most of his work since then has been good.

“That said, his Captain America: What Price Glory? was a train wreck of a comic. I had high hopes between his writing and Steve Rude’s art, but it turned out to be just a mess. I went so far as to email editor Andrew Lis directly to list out all the problems I had with it. He was kind enough to respond and said, in effect, ‘Yeah, we weren’t too happy with how that turned out either.'”

As so many of us do, Sam (Manga Recon) Kusek turned to manga for his mixed emotions:

“My example of two works from the same creative type that are quite different for me, are Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail and Rave Master. Rave Master was one of the first series that I first started reading and while it started off in a really interesting way, the story got really convulted as time went on.

“Fairy Tail is a series that has the same interesting and fun elements that Rave Master had at its start, but has found a way to keep that interest going for a long while. It also represents Mashima’s progression as a story writer and overall artist.”

Alain Mendez turned to classic science fiction:

“I think my big divide on a creator in their works is Isaac Asimov. I love the Robot series with the Caves of Steel being one of my favorite books. On the other hand despite being critically acclaimed I found the Foundation Series completely boring and unengaging.”

All the world is a stage for Alex Brown, but not all of it is worth being in the audience:

“The play I loved: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Also a wonderful movie. Clever, funny, and thought provoking all at once. Plus it totally plays with Hamlet which is wonderful.

“The plays that disappointed me: anything else. To my mind he’s never hit the heights of r&grd (heh) despite further cleverness.

“Oh I just thought of another one: Don Delilo. The book White Noise by him is terrific, a great deconstruction of life in the modern age. But everything else he’s written is too clever by half, it’s lost its soul.”

Lorena (i heart manga) Nava Ruggero sometimes finds Weezer to be… a little asthmatic:

“Another great contest! In terms of conflicting reactions, I’d have to say my favorite band, Weezer, has done this to me a number of times. Their blue album was the first CD I ever bought (I had only bought tapes up to that time) and it blew my mind with its happy-go-lucky music and, at times, dark lyrics. I was also blown away by their sophomore album Pinkerton. Sadly, they’ve since produced other albums whose names (or corresponding colors) aren’t worth mentioning. And just when I thought their latest album Raditude might bring me back to high school, I was disappointed again by an album with too many ‘lows’ and not enough ‘highs.’ Oh well!”

Sheli Hay applies game logic to the idea of mixed results:

“Any author that I love that has a huge body of work could fall into this category. There is always that one book/story/production that you treasure more than the others. But I think the series that has me forever on a hook is Final Fantasy. There are few stories that I love more than FFVII. A lot of comic authors dissappoint and delight like Ono, but FFVII is so unique in that is traps you for hours of your life. Not the hour is takes to take in a manga, or the couple hours it takes to digest a novel, but literally days of your life.

“And when those days are so flippin’ great? Of course you want more. But here is where Squaresoft/Squareenix has done me wrong. No game that they have produced has been good as FFVII. So they, more than anyone else, has me on the precarious edge of a wholly devoted/never what to speak to them again relationship.”

Lori (Good Comics for Kids, Manga Xanadu) Henderson faces the Watase conundrum:

“The first shojo series I read was Ceres Celestial Legend by Yuu Watase, and I loved it. Good characters and drama, touches of horror and a bit of a sappy ending. I was thrilled when Absolute Boyfriend was announced and hoped for another great series. I was seriously disappointed. It started out okay, and just went downhill from there.”

Matthew J. (Warren Peace Sings the Blues) Brady is sometimes driven to reach for the remote:

“I’ll go with Aaron Sorkin, whose Sports Night was a show that I really liked, being just the right age to learn to appreciate well-written dialogue. I never watched much of The West Wing, so I can’t comment on his creative evolution there, but Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was such a disappointment, especially since it started out so promisingly, but immediately sank to tiresome plots, ridiculous contrivances and misunderstandings, and almost self-parodic dialogue, before being mercifully cancelled. It seems that Sorkin’s career still has yet to recover.”

Rij knows that sometimes it’s not the money, just the time that you’d like back:

“Iain M. Banks, with or without the middle initial is an author who’s capable of producing books I fall in love with on the first page. Unfortunately he’s just as capable of producing works that make me want to throw up and books that I just want to forget ever wasting time on. I love Consider Phlebas, The Bridge, Crow Road and many more. The Wasp Factory is not a bad book, really, I just never want to touch it again as it is the only book I’ve read in 30+ years that has made me nauseous. It’s been years and I still remember the scene in vivid detail. Song of Stone on the other hand was just bad. Uninspired, gratuitous with both sex and violence, boring and even the compulsory twist near the ending left me more annoyed at it’s stupidity than in any way surprised. I’m just glad that I didn’t waste any money on that, wasting time was bad enough.”

Matthew (365 zines a year) Murray ponders the obscure:

“One Night @ the Call Centre was a novel (written in English, published in India) by Chetan Bhagat. I found it in a guest house in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and despite the back cover mentioning ‘god’ I picked it up (when you sit on buses all the time while travelling you read a lot of books), read it, and rally enjoyed it! It wasn’t religious, and it gave me an incredibly interesting look into modern Indian culture that I really had no idea about.”

“So when I found Bhagat’s first book Five Point Someone I was really excited! Except it wasn’t as good at all, and in fact I can now barely remember anything about it. I think it was just a typical ‘students at university book’.”

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Teen scene

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One more thought exercise for the weekend, still linked to the Eisner Award nominations, but this time I’m thinking about the Best Publication for Teens category. There was some lively conversation on Twitter on the subject, specifically why there’s never any manga in this category when so much of the category is aimed at teens and a lot of it is really, really good.

Again, this isn’t meant to take anything away from the nominees. In fact, I seriously need to get around to reading more of them, as some received widespread critical acclaim. (I was about to say that there are too many good comics, but that’s not true. There’s just not enough time to read them all.)

I am curious as to your thoughts on why shônen and shôjo titles are left at home on nerd prom night watching anime marathons instead of spending some time in the Eisner spotlight. As the Great Graphic Novels for Teens list reminds us, there are plenty of spectacular Japanese comics targeted at that audience. (Interesting digression: of the three manga titles that made the top ten list, only one of them was serialized in a magazine with a teen demographic, namely Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, which ran in Hakusensha’s Melody magazine, though I believe it’s branded older in collection.)

Of course, teen-targeted manga has received Eisner nominations before, just not in the teen category. Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare (Go! Comi) got a nod in the main manga category in 2007, and Fumi Yoshinaga was nominated for Best Writer/Artist in 2008 partly for Flower of Life (DMP). Takeshi Obata received a 2008 Best Penciler/Inker nomination for Death Note and Hikaru No Go (Viz), and Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo (Vertical) won the main manga award in 2009. (Of course, with Tezuka, demographic origins go out the window in the face of the fact that his works are classics.)

But why do you suppose manga is ignored on this front? Could it be that the judges would rather favor works created during the nomination period rather than translated reprints of comics from various vintages? Could they want to shine the spotlight on titles with less of a market presence? Or is manga just discounted when it’s targeted at teens?

Also, what are some worthy shônen and shôjo works that you’d like to see get a nod in this category? The window is now closed on Natsuki Takaya’s glorious Fruits Basket (Tokyopop) getting some Eisner love, but there’s still 2011 for Hinako Ashihara’s sublime Sand Chronicles (Viz). What about mega-popular titles that also happen to be really, really good?

Sharing the wealth

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Just as a random thought exercise, and working on the assumption that the number of slots and that all other Eisner Award nominations remain the same, would your dream slate for Best U.S. Edition of International Material — Asia look the same? I think I’d be inclined to spread the nods around a little more and add some other titles to the hopper:

I hasten to note that I don’t think any of the actual nominees are unworthy, because no sane person could say that about Taniguchi, Tatsumi, or Urasawa. (Okay, I will say that the Color trilogy is unworthy, though I would certainly agree with a nod for Kim Dong Hwa in the Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team category.) But it wouldn’t be awards season if you didn’t spend at least a little time second-guessing the judges. It’s part of the fun, right?

Break out the bubbly?

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Deb (About.Com) Aoki spotted this and posted it on Twitter: an article from CNN on that much-covered, yet-to-be-licensed wine manga, Kami no Shizuku. As is only natural, Deb’s sharp eyes focused on this particular snippet:

“According to the authors, the long-awaited English version will be out by the end of this year.”

(The emphasis is mine.)

Is our long wait over? Has the title had sufficient time to breathe, having been covered in virtually every major English-language venue? A search of the Amazon Canada site yielded no results, but I’m sure many folks are tirelessly seeking additional confirmation.

License request day: two from LaLa land

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In his “Know Your Publishers” segment, Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney describes Hakusensha as “the largest Japanese publisher that does not have a strong relationship with any one publisher over here, preferring to sell its shoujo (and occasional seinen) titles to whoever wants to license them the most.” This makes Hakusensha an extremely viable source of license requests, as does the fact that they publish really good shôjo in magazines like Hana to Yume (the source of series like Fruits Basket, Skip Beat!, and V.B. Rose) and LaLa (which gave us books like Jyu-Oh-Sei, Vampire Knight, and Venus in Love). (Hakusensha isn’t all shôjo; they’ve also given the world Detroit Metal City and Ôoku: The Inner Chambers.)

Recent conversations have alerted me to two titles from Hakusensha’s LaLa line that I’d love to see licensed, as they’re by creators who already have very appealing work available in English.

First up is Yoroshiku Master, written and illustrated by Sakura Tsukuba. Tsukuba is the creator of the very charming Land of the Blindfolded and the very funny Penguin Revolution, both from the LaLa line and published in English by CMX. Beyond Tsukuba’s credentials, Yoroshiku Master has the additional advantage of focusing on Japan’s endearingly fluid take on the Christmas holiday.

It’s about a young girl who is suddenly thrust into the role of Santa Claus, accompanied by a young boy who turns into a reindeer and calls the girl “Master.” It may be a little too soon after Snow-a-thon 2010 to start thinking about stories built around a winter holiday, but this series sounds too endearingly bizarre to wait. Plus, if someone starts working on the license now, perhaps we could have it in our hands by November when we’re in more of a mood for it. Click here to view some preview pages of the first volume.

Next is Faster than a Kiss, written and illustrated by Meca Tanaka. Tanaka, one of a tiny handful of male shôjo creators to be published in English, if not the only one to date, is responsible for Omukae Desu (another LaLa title from CMX) and Pearl Pink (a LaLa title from Tokyopop, just to mix it up a bit). I like the quirky sense of humor and low-key sentiment that Tanaka brings to his work.

Faster’s premise is a little worrying for those of us who have been burned before by “hot for teacher” subplots in our shôjo, but I’ve been reassured that Tanaka’s take isn’t icky in the slightest. The comic is about a pair of orphans who are shuttling from unwilling relative to unwilling relative. The sister contemplates dropping out of school to provide for her brother. When her teacher tries to dissuade her, she says she’ll stay in school if he marries her. She’s kidding, but he agrees, and the secret-relationship shenanigans commence. Click here to view some preview pages from the first volume.

Neither of these titles is likely to blaze new and innovative trails in the shôjo category, but both creators have a track record for charming work, and that’s good enough for me.

And the nominees are…

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Tom (The Comics Reporter) Spurgeon was first out of the gate to post this year’s Eisner Awards nominations, and I thought I’d pull out the manga- and manhwa-related nominees with a little commentary.

Best Continuing Series

  • Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urasawa (VIZ Media)

    • This delights me, as I like 20th Century Boys just slightly more than Pluto, so I’m glad to see it get a nomination in this very high-profile category.

    I was a bit disappointed by the absence of manga in the Best Publication for Teens category, but the slate seems crazy strong, at least based on reviews that I’ve seen of the chosen works.

    Best Reality-Based Work

  • A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Drawn & Quarterly)

    • A nomination for this excellent book was never really in question. It was just a matter of wondering which category (or categories) would claim it.

    Best Graphic Album — New

  • A Distant Neighborhood Vols. 1-2, by Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

    • I’m a bit surprised that GoGo Monster didn’t snag a slot here (or anywhere). But Taniguchi does admirable work, and I’m very thrilled that Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s splendid My Mommy is in America and she met Buffalo Bill is keeping A Distant Neighborhood company.

    Again, I’ll express some mild disappointment that there was no nod for Black Jack in the Best Archival Collection/Project — Comic Books category. That’s an impressive effort on Vertical’s part, and they deserve plaudits for it.

    Best U.S. Edition of International Material — Asia

  • The Color Trilogy, Kim Dong Hwa (First Second)
  • A Distant Neighborhood Vols. 1-2, by Jiro Taniguchi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
  • A Drifting Life, Yoshihiro Tatsumi (Drawn & Quarterly)
  • Oishinbo a la Carte, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki (VIZ Media)
  • Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka, Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki (VIZ Media)
  • Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, Naoki Urasawa (VIZ Media)

    • On the one hand, this is a generally excellent slate, and I’m thrilled to see Oishinbo included. I think I’m the only person in the world who didn’t like The Color Trilogy, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself on that front. And I don’t think it’s wrong to suggest that there might have been room here for some of the excellent works created by women, like Junko Mizuno’s Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu, Kaoru Mori’s Emma, or Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, as they really were as good as just about any other comic published last year.

    Best Writer/Artist

  • Naoki Urasawa, Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka (VIZ Media)

    • Is there some kind of record for most nominations for a single creator?

    Best Lettering

  • Adrian Tomine, A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarterly)

    • Best Comics-Related Book

  • The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, Helen McCarthy (Abrams ComicArts)
  • Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater, Eric P. Nash (Abrams ComicArts)

    • It wouldn’t be an Eisner slate if Tezuka wasn’t in there somewhere. As it should be.

    Here’s a link to my post of suggestions for the Eisner nominating committee, just in case anyone feels like looking back.

    In the near future

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    I’m never entirely sure what the right window is to review a book before it comes out. Write about it too far in advance, and people who might want to try the book could be frustrated by the fact that they can’t immediately act on that impulse. But I’ll run the risk with a couple of titles, as they’re both a little off the beaten track, both very good, and may well benefit from all the mentions they can get. Let me explain.

    One of the first manga I ever read was Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes (Tokyopop). I was never a huge fan of science fiction, and I’m still not, but this one really had the right kind of narrative voice for me. It’s a character-driven story about orbital garbage haulers, the men and women that clear debris out of space to keep people from dying, basically. It’s very low-key and introspective, and it really struck a chord with me, even though I felt it had some imperfections.

    It didn’t sell very well, which rankled me. (It’s always rankled me when books I really like don’t sell very well.) Planetes was among the licenses that Kodansha reclaimed from Tokyopop, so it’s effectively out of print. That’s very unfortunate. With two other low-key, character driven space dramas in the pipeline, I feel a possibly unwarranted, pre-emptive protective urge.

    The first volume of Kou Yaginuma’s Twin Spica (Vertical) comes out May 4, 2010. It’s about a 14-year-old girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut, of coming closer to the stars she’s always loved. Asumi must overcome her father’s resistance, a rigorous entrance exam, and personal tragedies to enter a training academy.

    Yaginuma renders all of Asumi’s difficulties with admirably straightforward delicacy and attention to detail. There’s plausibility to the process Asumi pursues and the examination system itself. There’s also a wonderful earnestness to Asumi’s dreams and her desire to reach out to the people who share them. Factor in the aching sadness that provides underpinnings for Asumi’s quest and you have a moving, unusual finished product.

    The illustrations have just the right fragility for the material. They have a simple, sketchy charm that helps you focus on the characters. There’s a similar quality to the look of the second book on my mind, Hisae Iwaoka’s Saturn Apartments (Viz), which ships on May 18, 2010. (It’s one of the titles in rotation on Viz’s SigIKKI site.)

    Iwaoka’s work has the same tenderness towards her characters, but she lavishes more detail on their environments. This is all to the good, because that environment is fascinating. The titular apartments are floating in orbit above a largely uninhabitable Earth. The story’s protagonists are window washers for those apartments, which is as perilous as you might suspect. As is too often the case, the danger and drudgery of their work doesn’t come with an appropriately high salary. They live on the grungy levels, even as they clean the windows of the elite.

    Young Mitsu has just taken up the work of a window washer, following in the footsteps of his dead father. We watch his evolution as a worker, and we also see the lives of his co-workers and clients. Iwaoka does a lovely job finding the possibilities in her scenario as she inches forward with Mitsu’s growth as a person.

    Both of these titles succeed in finding the specific human drama in space opera. They’re graceful, wistful, and gently funny at the right moments. They don’t have the raucous bombast that can often make a book a best-seller, but they’re well worth your attention if you like interesting, sympathetic characters in fascinating situations.

    (The review of Twin Spica is based on a preview copy provided by the publisher. You can read Saturn Apartments online at the SigIKKI link above.)

    Free to a good home: two by Ono

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    When a creative type is sufficiently prolific, he or she is bound to have highs and lows in his or her body of work. Heck, sometimes results can vary wildly when a creative type just has two major credits in his or her portfolio. Sometimes you may get Leave it to Chance and then Justice League: Cry for Justice, or Imadoki! may sit on the same resume as Absolute Boyfriend.

    We ponder this uncomfortable juxtaposition of credits in this installment of “Free to a Good Home,” my intermittent manga give-away contest. Our specific subject is the prolific Natsume Ono, who currently has two works available in print and translation. And let’s just say that opinion has been divided on one of them.

    That would be her family melodrama not simple (Viz). Now, I liked this book quite a bit, and so did some other folks, but critical responses have been undeniably mixed:

    Leroy Derousseaux at Comic Book Bin:

    “It is unfortunate that much of not simple reads like one of those somnambulant alt-comix dramas (like Alex Robinson’s Tricked).”

    Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey:

    “As a result, not simple reads like a medieval martyr play, a grim catalog of one saintly individual’s bodily and emotional suffering. In a phrase: not recommended.”

    Tucker (The Factual Opinion) Stone:

    “While it ultimately achieves a bunch of specific objectives—most of them manipulative family horror tricks—it mixes those with a terrible framing story, an unwillingness to portray its main character as anything more than a brainless victim, and a nice chunk of ineptitude when it comes to dealing with its gaping plot holes.”

    On the bright side, Ono’s Ristorante Paradiso (Viz) (which I also liked) has received a somewhat gentler reception:

    Deb (About.Com) Aoki:

    “Ristorante Paradiso has a simple story that provides a basic framework for Ono to showcase her memorable characters and allow them to interact in a way that feels natural and unhurried.”

    Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey:

    “Put simply, Ms. Ono, you won my heart back. I found Ristorante Paradiso an engaging story filled with complicated, true-to-life characters who I enjoyed getting to know.”

    Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney:

    “This is nothing at all like what’s coming out in the Jump or Beat lines, and pretty much exactly what I want to see from Viz’s Signature line. Manga I had no idea I wanted, but now suddenly want to see more of.”

    So here’s the drill: to enter, simply send me an e-mail mentioning two works by the same creative type, one that you liked a lot, one that disappointed you to some significant degree. You don’t need to limit yourself to the comics medium. Novels, movies, plays, TV series, songs, paintings, poems, whatever… if they hinge on the same artistic soul (say, Meryl Streep) and had decidedly mixed outcomes (say, Sophie’s Choice and She-Devil), they are fair game.

    You must be 18 or older to enter. I’m perfectly willing to ship internationally, though it will be cheap and it will be slow, so I’m just warning you right now. Deadline for entries is 12 noon Eastern Standard Time Sunday, April 11, 2010, and entries should be sent to DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com. The winner will be chosen at random and receive copies of not simple and Ristorante Paradiso.

    Also, if you’re among the Ono early adopters and have a moment and an opinion, please cast your vote in the poll below!