The Manga Curmudgeon

Free to a good home: All My Darling Daughters

February 3, 2010 by David Welsh

Have you been meaning to sample the work of Fumi Yoshinaga but don’t know where to start? Here’s your chance to win a copy of Yoshinaga’s All My Darling Daughters (Viz), which has garnered more than a little critical praise since its release:

“The storytelling style and the stories themselves all echo familiar manga tropes, but in Yoshinaga’s hands they have grown up and become something rich and strange—and highly entertaining.” Brigid Alverson, MangaBlog

“In addition to all of this thoughtful, integrated writing, Yoshinaga also employs her distinctive artistic style in the service of the story.” Michelle Smith, Manga Recon

“At times haunting, and at times very sweet, this book isn’t easily classifiable. It even has some occasional humor, and I love Yoshinaga occasionally slipping into caricature when she’s drawing Yukiko’s snarling face.” Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment

“And while I enjoyed Ooku and Antique Bakery, I think that All My Darling Daughters is my favorite comic from Yoshinaga to date.” Greg McElhatton, Read About Comics

“With this book, Yoshinaga really focused on a group of people, digging into their motivations and examining their relationships with one another.” Dave Ferraro, Comics-and-More

“Reading it can sometimes be like watching a soapy drama on television (Lifetime, anyone?). However, Yoshinaga is a master of insight, familial relationships, and human behavior, and this insight in behavior gives this book a poignant ending that makes the volume worth reading.” Leroy Douresseaux, Comic Book Bin

“It’s unusual to see family and relationship conflicts of this type in comics, especially portrayed in such a raw fashion with such insight. There are plenty of father/son struggles (especially in American comics), but few that tackle the frustrations and unique constraints of being a mature woman.” Johanna Draper Carlson, Manga Worth Reading

And here’s my review.

To enter, simply send me an email at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com that mentions your favorite comics mother or mother figure. By “favorite,” I don’t automatically mean the character that fills you with greeting card feelings, and if your tastes run more in the direction of Medea than I Remember Mama, that’s absolutely fine. If you already have a copy of All My Darling Daughters but still want to sing the praises of a compelling comics mom or grandmother, please feel free to do so in the comments.

Deadline for entries will be at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

The Shôjo-Sunjeong Alphabet: Q

February 3, 2010 by David Welsh

“Q” is for…

I can’t vouch for or warn against either of these, but by all that is sparkly, their titles start with the letter “Q.”

What are some of your favorite shôjo and sunjeong titles that start with the letter “Q”?

Upcoming 2/3/2010

February 2, 2010 by David Welsh

I was surprised to discover that Tsutomu Nihei’s Biomega (Viz) isn’t an adaptation of an existing video game. Its set-up and execution are exactly like a good first-person shooter, with a well-armed guy on a tricked-out motorcycle entering hostile territory with a mission and a subset of shifting objectives. There’s melee combat with a horde of shambling zombies, timed vehicle rescues, and malicious opponents in the form of a shadowy government conspiracy. There’s even a holographic wrangler providing useful information and reminding the protagonist of pending tasks. A more suggestible person might try and turn the book’s pages with their Xbox controller. (It doesn’t work.)

With its fast pace and progressively escalating stakes, Biomega actually does a better job capturing the experience of playing a video game than comics that are actually adaptations of existing franchises. As a result of that, the characters are thin and serviceable and their consequence is a distant second to event and spectacle, but there’s rarely a shortage of either of those ingredients. It’s also drawn extremely well, with clear, kinetic staging and some inventive bits of design (but not too many, because if you stare at how neat things are, the zombies will get you). There’s also a talking bear with a rifle for reasons that are probably no more complex than “just because,” but he’s welcome, as he keeps things from being entirely functional.

Biomega isn’t a book that inspires any contemplation, and it only takes itself as seriously as it absolutely must. There’s nothing wrong with that, though, any more than there is spending a few hours shooting digital zombies in the head and making a last-minute motorcycle jump from a burning building. It’s a time-waster executed with style and craft. (Review based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Now, let’s move on to the rest of this week’s ComicList, which offers a bounty of potentially appealing books for young adults:

I picked up Raina Telgemeier’s mini-comics at a Small Press Expo a few years ago and really liked them a lot. It was no surprise that publishers asked her to work on adaptations franchise properties like Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club (Graphix) and X-Men: Misfits (Del Rey). But it’s especially nice to see that Graphix is giving her original work such lovely treatment with Wednesday’s release of Smile. It heightens the average obstacles of life in middle school with a big bout of dental drama.

I expressed my enthusiasm for Chris Schweizer’s Crogan’s March (Oni) over the weekend, so I won’t repeat myself.

Collections of Jimmy Gownley’s terrific Amelia Rules! have been available for a while now, but they’ve found a new home at Simon & Schuster. One of those trade paperbacks, Superheroes, is due out Wednesday, and if you haven’t sampled the series yet, this is a perfectly good opportunity.

It’s also time for Viz’s monthly mangalanche, and the emphasis is on titles from their Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump lines. There’s lots of good stuff on the way, but I find myself unproductively fixated on the first volume of Ultimo, a collaboration between Stan Lee and Hiroyuki (Shaman King) Takei, with assists from inker Daigo and painter Bob. With that many credits, it’s easy to suspect that Lee has already been a bad influence. To be honest, I’m not quite ready to issue a verdict on the book, but please do go read thoughtful reviews from Erica (Okazu) Friedman and Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey. In the meantime, I’ll continue my fruitless stare-fight with the book as I try and figure out what it is about it that irritates me so.

Flap flap flap

February 1, 2010 by David Welsh

Panels by Kiyohiko Azuma make everything more cheerful, don’t you think? Anyway, here’s the link to this week’s Flipped, which will also be the last installment of that column. I explain everything there. It’s a good thing.

Birthday books: the Palomar stories

February 1, 2010 by David Welsh

It’s Gilbert Hernandez’s birthday, and it’s tough to pick a particular book to recommend because he’s incredibly talented and surprisingly prolific. (That’s a lovely combination, isn’t it?) I’ll let sentiment guide my choice and point you to his Palomar stories, which originally ran in Love and Rockets from Fantagraphics and have been collected roughly 36 times in about as many different configurations.

I would recommend you go with the handsome, affordable, focused paperbacks in the Love and Rockets Library: Heartbreak Soup, Human Diastrophism, and Beyond Palomar. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Palomar, it’s a small Central American town populated with interesting, complex people. It’s also populated with a variety of kinds of stories and tones, gritty realism one moment, magical realism the next. Hernandez really builds that web of community in these stories, exploring ties of family and friendship, lingering grudges, outside influences, sex, love and death.

It’s also fun to play “if you like” with the Palomar stories, because there are so many possibilities. People who have been enjoying the comics on Viz’s SigIKKI site might like these, not because of any specific carry-over in style or content, but because they’re so good in ways that are specific to Hernandez’s talents. People who like soap operas, particularly smart, place-grounded ones like EastEnders, will find a lot to like as well. (Full disclosure: I’m only really familiar with the early going of EastEnders when it was really ambitious in its combination of economic reality and emotional intensity. I have no idea if it’s still any good.) And fans of the sensual, dreamy, unsettling movies by Pedro Almodovar will feel right at home, especially with Hernandez’s leading lady, sexy, formidable Luba.

And since I’m on the subject, and since Hernandez is relatively prolific, I’d love to hear which of his non-Palomar comics people would recommend. I need to catch up.

Update: Via its Twitter feed, AdHouse mentioned that today is also Jim Rugg’s birthday, so you could celebrate that by picking up a copy of Afrodisiac, which Rugg created with Brian Maruca. I reviewed it here. Or you could pick up a copy of Rugg and Maruca’s Street Angel from SLG, which is having a sale at its web store through Feb. 3, also discovered via that publisher’s Twitter feed.

From the stack: Oishinbo: Izakaya: Pub Food

February 1, 2010 by David Welsh

I’m really going to miss Viz’s A la Carte collections of classic culinary manga Oishinbo, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki. The last installment (I’ll say “for now” because hope springs eternal) focuses kind of loosely on Izakaya, or Pub Food, and it covers a lot of the territory that’s become so endearingly familiar over the course of the series. For instance…

That doesn’t strike me as a compliment, but the characters’ raptures over various dishes often don’t. They say things like, “Oh, the bones of the fish give it a nice crunch!” or “The muskiness is so refreshing!” But there’s absolute sincerity in these exclamations, and that’s part of the charm. I’m not saying I’m ever going to echo the sentiments based on anything I eat, but they do keep things lively and they help paint a taste picture.

I was a super picky eater as a kid, so I have what might be a misplaced level of empathy for the characters featured in Oishinbo’s food peril stories. Let me explain what those are: every now and then, the regulars run across a friend or acquaintance or co-worker who absolutely must learn to like a food they despise. If they don’t, their professional, educational or romantic prospects will go right down the drain. Now, I’ll try any food once at this point, and I’m pretty good at expressing honest dislike of this or that food without judgment or apology, but there’s that nagging anxiety of the picky child. So while the stakes in these stories can be a little ridiculous, I feel the characters’ pain.

Not liking potatoes, though… dude needs to get over that.

Preach it, sister. The panel above is from a story that embodies two big Oishinbo themes: booze is awesome, and kids these days don’t know squat. The latter is generally expressed in the lead’s rivalry with his horrible father, but I’m pleased to report that there are no scarring father-son showdowns in this volume. Instead, a young actor fears for his career because he can’t drink sake properly. Our heroes take him out of town to snack and drink and snack and drink some more until he racks up the right sense memories to really look like that sake hits the spot. Along the way, he learns to hold his liquor and to pace himself so he can drink and snack with the best of them. And that, my friends, is valuable information no matter where you live or how old you are.

Sunday dinner: America's Test Kitchen

January 31, 2010 by David Welsh

I don’t think it’s any secret that I find almost all of the programming on the Food Network to be really, really terrible. Their new shows just get dumber and dumber and less and less useful. It feels like they’ve completely sacrificed culinary sensibility and education for personality, and whoever decides what kinds of personalities make the cut has tastes diametrically opposed to my own.

So I’m very glad that the local cable provider has picked up PBS’s Create network so I can watch interesting, talented people cook food and teach me about it along the way. Charisma levels may vary, and not every show is a gem, but I can usually find something smart and useful to watch. (Any network that gives Eric Ripert air time is aces in my book.)

My favorite program on Create’s admittedly irregular schedule is America’s Test Kitchen, which is an extension of the magazine, Cook’s Illustrated. (Gourmet is dead, but advertising-free Cook’s Illustrated is still going strong. I’m just saying.) The television version has all of strengths of the magazine – useful information developed with rigor and standards – with the added bonus of just enough personality. There’s none of the toothy mugging that makes Food Network programming largely unwatchable; there’s just smart, likable people who are sincerely enthusiastic about food.

The idea behind the magazine and the show is to develop the best possible versions of popular home recipes. And I have to say, their success rate is very, very high based on the recipes I’ve tried. (I grew up in Cincinnati and ate more chili than burgers, and their Cincinnati chili recipe is spot-on.) There are also segments comparing products like chocolate, cheeses, jarred sauces and the like, and equipment ratings where they test and compare the usefulness of various kitchen products like knives and ricers. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a show and not come away wanting to try one of the recipes or knowing more about kitchen tools and preparation techniques. There’s more good stuff in a half an hour than there is in an entire day of Food Network dribble.

The master of ceremonies is Christopher Kimball, founder of Cook’s Illustrated and the resident crank. He would never be hired by the current Food Network regime because he’s caustic, not particularly telegenic, and unapologetically smart. He’s a culinary curmudgeon, not in the self-congratulatory, bad-boy way of Anthony Bourdain, but in the sense of someone who doesn’t have any patience for bad food but has the determination and resources to try and make it better. His co-hosts are all appealing to varying degrees, and they treat Kimball with the kind of wistful indulgence you reserve for a grumpy, funny uncle, which is exactly what Kimball seems to be.

On the march

January 30, 2010 by David Welsh

Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while:

Crogan’s March
Written and illustrated by Chris Schweizer
Due 2/3/2010

SIXTEEN INDIVIDUALS, THREE CENTURIES, ONE FAMILY. THE ADVETURE CONTINUES!

Legionnaire Peter Crogan has some hard questions to answer. Should he finish out his 5-year term of service with the French Foreign Legion, or become an officer for life? There’s not much time to consider his options as the armies of the Tuaregs arrive. And just when Crogan thinks there’s only the relentless heat still to overcome, the rag-tag group of hardened fighters are trapped in a cave by a terrible creature with a taste for human flesh!

Here’s my review of the first volume, Crogan’s Vengeance.

License request day: Doubutsu No Oishasan

January 29, 2010 by David Welsh

There’s been a feline fixation among manga fans lately, and we all know what’s driven that bus. But cats aren’t the only adorable animal in the world. Just ask Viz. I’m pretty equal-opportunity as far as cats and dogs go, so my ears perked when Deb Aoki mentioned a 1990s shôjo title that seems designed to please animal lovers in general.

It’s Noriko Sasaki’s twelve-volume Doubutsu No Oishasan, which was serialized in Hakusensha’s Hana To Yume. A blogger known as Rei describes it thusly:

“Neither stereotypical action-adventure-sex nor sugar-sweet-romance-tragedy, Doubutsu cuts a bold swath through the under-appreciated field of plain old good daily-life fiction. You won’t find deep tragedy, deep philosophy, heavy romance, nor fast-paced beat-em-up-action: instead, just lots of funny situations, quiet compassion, memorable characters, and an overall great read. The hero is a young man with a dog (the aforementioned ‘Hamuteru’ and ‘Chobi’); the setting is a veterinary college in relatively spacious Hokkaido (the northernmost of the main Japanese islands). The situations and the stories are funny, enlightening, informative, and (mostly) believable, all at the same time.”

I don’t know about you, but in my household growing up, All Creatures Great and Small, the BBC adaptation of James Herriot’s novels, was destination television. We may have missed Sunday service from time to time, but we did not miss All Creatures Great and Small. And when Deb confirmed for me that, yes, Doubutsu No Oishasan captured some of that property’s feeling, plus it was shôjo of a certain vintage, plus Sasaki drew all kinds of animals faithfully and well, plus it was set in Hokkaido, it automatically entered the license request hopper.

I didn’t have any luck finding any page samples from the interior of the book, but I find the covers pretty persuasive or at least enticing. And Hakusensha properties are pretty much fair game to any interested publisher. And trust me when I say that a lot of kids want to be veterinarians when they grow up. I think there’s an audience out there.