The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Simon says

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As many of us hoped he would, Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing (whose blog may not be safe for work) has weighed in on the leaked draft of a pitch letter from a scan aggregation site to a major publisher of translated manga:

“The reason print publishers have yet to fully embrace free online ad-supported publishing on the PC is largely because ad profits do not outweigh the diminished print sales due to free distribution. It doesn’t matter that scanlations have legit promotional qualities when the result is still a net loss for the publisher. Otherwise, publishers would be doing this themselves.”

Go read. Or wait until you get home, then go read. Either way, you should also go read the lively commentary on the subject at MangaBlog.

License request day: Tasogare Ryuuseigun

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I’m actually closer to retirement age than adolescence. (I’m probably not closer to actual retirement, and some portion of me will probably never move past adolescence entirely, but that’s neither here nor there.) So perhaps it’s natural that I would start looking for sensitive comic-book portrayals of senior citizens. Or maybe I’m just perversely looking for drastically unlikely properties to request for publication in English.

Whatever the reason, I’ve had a needling fascination for the niche category known as “silver manga” ever since I read about it in Paul Gravett’s Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics (Harper Design). Even I doubt that the documented college-student fondness for Golden Girls reruns would translate into demand for comics from this category, and today’s featured title has a number of other strikes against its likely licensing, but it never hurts to ask.

So let’s carefully immerse ourselves into the deep end of the pool during adult swim, shall we? Let’s take a look at Kenshi Hirokane’s Tasogare Ryuuseigun (or Like Shooting Stars in the Twilight), originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original.

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Here’s Gravett’s description:

“They can also find respectful portrayals of senior citizens in new, so-called ‘silver’ manga, in which they are no longer reduced to the cliches of either wise elders or grumpy old fools. Like Shooting Stars in the Twilight is the metaphorical title of one series, in which protagonists in their sixties and older are shown still enjoying romance and sex to the full.”

shootingstarcoverAs lovely as that sounds to me, I can easily picture a lot of the primary audience for manga in English recoiling in abject horror from the very idea. For me, that reaction just offers bonus points, but I know that doesn’t reflect a particularly commercial mindset.

You’re probably familiar with Hirokane as the creator of Section Chief Kôsaku Shima, the ultimate salaryman manga. If you aren’t familiar with it, check out John Jakala’s tribute to the title. I certainly share John’s desire for more of that book and for office manga in general, but John’s covered it nicely, so why be redundant?

bcocoverLike Shooting Stars won an Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2000, so there’s that in its favor. Working against it is the fact that the series is 35 volumes long and, as near as I can tell, still ongoing. And that’s putting aside the fact that it features dignified portrayals of senior citizens in a market that’s yet to demonstrate consistent demand about portrayals of people in their twenties. But as I said, it never hurts to ask.

Shopping spree

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MOOM4.cover.qxd:Layout 1Helping people clean out their garage is not usually an enticing prospect, but Drawn & Quarterly has made it so with their Warehouse Sale for online shoppers. Bargains abound on great books like the following:

  • Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s fascinating autobiography, A Drifting Life, $17.98 compared to its cover price of $29.95 or Amazon at $19.77
  • All four volumes of Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, $11.97 each compared to their cover price of $19.95
  • Aya and Aya of Yop City, charming Ivory Coast soap opera from Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie, each for about half price at $9.97
  • Either the paperback ($8.97) or hardcover ($11.97) edition of Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings, one of the very best comics about an emotionally stunted twenty-something loser, and that’s a huge category

    • There are lots of great discounts on some amazing comics. Go look.

    Weekend update

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    I should probably be heading to the New York Anime Festival, but what can I tell you. I find the District of Columbia a lot easier to navigate than Manhattan, and I really enjoyed the Small Press Expo the last time I went, so that’s my choice of weekend destination. If you see me shambling around and looking baffled and skittish, feel free to say hi.

    Credits report

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    Yesterday, Dirk Deppey featured a quote from Andrew Wheeler that was critical of the packaging of The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks from Three Rivers Press. Specifically, the publisher highlighted the author of the graphic novel while pretty much burying the artist’s name. Ibraim Roberson doesn’t actually have a cover credit for the book on the preview proof, though there’s a small signature next to the leftmost zombie. He doesn’t even get a credit on the publisher’s online listing for the book. He does seem to be credited on what’s likely the final cover for the book, shown below. Still, the initial cover credits were an undeniably bad choice, since Roberson’s gory, energetic contributions are pretty much essential. I’ve read about half of a preview copy of the book, and it’s a neat idea – a sort of anthropological, archeological look at zombie attacks throughout history. It’s not exactly rich in text, and Roberson does all of the heavy lifting. But anyway, here’s the cover that seems to likely to actually arrive in bookstores:

    recordedattacks

    It did make me wonder how other publishers and publisher imprints have handled this sort of thing, since graphic-novel adaptations of popular prose have made such headway lately.

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    Del Rey doesn’t credit Queenie Chan on their web site, but she fares better on the cover of In Odd We Trust, her collaborative adaptation with Dean Koontz. She gets a co-writer credit with Koontz and a separate illustrator credit. It’s sensible to me that Koontz’s name is big and bold up at the top, since he’s the main attraction for casual readers or newcomers to graphic novels.

    Hunter

    Darwyn Cooke actually comes out ahead of Richard Stark on IDW’s page for Cooke’s adaptation of The Hunter. The cover credits seem to strike an okay balance between the creator of the property being adapted and the adaptor.

    babysittersclub

    Graphix takes a similar approach with Raina Telgemeier’s credits on the cover of her adaptations of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club books. The placement and proportion of Telgemeier’s credit is roughly similar, though her name is preceded by “A Graphic Novel By…” which I like.

    maximumride

    NaRae Lee’s credit on the cover of Maximum Ride (Yen Press), based on a popular property by James Patterson, is fairly dinky. It’s there, but it’s dinky. His prose collaborators seem to get better placement.

    I can’t quite bring myself to delve into Marvel’s adaptations of books by people like Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephen King, and others. I know that they’re out there, and a glance at some of the covers indicates that their modus operandi follows the pattern of “big credit for name author, standard credits for comic writers and artists.”

    Update: At The Beat, Heidi MacDonald notes that Amazon doesn’t seem inclined to credit illustrators.

    Upcoming 9/23/2009

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    Time again for a look at this week’s ComicList:

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    Summer is over, and school is underway, but if you want to recapture that sense of freedom and possibility, pick up Matthew Loux’s Salt Water Taffy: The Truth About Dr. True (Oni Press). This series about young brothers spending a silly and mysterious summer at the shore has been a real treat so far. Check out the series site, which includes added webcomic adventures, and read this interview with Loux over at Comic Book Resources. The site has also promised a chunky preview of the book sometime today. (Update: It’s here.) Here are my reviews of the first and second volumes of the series.

    eden12

    Dark Horse rewards the loyal with the 12th volume of Hiroki Endo’s meaty science fiction saga, Eden: It’s an Endless World! There tend to be long gaps between new volumes of this excellent series, but I can be patient as long as they keep coming. Here’s my review of the series over at The Comics Reporter.

    vbrose6

    I arrived late at this particular party, but I’m still happy to see the sixth volume of Banri Hidaka’s V.B. Rose (Tokyopop). I’ve enjoyed the first three volumes of this story about a promising amateur designer who goes to work for a couture bridal shop. It’s got endearing characters and almost enough sparkle to necessitate protective eyewear.

    blackjack7

    Vertical delivers more morally ambiguous medical madness with the seventh volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack.

    detroitmetalcity2

    I was shocked by how much I liked the first volume of Kiminori Wakasugi’s vulgar, improbable, totally hilarious Detroit Metal City (Viz). The second volume arrives this week at better comic shops and braver bookstores everywhere.

    Update: I almost always forget to look at Image’s listings, because they don’t publish a whole lot that seems like it would interest me and because I’m still bitter that they aren’t publishing more of Andi Watson’s Glister. I also find their web site completely impossible to navigate or search, so I won’t even bother linking to it. While I think this is a largely defensible position on my part, it sometimes leads me to miss neat comics like the following.

    underground1

    Underground, which mercifully has its own, entirely navigable web site, is written by Jeff Parker and illustrated by Steve Lieber. I liked Parker’s Agents of Atlas mini-series a lot (Marvel), and I thought Lieber’s work on Whiteout and Whiteout: Melt (Oni) was great. Also, Me and Edith Head, drawn by Lieber and written by Sara Ryan, is one of my favorite mini-comics ever. So I’m naturally inclined to give the comic a try, even though it’s about a cave, and claustrophobia prevents me from even considering entering one. I couldn’t even finish Nevada Barr’s Blind Descent, and I like Barr’s mystery novels a lot. But it’s Parker and Lieber, so I’ll certainly muster as much courage as possible.

    Leaps and bounds

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    swanscan2

    You know, if you get the opportunity to spend a weekend settled down with a long run of manga volumes you know are really good, I really recommend it. This weekend was spent revisiting and catching up with Kyoko Ariyoshi’s Swan, which resulted in this week’s Flipped column. Such a great series.

    Shame! People will see them and cry…

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    Over at The Manga Critic, Kate Dacey takes readers on a tour of her Manga Hall of Shame:

    “The flipside of being a gourmand is that I’ve encountered my share of truly dreadful stuff, too — the kind of manga with such incoherent plots, unappealing characters, clumsy artwork, and tin-eared dialogue that they beg the question, Who thought this was a good idea?”

    My personal set of neuroses must be such that I edit out memories of truly dreadful manga that I’ve read, and that’s a blessing, because I know I’ve read a lot of it. So it’s much easier for me to define some qualities that render a comic unreadable for me:

  • Needlessly impenetrable logic systems: When characters need to provide a running narrative on what precisely they’re doing for a reader to have the vaguest clue, it’s all over. This is probably because I care less how the characters are using their incomprehensible power sets than I do about what the characters are like as… y’know… characters.
  • Fan service that isn’t remotely sexy: I honestly don’t have a problem with fan service, provided it’s actually enticing. When it ends up looking like some weird anatomical chart or it’s ultimately sex-negative, I’ll take a pass.
  • Indifferent execution: Is there anything sadder than a great idea that ends up stillborn because more energy went into the conceptualization than the execution? It’s probably unfair, but I get more irritated with comics that could have been great but wound up mediocre than I do with comics that never stood a chance of being anything but dreadful. At least resolutely dreadful comics can be fun… briefly.
  • Bait and switch: Along the same lines, I entirely over-personalize it when a good first volume is followed by an absolutely untenable second. I don’t know if that’s the result of editorial interference or if the creator only had once decent volume worth of ideas in them, but it really, really gets on my nerves.

    • Anyway, go over and share the pain with Kate. You’ll feel better.

    Shop talk

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    Over at About.Com, Deb Aoki has a terrific interview with Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, owner and founder of the highly regarded Meltdown Comics & Collectibles in Los Angeles. They talk about the various hassles of selling manga in a Direct Market comic shop, even for retailers who really want to sell manga.

    There’s also some jaw-dropping detail about the specific challenges for a retailer in L.A., including this tidbit:

    “Some junior execs, assistants, others [entertainment] industry types order tons of books from us, then find out that they can download them for free via fan translations from online share sites.

    “It’s not really something I can definitively put a dollar value on, but these free download sites have really impacted our manga sales to the college set and our younger readers-base. This kind of this would be the death of the book publishing if it wasn’t for buyers who prefer to have a physical book to read and collect.”

    Seriously, go read it.

    License request day: Hataraki Man

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    hataraki2_1

    How is it that I’ve been doing these license requests for so long without pleading for that all-too-rarely translated kind of comic that explores the lives of contemporary working women? As you all surely know by now, I’m a big fan of Mari Okazaki’s Suppli, and I’m thrilled that Tokyopop plans to resume publication of the series next year. But is one really good example of this kind of story really enough? No, it is not.

    hataraki1So I must ask some kind, forward-thinking publisher to give us a licensed version of Moyoco Anno’s Hataraki Man, originally serialized by Kodansha in its Weekly Morning magazine. It’s about a late-20s magazine editor, a workaholic whose personal life is somewhat lacking as a result. At The Beat, Heidi MacDonald found this more detailed look at the series in the U.K.’s Times Online:

    “A well-educated, chain-smoking, occasionally foul-mouthed comic-book character has become a heroine for millions of Japanese women who are battling for recognition in the country’s male-dominated workplace.

    “Through her exploits, women have begun to see how, perhaps, they might overturn decades of gender inequality and chip away at one of Japan’s most frequently decried statistics – that, across all industries, only 10 per cent of managers are female.

    “To succeed in her working life, Hiroko Matsukata, a fictional magazine news editor, deploys a range of arts that her fans are quickly adopting themselves. The 28-year-old is sweet when she needs to be and flint-hearted when threatened. She is even able to control her use of Japanese, suddenly dropping the niceties of speech traditionally expected of women when she needs male colleagues to take her seriously.”

    hataraki2Everything I read about this series makes it sound more awesome to me. Well, almost everything, as Anno had to suspend work on the series due to health issues. But there are four volumes available, and since josei (or titles that look very much like josei, as Morning is technically a seinen magazine) is not a sector that has yet enjoyed commercial success here, maybe that’s not so daunting a number for a publisher.

    Unlike many of the creators whose work winds up in this category, Anno has actually had a lot of her work translated. Tokyopop published her eleven-volume Happy Mania. Viz published her six-volume Flowers and Bees. Del Rey published her eight-volume Sugar Sugar Rune. Of course, it’s a Kodansha property, and I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to what they might do next, as their latest piece of strategy seemed to be to make less of their work available in English. But one can always hope.

    Ediciones Glénat has picked up Spanish-language publishing rights for the book, which they will call Tokio Style.

    hataraki3hataraki4