The Manga Curmudgeon

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

License request day: Journal

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JL_2_-20I don’t just want English versions of comics from Japan, you know. And since I seem to be casting my eyes towards France today, I’ll make it a theme and request… beg, even… that someone takes a crack at Fabrice Neaud’s Journal.

In fairness, there is a Japanese connection here. I first became aware of Neaud’s work in Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s wonderful Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators. (Neaud was one of the 17.) Here’s my reaction to his contribution, “The City of Trees”:

“I’m particularly desperate to see more work from Neaud after reading ‘The City of Trees.’ As Neaud explores Sendai, seeing its sights and eavesdropping on its people, he peppers his narrative with flashes of his inner life. Experiences can unexpectedly call to mind bits of his own pain or heighten his sense of isolation. But they can also please and soothe him. It’s three-quarter travelogue, one-quarter confessional, all rendered with a wonderful eye for detail.”

JL_1_-p-005A few years later, I’m still particularly desperate. Over at Prism Comics, François Peneaud included Journal among the “Top Ten Comics for LGBT Readers”:

“Fabrice Neaud is a unique author in French comics (or bandes dessinées, as we call them). He’s a member of the Ego Comme X group (‘ego as x’, pronounced ‘ego comix’), and the only gay artist there… His Journal (‘diary’) is among the best comics coming from France, for its strong point of view and its constant inventiveness. I think it would suit quite well either Drawn & Quarterly or Fantagraphics.”

Ego Comme X has published four volumes of Journal so far, about 800 pages total. Two of those volumes have been published in Spanish as Diario by La Cúpula. And I must repeat myself when I note that none of those volumes have been published in English by anyone. Someone should fix that.

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Birthday Books: Joann Sfar

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The Comics Reporter notes that today is the birthday of Joann Sfar, the wonderful and prolific French cartoonist. I haven’t read any of Sfar’s comics that I wouldn’t happily recommend, so I’ll cheat and suggest two.

First up is Klezmer (First Second): “Klezmer tells a wild tale of love, friendship, survival, and the joy of making music in pre-World War II Eastern Europe… Tragic, humorous, violent, and tender, Klezmer’s rich watercolor art and simple but moving story-telling draws you into the lives of these fascinating characters.” Here’s my review of the book.

Next is a companion piece of sorts, The Rabbi’s Cat (Pantheon): “The preeminent work by one of France’s most celebrated young comics artists, The Rabbi’s Cat tells the wholly unique story of a rabbi, his daughter, and their talking cat–a philosopher brimming with scathing humor and surprising tenderness… Rich with the colors, textures, and flavors of Algeria’s Jewish community, The Rabbi’s Cat brings a lost world vibrantly to life–a time and place where Jews and Arabs coexisted–and peoples it with endearing and thoroughly human characters, and one truly unforgettable cat.” Here’s my review.

From the stack: Nightschool

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nightschool1Reading the first volume of Svetlana Chmakova’s Nightschool: The Weirn Books (Yen Press) is a bit like reading an interesting recipe that sounds like it will result in a tasty dish. I’m the kind of person who reads cookbooks for fun, so I mean that as a compliment. Chmakova lists a bunch of interesting ingredients and suggests promising ways they might be combined.

It’s abut a young witch (or “weirn”) named Alex. Her older sister, Sarah, works as a sort-of guidance counselor at a school for the demonically inclined. In these times of scant educational funding, the institution shares space with a garden-variety high school after the sun sets. Alex has opted for home-schooling for as-yet-undisclosed reasons, though Sarah hasn’t given up on persuading Alex to join the weirns, vampires and werewolves that form the school’s student body.

As Sarah deals with weird kids at the school, Alex encounters her own troubles on a self-directed field trip. Alex wants to practice a spell in the field, and brings her inky smudge of a demonic familiar along. They run into a group of trainee monster hunters who are more inclined to eliminate eligible night-school students than educate them. They have their own parallel subculture to the school, which itself is fraught with unexpected perils.

It’s a lot of set-up to juggle, and Chmakova does a very nice job. The sizeable cast and their respective castes get a sensible amount of introduction, and the concluding twist gives a good nudge towards forcing Alex to engage with the school. Alex herself seems reasonably formidable and a bit mysterious.

Not surprisingly, Nightschool is a great-looking book. Chmakova proved her drawing chops on Dramacon, one of a handful of hits that emerged from Tokyopop’s global manga push. I didn’t especially care for that book, but I did find the visual storytelling to be brimming with talent. Chmakova’s work stood out in the way she didn’t seem to be imitating some idea of “manga style.” She’d clearly been steeped in the stuff, but her work had a distinctive look of its own, along with plenty of energy and emotion.

Nightschool carries over the appealing illustrations while demonstrating a smarter, subtler storytelling sensibility than Dramacon. As I said, all of the ingredients are there, and I feel reasonably confident in predicting that Chmakova will whip them up into something appealing.

Addenda

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I overlooked a choice item on this week’s shipping list, as it was part of Diamond’s Adult roster of arrivals. (I hope I’m in the minority.) It’s Junko Mizuno’s Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu from Last Gasp, and it’s easily the pick of the week:

“Artist Junko Mizuno unleashes her unique graphic storytelling sensibilities on a tale that’s frequently adorable, sometimes grotesque, and surprisingly moving.”

It sounds like vintage Mizuno, in other words. Deb Aoki has an interview with Mizuno up at About.Com conducted at a signing at New People in San Francisco. Ryan Sands has some photos of the event over at Same Hat! Same Hat! (Oh, and Sands is interviewed by Kai-Ming Cha in the latest Publishers Weekly Comics Week about his upcoming Last Gasp project, Suehiro Maruo’s The Strange Tale of Panorama Island.)

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In other fringe manga news, Viz has added another series to its SIGIKKI line-up, Temari Tamura’s I Am a Turtle:

“Follow this turtle down a Zen path through the wondrous natural world of Japan. Witness his simple life on a tea farm with his young master. Meet other animals such as his neighbor, the Sea Dog, an owl, a family of boars and, of course, more turtles! Come see how much better life can be when you’re a turtle.”

I don’t think that was ever really in question, was it? Looks like a quirky, well-drawn, reasonably charming offering to me.

Oh, and utterly unrelated, while looking around Diamond’s site, I noticed this article on the best fictional schools and was scandalized to find not a single entry from any manga series. This seems egregious, given the volume of such institutions available for consideration.

Upcoming 8/26/2009

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Time for another quick look at this week’s ComicList:

There are some nice guilty pleasures on the Wednesday agenda. Dark Horse offers the sixth volume of Gantz, Hiroya Oku’s ultra-violent, oversexed action drama. CMX delivers the ninth volume of Yoshito Usui’s ode to kindergarten crudeness, Crayon Shinchan.

sayonara3It’s a hefty week for Del Rey. I’m most eagerly anticipating the fifth volume of Ryotaro Iwanaga’s underrated Pumpkin Scissors, an intriguing blend of wacky action and thoughtful political commentary. I was surprised by how much I liked the first volume of RAN’s Maid War Chronicle, given its fan-service friendly premise, but it’s got an unexpectedly quirky charm, even though I’d very much like the male lead to die horribly. Anyway, the second volume is due out Wednesday. For me, Koji Kumeta’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is about 50% impenetrable, culture-specific humor, and 50% really, really funny stuff that requires no supplementary essays. That ratio is balanced enough to put the third volume of the series on my “to buy” list.

Someday I’ll set down and try to compose a reasoned piece on the things that bother me about the Color of… trilogy of books by Kim Dong Hwa (First Second). It doesn’t seem like a project that should be entered into lightly, as lots of people seem to really admire them. The concluding volume, The Color of Heaven, is as laden with gynobotanical metaphor as its predecessors, though it’s beautifully drawn.

Tokyopop unleashes a couple of the new series it announced at its recent webcast. Minari Endou’s Maria Holic generated a fair amount of interest in the previously linked poll, landing in the middle of the pack, while Kazusa Takashima’s Mad Love Chase ranked a bit lower.

License request day: Delinquent Girl Detective

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cover1When writing this week’s Flipped, I surfed around for some information about Crown co-creator Shinji Wada, not being familiar with his body of work. I almost immediately discovered that Wada had given the world something called Delinquent Girl Detective (or Sukeban Deka), and I knew that this week’s license request was all but written.

“The series follows a delinquent schoolgirl who is taken in by the government and forced to fight crime to redeem herself,” claims Wikipedia. “She is given the codename ‘Saki Asamiya’ and a metal yo-yo that doubled as a badge and made to infiltrate high schools around Japan to investigate and stop the criminal activities.”

cover2Clearly, awesome as Delinquent Girl Detective is as a title, it is merely a whisper of a hint of the absorbing lunacy of the series itself. Mentioning Sukeban Deka on Twitter led to a flurry of love for our yo-yo wielding gang girl gone undercover, most notably from Erica Friedman. Here’s her review of one of the live-action movies based on the franchise, which includes an overview of its multimedia history:

“Sukeban Deka began life as a manga, which was then made into an anime OAV and, in the 80’s, a popular three-season live-action TV show, all of which I have reviewed previously. For the basic plotline, general Yuri-ness and links to manga and anime on Amazon JP and Amazon respectively, click the link to the past review.”

cover3You should obviously click through to that previous review, if only for this faultlessly persuasive opening gambit:

“But what, you ask, if I like shoujo manga, but I also like sex and guns and violence, and sex? Well, obviously, I wouldn’t have brought this up without an answer, would I?”

If I were a weaker person, I’d quote Jerry Maguire, but that’s a dated reference. I also haven’t seen the movie and hope never to do so. I could make even more dated references to 21 Jump Street, The Mod Squad, and juvie movies starring Linda Blair, but they really aren’t necessary, are they?

cover4Sukeban Deka was originally serialized in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume magazine, then collected in 22 volumes, then re-published in 12 volumes. I can’t seem to find any information at Hakusensha’s web site, but here’s a starter link from Amazon Japan. (UPDATE: Sean notes in the comments that the book moved from Hakusensha to Media Factory.)

Now, many of you are probably saying to yourselves, “Oh, yeah… a vintage, 22-volume shôjo series… I’m sure publishers will get right on that.” You’re probably right, but I must remind you that any commercially viable series that appear in these posts do so by pure coincidence. If I want to ask for dated, bat-shit crazy gang-girl drama, I will ask for it.

(Is there something you want to ask for from the manga gatekeepers? Drop me a line if you’d like to do a guest post.)

More manga remakes

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I picked up X-Men: Misfits (Del Rey) yesterday, and it’s… got its ups and downs, but I still like the idea of stripped-down manga variations on super-hero properties, so I started thinking about DC characters who’d suit that kind of treatment. Many are still holding vigil for Tintin Pantoja’s Wonder Woman remake, so I’ll skip over that one, and from everything I’ve heard, Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld was practically manga to begin with, but here are a few others:

Martian Manhunter: The shape-shifting sole survivor of the Martian race comes to Earth and sets himself up as a private investigator. I’m picturing a seinen take on J’onn, with tonally varied mysteries that explore the human condition.

Oracle: A woman with a disability establishes herself as an information broker and creates an anonymous, online identity to help people. My mental image of the series is admittedly kind of similar to the Martian Manhunter take – episodic storytelling featuring a range of guest characters interacting with the protagonist. I don’t think it would need to be entirely crime-driven, if at all. It could be kind of issue-of-the-week, to be honest.

Green Lantern: The whole bring-out-your-dead concept of Blackest Night sounds kind of gross to me, and some of the Care Bear Rainbow Lanterns sound really ridiculous, but the core idea works. An Earth person suddenly finds him- or herself enlisted in an intergalactic police force with a really cool piece of jewelry. As I think of it, giving the ring to a woman might be even more appropriate, what with the rich history of special accessories empowering spunky magic girls. But then I think of Arisia, and I become wary.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Super-powered, futuristic teens form a club to fight crime and protect people from disaster. It writes itself.

Blue Devil: I never read the series during its original run, but it’s a neat idea. A stuntman gets caught in a super-suit, right? Showbiz comedy, hero-with-a-problem drama, shake, pour over ice.

Zatanna: A beautiful young stage magician must conceal the fact that she’s an actual sorceress. I’m picturing Bewitched blended with backstage antics from series like Skip*Beat!

Filed Under: DC

From the stack: A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge

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adIt’s impossible to capture the scale and scope of a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, and a smart creator wouldn’t even try. Josh Neufeld is a smart creator, and he’s a talented one, and I like the approach he takes to A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge (Random House). Instead of trying to capture everything, he focuses on the experiences of a handful people who lived through the storm and are muddling through its aftermath.

His subjects offer a socioeconomic mix, from upper to working class. Some of them stayed in New Orleans through the storm, and others watched it unfold from a distance. Again, I don’t think Neufeld is doing this to try and tell “the whole story” so much as to offer different vantage points on what the city and its residents endured.

There’s Denise, who has no means of evacuating, and she ends up at the convention center, waiting for help that seems unlikely ever to come. Abbas sticks around to protect his family’s convenience store. Twenty-something Leo and his girlfriend, Michelle, evacuate, as does young Kwame with his family. A doctor stays put, confident in the sturdiness of his historic home.

Neufeld refrains from imposing a narrative on these survivors, instead illustrating their individual stories and interspersing them as they chronologically unfolded. Their testimonies are all vivid and engrossing, and Neufeld renders them with detail and restraint. There’s terror, anger, and sadness, but there’s also perseverance and hope.

It’s a durable and valuable work, and Neufeld’s illustrations hold up to the content. Like Rick Geary of the Treasury of Victorian Murder series of books, Neufeld doesn’t illustrate for photo-realism. His style is still evident, though he’s scrupulous in rendering people and settings.

I remember text pieces in this vein from my newspaper days, when a sensible reporter would get out of the way and let people tell their stories. (As Neufeld is illustrating these stories instead of merely transcribing them, there’s obviously a higher degree of difficulty.) There seem to be fewer of those kinds of meaty, personal portraits that flesh out major events. I miss them, and I’m glad to see Neufeld translate some of that same journalistic spirit into comics form.

(This review is based on a black-and-white “advanced reader’s edition” provided by the publisher. It’s one of those books with a really interesting provenance, so I encourage you to go read Tom Spurgeon’s interview with Neufeld to find out more. I nominated this book for the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens list. Anyone can nominate a title, assuming they aren’t one of the book’s creators and/or don’t work for the publisher of the book being nominated. Creators and publishers can certainly nominate the work of others.)