The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Upcoming 8/19/2009

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astralproject4Before I delve into this week’s ComicList (which is impressive), I wanted to make sure to point you towards Christopher Butcher’s examination of San Francisco’s New People center and what it might mean for the evolution of otaku culture in North America.

Okay, moving on to the “bitter complaint” agenda item: as regular readers of this blog surely know by now, I’ve been obsessively stalking the progress towards English-language publication of Fumi Yoshinaga’s award-winning Ôoku: The Inner Chambers for a really long time. It’s included on Diamond’s shipping list, but @Toukochan informs me that the quasi-monopolistic distributor evinces a winsome disregard for residents of “the Northwesteast Corridor” and often makes us wait for a week or more for new Viz titles. So when I said to myself, “Gosh, I really want to support manga for grown-ups in the direct market, and I also want to make sure I get a copy of this in a timely fashion, so I should pre-order it,” I should have replaced “in a timely fashion” with “at some point.” Screw you, Diamond. (Update: Apparently, the problem is not with Diamond but with garden variety slapdash-ery at the local level. There will always be reasons to say “Screw you, Diamond,” but this is not among them. Apologies.)

On the bright side, Diamond will manage to deliver the fourth and final volume of Astral Project (CMX) in a timely fashion. I’m not sure how marginal and Syuji Takeya are going to wrap up the many concurrent threads of the story, but I’m sure it will be fascinating. I’m also sure that I will wish there were more volumes. (And I really need to track down a copy of Mai Nishikata’s Venus Capriccio, which has gotten a lot of review love. The second volume arrives Wednesday.)

delreyxmenDel Rey continues with the manga-fication of Marvel’s mutant franchise with X-Men: Misfits, written by Raina (Smile, The Baby-Sitters Club) Telgemeier and Dave (Agnes Quill) Roman and illustrated by Anzu. It’s all about Kitty Pryde’s admission to Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, which sounds like a promising take on the property.

Random House releases Josh Neufeld’s A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge, a journalistic look at various citizens’ experiences during and after Hurricane Katrina. I’m planning on posting a full review later this week, but Neufeld has done a fine job with the subject matter. It’s excellent graphic-novel reportage. Tom Spurgeon recently ran a meaty interview with Neufeld about the genesis and evolution of the project.

I already picked up a copy of the fourth volume of Naoki Urasawa’s excellent 20th Century Boys (Viz) over the weekend at a bookstore, which is what I probably should have done with Ôoku, not that I’m bitter or anything. Urasawa continues to fold complications into his thriller while introducing and expanding on his complex cast of characters. It’s well worth your money, though Northeast Corridor residents may have to wait. Also promising is the first volume of Shiro Miwa’s Dogs: Bullets and Carnage. I really enjoyed the prelude volume.

It's the humidity

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That’s the way, totally improbable mercenaries. Freshen up from the August heat and conserve our precious natural resources at the same time. This week’s Flipped offers more suggestions on how to wile away these last few sweltering weeks of summer.

A pretty girl…

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… is just not to be found in Hitoshi Iwaaki’s almost entirely awesome Parasyte (Del Rey).

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Don’t get me wrong. I love the series, I really do, and I’d put it in my all-time favorites category. But part of loving something is being able to recognize its imperfections and accept them, right? And in the case of Parasyte, one of those flaws is that Iwaaki draws young, female characters in ways that make them look haggard, dowdy, and… well… just plain weird, even when they aren’t supposed to inspire any of those adjectives.

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Seriously, she’s supposed to be happy in that panel. On the other hand, it’s a tribute to Iwaaki’s gifts as a storyteller that he’s managed to have a successful, award-winning career in manga in spite of his seeming inability to draw cute girls.

License request day: More Ai Yazawa

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tenshijankajanaiAmong the things I simply don’t understand about manga is why there aren’t more titles by Ai Yazawa available in English. There are two irrefutable reasons there should be more Yazawa in more places: Paradise Kiss (Tokyopop) and NANA (Viz), the Yazawa titles that have already been licensed and translated. Paradise Kiss is a five-volume treasure about young fashion designers and their gawky, ambivalent muse. NANA is a sprawling soap opera about two young women who share the same name and are in the thick of Tokyo’s music scene. Both series are as emotionally engrossing as they are stylish, and while I’m not sure either has ever topped the sales charts (in fact, the publication of Paradise Kiss actually predated specific attention for manga on such lists), the fondness for Yazawa is palpable. (And she’s a superstar in Japan, where NANA does regularly top the sales charts and has been spun into movies, an animated series, and, unless my memory is failing me, a café.)

tenshioldFor this week’s purposes, I’ll focus on two Yazawa titles. First up is Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai, originally serialized by Shueisha in Ribon. It spans eight standard volumes, though it’s also been collected in four double-sized books. French publisher Delcourt chose the four-volume version when it published the series as Je ne suis pas un ange in its Akata imprint. I prefer the covers of the four-volume version (example above), and I suspect I’d like the heft, so that would also be my format preference. Tenshi (or I Am Not an Angel) is described by Delcourt as Yazawa’s first major commercial success. While the synopsis at Wikipedia sounds fairly conventional – friendship, love, and jealousy in high school – I would love to see how Yazawa executes that familiar formula. (As others have noted, this is not to be confused with Takako Shigematsu’s Tenshi Ja Nai!! [I’m No Angel!!], published in English by Go! Comi and well worth your time.)

GokinjoMonogatariNext is Gokinjo Monogatari, also originally serialized by Shueisha in Ribon. Aside from being a Yazawa creation, Gokinjo Monogatari (or Neighborhood Story) has the added allure of being a prequel to Paradise Kiss. (Okay, maybe “prequel” is the wrong word. That’s reserved for stories set earlier in continuity than the one that spawned them, right? Then again, since it would be published in English after Paradise Kiss, it would technically count as a prequel, right? Sorry. Moving on.) Mikako, the story’s protagonist, is the older sister of Miwako, one of the designers from Paradise Kiss. It follows the lives, loves and ambitions of students at Yazawa Arts, and nobody portrays young artists quite as well as Yazawa. It spanned seven volumes, so it wouldn’t lend itself to easy doubling, but seven is a lucky number. Delcourt has also published Neighborhood Story as Gokinjo: une vie de quartier.

And since I’m on the subject of Yazawa, I’ll restate something I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. I would really love it if someone published a handsome omnibus of Paradise Kiss. At five volumes, it would be a bit chunky, but the story and style almost beg for high-end packaging, and it would be a great way to introduce the series to readers who may have missed it the first time around. If Tokyopop isn’t up for it, they could always partner with Dark Horse, which seems to be quite interested in repackaging super-stylish manga (mostly by CLAMP) in aesthetically worthy vessels.

From the stack: Asterios Polyp

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Isn’t that a great page? I love the way images and text join forces to tell you everything you need to know about the characters’ relationship. It’s from David Mazzucchelli’s much-praised, best-selling graphic-novel debut, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon). The book is pretty much front-to-back filled with great pages like that, and by “like that,” I don’t mean “told with the same visual techniques.” I mean that Mazzucchelli seems to have limitless imagination when it comes to finding inventive ways to fuse words and images (composition, line, color, style) to convey character and plot. It’s a tour de force of cartooning.

asterioscoverIn my experience, tours de force, while breathtaking, can sometimes end up seeming a little hollow. The artistry and technique can excuse the fact that there really isn’t very much underneath. My week has coincidentally ended up being about contemplating books with diversely amazing art. For instance, I found Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea (Viz) both visually breathtaking and emotionally satisfying, so that was good. I found the beginning of J.H. Williams III and Greg Rucka’s Batwoman arc in Detective (DC) to be dazzling to the eye and unsurprising in most other ways. Asterios Polyp falls squarely on the Children of the Sea end of the spectrum.

For all of the craft on display, and in spite of the fact that it’s about a male narcissist with relationship problems, it’s a funny and nuanced story. (New rule: let’s only allow graphic novels about male narcissists with relationship problems to be published if they’re this good. We could form a screening committee.) Asterios is an architect and professor; he’s won awards for his designs, but none of them have ever become actual buildings. He’s a paper architect, never transcending two dimensions.

This is entirely appropriate. As the terrific page above suggests, he’s obsessed with dichotomies – life and death, organic and mechanical, order and chaos. It’s no accident that he virtually always appears in profile, a hook-nosed escapee from a cartoon from The New Yorker. It’s also no surprise that his ironically myopic world view keeps him from fully connecting with his fragile, lovely wife, Hana. It’s entirely possible that he chose her to fulfill another dichotomy – left-brain unites with right-brain, urbane weds earthy, Rea Irvin meets Osamu Tezuka. Even his nickname for her constitutes an attempt to wedge her further into his yin-and-yang perception. Fortunately for her and less so for him, Hana is not so fragile that she can put up with a lifetime of that kind of reduction.

Mazzucchelli juxtaposes scenes pulled from Asterios’ past with Hana with his more difficult present. Disaster has followed decline, and Asterios does the sensible thing – he hits the road going as far as limited funds will take him. He winds up in a small town where the people have their own interests and obsessions and are cordially impervious to any stab at condescension Asterios might make. He doesn’t wind up in Mayberry. The wisdom of the people he meets isn’t homespun; at times it isn’t even wisdom. But they have passions and nuanced belief systems, and they’re striking enough that Asterios actually listens to them. For him, it’s progress.

I’m reluctant to mention the plot or character dynamics in any more detail, because Mazzucchelli has a way with contorting familiar elements in surprising ways, and not just in the illustrative sense. Even if Asterios Polyp was just prose, it would still offer plenty of surprises. Of course, it’s about as far from being “just prose” as you can get, and I suppose it would be possible to be carried along by the immense craft of the thing. I don’t think that’s likely, as there’s splendid feeling to the thing as well.

By the way, Ng Suat Tong contributed a comprehensive reader’s guide to Asterios Polyp to The Comics Reporter. As the author notes, “this article will be of limited use to a person who has not read the book.” If you have read the, and I really recommend you do, whether for pyrotechnic displays of cartooning or for the fact that they still manage to serve a moving, intelligent story, go take a look.

Tokyopoll

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Over at About.Com, Deb Aoki provides a wrap-up of Tokyopop’s recent webcast, including a list of upcoming new titles and updates about ongoing series. If you’ve got a minute, check Deb’s listings, then take a look at the poll below and click whichever titles sound good to you.

I usually enjoy series that use eateries as a setting, so I’ve got my eye on Kou Matsuzuki’s Happy Café. I’m also a fan of whodunits, so I’ll certainly give Yoshitsugu Katagari’s Kokaku Detective Story a try. Higuchi Tachibana’s Portrait of M & N sounds like it could be really intriguing or go horribly awry. And the prospect of a bishie-infested, eye-rolling take on Wonderland draws me to Alice in the Country of Hearts by quinrose and Hoshino Soumei.

Upcoming 8/12/2009

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

ikigami2I’m looking forward to reading the second volume of Motoro Mase’s Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit, a creepy, slice-of-death story about a place that has taken social engineering to a slightly absurd but undeniably chilling new level. To promote order and the value of life, a government is randomly choosing citizens to die in their late teens or early twenties, and readers are invited to follow an ambivalent civil servant tasked with informing the soon-to-be deceased that they really lost out in life’s lottery. In episodic science-fiction or fantasy series, I’m almost always less interested in underlying subplots than the episode-to-episode structure, but I’m hoping Mase continues to build on the civil servant’s growing discomfort with the system he supports. I enjoyed the first volume, and I’ll certainly stick around for a while.

I meant to review the first issue of the Marvel Divas mini-series (Marvel, needless to say), but I kept forgetting to do so, which I guess amounts to some kind of a critique. It’s about four B- to C-list Marvel super-heroines who hang out, sip cocktails, and help each other through their personal problems, which range from terrible exes to questionable currents, booty calls gone wrong to power-driven health crises. The featured heroines mostly track with my preferred portrayals of them, assuming I had an opinion in the first place. Writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa seems to like and respect the characters, Tonci Zonjic is a competent illustrator, and Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic’s cover for the second issue, due out Wednesday, is a vast improvement over J. Scott Campbell’s first-issue travesty.

CMX debuts a new series, Shouko Fukaki’s The Battle of Genryu: Origin. It’s a martial-arts manga about a boy with a mysterious family and an equally mysterious monthly power-up that significantly boosts his natural abilities. (Insert your own PMS joke, if you must.) I read a preview copy from the publisher, and I have to say that I’m just not the audience for this kind of thing. Most of these bare-knuckled-combat series seem virtually identical to me, and this one doesn’t offer any quirks or novelty to overcome the familiarity. It’s not as offensive as some or baffling as others, but still..

Rough seas, dead trees

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You know what’s great about print versions of comics that are available for free online? Back covers featuring grizzled old men covered with tattoos — that’s what’s great about them. Now, I will freely admit, when I saw Kate Dacey’s beautiful review of Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea, I almost switched topics for this week’s Flipped, because seriously, what else needed to be said that The Manga Critic hadn’t already covered much more artfully than I could? But I’d painted myself into a corner, and I really wanted to write about the book because it’s lovely in some very unusual ways, so you’ve all been spared my treatise on 10 sizzling shônen bromances… FOR NOW.

When nerd worlds collide

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I love the “Five for Friday” feature over at The Comics Reporter, but I very rarely remember to respond when the question goes out. This is because I’ve usually shut down the computer and curled up with Mr. Hendrick by the time the call goes out. I even forget when I’ve suggested the week’s topic in a previous Five for Friday; in this case, I suggested Tom ask contributors to “Name Five Comic Properties That Should Be Adapted Into Broadway Musicals.” So here are my choices:

Fumi Yoshinaga's "Antique Bakery" Vol. 2Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (DMP): I think just about anything by Yoshinaga would translate well into a musical, because her characters could just as easily burst into song as they burst into monologue. I do think Antique Bakery would be a great starting point, as it’s got four solid male leads and a whole bunch of Tony-bait supporting roles in the mix. The leads also lend themselves to different musical styles for solo pieces, and their number holds promise for bizarre barbershop sequences. I admit that food-based stage productions are hell for the props crew, but there are ways around that.

pollyPolly and the Pirates, by Ted Naifeh (Oni): Given the quantity of apparently horrible family-friendly stage musicals Disney has unleashed on Broadway in recent years, it’s probably cruel to suggest an adaptation of this delightful but underappreciated mini-series. Still, it’s got a lot of things going for it: a spunky ingénue part in the title character, a big chorus of rowdy pirates, an exciting plot, and some fun staging and design opportunities.

10203010, 20, 30, by Morim Kang (Netcomics): Swinging in the other direction in terms of production scale, this look at the lives of three different women muddling through three different decades of life (teens, twenties, and thirties) would make a nifty chamber piece that would be very portable to university and community theatres. All you really need are interesting characters with distinct voices, I think, and this book has them.

palomarPalomar, by Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics): Hernandez’s Palomar stories have an embarrassment of riches for composers, lyricists, librettists, and directors. A cast bursting with great characters, a community that could easily function as a formidable chorus, a lovely setting with just enough of a magical-realism quality to justify the bursting-into-song aspect, and a magnificent “Big Lady” lead role in Luba all suggest a musical that would write itself.

dragonheadDragon Head, by Minetaro Mochizuki (Tokyopop): Okay, this is probably me just being perverse, undoubtedly influenced by that PBS special on the Lord of the Rings musical that aired on PBS. In my defense, history has shown us that Broadway will adapt anything – ANYTHING – into a singing-and-dancing extravaganza, so I see no reason for them to shy away from this post-apocalyptic treasure. And someone’s probably still got that helicopter from Miss Saigon lying around, so there’s a cost savings right off the top. It could be Carrie: The Musical or it could be Sweeney Todd, and I think it’s worth it either way.