Dude, I am so behind on my reading. You have no idea. Stacks and stacks of stuff by my bedside, in the living room, in the batroom. Can’t deal. So I asked my friend Derek (who we call “Haliday” as that is his last name) to read X-MEN: MISFITS, the X-Men Shojo manga by my friends Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman (and artist Anzu), because he’s a) read a lot of manga and b) read a lot of X-Men. He’s a dude, so he’s not the target audience (necessarily, I’m sure the authors would say that the book is for everyone, more or less), but still, he understands manga and superhero comics real good-like… I knew he’d have an interesting response to the book whether he liked it or not.

Instead of telling me about the book after he read it, he wrote a review of it. It’s a really good review as a piece of writing, very direct but still nuanced without being flowery, and I feel it really tells me a lot about the execution of the book, as well as just enough of the plot. So, since I in effect commissioned this review, I feel I should link to it:

http://comikaider.blogspot.com/2009/09/x-men-misfits-marvel-shoujo-manga-rise.html

Thanks Derek, you’ve made me want to move the book to the top of my to-read stack.

- Christopher