If you’d like to enter to win one of two sets of the DVDs, see the rules and details at the bottom of this post.

Review: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Volume 1 & 2 DVD
Available in stores now.

Reviewed by Derek T. Halliday

Growing up as an 80′s baby meant growing up during what some might consider to be the Golden Age of televised animation.  Saturday morning used to be the day you’d sneak out of bed as early as 6am and stay glued to the TV until noon, watching in wonder as your heroes strode across the screen, having big adventures and fighting bad guys, inspiring your imagination and shaping your moral compass; GI JOE and HE-MAN were as important a part in shaping my world view as any other influence from that early developmental period in my life.  When I was a kid, I was convinced that when I grew up, I could become a hero.

AVENGERS:  EARTH’S MIGHTIEST inspires those same feelings; it’s a Saturday morning throwback to when children’s entertainment featured larger than life characters having big and bold adventures.  The Good Guys are good and the Bad Guys get what they deserve.  It’s colorful, exciting, and engaging, mostly because there’s a sophistication that hasn’t been apparent in a lot of cartoons for quite a long time.

EARTH’S MIGHTIEST introduces MARVEL’s greatest heroes individually in the first five episodes and then brings them together as a team to face the biggest of threats; a massive breakout of four Superhuman Prison facilities, which all inexplicably fail simultaneously, release 73 of the world’s most powerful, most evil, supervillains.  It’s a crisis that no individual hero can cope with, and an uneasy alliance is struck as Iron Man gathers together a motley crew: Thor, a Norse God unfairly exiled to Earth by his all powerful father Odin; The Incredible Hulk, a snarling monster and fugitive on the run from the Government; pacifist scientist Hank Pym and his spunky girlfriend Janet Van Dyne, also known as Ant Man and the Wasp.  Each hero is introduced individually in stand alone episodes that give their background and show their unique place in the larger context of the MARVEL Universe, and all come together to face a greater threat. And what a great threat it is! A powerful, insane, villain named Graviton uses his mastery of gravity to life the entire island of Manhattan from the Earth, and threaten to throw it into space… and that’s one of the great things about AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST, every story is BIG, and makes effective use of the fact that it’s an animated show by showing you something you’d otherwise never be able to see.  Colorful characters, literally larger than life, provide big action in a way that you’ve always wished you could see; there’s weight and force as they trade blows, punching each other across great distances and through buildings, tossing cars around and ripping up streets… it’s all big and exciting and visually engaging.

One of the greatest strengths of EARTH’S MIGHTIEST, though, is character.  Big action is great and fun to look at, but doesn’t mean as much if you don’t care about the guy getting punched.  Each character is unique, and they don’t always get along.  Characters clash and fight and rag on each other, and through it all there’s growth; these are people who are used to fighting alone, and, being superhuman, have never had to rely on anyone else, because there wasn’t a thing they couldn’t do for themselves.  Iron Man and Thor clash over Technology VS Magic, Thor and Hulk clash over who is strongest of all, Giant Man and Wasp clash over the effectiveness of violence, and my favorite character, Hawkeye, he just clashes with everyone!  Most of the show’s humor comes from how awkward each character’s interactions with each other are.

EARTH’S MIGHTIEST is also something of a nerd-bonanza.  In an ambitious move, the series creators seem to be determined to work in just about every MARVEL character you could possible think of in some respect, creating a massive and textured world that will have many a nerd running for his OFFICIAL HANDBOOK TO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, looking up obscure characters glimpsed in the background. Weird fan favorites such as the Wrecking Crew and Whirlwind, and, yes, even CHEMISTRO, who is just about as far down on the D-List of MARVEL supervillains as you can get, make appearances.  On top of this, MARVEL also expands on it’s brand by bringing in characters and villains from each individual hero’s titles, including as Thor’s human love interest Jane Foster, and classic Walt Simonson creation Malekith the Black, not to mention James Rhodes, Bucky Barnes (who seems to be set up to return as The Winter Soldier), Maria Hill, and more.  On top of this are guest stars and future Avengers such as Ms Marvel, Captain Mar-Vell, the Fantastic Four, Mockingbird, and Black Widow, among others.

It’s not just the ancillary characters and guest stars that will excite nerds both young and old, but seeing classic stories adapted and woven together as the writers pull from the deepest annuls of MARVEL history, showcasing the best and most defining stories for not only the Avengers as a whole, but each individual Avengers. Notable stories include the CASKET OF ANCIENT WINTERS from Thor, THE COSMIC CUBE from Captain America, and Avengers stories THE ULTRON IMPERATIVE, THE MASTERS OF EVIL, KRANG THE CONQUEROR, and even hints at a forthcoming KREE/SKRULL WAR.

Visually spectacular, the show is well animated and storyboarded, bright and colorful, with lush, detailed backgrounds, and lots of big action. I will admit that I was not entirely on board with character designs, which are blocky and awkward looking at times, but they animate well, and evoke a sort of classic MARVEL look, showing influences that range from Jack Kirby’s square jawed Captain America to John Busema’s messy haired Hulk.  Occassionally there are some really lovely and ambitious scenes that look like animated splash pages.

In terms of voice acting features a solid cast, and even has a few welcome guest voices; Steven J. Blum (a personal favorite actor of mine, who famously portrayed Spike Speigel in COWBOY BEBOP) does a pitch perfect Red Skull, while Lance Henriksen (best known for ALIENS and TV’s MILLENIUM among other things, as well as previous voice work on IGPX and TRANFORMERS ANIMATED) does a chilling but wry Grim Reaper, and Clancy Brown (a fantastic actor famous for SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, as veteran voice actor from such show as  MEN IN BLACK, SUPERMAN, and many others) portrays a powerful and intimidating Odin.  The regular cast is overall solid and grow into their characters, though I’m not sold on Brian Bloom’s Captain America.

Overall, AVENGERS:  EARTH’S MIGHTIEST is the kind of show I’d have loved back in 1988, sitting in front of the television at six in the morning eating a bowl of cereal. It has big characters, big stories, and big action, all coming together to bring these classic heroes to life, thundering across your television screen.

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CONTEST: WIN ONE OF TWO AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES DVD SETS

Hey there! How’d you like to win a set of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes DVDs, including Volume 1: Heroes Assemble, and Volume 2: Captain America Reborn? It’s dead easy. Here’s how you can do it:

For a chance to win, send an e-mail with your name and “AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST” in the subject line to beguilingcontests@gmail.com before Monday, May 16th at 12pm (noon) EST. Winner will be drawn and contacted on Monday the 16th. Their first name will be announced on the website here.

RULES & REGULATIONS:
1. Subject line MUST contain entrant?s name, and “AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST” (no apostrophe), and must be sent to beguilingcontests@gmail.com.
2. Entries must be received before Monday, May 16th, at 12 noon. You will be contacted for your mailing address at that time.
3. No purchase necessary, void where prohibited, etc.

- Chris

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SEXY VOICE AND ROBO GN
By Iou Kuroda
Adapted by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Yuji Oniki
US$19.99, 400 pages, 8″ x 10″
Winner of the Grand Prize for manga from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Media Arts Festival in 2002.

Published by Viz LLC

Right in the final stages of planning and preparation for The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (a comics event I co-chaired earlier this spring), I received a mysterious package in the mail from Viz. I didn’t recognize the name on the attached business card, and the project, a strangely crude manga I was only vaguely familiar with the solicitation for, weighed in at a whopping 400 pages (with an angry legal warning on the front that this wasn’t the final version anyway!!!). This was inopportune timing to say the least.

The person who forwarded it my way probably didn’t know that I was planning a large comics event at the time. The Festival was great though, 8,000 people came and everyone sold lots of comics. It is, however, now September and more than 6 months since I received my preview copy, and more than 3 months since the book came out.

So, to make up for lost time (and a two-paragraph introduction…), run out and buy SEXY VOICE AND ROBO right now.

SEXY VOICE AND ROBO sounds almost like a prototypical anime-cum-manga title; a cute high school girl gets into adventures on the streets of Tokyo aided by a mysterious old man and a dumb-but-well-meaning lunk of a guy. But really all you have to do is flip open the book and you’ll be able to tell that this isn’t really very typical at all. Hell, it’s not even a twist on or elbow-to-the-ribs of typical romance manga, instead it’s an astoundingly realistic piece of contemporary fiction, so grounded in the sights, smells, and actions of Tokyo that even the more fantastic elements that enter the narrative as the book progresses seem utterly plausible (both in the writing and the art as well; it only takes a few pages for the realistically proportioned and rendered bodies with hastily-drawn doe-anime eyes to seem perfectly normal). SEXY VOICE AND ROBO successfully transports the reader to the Tokyo you don’t see in Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, or any one of a hundred ‘realistic’ shoujo tales. You get, as Viz Editor Marc Weidenbaum writes in the afterword, a “modern Tokyo [connected] with it’s past… A Manhattan as wide as it is tall, with many many West Villages.”

Nico is a schoolgirl making money on the side by engaging in phone sex with the lonely, bored, and desperate men of Tokyo. As Codename: Sexy Voice, she uses her uniquely intimate position with these men to profile them, and then to apply that profiling to the people around her. As soon as she hears the sound of your voice, she’s got you all figured out. Her unique abilities draw the attention of an elderly Yakuza boss who has her undertake special ‘assignments’ for him: Finding his lost son, tracking down an employee who has absconded with money, a lost love… The jobs get more and more serious, and dangerous, with Nico reaping rewards and always walking the line between being impressed with and aware of her abilities, and potentially misjudging her situation. Through a combination of forthrightness and light blackmail, she gains the assistance of one of her former callers (Codename: Robo), a hapless nerd whose usefulness tends to begin and end with his being old enough to drive. It is the maturity and complexity of the relationships between these three characters, as well as the meta-commentary on the nature of relationships, that makes SEXY VOICE AND ROBO an engrossing read.

SEXY VOICE AND ROBO is the characterization, thoughtfulness, and James Kochalka-esque ‘play’ of art-comix put in the service of action-movie tropes, to create a unique reading experience. The dialogue and drawing are both intensely naturalistic, with only a few stylistic flourishes that give away the book’s country of origin (the afformentioned anime-eyes, for example). For anyone used to the crisp, measured lines of contemporary commercial manga, SEXY VOICE AND ROBO will undoubtedly seem sloppy, perhaps even amateurish. This is because we’re trained to think that all manga looks the same by the vast wave of manga being imported that all looks the same… But as ‘sloppy’ or amateurish as it may seem, the rhythm of the story, the movement of the characters and their relation to their surroundings is entirely realistic and quite obviously the product of a talented hand; the entire book looks to be drawn panel-by-panel from life, in the sketchbook of someone who is probably painting masterpieces for his day-job.

I’ve been recommending this book steadily at work for a month, and the one comment I hear (after “I really enjoyed that!”) is “I wanted more!”, a sentiment I echoed upon my first read-through of the graphic novel. However, upon re-reading the path that Nico undertakes becomes clearer, the later stories subtly inferring the larger direction of her future. While I would love to see more and more of manga-ka Iou Kuroda’s Tokyo, the four-page epilogue says more than enough about what would follow. Every reading leaves me more impressed, and satisfied, with the book we have received, and more eager to recommend it to folks everywhere.

That means you, by the way.

Highly Recommended

SEXY VOICE AND ROBO is available at better comic book stores everywhere, perhaps a chain bookstore or two, and most-assuredly on the internet.

Buy this book from The Beguiling, in Canada
Buy this book from The Publisher, Viz
Buy this book from Amazon.com

Other Reviews:
- http://www.eclipsemagazine.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1472
- http://www.kellysue.com/professional/archives/2005_07.html#001543
- http://forums.animeondvd.com/showflat.php?Cat=2&Number=1078804&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

The fine folks at SLG Publishing (known back-in-the-day as Slave Labor Graphics) are having a pretty solid sale right now—40% off their whole web store at http://slgcomic.com/—to help them through some rough economic times. Things aren’t DOOMy or anything, just a sort of a “hey look over here if you’ve got some money to spend”. I was considering telling you about 5 great books from the SLG catalogue that I own, and that you should buy them, but then I thought “My readers are givers, and what with the holidays right around the corner, I’m certain that they’d much rather have a list of recommendations for what to buy for Other People.” And since I have been enjoying and selling (and enjoying selling) SLG products for the better part of 15 years, I thought “Gift Guide!” and so here we are!

But this is no ordinary gift guide.

You see, SLG publishes a wide range of stuff, much of it difficult and strange and unique, and since everyone has a couple of people on their shopping list that are impossible to buy for, the comics and products manufactured by the fine folks at SLG would work wonderfully as gifts… for the difficult, strange, and unique people on your list. (Note: books are also appropriate for folks that do not match the stated criteria.) And with no further ado we present:

5 GREAT GIFTS FROM SLG PUBLISHING FOR DIFFICULT-TO-BUY-FOR-PEOPLE

For The Guy That Makes Inappropriate Jokes At Inappropriate Times…

FUN WITH MILK & CHEESE VOLUME 1
By Evan Dorkin.
Reg: $11.95. SALE: $7.17
[LINK]

I’ve been running Evan Dorkin’s awesome DORK comic strips here at Comics212 for the past few months and while I can’t speak for you guys, it’s been lovely waking up every morning (or so) to see a new Evan Dorkin strip on the site. So while I’ve been recommending DORK for the past few months, let me instead make a recommendation for MILK AND CHEESE, Dorkin’s most famous creations. Dairy Products Gone Bad, they are sociopathic, anthropomorphic bits of food, that Dorkin uses to both satirize society and to just draw vicious, unapologetic insanity. We’ve all met that person who says the most profoundly tasteless thing at exactly the wrong time, and an angry carton of milk and an angry wedge of cheese forcing an old woman into her coffin and beating a senior citizen with his own cane because they were forced to wait behind old people in a line one time? That is the comic for that person. Misanthropy!

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For Your Friend’s Teenage Daughter Whom No One Understands And Is Possibly A Lesbian…

PARIS
By Andi Watson and Simon Gane.
Reg: $10.95. SALE: 6.57
[LINK]

PARIS is a wonderful book, a sensual, energetic, surprising work that reflects its titular setting. A restless young aristocrat and a talented young painter both find themselves in the city of lights, and after a chance encounter with a portrait painting session, they can’t stop thinking about one another. Did I mention that they’re both young women? A couple of major plot twists and Romeo & Juliet allusions conspire to keep the two young ladies apart, but thankfully (for a change) it’s not about the love that dare not speak its name, but instead about the class divide. Ooh la la! PARIS is beautifully drawn, with cute characters and an expressive line. It’s a bit “Classic British Farce”, a bit “Backpacking Across Europe”, a bit “Hollywood”, but really it’s just a wonderful little book, to make you feel good about falling in love.

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For recent “Cool” young parents, to remind them not to move to the suburbs…

I FEEL SICK #1 & #2 and SPOOKY SQUEAK TOY
By Jhonen Vasquez, w/ Rikki Simmons
Reg: $17.85. SALE: $14.69
[LINK]

Jhonen Vasquez is the creator of cult-fav comics JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC and SQUEE, but he’s probably best-know around the world as the creative mastermind behind the incredibly popular Invader Zim television series for Nickelodeon. My favourite of his comics efforts is this two issue mini-series. It’s about the nature of creativity, and compromising artistic ideals for comfort and commercial success, and the struggle therein. It is surprisingly, hilariously good, and poignant, and could only have been written by someone who had a difficult birthing process with a creative property at a multinational corporation… like say Nickelodeon? Anyway, it’s edgy as all hell (even almost 10 years after its initial release), with great art and lovely colours by Rikki Simmons (the voice of Gir on Zim).

Bonus: Appearing in the comic itself is a little skull-faced squeak toy, called SPOOKY: THE THING WHAT SQUEAKS. It is pretty adorable, and it squeaks, and it’s pretty ‘cool’ as far as baby toys go. SLG’s store seems to be out of stock right now, but the toy has been ‘in print’ for years and many retailers should still have it in stock. We do at The Beguiling, for example… :)

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For anyone you know that works in I.T., graphic design, or really any computer-related field…

NIL graphic novel
By James Turner
Reg: $12.95. SALE: $7.77
[LINK]

Drawn entirely in vector-based illustration tool Adobe Illustrator, NIL has a stark, complex, ‘designy’ look that is wholly unique in comics. The visuals of the world in this graphic novel are fully-realized, creating an engrossing place to get lost in. And? It’s a really good story too. NIL is a satire, an extension of nihilist chic taken to an absurd and therefore amusing degree. It’s about a man who’s job it is to quell outbreaks of hope or belief in a nihilist society, and anyone who’s ever heard “Can you make the logo bigger?” or uttered the phrase “Have you checked to make sure it’s plugged in?” will sure understand and appreciate the dark, dark humour. And it’s Canadian too, so double-excellent.

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For someone you know likes Superhero comics but you have no other idea what they like or read, like none, and you want to get something that they almost-assuredly haven’t read AND is really good AND reflects your personality as the gift-giver…

STREET ANGEL
By Jim Rugg and Brian Maresca
Reg $14.95. NOW: $8.97!
[LINK]

So here’s the deal: The protagonist of this book is a homeless 12 year old girl who rides a skateboard and kicks ass. In the first chapter she fights like a hundred ninjas. In the second she fights Spanish Conquistadors and Ireland’s first man in space, “Cosmick”. In the third: Satan. It only gets bigger from there. Seriously, this is the work of a dude who’s taken in a LOT of pop culture over the years, and is letting it flow back out of his mind, through his pen, onto the page. It’s visually inventive, more sophisticated than you might imagine, and has all of the stuff in it that nerds like. The new edition even has shiny paper! One of my favourite comics of the past few years, and aside from being incredibly pink, any die-hard superhero fan who gets this one is going to love it.

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Bonus: Free Comics for you to read…
SLG loves getting folks to read its comics, so it has all kinds of freebies that you can throw in whenever you place an order on their website. I personally recommend the beautifully-illustrated BOMBABY graphic novel by Antony Mazzotta, which is FREE, or the totally f’d up sci-fi graphic novel VAISTRON by Andrew Dabb and Boussourir. Grab one of everything from their FREEBIES SECTION, it’s all at least interesting and a bunch of it is really good!

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So that’s 5 recommendations, but really, SLG has a pretty fantastic catalogue of books and products, and narrowing it down to just these five was kinda tough. So here’s 10 more suggestions:

1. Agnes Quill, by Dave Roman and friends – Spooky stories about a spunky girl detective.
2. Bill and Ted’s Most Excellent Adventures Volume 1 & 2, by Evan Dorkin – We’re almost ready for 90s nostalgia, get ahead of the curve with these surprisingly awesome comic books (they’re seriously great).
3. Farewell, Georgia, by Ben Towle – Tall tales and modern myth from down south.
4. H’eofigendlic Lodrung: A Collection of Stories by FSc – A fantastically talented Singaporean cartoonist working in a “goth” style, with wonderful results. Collects almost everything she’s ever drawn.
5. Milk & Cheese Vinyl Toys – based on the violent dairy products above. Only for hardcore fans, but for hardcore fans, they’re only $35.97, down from $69.95!
6. Rare Creature, by Kelley/Ken Seda – A pretty, quiet, short graphic novel about strange and quiet kids. Very ahead of its time.
7. Skaggy The Lost, by Igor Baranko – A very funny story about an incompetent, high-energy Viking who ‘discovers’ Incan gold. Hilarious, great euro-style art. Underappreciated gem.
8. The War At Ellsmere, by Faith Erin Hicks – A ‘Mean Girls’-esque boarding school drama about a school with secrets to hide.
9. Wonderland, by Tommy Kovac and Sonny Liew – Beautifully illustrated side-story to Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. A lovely full colour hardcover book.
10. Zombies Calling, by Faith Erin Hicks – Zombies, fun art, a satire of the college experience.

Now this sale might not extend much past the next few hours (check your shopping cart to see the discounts), but these books are great year ’round. I recommend picking them up from the SLG store, or from your local comics retailer (when available), and you’re unlikely to be disappointed.

Best,

- Christopher
(Header photo by Chuck Rozanski/Mile High Comics. Stolen from here.)

“It’s a little funny that I was asked to share what I’m reading this week, I feel like I’ve read fewer comics in the past few weeks than anytime in the last few years. Y’see, I’m getting ready for a trip to Japan in just a few hours—actually I stopped in the middle of packing to write this—and I feel like all of my time lately has been spent packing, planning, and booking stuff. But, luckily for you reader, I’m not going to bore you with my opinion of the Frommers or Lonely Planet guides to Tokyo. It turns out I have been reading some stuff of interest, and I hope it inspires you to go out and track down some copies for yourself…” – Me, at Robot6

Chris Mautner at the Robot 6 blog asked me to be the guest contributor to this week’s “What Are You Reading?” column, and there I am recommending some very good books. Go check it out…!

- Chris

First up? We totally sold out of PREVIEWS this month, because the cover looked great and had a top-notch creative team featured. I don’t know what it is, but usually the cover of previews is either an incomprehensible mess of digital paint, or just plain hideous. Morrison and Quitely’s BATMAN AND ROBIN for the win.

2:25pm: Huh, the Editor’s Note on page 7 actually mentions that the Previews is thinner, and they’re being “more choosy” with what they offer. I always thought choosey was spelt with an ‘e’, but perhaps in this “tough economic climate” we can’t afford a surfeit of e’s.

Oh, and I’ll try to mention page-numbers for those of you playing along at home.

2:27pm: God’s honest quote: “What would William Shatner Do? Apparently, create some good comics.” Thank you, “indieEdge”, for the most depressing thing I’ve seen in days. And we’re only at Page 9.

2:28pm: Is this the fourth or fifth consecutive month of Free Comic Book Day ads in the front of the catalogue? Yikes. Though it is still nice to see Comics Festival in there.

2:29pm: This is actually what I meant about a mess of digital paint on the covers of Previews. This Predator #1 cover is a nightmare. Comics fans aren’t known for being big “impressionist art” fans at the best of times, and this is just all rendering and no composition. Although the strictly realist interpretation of the Predator on the facing page is… ugly. I mean, perhaps that’s the point, but it’s not attractive at either. At least there’s some thought to the composition with the figure framed by the window/doorway. Still, not auspicious for a debut to the section.

2:33pm: The Art of Tony Millionaire has an introduction by Elvis Fucking Costello. That’s cool, but is that gonna sell the book? It’s so cool.

2:42pm: I think I mentioned these “Neil Gaiman Presents” novels last month…. I just saw that the first one was cancelled by Diamond on my last invoice. Does anyone know if it’s just going to get resolicited or if the line isn’t happening? Because this one, Spave Chanety, with are by Vaughn Bode, that will probably do alright for us.

2:46pm: I’ve been really, really hard on Dark Horse in the past. I know it’s not easy keeping tons and tons of backlist in print, but I’ve never understood their handling of the Usagi Yojimbo series by Stan Sakai. Volumes out of print for huge stretches of time, and a general confusion about how to handle the series seem to pervade it. I’m really glad to see that they’re doing new editions of all of the Usagi stuff, starting with volumes 8-10. Completely remastered and rescanned artwork, new story notes. Sounds good, you know? Sounds good.

2:50pm: So Buffy the Vampire Slayer is doing a new TALES OF THE VAMPIRES one shot featuring Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos, and covers by Ba and Moon and Jo Chen. Sounds like a pretty amazing crossover, and given the creative pedigree is likely to be awesome. My only fear is that the hardcore Buffy fans won’t pick it up because it’s not “cannon” or by “Joss” or whatever, even though it’s quite likely to be a really strong genre comic. Blessing and curse of setting the bar high?

2:54pm: Man, 12 volumes of EDEN: IT’S AN ENDLESS WORLD. Nice. If you’re the kind of person who misses Masamune Shirow’s regular output, but kind of wish he stayed on the “interesting philosophical digressions on humanity + kick ass art” track, instead of, you know, a cyber-version of Hot Biker Sluts, you should check this out. Also, if you’re the kind of person who was repulsed by every part of the previous sentence, you can check this out too, it’s actually really solid and enjoyable.

2:58pm: Alright, DC COMICS! … You know, I even LIKED Final Crisis (seriously, it was a lot of fun) but? Is anyone at all gonna care about these Final Crisis spin-off books by the time they come out, months after the end of the series?

BTW, I decided the one written by Joe Casey and drawn by Chris Cross has the strongest crative team, despite having the most ridiculous (within the context of superhero fanboy names), so that’s the one I’m ordering the strongest.

3:00pm: It would be nice if there was not a 1-in-250 variant on Batman and Robin #1.

Actually, let me expand on this. This is fucking stupid. It either rewards the absolute largest retailers, the ones who are already ordering thousands of copies of these sorts of books anyway (chains mostly) while thumbing its nose at the mass of small-to-mid-sized accounts that make up the meat of the orders on many of these books. 

Or? Or it’s encouraging retailers to take untennable positions on books, in a time of economic downturn. Is it a biased, favouritist promotion, or just totally irresponsible?

We are going to qualify for this incentive, we are going to be fine. But “I got mine” is not an acceptable way of doing business in the same month that the editor of Previews says “We all have to tighten our belts.”

3:20pm: Okay, that out of the way, is anyone going to be rushing to pick up these new Batman books that don’t have the real Batman in them? Like, Gotham City Sirens I kinda get, put a bunch of popular sexy characters in the same book, get a cheesecake artist to draw them. But like, Paul Dini’s “Another Batman Ongoing Series” has a solid creative team, but are people on board with reading this? I have no feeling, except negative.

Also, Red Robin #1? Really?

I feel disconnected from this. I am ordering low.

3:24pm: Our Superman sales are really taking a hit right now. That is unfortunate… but unsurprising.

3:25pm: Really? Superman vs. The Flash cover on issue #3? I… I dunno.

The DC section is kinda depressing me here.

3:28pm: Man, new series are Not having a good go of it right now. Dead Romeo #1? Tanked. The Mighty #1-3? Not promising numbers. I guess I could’ve done more to promote both series, but with so much on the racks it’s a little tough. But the lack of sales were not for a lack of copies on the rack…

3:35pm: You know, I like Mike Oeming’s artwork; I own all of Powers. I think that Kevin Nowlan is an incredibly talented artist, just the bees knees. What I am less on board with, is getting Kevin Nowlan to do a cover for The Spirit #30, and then having Mike Oeming draw (and write) the interiors. Because, you know what? Those two artists are very different. Their work does not compliment one another. That is what we in the biz call a bait-and-switch. That is a poor choice.

3:40pm: Time for the monthly “bitching-about-DC’s-collected-editions-department”. Listen folks, I DON’T LIKE DOING THIS ANYMORE THAN YOU LIKE HEARING ABOUT IT. But what do you want me to do, exactly? Huh?

You’re releasing a prestige-format Alex Ross project years after the demand was at it’s peak! AND you’re asking me to order it now, but it’s not arriving until November 25th, 2009. I’m officially ordering Christmas Product here when, and let’s be honest with ourselves here, last Christmas would’ve been a much more realistic window for release of this book.. Hell, Christmas 2007 would’ve been the ideal time to release this book. The “heat” has sort of dissipated from this project… released as it was 3 years ago, when everyone knew there was an absolute edtion coming. Who knew it would take DC this long to put it together.

3:46pm: Who is the audience for the “El Diablo: Haunted Horseman” collection? I thinik Phil Hester and Ande Parks are great, but did this mini-series get rave reviews or huge sales and I missed it? I am willing to accept that I missed it.

3:47pm: The Final Crisis: Revelations Miniseries does not need a hardcover.

3:48pm: Ugggggh. Why are you doing simultaneous Hardcover and Softcover releases of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League Material? We only have so much shelf space, Jesus. Just stop it. The HC and SC are coming out within a year of each other for a series of books. JUST PICK A FORMAT. PLEASE. Stop with these dual releases on projects, it’s So Fucking Pointless.

3:51pm: Seriously. Like, DC must know that these collections are broken, right? Terror Titans? Is someone really demanding a Terror Titans collection for the ages? I honestly don’t give a shit if Terror Titans is your favourite mini-series of all time, good for you! But… But we don’t need a trade paperback of a series that people are going to be fishing out of quarter bins in under a year. It’s a waste of trees, of shelf-space in my store, of resources on DC’s part.  Not everything is worth collecting, not everything is worth a larger audience.

Prepare for me to cut and paste this when we get to the Marvel section.

3:56pm: That really, really looks like Blue Beetle on the Cartoon Network Action Pack #38 cover.

3:59pm: I had no idea that the kangaroo that Sylvester thinks is a mouse is named “Hippety-Hopper”. At least according to the cover of Looney Tunes #175. Weird.

4:05pm: The first Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash mini-series sold well, and surprised the hell out of by actually sending new customers to my store, asking for a book by name. That’s how licensed books are supposed to work, offering fans of other media something that they can only get from a comic book. Unfortunately most times these books are just aimed at existing comic fans, doing nothing to grow the market… So yeah, we’re putting a solid order in on this new series.

4:13pm: Oh man, I just read the most brutal, brutal review of Azzarello’s Filthy Rich graphic novel. I mean, I dig his work and all, 100 Bullets is aces, but I avoided that Joker HC specifically because it seemed callous and awful and… and tossed-off even. Just random. So to read this dude at The Oregonian just tear this book to pieces. I cringed a little. I don’t think it’ll affect the first few weeks of sales, actually, negative reviews rarely do. But I know that I personally am not that interested in picking it up anymore… Yikes.

4:18pm: …but by all accounts 100 Bullets ended well. My orders on the last trade, WILT, are going to be pretty darned strong.

4:25pm: Second Northlanders TPB. Good good.

4:26pm: Does Nightwing always look constipated, or just in this statue on page 128?

4:28pm: IMAGE: I’m not really a Dawn/Linsner fan, so maybe I don’t know, but I kind of get the feeling that these one-shots? If you slapped a hardcover on them and charged $14.99 instead of $5.99 for the same story? We’d sell just as many. I understand the French-market “album” format doesn’t really work for North America, but I can’t help but feel that this is one of the few properties that could really make a go.

4:31pm: Writer John Layman e-mailed me about his new series here, Chew, from Image. I have to admit that I didn’t actually read the email very closely, I’ve been incredibly busy for the past month. But I’m looking at this here, and the art is a very appealing indie/lo-fi sort of a thing, and the idea of a detective who gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats? Pretty good, pretty good. I’ll give this a shot for the store. And then probably go back and read the e-mail and figure out I shoulda ordered more. But, you know, only so many hours in a month.

Oh, and John Layman’s website is http://themightylayman.blogspot.com/.

There, good deed done for a creator-owned book. I can go back to being a jackass.

4:38pm: Fair enough, I could probably discern that T.RUNT by Derek McCulloch and Jimmie Robinson is going to be in an odd format, a square book, just by looking at the solicit image. But it would be nice if that information was in the actual solicit somewhere.

4:43pm: Douglas Fredericks & The House of They is written by Joe Kelly, whose work I generally enjoy, and illustrated by Benjamin Roman, whose work is kind of hideous, but also in an enjoyable way. OGN for 13 bucks, I’ll give it a whirl.

5:06pm: sorry for the big break, I had a rash of customers come in and sadly had to stop working on the previews… this is exactly why I’ve started working from home btw. Someone at The Beguiling needs to build me an office before I go all Les Nessman and start taping up the floors. YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING PETER? I AM JUST A FEW WEEKS AWAY FROM LES NESSMAN. That reflects poorly on all of us.

5:08pm: There are WALLS here.

5:09pm: Okay, MARVEL. Hah, Halo. It’s funny, last month I made mean jokes about how Halo #4 and Detective #857 were never going to come out, and then they both came out less than 4 weeks later. Perhaps I have a gift? Perhaps my snide disbelief and criticism is what Gets Shit Done TM. Alright, let’s try this: “Yeah, a MIRACLEMAN trade paperback! That’ll be the day! Haw Haw haw!”…

If it’s announced in the next 30 days you’ll have to give me credit, you know that right?

Huh, no shit. Colourist Richard Isanove is now illustrating the Dark Tower series. I would not have seen that coming. I’m not really digging the cover; it’s well-illustrated but lacks the broody menace of the series, and of Jae Lee’s take. Still, this is just the cover.

5:14pm: Really? Spider-Man election day seems… Like a poor choice. I’d really like a book that has the (terrible) Spider-Man/Obama book in it, but the story arc it’s attached to… How accessible is that? Isn’t there material in the archives that would serve as a better introduction to the character, or would be of the same sort of kitsch-value as the Obama material in the first place? Or what about just doing a thin stand-alone collection, like 48 pages for $15 or something? This product just doesn’t make any sense to me as anything other than “the next Spider-Man collection”. 

Which is a missed opportunity, considering.

5:20pm: I have no specific interest in the golden age Marvel reprints, but I do find the 832 page omnibus of Golden Age Marvel Comics incredibly tempting. 

5:23pm: Jesus does Anita Blake ever do anything other than stand around with her hands in her pockets? What an intensely boring looking comic book. Also, I guess those are supposed to be “Ladies of the night” milling about behind her on this cover. but you know what? That’s just what all women in mainstream comics look like, so it totally fails as a visual cue! Even moreso because that cover is horribly underdrawn hackwork.

5:27pm: Fun-fact: This month in the Marvel Previews “illustrated” section there are colour-bars with the names of the classic authors in all caps. It’s very Marvel. Like, we can visually pick up what Wolverine looks like, even “Wolverine Noir”, but who’s that buncha chicks in that image? Is it one of those “The ladies of X-Men go shopping” down-time issues? Oh, no, wait, it’s JANE AUSTEN. Dude with a sword? HOMER. Got it. Sadly no similar one for L. FRANK BAUM. Actually, Baum isn’t mentioned anywhere in the solicit for Shanower and Young’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptation. Kinda disappointing.

5:32pm: Marvel’s got way, waaay too much sub-mediocre product out here. All of these Dark Reign tie-in mini-series and stuff. You’ve got an almost-weekly Spider-Man book now, the story of his mysterious new villain introduced in that series couldn’t be told in that series? We need a mini-series for this? Well, no, we don’t. But we’re getting one. Weaksauce.

5:40pm: Is Reed Richards uncovering a mass grave in the middle of New York? That’s a bit much, isn’t it? Am I just being a prude?

5:47pm: Wow, the new creative team on Runaways seems awesome! Kathryn Immonen, really lovely cover by David Lafuente, and the interior art by Sara Pichelli looks great too. Cool beans, I hope this team sticks around for a while.

5:50pm: The cover to Deadpool: Suicide Kings #3, is stupid.

5:52pm: I’ve been out of the store for a while so I had to check, but it says Kick Ass #5 came out in April. That means the last two issues have gotta come out monthly for this hardcover to release in July… I don’t really see it happening? Did someone give an interview somewhere where the editors and creative team promised monthly shipping on issues 6-8? I’m willing to accept that I missed it. But I find it unlikely.

5:59pm: Ugh, really? The Jeph Loeb FALLEN SON story is getting an oversized hardcover? That’s just brutal.

Edit: Okay, I’m a huge jack-ass. Somehow I completely missed the page (99 in the Marvel Previews) where Joss Whedon’s Runaways was solicited as volume 8 of the Digest series. Missed it completely. So, officially? I am a huge jack-ass. Apologies to Marvel, and thanks, for giving us product that I know we can sell. But because I don’t believe in editing these things to make myself look better, here’s me being douchey to Marvel (although in my defence my heart was in the right place):

6:01pm: Maybe I’m inappropriately holding out hope here, but this will make the third regular-sized hardcover RUNAWAYS collection since we had a digest. We Really Sell A Lot Of Digests. Please Print More Digests. This would be volume 10. And you know, Runaways sells like manga for us, and manga sells _well_. Please let us keep selling these books to more than just anal fanboys who need to own everything in bullshit prestige-format hardcovers. Please.

6:04pm: Ah, I’ve answered my own question. Regular-size tpb of the first Terry Moore Runaways arc. And $16 for 136 pages too, lovely. Marvel: You’re kind of fucking up a good thing here.

6:08pm: …and I’m done. Well, the first half here anyway. After I take a little break to do something about this headache and maybe have some dinner, I’ll come back and do the back-half of Previews. Thanks for reading so far!

- Chris

Little Nothings Volume 2: The Prisoner Syndrome
By Lewis Trondheim
128 Pages, softcover, $14.95
Published by NBM Publishing

I haven’t yet gotten around to publishing my Best-Graphic-Novels-of-2008 List, but the first collection of Lewis Trondheim’s Little Nothings is most assuredly on it. Little Nothings is the series of collections of Trondheim’s diary comics–moments from his days being one of the most respected cartoonists in the world, and the international travel and sightseeing accompanying that recognition. Trondheim is kind enough to bring us all along with him through beautifully rendered drawings and paintings done right in his sketchbooks, mixing live- and life-drawing with after-the-fact recollections of his day–although a brief segment in the middle of the book shows just how unreliable a narrator he can be.  I admit that I’m a fan of journal and diary comics anyhow, but even if they’ve never been for you I think Trondheim is an interesting character with a relaxed cartooning style and these comics will appeal beyond the subject matter; Trondheim tackles personal and introspective themes, the larger comics industry, politics and the world at large, and even breaks the fourth wall to comment on the nature of the work you’re reading–a little something for everyone. I feel quite fortunate when I see new books like this released into stores, and have specifically enjoyed the recent wave of material from Trondheim that NBM (and First Second) have brought us over the past few years.  There’s a huge potential audience for this material–what family man wouldn’t want to be internationally respected in his field and travel the globe drinking with friends?–and I hope that Little Nothings finds it. Pick up your copy today.

- Christopher Butcher

Excerpt from Little Nothings Vol 2, by Lewis Trondheim

A Drifting Life
By Yoshihiro Tatsumi
856 Pages, Softcover, $29.99/$39.99
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

I have no doubt that much will be written about this book when it is officially released this spring. There’s a deceptive density to A Drifting Life, Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s arms’ length autobiography. It’s a story told very directly, switching between the first and third person to describe a young man’s passion and struggle, set against a larger picture of a nation looking to rebuild after World War II.  The 800+ pages of the book read quickly, but the ideas expressed are potent and the history chronicled Important (and largely unkown); the effect of completing the book is disorienting. At one point I flipped to the back looking for footnotes to try and match my own understanding of the origins of Japanese comics to the incredible amount of information Tatsumi dolls out in a few key chapters (though the entire birth of the manga industry, and Tatsumi’s own Gekiga can be found in these pages) (about the footnotes: there are none). At its heart A Drifting Life is a memoir, filled with a density of details to give it a setting and place that will be immediately familiar to Japanese readers of the last generation but that will largely evade North American ones. This is not a bad thing, if anything the unfamiliarity of the time and place of this story will add to the experience of the lead drifting through his life, tied only to the comic that I hope you’ll be holding in your hands.

- Christopher
Yoshihiro Tatsumi will be a Guest of Honour at the 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, of which I am the Festival Director.

So for Christmas I decided to treat myself a to a complete reading of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, an 18 volume manga series translated and published in English by Viz. I’d read the first five volumes as they were coming out, but unfortunately got sidetracked as the series progressed. Since I had a free day, deliberately clear of any obligations, I decided I’d give it a go.

So, honestly? It’s just an exceptionally well-done comic. There’s no way to look at this and not recognize the incredibly high level of craft, the sheer ability put into this series. The character development, the labrynthine plot, and just how compelling it is as a story! There wasn’t one point while reading that dragged for me, where I wasn’t propelled into the next chapter, the next book. And the art! It’s understated, probably doesn’t give the best impression on the ‘flip-test’, but it’s pretty clear that Urasawa and his legion of assistants can draw pretty much anything; any expression, any angle, any background character, and dozens of unique faces and body-types and even body language. He has a wonderful gift for caricature too, character faces that could seem cartoony (or in some cases grotesque…) work very well within the context of the story. The series is in almost every respect fantastically accomplished.

The thing that bugged me, is bugging me, is the ending. It’s why I am blogging at 5:10am instead of, you know, being asleep for when I have to get up for work in 3 hours. :(

I’m having a hard time reconciling the decisions of some of the characters, and am… unclear… on how some of it played out. I’ve got theories on some of it, and my theories are leading me to be more disappointed than not. I think part of the problem is that enough of the “plot” was resolved, but a lot of it was left open-ended as well, giving us instead the emotional resolution we needed. But in a page-turner thriller graphic novel series, I’m not… entirely… ready to just accept the emotional resolution and forget the rest.

I don’t really want to read it again at this point, as I am tired, but I kind of hope I get to wake up tomorrow and there’ll be lots of discussion in the comments section here. I know there was lots of discussion when this series wrapped up in Japan (and in scans), and lots of… heated… commentary arose out of it, but honestly I tried to stay away knowing that I’d read it all one day for myself.

Anyway, your thoughts would be welcome, dear readership, if you’ve read it yourselves. Maybe I’ll try and coax some of my buddies out for a beer after work tomorrow (today…) and we can try and figure it out.

Until then, feel free to let loose in the comments section!

- Chris

I spent a few hours reading it and enjoyed the reading experience… It sort of lilts along, inviting you to spend time with its myriad of characters and get to know them. In fact, you spend a lot of time in their heads, and again, if you’re alright with people with problems, or if you particularly relate to being 23 or 24 and a bit aimless, it’s a pleasant place to hang out. That sense of security with the characters pays off as well, about half way through the book in a big way, making for a genuninely jarring, surprising turn. Speaking of, solanin enough hooks and twists to keep you flipping the pages right to the end. The art is really lovely too, with a solid and subtle range of expression and body language from all of the characters, and a pleasing and attractive surface sheen. Where Jog was disappointed because he’d read scanlations of later, more accomplished work from Asano and found this one lacking in comparisson, this is my first exposure to his work and I found it ambitious and largely successful.

But, the little stuff like attributing narration appearing on solid black panels to a need to crank out pages every week versus, I dunno, artistic license, I don’t buy it. Jog argues his position well, sets up a strong thesis at the outset of his review and hammers it all home at the end, but in the end I just came to a completely different conclusion. It’s a really solid graphic novel, that I think will particularly speak its target audience of 18-34 year olds… I certainly dig it.

- Christopher

Update: David Welsh weighs in with a review of solanin (link) at The Comics Reporter, and he talks about a bunch of the stuff I liked. Go read.

Moresukine
By Dirk Schwieger
$15.95, 176 pages (with foldout), Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-56163-537-5
Published by NBM Publishing

Reviewed by Christopher Butcher

I was lucky enough to grab an advance-advance copy of Dirk Schwieger’s Moresukine at this summer’s Comic Con International in San Diego, direct from the artist himself. I paid full price, and it’s the only book I got signed while I was there. That should tell you that I liked it. Even though I was already a fan of the work from its serialization online in 2006, I have to admit a little bit of disappointment at the print edition, which saw many of the pages suffer unfortunate cropping and printing problems. Many of the densely-packed pages of art and text were bleeding right off the edges of the page, more-or-less legible but incredibly distracting. But it’s with great joy that I can announce that the review copy that arrived today is free of those problems, which may account for the book’s exceptional lateness (it was originally due in July). It looks like NBM might have gone back to press on this title, to provide a better edition. If so? Bravo for them, for their commitment to quality! And… maybe sometimes it’s better not to get one of the first copies off of the press.

Moresukine is how you pronounce “Moleskin,” as in the notebook, in a Japanese accent. The book is named after the diary that German-in-Japan Dirk Schwieger used to chronicle his adventures in the city of Tokyo, comics-style. But he took the casual observation of his temporary home a step further, offering his comics’ online readers a chance to shape the comic and his coverage in the most direct way possible: tell him what to do, and he will do it, and draw a comic about it. And people did just that from January to June 2006, each week with a new installment and a glimpse into life in Tokyo. We get to see first hand almost as it happened what Harajuku fashion is really like, the terrifying truth about Japanese toilets, and discover the deadly fugu fish in a way heretofore only afforded by The Simpsons.

It’s funny, when I first start to tell people how much I enjoy this strip and this new collection, they do a little politically correct-minded wince at the strip’s title, worried that it might be drawing humour from an uncomfortable place. I understand those concerns, but I can’t really see anything in Schwieger’s stories that are mocking or denigrating Japanese culture; Dirk takes great pains to engage Japanese culture on its merits, whether serene or seemy, and to present his experiences as honestly as possible. It’s really not until the end of the book when the reader is exposed to more… uncomfortable attitudes towards “foreigners” (and let’s not forget: Dirk is the ‘foreigner’ in this book) that you realize the careful way in which Schwieger has presented his experiences in this culture. More on that a little later, though.

At first flip Moresukine is a bit of a mixed bag…Schwieger’s thick line impressively diagrams the food and architecture that make Japan so alluring, but it seems uneasy and occasionally awkward depicting the human form. Each entry (“assignment”) starts off with a singularly unflattering and perhaps even ugly profile portrait of Schwieger, and considering that both North America and Japan love their clean, attractive human forms when it comes to comics, I can see how it might turn off potential readers. The ugliness of those portraits belies how accomplished Schwieger’s cartooning really is, as Schwieger is called upon to chronicle a startling array of objects, and situations. He displays a high level of craft in his depictions of the intricate folds of origami, or in the heavily-rendered and detailed (and photo-referenced) can of coffee that sits at the center of one assignment. His depictions of his human characters tighten up noticeably when working from photos, and his drawings of a friend taking him to his first okonomiyaki restaurant, or of the trance-music pioneers Sam & Valley are miles away from his cartoonish self-portraits thanks to the photography. In fact, it’s in Schwieger’s illustration of popular Japanese slang that you get a peek at where I feel his true passion may lie; expressions like “Working with your ass on fire” or “All of America wept” are illustrated in a broad, cartoony style more at home in satire rather than reportage. A few stories in, though, and I feel that these competing styles coalesce into a whole. It’s a bit like Tintin or other clear-line art styles, with intense and detailed backgrounds and objects and cartoonish characters laid over top… give it a few stories and you’ll grow to love it.

Schwieger’s a real formalist too, which serves the reportage aspects of the stories well. In one assignment he spends the night in an infamous Capsule Hotel, a cramped outing for the 6’4” Schwieger told through a similarly cramped 12-panel grid, each panel in the shape of the coffin-like capsule rooms. In another assignment he attempts to diagram the relationships of gender and sexuality in modern Japan, and the book folds open and out: A 4-page map trying to connect masculinity and femininity and male and female genders in a series of overlapping, crossing, and messy lines; as fluid, confusing, and wonderful as the real thing. His depiction of the lofty bliss of eating great sushi is matched side-by-side, panel-for-panel with the creeping horror of ingesting natto, and is particularly effective. Schwieger’s narrative experimentation gets the better of him a couple of times: A tier of panels randomly reading from right to left to fit design rather than function is distracting, the cacophony of imparted cultural knowledge occasionally overwhelming the reader, but these are minor complaints. Ultimately, Schwieger takes great pains to match the interest of the experiences with a similarly interesting visual narrative; another success.

Of course, I’m coming at all of this from the point-of-view of being an avowed Japanophile, and it’s small wonder I feel that the experiences of a Westerner discovering Japan are fascinating…Schwieger’s experience inspired parts of my own trip to Japan last year. But you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted not to share in the humour and joy of discovery that Moresukine offers… particularly if you got that Simpsons reference that I made up top. Moresukine is a prism, refracting equal parts fuzzy pop-culture impressions and learned Japanese cultural knowledge into a first-person man-on-the-street travelogue that anyone could enjoy.

A last note to those groaning at the thought of adding another book to their already-stuffed shelves when the content is available freely online; the print edition of Moresukine features Dirk Schwieger making a challenge to his fellow cartoonists, to discover the Japanese culture around them: “Meet a Japanese person in the city you are living in and have a conversation with him or her. Document whatever you deem noteworthy.” A range of poplar webcomics answer his call, and 10 comics responses from Dinosaur Comics, Pokey The Penguin, and American Elf amongst others are reprinted in this book. It makes for a fascinating corollary to Schwieger’s experiments, particularly an extended and “un-politically correct” story from Monsieur Le Chien that makes you realize just how far afield Schwieger’s own presentation of Japanese life could have gone.

- Christopher

Black Jack Volume 1
By Osamu Tezuka
$16.95, 288 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 978-1934287-27-9
Published by Vertical Inc.

Reviewed by Christopher Butcher
When I was younger, I wrote diatribes about how Japan’s comic industry was something to be aspired to. Among my arguments was the assertion that in Japan, there were comics about everything, and for everyone. Comics for boys, girls, teens of both genders, young men and young women, salarymen and housewives, even the elderly! And the genres too… we had never seen anything like “business man comics” in North America, Dagwood Bumstead was about as close as we got. Hell, they even had a whole genre of comics about risky surgery, that’s something! So now, many (many) years later, I hold in my hand Black Jack Volume 1, likely the originator of the brilliant surgeon comics genre (echoed today in series’ like the thriller Monster). I’m pleased to report that my teenage ranting was not for naught, that I understand how a whole genre, hell an industry could spring up around the enigmatic titular character.

Originally serialized from 1973-1983, Black Jack is from the same period of work that saw Vertical’s other more mature Tezuka releases including MW, Apollo’s Song, and Ode to Kirihito, although this one was serialized in Shukan Shonen Champion, a popular manga magazine amongst boys and teens. It remains some of the maturity and reality of the gekiga-influenced mature graphic novels by having the characters interact with the social and medical ills of the day, though it isn’t afraid to take a younger and more crowd-pleasing tone. In fact the first story in this volume features some of the most extreme super-deformed expressions I’ve ever seen from Tezuka, which sets a strange tone in a story that’s ostensibly about grisly injuries and sicknesses, and the smorgasboard of humanity that Black Jack’s operating table becomes. Further, fantasy and outright science fiction drop in when the stories call for it, with psychic communication and a self-aware computer driving the action in some of the more memorable stories. Black Jack has all of the commentary on the human condition of someone like Tatsumi’s work, but with all of the grit sucked out and replaced with a shonen adventure comic; it’s timely, it’s affecting, it’s got bizarre stories to keep everyone entertained, and no one has to fish an infant corpse out of a sewer.

The storytelling is interesting, as it comes from one of the most celebrated and accomplished points in Tezuka’s career…Tezuka’s attention to detail in the surgery scenes is thrilling, and the few action sequences (in particular the one beginning on page 124) are almost elegant in their telling. Tezuka also composes a page beautifully, and although the book is printed in its native right-to-left format, Tezuka’s storytelling is marvelous at moving the eye across the page. Check out the first two pages of the book here, presented right-to-left:

Although this collection is based on what would be considered the Japanese “perfect collection,” much like the Dark Horse release of Astro Boy the stories here don’t appear in the order that they were originally serialized, and so the art does move back and for a little. Some faces and expressions are more confident, some of the storytelling is smoother, the stories vary wildly in tone, and most telling, a sidekick character and domestic situation are introduced for Black Jack very early on, which intermittently disappears from the stories that follow… It looks like in this collection, Black Jack’s annoying-but-fan-favourite sidekick is introduced much earlier than the original serialization, and then they go about pretending she’s just off-panel for some of the stories that clearly took place before that event. In fact, further complicating viewing this as a historical work is the fact that it really is based on a “Perfect Collection,” and as my own visit to the Tezuka Museum in Japan revealed Tezuka would often extensively re-draw characters, scenes, and whole stories for new editions of his works, and that’s clearly present here.

Black Jack doesn’t really work as a historical record, or a reflection of the time in which it was created because of the re-drawing and re-sequencing, and I think that the earlier Vertical Tezuka releases are where you would want to go for that… But considering Vertical’s ultra-contemporary book design choices and packaging, it seems that they aren’t interested in presenting Black Jack as a historical document anyway. The bold graphic design on this book is almost non-representational, a small piece of Tezuka’s art depicting the inside of a body is obscured and cropped so as to appear nearly abstract; the back cover features a sprawling futuristic industrial complex built from Lego. This is not being presented as a record of manga’s glorious past, but as a vital and engaging contemporary work. It reminds me of Viz’s handling of their recent release Cat-Eyed Boy, actually, in eschewing a historical connection almost entirely. To that end, volume one of Black Jack is entirely devoid of any sort of historical or academic context… the stories run right to the very last page of the book, endpapers be damned. I understand this decision of course, but I ultimately disagree with it: the stories don’t work presented as contemporary entertainment. They’re simply a little too unsophisticated for a generation of readers who are familiar with shows like ‘House.’ The formula is exactly, exactly the same of course, with the mysterious taciturn brusque brilliant surgeon solving the rare medical condition of the week, but the lengths to which Black Jack’s surgical prowess are stretched could snap a suspension-bridge of disbelief… But they’re totally fun, totally engrossing. Black Jack is a page-turner of the highest order, and I blew through 280+ pages and I’m hungry for more. I just feel that, seeing as this is the 20th-or-so Tezuka graphic novel I’ve read, I’m one of the initiated, I’m on board. As such, I’m the kind of reader that wants to know as much about this character and this world as possible, and I want a killer piece of Tezuka art on the cover too!

Of course, everything I’m asking for might actually be present in the limited-edition hardcover version of Black Jack, arriving in comic stores everywhere tomorrow (September 24th). That one actually has a picture of Black Jack on the cover, and an extra story that was excised from the Japanese perfect collection (perhaps it was too silly even for them!). I’ll be buying that one tomorrow, and every volume thereafter, because despite whatever conceptual problems I have with how the work is presented, the work itself is still great, still enjoyable, and a record of one of the most popular and beloved comics and characters of all time. Who could pass that up?

- Christopher

Black Jack artwork © 2008 by Tezuka Productions.

Images from top: Black Jack soft cover Volume 1 cover, Black Jack Volume 1 pages 6-7 excerpt, Black Jack hard cover Volume 1 cover.

Review based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. For more on Black Jack including two full stories to read, check out the Vertical website at http://vertical-inc.com/blackjack/index.html.

Disappearance Diary
By Hideo Azuma
$22.99, 200 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 978-84-96427-42-6
Diamond: JUN083951H
Published by Fanfare/Ponent-Mon

I think it’s worth noting, first off, that this is a comedy about a man who chooses to be homeless, suffers numerous breakdowns, and then spirals into alcoholism. A comedy. I think it’s important to take all of that into consideration when deciding whether or not this is the book for you.

Me, as soon as I heard about it I couldn’t wait to pick it up!

Disappearance Diary is a rare thing in English language manga–direct insight into the collective mind of the Japanese Manga Industry by an accomplished creator who worked within it for decades. Author Hideo Azuma created numerous manga serials for various magazines over the course of his career, more than a dozen are named in the book itself, and is credited with the creation of the “Lolicon” genre of manga (cute, sexy young girls in sexual situations) that would later give way to the concept of “moe” (moh-ay) or superlative cuteness. Basically, this guy has serious manga chops. The thing is, it nearly killed him to acquire them.

The table of contents for Disappearance Diary breaks the graphic novel down into four components: “Walking At Night,” covering Azuma’s first escape into homelessness, “Walking Around Town,” in which Azuma again escapes the glamourous world of manga creation to work anonymously for the gas company, “Alcoholic Ward,” which details Azuma’s battle with alcoholism, and “End of Book Discussion Hideo Azuma & Tori Miki,” which is an interview between Azuma and manga-ka Tori Miki, a contemporary of Azuma’s who has had one great book published in English by Fantagraphics: “Anywhere But Here.” But to my mind the two most important sections of the book aren’t listed on that table of contents: one is tacked onto the end of the second section, and the other is literally hidden from sight–and they are quite simply the strongest sections of the manga.

But lets back up a little bit. The quote on the back cover of Disappearance Diary is pulled from the second panel of the book, and it reads “This manga has a positive outlook on life, and so it has been made with as much realism removed as possible.” It’s a little unsettling to pick up an ostensibly non-fiction, autobiographical book and see that on the back cover, and as the first sentence. I was a little surprised myself, and I imagine that it might put off those without a sense of humour about this sort of thing (anyone who tried to return a copy of James Frey’s Million Little Pieces, for example). But when the author’s first suicide attempt arrives 2 pages later and it’s hilarious rather than tragic, you begin to understand–and be grateful for–his light-hearted approach to personal tragedy. It’s impossible to tell how much of the thought and action attributed by Azuma to his adorable cartoon stand-in is strictly true, strictly accurate, but almost regardless it’s certainly convincing. By the second or third short story I was rooting for Azuma–to find some food in the wilderness, to figure out how to keep the rain off of him, and avoid being discovered by the authorities. It’s a hell of a thing to root for a guy that has abandoned his life, his wife, and his infant son, but such trivial and earthly concerns nearly-evaporate when Azuma figures out how to build a fire… It’s all a bit like if Tom Hanks’ character crashed the plane himself in ‘Castaway,’ but you’re still excited when he cooks the crab! The Azuma stand-in is incredibly self-effacing, humble, and especially adorable. He is designed to be loved, a personification of the lolicon/moe/kawaii ethos that Azuma the author contributed to developing within the manga industry. Azuma needs your good will and your empathy though, because that’s what makes his spiral into truly self-destructive behaviour so affecting, and enraging. By the time he gets around to explaining just why exactly his life was so tough, you can’t help but feel for the poor cartoon guy, and that wouldn’t have happened (I feel) with a more realistic depiction of Azuma, or his actions.

So at the end of the second section, “Walking Around Town,” it looks like Azuma simply ran out of stories to tell about his second foray into homelessness and obscurity, and so to fill out his serialization he decides to tack on three short pieces that chronicle his entire career in manga up until he checks into rehab, the last major event in his life before he begins creating this book. This might be the most important, and difficult to read, section in the manga, as it describes in painful (though surprisingly light-hearted) detail just how intense the creation of our favourite manga can be. It’s one thing to be told “Working in the manga industry is tough!” It’s another altogether to work alongside our beloved and cherubic narrator and see him slide cheerfully into oblivion. Rereading Disappearance Diary for this review, I couldn’t help but compare Azuma’s horror stories of working in the manga industry to the recently unearthed documents surrounding Siegel & Shuster’s dealings with National Periodicals during the early days of Superman. Is there something endemic of comics that creates creators that drive themselves to ruin and editors there to backseat drive the whole way? Azuma puts forward a solid argument for.

Another key piece of these stories, presented as almost an afterthought in the book, is that we’re introduced to them via a conversation between Azuma and the editor of the book we’re reading, probably in serialization. Azuma never lets you forget that you’re reading a manga about his problems with manga, making you complicit in the acts that cause his downward spiral. Of course he never accuses the reader directly, and takes great pains to filter these experiences through a very deliberate prism separating the heartbreak out and leaving only sunshine and humour behind. He lays out all of the clues for you and lets you make your own mind. Actually, he does that in his portreyal of his editors at the time as well. By all accounts, these men drove him not only to drink but to the drink of death, but he treats all of them with the lightest possible touch. They come off as heartless, uncaring, maybe even a little evil at points, but Azuma simply presents things as they were (to his recollection) and again, lets the readers fill in the gaps. Why? Well, I think it’s telling that his harshest criticisms of his editors are, effectively, “They stopped giving me work!” Despite all of the hardships and heartache, you get the feeling that he wasn’t entirely ready to burn his bridges with these folks, just in case he might get an assignment or two out of them again…!

The third section of the book chronicles Azuma’s fall into alcoholism, and his slow recovery in a rehab clinic, and that’s by turns funny and horrifying and as enjoyable as the rest of the book. Seriously, by this point in the book I was completely in love with it, all of its promises fulfilled. Well… almost all of them. The book ends with Azuma clearly on the road to recovery, managing his alcoholism but… still clearly in rehab. I mean, we’ve already seen him post rehab at the end of the second section of the book, we see that he comes out of it, but the book is left on a cliffhanger, with Azuma promising to tell the rest of his story “next time…”. That leaves us with the end-of-book interview to fill in the gap, to offer clarity and context to the graphic novel. But of course, that wouldn’t be in keeping with a positive outlook on life, with as much realism removed as possible, now would it? Which isn’t to say that the interview with Tori Miki is devoid of content or closure… It’s just not what we want after spending many years and 200 pages with Azuma. We want the last word on him, or a breathrough, or something, and in the end what we get is his life, as honestly as he could bare to tell it (and full of as many jokes as he could cram in). And he answers one of my early questions too–Azuma says that not everything that happened made it into the book, but everything that’s in the book actually happened.

The real clarity comes in an interview that is hidden from the reader… I’ll let you discover it for yourself but I will reveal that this hidden interview is where Azuma offers the first real bit of insight into his actions, what it means to leave your life behind. It isn’t pretty, but it lasts for only a moment or two before disolving into a conversation about which popular Japanese idols are prettiest. Azuma is certainly committed to his manga ideology, I’ll give him that.

I guess I’ll finish off by saying that, in today’s graphic novel market memoir and autobiography are the genres that have found the most traction amongst real mainstream readers… at least the ones not buying movie tie-ins. In a just world, this one would find a great deal of success… But I have a feeling that Disappearance Diary has traded in too much of what mainstream audiences want from their memoir for a gentle, knowing humour and a refusal to find a conclusion in an ongoing life. Disappearance Diary is a book that can find the comedy in tradgedy, and as we’ve already established that’s the book for me!

A copy of this book was provided for review by the publisher. But let’s be honest, I woulda bought in anyway…!
- Christopher

Project Superpowers #0-#3
By Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, Doug Kaluba, Stephen Sadowski, Carlos Paul, Andy Smith, and Various
#0: $1.00, #1-3: $2.99 each, FCBD: Free
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

Two series’ launched recently with very, very similar premises: Forgotten heroes from the Golden Age of comics, roughly World War II, are taken out of commission for 60-odd years, re-emerging into the present day with times having radically changed around them. One of those series, The Twelve by J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston and published by Marvel Comics, has been surprisingly good. I look forward to each issue and the progress that these forgotten heroes are making in the post-Civil War Marvel Universe, and no one is more surprised about that than I. But with a full 30 days between installments of The Twelve I figured I’d give the other series a go, see if I could find something to fill my “old-timey-men out of place and out of time, with seeeeeeeeeeecrets” jones.

So, that was pretty much a mistake. Despite very, very similar starting points, the two series could not be more different than one another. Whereas The Twelve is a gritty and intriguing mystery/drama slowly being revealed to the reader, Project Superpowers is a pretty straight-forward superhero beat’em-up by Alex Ross and Jim Krueger, the creative team behind Earth X. Actually, if you’ve read the Alex Ross vehicles Earth X and especially Kingdom Come, you’ll be on incredibly familiar ground here as all of the standard Alex Ross tropes are here: Repentant old-man narrator, guide from the spirit world, classic heroes appalled by the sorry state of the modern world and its heroes, and more iconic characters standing around posing than you can shake a stick at… Which isn’t to say that Project Superpowers is particularly bad either as a comic or as an example of the contemporary superhero genre, it’s just not what I was looking for.

So on its own merits then, how does the series hold up? I’m not as ‘into’ the big superhero mythology stories as most, but I still found enough to enjoy in the series to keep reading through. The series itself isn’t drawn or painted by Ross, but instead by a fella named Carlos Paul, who has a cartoonish vibe to his pencils, sort of half-way between one of the contemporary anatomist pencilers like Steve Sadowski or Doug Braithwaite, and someone like Norm Breyfogle. The art is always at least functional, with the characters clearly blocked out and the story easy to read, and occasionally there’ll be a nice level of polish on the illustrations as well. Granted, it’s still got a bit of that garish contemporary superhero colouring to it–something that Ross seems to have largely eschewed in his own work lately–but it’s got more of a painterly vibe than most contemporary comics work which created a great deal more visual interest than most books on the rack. It’s still going to be a bit of a shock-to-the-system for readers picking up an “Alex Ross Book” and getting not Alex Ross art inside, but the work is much more Brent (Astro City) Anderson than contemporary-meh-DC-penciler, which will soften the blow.

As for the story? I’ll be honest, it’s a step above most contemporary superhero comics, but that’s quite clearly me damning this with faint praise. Alex Ross is a poor writer, and I’m not quite sure what Jim Krueger’s contributions have been, but I really remember liking some of his earlier work… The biggest problem Project Superpowers faces is that ‘clarity’ seems to be a four-letter-word, with the writers mistaking confusion for drama. There are lots of short scenes dropped in without explanation, lots of cuts back and forth in space (and occasionally time), blind prophet characters shouting about the end of days, ghosts shouting about spectral duty, superheroes just shouting at one another, and so far it’s added up to not-very-much. The narrative through, the story of a golden age hero named “The Fighting Yank” hoping to atone for past sins, is easily the best part of the book, and the scenes moving that story forward have been enjoyable. The rest of it, with random heroes getting little introduction alternately screaming or “being mysterious”? I could do without that. I feel like Ross and Krueger are relying a little too heavily on their past writing styles here… It’s one thing to have The Spectre, Captain Marvel, or any number of popular iconic characters shouting at one another or uttering mysterious nonsense that might eventually pay off in the story; the reader is already invested in those characters thanks to years and years of familiarity–it’s the very definition of a fanboy-oriented event comic. But when the reader has no idea who any of these characters are? When you haven’t sufficiently invested them with any humanity (other than: blanket tragedy, ‘mystery’, and screaming) it’s really hard to give a shit and I don’t. By contrast, The Twelve has done a great job of the ‘slow reveal’, with plenty of characters populating the book that you want to spend time with or, if not, at least want to figure out how their stories will end. But there I go comparing Project Superpowers to something else again. I guess what I mean to say is, in Project Superpowers I’m curious to see where the plot is going but so far I don’t care if anyone introduced in the series makes it to the last page, you know? And since the whole vibe of the book seems to be about re-introducing these golden age characters to the modern world (and aren’t they all nifty!?) that’s kinda-sorta a problem. I guess when you’re Alex Ross you don’t need an editor to point out huge flaws in your storytelling…which would explain why no editor is listed in the credits page. Guys: give these new characters you’re introducing something to do, or leave them out of the story until you figure out what they’re for.

So, to sum up: I’ll probably wait another few issues and then catch up with the story again. Anyone who’s liked Ross’s last few outings in big bold superheroes will probably really enjoy this one and should check out that $1 issue #0 (28 pages for a buck!) at the very least: It’s a big, bold superhero story that is very close to all of the work you already love.

But The Twelve will be one of those books that I read first thing in the morning, standing at the rack on the day of release, wondering if Dynamic Man and Captain Wonder are gonna hook up.

- Christopher
P.S.: Skip the FCBD story, it’s poorly drawn and nothing happens in it, and it jumps past the end of the current story arc, which is vaguely stupid when you’re trying to write a mystery…

Image: Cover painting used for Project Superpowers #0a and #0b, by Alex Ross.

They seem to mean these little bon mots with affection, but it does tell you quite clearly what the editorial staff thinks of its readership. Of course, the new magazine from ADV (nascent anime and manga publisher) is meant to replace Newtype USA, their former chronicle of otaku culture with a name and content licensed from the original Japanese Newtype magazine, and so some recognition that it is the hardcore fan who may be used to such derisive terms may simply be a way to ingratiate itself to the new readership. But it’s going to take a lot more than saying that we’re all nerds together and adopting the tagline “Entertainment for the rest of us” to convince me that they have anything to say, let alone that we’re all alike…

I previously covered PiQ magazine when I got my hands on the press-kit for the magazine prior to its release. The press kit broke down the aims of the magazine and their demographics quite clearly: they want men age 18-34. I’d say the magazine delivers on that promise, though they don’t quite realize that not every man in that demographic is interchangable…
I’m going to be upfront and say that I disliked the first issue. I’m not going to string you along listing good and bad before revealing my ultimate conclusion; PiQ Magazine #1 wasn’t very good. That out of the way, PiQ does have strengths to recommend it, and a lot of potential, but going by the first issue they’re going to have to work awfully hard to achieve any measure of success. It’s incredibly problematic and likely quite rushed, and with a lot of former Newtype readers already very, very angry at them, they’re going to need to improve, and quickly, to get a chance at long-term survival.

I’ve written an incredibly thorough page-by-page analysis of the magazine. It’s taken days to actually put it all together. I’ve included it behind the cut because people browsing here probably have no interest in a 6500 word essay on a magazine that they will never read, but when I say POST MORTEM I actually mean it. I am digging through the entrails of this thing CSI-style to find out what they’re doing and why. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, and you probably shouldn’t bother reading unless you’re really, really interested in the subject.

With that, click to continue:

COVER: The lead feature is the recently-released Appleseed Ex Machina, a 3d animated film based on the works of Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) and directed by John Woo. It’s an appropriately exciting cover, and relevant to the target audience.

The next thing I notice on the cover is the “Inside Peeks” under the magazine title, which is a contextless laundry list of properties covered: “Avatar, Code Geass, Speed Racer, Terminator!” Similar schizophrenia dots the rest of the cover, THE LIST: “10 best anime, comics, games, movies of the month.”

The rest of the cover text makes no impression on me.

Font: PiQ is using the most popular magazine font of the day, ITC Officina. I’m not sick of it yet, it’s a nice font and I actually set my first book in it (PopImage Volume One) years and years ago… I know that fledgling comics magazine Comic Foundry digs on the Officina as well and I find it popping up with greater regularity… It’s not like the relatively-awful “Technical” font that was driven into the ground in the late 90s (or Comic Sans), but I’d personally want to launch a magazine with something a bit more distinctive. (If you check out the ITC website, Officina is listed as their most popular font.) (They also seem to be using ITC Conduit as their display lettering, which is another of ITC’s most popular fonts).

Price: The $6.99 price point seems about right for a 128 page magazine, though for the general-interest audience they’re shooting for it seems a bit expensive and a bit thin when compared to some of their contemporaries. The saddle-stitched (flat) binding also makes the book feel significantly slimmer than its predecessor which was stapled, and a little bit more bulbous, if that makes sense…

Advertising: PiQ #1 is a 128 page magazine, that includes 22 and 1/3 pages of advertising. By my count, at least 6 of those pages are house-ads or co-op ads for parent company ADV, meaning around 14 and 1/3 pages of ads were sold. I don’t think that’s too shabby, though it’s important to note that a) every singly advertisement sold is for anime product, so far as I can tell, and that’s a direction that the editorial staff are admant about moving away from, and b) Protoculture Addicts #93 did 16 pages of outside advertising in it’s last issue and it’s got a much, much smaller circulation than PiQ, and a smaller page count, and c) the February 2008 issue of Newtype included 23 1/3 pages of advertising that weren’t related to ADV in any way, which is a pretty big drop (and loss in the number of different advertisers).

Of course, PiQ #1 features a 16 page preview of the new Crayon Shinchan manga from DC Comics’s CMX imprint, where issues of Newtype usually featured manga published by ADV. That sort of outside advertorial content is generally paid for, though I’m not peeking into their accounting or anything so who can say? They might have actually increased advertising revenue…

What is clear is that not all of their advertisers have gone along with the change in size, focus, and format, and so far as I can tell the magazine features no new advertisers either… Here’s hoping their advertisers enjoyed the first issue more than I did for the sake of the health of the magazine.

PAGE BY PAGE BREAKDOWN OF PIQ:

It’s at this point I start doing a page-by-page rundown of my thoughts on the magazine. Join me as we journey through the beast…

Page 2: The letter from the editor is kind of awful. I hate it when marketers (and let’s not kid ourselves, the people producing this magazine are marketers, selling popular culture and hoping to sell adspace to go along with it) try and tell me who I am: YOU HATE YOUR PARENTS! YOUTUBE! RETRO GAMING! TEAM FORTRESS 2! PLANETES! (really, Planetes?) According to the editor, “You’re not ‘normal’. That’s why PiQ is entertaiment for the rest of us. Video games, movies, TV, anime, comics…” Are you… f’ing kidding me? Video Games, Movies, TV? This is the way in which we are abnormal? And then the “Editor Guarantee”, where he promises to never use “made up” words or to use language in an interesting way… Just what I was looking for, a boring, consumer-focussed way to express my individuality.

Uggggggggggggggggh. This is the first piece of writing, from the editor, on the second page, and it’s awful. This will not end well.

Page 4 & 6: The contents pages/masthead are actually quite attractively designed, with big, clearly reproduced and well-chosen art. The masthead still has Gary Steinman listed as publisher, although he’s left the company already. Also interesting, PiQ is not published by ADV, but by “PiQ LLC” which has… the exact same address as ADV. Quite the arm’s length they’ve got there, it may actually be an arm’s length.

Page 9: The first section of the magazine is “Peek”, which is not defined in any way or introduced with much fanfare, just a little tag in the upper outside-corner.

The first article? It’s on the new video game Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for the Nintendo DS. The body text and header/pullquote text all looks quite nice lying on the page, though the font size feels a little bit small for some reason. Perhaps I am getting older. You know what’s weird though? The lack of any sort of easy-to-read information about the game…. like a little stats box that lays out the availability, format, system, price, etc. Also, one assumes that “peek” has a sort of forward-looking mandate, getting a “peek” at something forthcoming or newsworthy. But the article says that the game drops this month… Strange lead.

This page also introduces the “also” sidebars, where short stories are detailed. The text is smaller still, though it’s an attractive-enough graphic.

Page 10: Articles on this page include advance buzz for the Vertical’s Dororo by Osamu Tezuka coming in April, and a sequel to the popular anime “Kite” coming… in March. Maybe I don’t get the point of the “peek” section, it would’ve been nice if they’d explained it to me a little? Anyhow. I think that it’s important to note that there’s nothing immediately explaining what anything on the last couple of pages is. Nothing that says VIDEO GAME or MANGA or ANIME. I can’t tell if this is an attempt to give the reader a lot of credit for being willing to read each article (or knowing all of this ahead of time), or is just really badly executed.

Also, the sidebar on this page talks about the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars as an ongoing concern, which is kind of amusing.

Also, the article on the “Kite” sequel makes a point of not having a point of view on the controversy surrounding the original. I guess it’s much harder to alienate people if you don’t have an opinion, but why am I reading you if you don’t have an opinion? What do you have to offer that a listing in a catalogue does not?

Page 12: The sidebar features a paragraph describing this month’s hot new video game releases. This is very weird, as this is information that would be better served by a chart, or a feature article, or some art maybe? It’s awkward to read too.

The main article on this page is decent, a list of upcoming titles from game publisher “Atlus” and their concerted effort to bring quirky, unique Japanese games to North America. It’s all “What” though, no “Why”.

Page 14: Look, it’s an article on Sweeny Todd? Coming on DVD April 1st. Again, the technical info is all in the article rather than pushed into it’s own section or graphic, which would’ve have been much clearer. Actually, I just figured out why this is bothering me: it reads like a press release from the company. “Sweeny Todd is coming your way on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD April 1st, just the way director Tim Burton wanted it!” or whatever. It’s awkward, an advertorial voice that is unpleasant to read.

Also this page, Comic Peeks, an additional sidebar design which features the new Serenity series, the new Morrison Batman arc, and the Hellboy Companion book, in a bit of writing too small for their main article design and too big for the sidebar… Awkward.

Page 15: A mess. An article on the new Sam & Max graphic novel uses the cover from the first edition, there’s a 1/3 vertical page advertisement unbalancing the design, an “also” sidebar disappearing into the binding, and a headline set into trapped whitespace with a hyphen in “High-way”. Ugly and poorly designed.

Page 17: It’s the “DVD Hoedown”, a named subsection within the Peek section, which reviews DVDs. Except it isn’t really “reviewing” them so much as mentioning that they have come out. Again the technical info is in the body text making for a weird advertorial voice, the product images are tiny, there’s a design here using coloured (CMYBrown, which is lazy AND strange) bars and white space and text set on top of the coloured bars that is alternately aligned to or a pica off of the edges of the bars… It’s all just very poor. It looks like it was done at the last second, and the design elements in this section don’t actually repeat anywhere else in the magazine adding to the slap-dash effect.

Oh, and there’s a review of “Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job!: Season One, which I thought they specifically said they weren’t doing?

Here’s another odd thing, the DVD review section goes “Hollywood Blockbuster Film, Anime Box Set, TV Box Set, Hollywood Blockbuster Film, Adult Swim Box Set”. It feels like no consideration has been put into how the information is laid out or to be received by the viewer…

Pages 18-25: Here we go, the main event! The cover feature on the new 3d animated APPLESEED feature. It starts off promisingly with a well-written introduction to the Appleseed universe and the history of the animated films, a nice few paragraphs that bring us up to speed and get us hooked on the story. “An introduction,” one might say.

Page 20 begins the main article, I assumed at the time. But the type has JOHN WOO in great big letters and this page features an interview with John Woo, which is interesting enough… it’s a little blandly told, focusing more on Woo’s business acumen than his creativity… I wonder who the audience is for this piece? At any rate, the single column of text runs 6 paragraphs of Woo interview and advertorial background information, and it runs just right-of center the left-page of the double page spread, the rest being taken up by a pull-quote and some screen-shots of the film. And a big photo of Woo. One assumes, as the photo is neither credited nor captioned.

So when the next spread features a similar layout, with a single column of text that begins with an unindented paragraph and a big bit of text that says MASAMUNE SHIROW at the top, I assume that it’ll be an interview with Masamune Shirow. It is not. It is more article, I guess? I guess the John Woo interview was not an interview on its own but the next part of the article, even though it read (and was designed!!!) as a self-contained interview. So this one is Jonathan Chou (who isn’t re-introduced in the text, which is also a bit confusing, I had to go back and check the previous spread to see who he was) talking about Masamune Shirow. Which is both misleading and less interesting to me.

The last page again starts with an unindented paragraph and a big name, JONATHAN CHOU. The co-producer of the film (and one of the fellows involved in the “Animatrix”) actually gives an interview here and this part of the article is centered on him (and ends with him). So what was going on with the Shirow spread? Did he drop out of the interview after the pages had been designed or something? It’s really awkward to read thanks to the design, and the feature itself seems pretty confused with the text broken up artificially into 2-page spreads..

Oh, and you know what else is annoying as heck? None of the articles have an “End Sign”, that little dingbat graphic that most publications put at the end of their text to signify the end of an article. So after each article sort of ends and then restarts on the next page, I’m kind of expecting another double-page spread of APPLESEED, but instead it launched into something else entirely. This is really, really weak on their part.

Page 26: Our next feature article is on “Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII”. There’s a big pretty CG render at the top of the article of a pretty anime boy. Now here’s the thing, without reading (rather than skimming) the body text or being in-the-know, there’s no way to know what CC:FF7 actually is… The Final Fantasy brand extends into almost every facet of pop-culture, and it all looks really samey. I just noticed that the info box (which finally makes an appearance) mentions PSP, but again, there’s no context… It’s just poor information design.

The sidebar for this article mentions that Crisis Core is part of the “FFVII Completion Project” and mentions that with the release of this game there’s now only one game from the project that hasn’t been released in North America. All well and good, except it doesn’t mention the status of the other “Completion Project” items that span films, anime, and other video games… It’s a real missed opportunity to do something genuinely informative and interesting.

Also: I found this piece a little mealy-mouthed, afraid to have an opinion on the work. It almost contradicts itself in it’s “this offers something new that will bust it out of the RPG mold!” opening versus it’s “this is an RPG for RPG fans!” closing, and even then it reads more like a review than a feature article…

Page 30: The Speed Racer… whatever this is. Preview? Review? Feature? It doesn’t really say much. I think it’s supposed to be a comment on the mixed fan reaction to the visual look of the trailer, but at 4 paragraphs it doesn’t develop into much, or quote any of the sources its referencing about that mixed reaction. It’s like a lazy blog post.

Page 32: A feature on Marvel’s forthcoming SECRET INVASION mini-series. This is the best-written and most interesting piece so far, featuring an actual interview with writer Brian Michal Bendis, some interesting art, and two decent sidebars. Unfortunately the sidebar that’s a timeline of the history of the Skrulls of the Marvel Universe is pretty boring, a missed opportunity to add some visual interest. This article is the minimum standard I expect from a “feature” and it makes much of the other material look underwritten by comparison.

Page 36: On that note, this “feature” on the xxxHolic anime series feels like it has no content whatsoever. It’s a plot recap. Actually, there’s a sentence or two recapping the business deals surrounding its move from manga to anime, and from Japan to the U.S. Is there some top-down editorial verdict that none of their writers are actually allowed to talk about the quality of something? I mean, the closest this gets to expressing any sort of opinion at all is “Regardless, the series has become an overwhelming success…” whilst talking about a series that is at least theoretically debuting this month and again, not quoting anyone or (I feel) supporting that assertion. Again, I can’t tell what this is supposed to be. A primer on xxxHolic? A review? Advertorial?

Page 38-43: This feature on the popular animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” actually feels like a feature, and the piece even has an authorial voice that isn’t “buy this!” which is a really nice change of pace. Author Paul Starr interviews the creators of the series in an informally written style that directly addresses the reader and their possible bias against the series because of it’s anime look but non-Japanese origins. While the style of the writing isn’t to my personal taste, it’s competently written and informative.

The design on the other hand, is weaksauce. This article suffers from the same problem as the APPLESEED article, only moreso. The initial double-page spread features an introductory piece that explains the series, and then continues into… a double-page spread of profiles of the main characters in the series, sidebar entries blown up to two full pages of content (six medium-length paragraphs spread out over two pages with character art). Not only is it badly designed and presented, it also breaks up the flow of the feature article something fierce. If I were the writer I’d be pretty pissed myself… unless in this instance the first double page spread WAS it’s own article, followed by another “article” profiling the characters, followed by another article interviewing the creators… In which case: yikes… editorial misfire there.

Also, the design of the last spread is really… overthought. I don’t know if their designers can tell the difference between visually interesting and just too much. Trapped white space, too much white space… It’s all a bit… much. The choice of pullquote was kind of odd too.

Page 44: The next double-page spread is titled “the zen of n” about a video game called “n”. It’s pretty well written and I came away feeling like I knew something. It’s also important to note that the name of the thing that they’re talking about is in the title, and that the sub-header clearly explains what the article is about. This works exactly like a headline and sub-headline are supposed to work. This is important, because the xxxHolic article buried the title of the anime in the body text, and:

Page 46: A double page spread entitled “Viva la Revolution!” with no sub-headline, and an article that starts off with an icon that says SPOILER ALERT! So if you were just browsing this issue you would see an article about what looks like an anime (but given the nature of contemporary pop-culture, something that looks like anime could actually be anything, a video game or manga or movie or whatever) called “Viva la Revolution” and you can only read about it if you want the series’ plot twists spoiled for you. Weak.

Except that the feature is actually on an anime series called “Code Geass: Lelouch of the Revolution”, and that is not mentioned until the second paragraph of body text. Even the “Vitals” box doesn’t mention that this is an anime, or that it’s a tv series versus a movie or anime. Or it’s name.

The feature itself is well-written enough (although they have buried the lead in a rookie mistake). The sidebars are informative too, explaining what a “Geass” is. Still no “End Sign” anywhere in site, so when I flipped to the next page I was expecting more Code Geass info, and instead got:

Page 50: A feature article on the new “Terminator” television series. It’s a fun little comparisson between the timelines of the various Terminator films and the new TV series, and how none of it really “works”. Fanboyish, sure, but exactly the sort of article I assumed I would get from this magazine. My only complaint is that the article starts off with a quote that isn’t actually quoting anything, which the authors describe as a “common refrain.” But if it was that common, source the quote, and if not, it’s easy enough to re-write the opening.

Page 54: Double page spread of the new Honey & Clover live action film by Viz. The design is a little overly-ambitious again, and doesn’t quite come off, but it’s alright.

Page 56: This is sort of a strange one. This spread is designed to look like a feature on “The Tin Man” (though again, it doesn’t mention that in the headline or sub-header). Except the “feature” is three paragraphs. And the “sidebar” is an interview with one of the characters that runs 2/3s of a page.

I think it’s fairly safe to say at this point that the design and content are just poorly integrated across the magazine.

The interview itself is kind of sad, the interviewer asks if “The Wizard of Oz is as huge in Canada as it is here?” which is… are you kidding me? There’s also a question where the interviewer can’t seem to tell the difference between an actor and the character the actor plays, and the interview subject is kind of like “Are you kidding me?”. Both the reader and the interview subject being incredulous at the questions of the interviewer is a poor recipe for success.

Page 59: The beginning of the promised cover feature, “LIST:”. It’s important to note that LIST: is the only section in the entire magazine that gets an introduction. I am glad that they bothered to explain that this is their reviews section, though they take great, great pains to let us know that they’re not the final arbiters of taste, and that their opinions are only their opinions, and please keep advertising with us if we don’t like your comic/game/anime/movie/book. You think I’m probably just being mean at this point, but seriously, this is in the body of the text:

“There’s no point in trying to stay abreast with everything coming out. It’s impossible. And more to the point, it’s impossible to pretend that one magazine can be your ultimate, infallible resource for everything cool under the sun. We may be fancy-pants salaried editors, but printing a magazine doesn’t instantly make us the Wizard of Oz, dictating to you what’s cool and what’s ridiculous–the Internet pulled the curtain on that ruse years ago. … Every month we’ll sit around a table… and draw up a list of the ten new things that we like the most.” - PiQ Magazine #1

So there you go, their review section is comprised of 10 things that they really liked, and even then if you don’t like their opinion, they’re very sorry. This is, seriously, followed up by their review guidelines:

“PiQ’s Rating System. If we use words like “neat,” “engaging” and “spanklicious” in our reviews, that means we liked it. If you see terms like “nasty,” “boring” or “They raped my childhood!!!”, that means we didn’t like it. Our reviews are our opinions–we’re here to tell you what we like, not what you are going to like. Keep that in mind as you have fun reading about neat stuff. (If you like numbers, we hear Will Shortz has a delightful selection of sudoku books out now.)”

Dude. Dude. Points for doing away with a numeric rating system, but that’s just sad. Anime fans are ‘passionate’ and all but that doesn’t even sound like you’re standing behind the opinions you’re expressing, even though you’ve already said that you’re only going to be talking about things you like! Weak.

Also, “spanklicious” would seem to be the exact sort of made-up word that the editor promised on page 2 that they would not use… Three cheers for a consistent vision across the magazine…

Oh, and then there’s this, also from the introduction to the LIST section:

“Anime, video game, TV show, book, manga, comic… in a way the format doesn’t matter as much as it used to, because you and I, we’re interested in all of it.” – PiQ Magazine.

I’m sorry, guys, you’re just wrong. I agree that your readership likely has a wide variety of interests that generally fall under the banner of “nerd stuff,” but that’s no excuse for just slapping content onto the page, or making no effort to be clear about what you’re actually reviewing (seriously, the lack of categorization on the pages themselves is almost pathological).

Point blank: The PiQ editorial ideology is out to lunch. Do you want to know why? It’s because Otaku may like lots of different things, but they’re obsessive-compulsive about the organization of those things. I know I am. I know my customers are. I know the internet has wide-ranging fights about the exact definitions of terminology related to their hobby/lifestyle, and how individual items within that hobby should be classified. This is all fact. Actually, I’m going to enter the following into evidence; it’s an interview I just conducted with one of our better customers and a friend of mine. Enjoy.

Interview with an Otaku
Christopher Butcher interviews Derek Halliday, admitted multi-faceted Otaku and squarely in the middle of the 18-34 year old demographic for PiQ. Derek can be found on the internet at http://halliday.livejournal.com/

Comics212: Did you collect NewtypeUSA when it was coming out?

Derek: I didn’t really collect Newtype, but I would pick up issues where they had stuff I wanted to see in it. It was alright. It’s basically exactly like the Japanese Newtype, but more about what’s coming out here.

What did you think of PiQ?

I started flipping through it, and became bored almost immediately.

I didn’t like how it was all over the place without… you know. There’s 4 articles about anime, but it’s spread throughout the book, between the comics and the video game stuff. I just felt that if there’s one thing you wanted to look at you had to jump all over the place.

What kind of stuff do you collect?

Uh… comics, anime, manga, dvds, toys, art books… Considering all of the other shit I collect I just can’t afford to collect video games anymore. But I do like them and follow them… I just can’t keep up with it all.

Do you organize them or do you just sort of keep everything together?

I put all my American comics together, and then they’re sorted by which company they’re from. All of my manga is organised by title or artist, and my anime is all together.

But those things aren’t mixed together?

No.

Even though you collect all of them, and are interested in them.

Yep.

What about your anime and your other DVD stuff, do you keep that together?

My anime is completely separate from my other DVDs. My TV DVDs are separate from my movies… I just like to categorize things.

Me too, buddy.

Thanks for participating Derek!

So what have we learned here? Slapping down the content in your review section (not to mention throughout your magazine) all willy-nilly is not cool just because someone might conceivably buy both “Tweeny Witches” and “Patapon”. We all like all of this stuff, but we don’t just cram it all onto the same shelf in our homes or collections, and it makes for a poor reading exeprience.
How could the editors of a magazine for Otaku not understand the first thing about Otaku? They’re all (hell, we’re all) obsessive compulsives.

Alright.

Moving on.

The review section is fairly well written, though a little bland and as worried, nearly uniformly positive. Any problems with any of the featured items are quickly contextualized, and most of the reviews are mostly plot recap anyway. It’s pretty much the definition of contemporary reviewing, and perhaps it’s just unfair of me to hope for something more. Standout reviews include The Ten-Cent Plague by Ellen Wernecke and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney by Kevin Gifford, which offer rounder views of their subjects and deeper insight into their histories and their cultural context.

Page 79: This spread introduces a new section, “LINK”, with the letter column. It’s called “The Whine and Cheese Party” and I can’t tell if that’s clever or insulting. They take the curious task of having the guy who answers the letters introduce himself, meaning that it is not the PiQ editorial staff who is responding, but one specific guy at the magazine. Perhaps it’s cynical of me to assume that they will hang him out to dry at one point, but considering how reticent they are to weigh in on anything and that this guy comes off as fairly combatative (he describes anyone who complains in a letter as a “player hater”). I guess that it’s okay to have a vocal opinion about your readership, they aren’t buying ads [cheap shot]. From a design perspective, there’s not enough difference between the text of the letters and the text of the responses, which is an easy-enough fix, if they decide to fix it.

Page 80: A feature on LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) runs for four pages here… I think LINK is all about fandom, rather than about the things that fandom concerns. Yay! I figured out what one of their sections means! Three cheers for me. The feature is good enough I suppose, although I really can’t help but chuckle a little at the huge picture of “menacing” men and women pretending be vampires. I’m sorry, I really am, I shouldn’t laugh.

Page 84: A review of a an anime convention with lots of cosplay photos. Alright.

Page 86: A listing of upcoming conventions organized by date. Seems relatively useful, though I think I prefer listings by geography so I can figure out what’s in my general area, rather than simply what’s next weekend… still, hardcore fans will certainly travel to the big shows so maybe this suits the target demographic?

Page 90: The next section of the magazine is MONITOR, which I take to mean “news” and maybe something with an opinion, which is welcome.

This section starts off with an article entitled “Is Anime Dead?” which explores the trials and tribulations of the anime industry over the past few years. The article is actually a collection of essays by notable anime industry figures, and offers a variety of viewpoints on what the problems are, what’s causing them, and what might fix them. It’s actually really well done, an excellent piece of discussion, and the strongest piece in the whole magazine. It’s even sort of conceptually neat, asking the question as the magazine launches from the ashes of an anime dedicated magazine.

I’m kind of annoyed that no one in editorial or on staff comments or writes for the article though. It seems to me to be the same problem that pervades the rest of the magazine, a lack of opinion or ideology. I’m glad they’re at least presenting a platform for opinion this issue, I hope that continues.

Oh: Best part of this piece was a list of the top 10 best selling anime DVDs in Japan for 2007: Four of the top 10 discs were Western animation, including Ratatouille, Shrek 3, Cars, and “Leroy and Stitch” which I thought was “Lilo and Stitch” but maybe there was a translation error? Anyway. It’s a nice sort of kidney-punch driving home the fact that anime is having a tough go of things everywhere, not just in North America.

Also interesting: The magazine has had a pretty aggressively anti-moe (essentially: exceptional cuteness usually found in big-eyed, young anime girls) stance considering that material was the bread & butter of Newtype USA. I have to wonder if they’re really interested in retaining any of that audience at all…

Page 96: Monitor continues with an article on how the producers of the Naruto: Ninja Destiny” video game turn the fighting moves from the manga and anime into the moves used in the game. I’m not sure why this is in a “news” section? At any rate, even though it’s only 4 paragraphs it still could’ve used more than the 2/3s of a page it received as several of the displayed images measure less than 1″ x 1″ and really aren’t designed to be shown so small.

Also on this page are two Top 10 charts seemingly chosen at Random, the “Top 10 Selling Manga” (but from Japan?) and “The Top 10 Hentai DVD Names” which is funny, but racier than the rest of the content in the magazine. I’d actually prefer more lists like this in a magazine, they’re good way to get actual content and information across.

Page 98-99: This double page spread features 4 short articles of varying quality. The most disappointing is the short article entitled “Asian Invasion” on “The finest in film from Japan, China, Korea, and beyond”. All well and good, but the article again featured no info graphics at all, and therefore had no information at all on any of the dvds it was covering! Release, format, price, extra features, anything… the whole article takes on the tone of a conversation between two friends, and not a piece of formal writing. “Hey, you know what’s good? Zebraman. It’s totally not like Takeshi Miike’s other films. If you ever see it around you should get it.” Thanks man, that’s really informative!

“The Line Between Camp and Crap” is an interview with several of the creators of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000″ promoting their new project “Cinematic Titanic” by talking about crap films. It was pretty fun, but the design is weak again, much like in the letter columns, with no easy visual differentiation between the questions and answers. The whole purpose of design is to make things both attractive and clear, it’s a pretty basic concept, and it’s not really present anywhere in the magazine.

“Signal to Noise” is, apparently, a CD review section. Why this was not included in the review section is beyond me.

“Don’t Smurf Me Bro” is an article on the anniversary of The Smurfs. It’s just weird, there’s no other way to explain it. It’s like 5 random thoughts about Smurfs, including an awkwardly quoted section from The Venture Bros.

Page 100: This double page spread features a really well-written, relatively well-designed profile on a Japanese illustrator named “Symbolon.” I found it genuinely informative, and while the sub-header has an unnecessary hyphenation in his name because of a line-break, generally, it was really good. Except.

Here, I’m going to do something that the article didn’t do: http://www.symbolon.jp/

How do you not bother to link an artist’s personal online portfolio in a spread of their work? Is it laziness, or a really unfortunate editorial mandate not to include external links? Either way: Weaksauce.

Page 102: Model Citizen, an introduction to model building. It’s well done, but it’s an ultra-basic article on model building. Appropriate for a first issue I guess, but I’m not quite sure if there is an audience that wants to build Gundam models that doesn’t already know the very basics of building Gundam models.

Page 104: I feel like I’m only repeating myself here, but this page features a profile on a Gundam-themed cell phone that doesn’t mention price, availability, or a website link to find out more info. Seriously, guys, just go buy any magazine at all (particularly something oriented towards consumer purchasing… fashion mags are good in particular) and just teach yourself how this sort of thing is meant to be done.

Page 105: A feature on kewpie dolls. Cute, nice photos, same problems as previous.

Random Observation: Photos and images in PiQ don’t have captions, credits, or copyright info. Anywhere. Isn’t that a major oversight? I mean, I find it less readable personally, but isn’t there a sort of… requirement for some of this stuff?

Page 106-109: I noticed the credit/caption thing because this article was the first one to actually include captions. They’re at like 4 point, which leads me to believe they aren’t actually part of the design ideology and were sort of jammed in after the fact.

It’s a 4 page article on the history of adventure game publisher Legend Entertainment, an early competitor to Sierra. It’s well written, designed, has great sidebars, and is ultra nerdy. Perfect article, no anime fans will care though, so again, I have no idea what the target audience for this magazine is…

Page 110: So there’s a feature called PIG. This is the last article in the magazine, and a bizarre note to go out on.

At first I was mystified that a company that only exists to sell pop-culture to its readership would move away from their bread-and-butter, anime and manga, and the vertical integration that comes with it. Especially when the first issue of that new magazine runs a cover-featured story entitled “IS ANIME DEAD?“. But I made my peace with it, because they’re clearly trying to include their anime coverage in a larger cultural context, appeal to new audiences, and move to a format that can realistically be supported by far more advertisers. Fine.

But the last page of the magazine is an opinion column, unsigned by an author and therefore coming on behalf of the magazine editorial staff itself, that outright insults their customer base for buying too many DVDs. Seriously. They spend the previous 109 pages actively trying to sell you things (yay advertisers!), and then run an editorial bemoaning conspicuous consumerism (our readership sucks!). Opposite a full page advertisement for an anime box set, an advertisement that is at the least a co-op advertisement by their parent company.
That effectively hangs an “Under New Management” sign on the front doesn’t it? A schizophrenic one that is written in those cut-out-from-newspaper-letters, sort of a ransom note thing…
Of course, it’s a pretty awful and unpollished article… and honestly a completely bizarre note to go out on. Another editorial misfire in a magazine full of them.

Pages 112-128: A 16 page preview of Crayon Shinchan manga from CMX. I like Shin-Chan so this was a fun read, but it’s miles away from any of the manga that they had been running in Newtype and I can’t see the manga/anime market caring. I suppose it’s for the audience of readers that are the “mainstream” and that watch Adult Swim, where the animated version appears. Probably a good move for CMX as an advertiser, but in terms of editorial content I can’t imagine that PiQ will get any mileage out of it… at all.

Conclusion:

Like I said in the opening, PiQ #1 is just a weak all-around magazine. It lacks focus, it’s editorial mandate is poorly considered, the design has the building blocks of quality but doesn’t know what to do with them, and a number of persistent mistakes damage the readability and my personal enjoyment of the magazine. I think it’s one thing to say that your magazine is for men, age 18-34, but it’s another thing to actually produce a magazine for that demographic. No mentions of sex or attractive women or men are featured in the magazine at all, no libido, no opinion (except that they don’t seem to think much of their readership…). PiQ #1 is a surprisingly bloodless affair, and if there’s one thing that their demographic is, it’s PASSIONATE (and obsessive compulsive…). How they missed the mark so far is beyond my reasoning, but miss it they did.

Failing a spectacular improvement between issue #1 and #2, I wonder if this magazine will be long enough to find it’s footing, it’s editorial voice, and perhaps most importantly a readership that doesn’t outright hate them right now thanks to the mishandling of the transition between the former NewtypeUSA magazine and this new endeavour. I hope they do because a venue for smart writing on pop culture is a good thing, and an editorial acumen that chooses strong, smart, and most importantly passionate articles is always welcome. There’s a lot of possibility there, and articles like Is Anime Dead? hint at what could be, but they just aren’t “there” yet and probably won’t be without a concerted effort on the editorial staff’s parts.

Good luck PiQ, you definitely need it.

- Christopher

Brigid at Mangablog called me out regarding my appreciation for Tokyo Is My Garden, a 2007 release by Fanfare Ponent-Mon and, like most of their releases, doomed to obscurity for some reason. Well I didn’t take her up on her challenge due to my blogging time being cut short as of late, so she just kicked me in the butt and posted her own, very balanced, review of Tokyo Is My Garden. I have a little bit of time on my hands while at work (hurrah for dinner-breaks) so I figured I’d link to Brigid, but also talk a little bit about why I enjoyed the book so much.

First though, I want to complain about Iron Chef America, on The Food Network.

Despite loving show host Alton Brown and being happy to see fellow Canuck Kevin Brauch on the screen, I find the whole thing to be so much lesser than its Japanese counterpart and originator. It’s considerably more crass, with less of a sense of humour or pagentry, making up for it with bitchy reality TV nonsense. The worst part though, the part that just grates on me when I watch it, are the judges and their inability to be anything but literal and low-minded when it comes to their duties. The role of the judges is to determine how well the chefs articulate the theme ingredient in their dishes, but the most common and common complaint of the judges is that “I can’t taste the theme ingredient!” If it’s bacon then the dish isn’t bacony enough; fish isn’t fishy enough; leeks are “overpowered” by the other flavours. Admittedly some judges are worse about this than others, but for the most part, the judges seem to believe that the only way to articulate an ingredient is by having the dish scream out that flavour above all others.

Where’s the subtlety? What about articulating the theme ingredient through… I dunno, the texture, like the real Iron Chefs do (wherefore art though, Kenichi-sama?). Or in the subtle melding of flavours? Or just for colour? Is the only facet of cuisine the purest and brightest essence of what its cheif ingredient? Or is food subtle, layered, and surprising? The answer is the latter of course, because if it weren’t, than the Jones Soda Turkey-flavoured holiday soda would be available all year round! Everyone likes turkey, why wouldn’t they want it concentrated in carbonated form, right? Because there are other facets to eating, and to enjoying a meal obviously. But try telling that to an Iron Chef America judge. Dicks.

Right! So, why did I enjoy Tokyo Is My Garden so much? For its sweetness, its sense of place articulated by its lovely art. Because it is a story of young love where the challenges the lovers face are internal. Early on in the book, the characters talk about “sad French novels” and the book is quite conscious of being a sad French graphic novel throughout, brilliantly turning those expectations on their head through a number of plot contrivances that evoke the classic romantic comedies of the 1940s through the 1960s. A happy ending and the sort of gentle redemption that comes from the various characters’ gentle transgressions. It reminds me a lot of the work of Dupuy & Berberian actually, a sort of upper-middle class existence in a fabulous city, where the characters tribulations are largely due to their personality quirks and their fears and inadequacies. It’s a fantastic change of pace from the melodrama of most manga (let alone most commercial graphic novels). A smart, funny, romantic romantic comedy.

But, the plot! There isn’t enough plot! I understand Brigid’s criticisms, that the plot is ‘thin’ but I don’t agree (obviously). Rather, the plot is thick enough. The plot doesn’t need to scream at you, in my opinion, for a book to work. What is the best way to articulate the themes and aims of your story? Sometimes it isn’t a bold, bright, forthright “flavour,” but rather subtlety. Sometimes it is the texture of the relationships, simple clues about how people interact (the lead and his French boss, the lead and his girlfriend, the boss and the rest of Japan) that generates the friction that drives the story forward. The colour! The interplay! Were this story a contemporary manga (rather than nouvelle manga, as the author calls it) I feel that it would be told quite differently, the stakes much higher and the action more intense! If it were published in North America I feel it might read exactly like one of those terrible 100 page “film treatments masquerading as a graphic novel”. If it were a film made today, I feel like it might end up exactly like the sort of uninspired tripe that A.O. Scott talks about in his review for this weekend’s “Fool’s Gold.” (Thanks to David for the link). Instead, we have a delightful hybrid French/Japanese graphic novel that, when I put it down, I feel great about having read. A book that I made my husband read and he similarly enjoyed. A book that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to you. That’s not to say that I don’t understand why it felt a bit flat for some reviewers, I do, but I think it comes down to the expectations of story that you bring with you to the table. It may be why Dupuy & Berberian’s Get A Life and Maybe Later didn’t set the blogosphere on fire either…

I think that if I’d never seen Iron Chef in its original Japanese incarnation, I’d be far more charitable to its American sequel. But I know that there’s a show out there that is just more enjoyable, where the judges have a greater and more nuanced appreciation of food, and it makes it hard to watch Mo Fucking Rocca blather on and on about nothing, only present to resuscitate his own failing career. Likewise, I think I appreciate the light touch of Tokyo Is My Garden, the gentle appreciation of a beautiful city, a beautiful young romance, and the cultural differences that separate and ultimately unite us.

- Christopher

For the uninitiated: http://www.ponentmon.com/new_pages/english/princ.html.

- Christopher

Ware’s introduction to the book is interesting, as he writes about visual literacy and invention in the context of his own work and in the work of the artists he has assembled here. Of course (and in typical self-depreciating fashion) he throws the idea that this is the ‘best’ work in comics right out the window in the first paragraph: No matter how much you criticize Chris Ware, you can be sure that he has already beaten you to the punch in doing so. Instead he talks about the work in terms of “telling the truth,” which he states to be the primary attribute in comics stories that he personally enjoys. This shouldn’t be mistaken for an elevation of non-fiction over fiction or any other such fallacy, but instead Ware seems to best respond to works that seek to understand, explain, and celebrate the human condition, and that’s evident in the book. More than half of the books’ stories are outright biography or autobiography; the only real concession to the fantastic seems to be in Ware’s appreciation of C.F.’s Blond Atchen And The Bumble Boys and Paper Rad’s Kramer’s Ergot; the hypercolour cute-brut works descended from the Fort Thunder collective and, in Ware’s estimation, the work Gary Panter (Panter also included here via an excerpt from his Jimbo In Purgatory). If “Fiction,”as Mr. Ware has posited elsewhere, “allows details and doubts about actual events to be bypassed and the remembered essence of a person to suddenly ‘come alive’ again,” then it seems very much like that fiction oughtta stay as close to plausible as possible, if the choices here are anything to go by.

The collection isn’t a bad one, and seeing as it is produced and marketed for a ‘general public’ graphic novel reader it’s a lot harder to fault it for being picked from a fairly small (though very deep pool). I’d have a hard time arguing against any of the included works as being undeserving of the “Best Comics” tag, and I probably wouldn’t bother either because that kind of behaviour is kinda dickish. But even the briefest page-through of the book will show that while it is a coherent and considered opinion on comics, it also isn’t representative of the North American comics publishing industry as a whole. Luckily Ware has already forestalled such criticism (told ya!) but it’s still a little aggrivating that, for example, anything with a whif of genre about it is seemingly disqualified, despite its ability to get to get at “truth” in it’s own way. Further absent are any comics that don’t mark print as their primary medium. I wonder what kind of view of the industry this presents to the ‘general public’?

Next year (and for the foreseeable future) the Best American Comics collections will feature new, permanent Editors in the tag-team power couple of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. I feel fairly confident in saying that their vision of the Best Comics will look substantially different from Ware’s, just as my own ideas about the best comics released this year do. Will that make for a better, more coherent or thorough anthology though? Will those opinions be any more or less correct? I quite honestly have no idea, but there’s a much better chance I won’t own previously released versions of 80% of what’s in the book, and that’s pretty exciting to me at least!

So my recommendation? Check out the table of contents for this one over at The Publisher’s Website and see how many of the works–or creators–are new to you. If you haven’t purchased much of this work already I’d strongly recommend you do so through this volume… but maybe keep the other eye open and on the rest of the graphic novel rack too.

Meanwhile, Chris, What Did You Think Were The Best Graphic Novels of 2006?

Well I’m glad you asked. Now that literally every award for graphic novels published in 2006 has been given out, AND they made a book out of it, here’s what I thought were the best comics in 2006. I’m not limiting myself to works by North American creators as Mr. Ware is, but I am requiring English-language publication in 2006. I’ve included my (whopping) 28 choices behind the cut below. Let me know what you think:

Abandon The Old In Tokyo, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
Tatsumi was putting together sophisticated, humanistic, visually advanced stories at a time when those types of comics simply did not exist in North America. That his work, upon translation, is still as vital and unique more than 40 years after the fact is nothing short of remarkable and a testament to its strength.

Achewood, by Chris Onstad. Published at http://www.achewood.com.
A good comic strip, in my estimation, has a hint of the sublime to it. Achewood is drenched in it. Achewood was a compulsion for me in 2006, needing to find out what happens next throughout the Great Outdoor Fight, refreshing every hour on the hour waiting for a new installment. Inspired stuff.

Acme Novelty Library 17, by Chris Ware. Published by Chris Ware and distributed by Drawn & Quarterly.
I guess I can understand how Ware, as the consumate shy artist, would not include his own work in a book he edited called THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2007. But… come on. Someone should have just slipped in his work on Acme Novelty Library (or even his serialised Building Stories work) without telling him or something. The Rusty Brown narrative in Acme Novelty Library just destroys me every time I read it.

All Star Superman (Series), by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Published by DC Comics.
Probably the point at which many of my audience quit reading this list, but this series is a shining example that even within the strict confines of mainstream comics, a work can be produced that is humanistic, both reverential and irreverant, and genuinely ambitious in both narrative and storytelling. That it’s largely successful earns it a place on this list.

American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang. Published by First Second Books.
At one point this was my favourite graphic novel of 2006, following a lengthy wait for its completion that began several years prior when this webcomic stopped updating one day. I found the ending challenging and thought-provoking, which, once I had reconciled it with the rest of the book, made me enjoy the story even more. But I still feel that this is a flawed work, and it’s something that I hadn’t really thought about until a friend of mine pointed it out to me: The Monkey King of Chinese legend goes off to meet and pay tribute to the baby Jesus… which the more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Yang’s relationship with God is his own, but introducing Christian mythology into a book that was until that point solely about Asian-American identity is off-putting, and clumsily handled. Still, nearly every other panel in the book is well-drawn and well-told, contributing to an over-all excellent graphic novel.

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, edited by Ivan Brunetti. Published by Yale University Press.
It’s probably cheating to include a ‘best of’ anthology that spans more than 3 decades in your “Best of 2006″ list, but as far as I’m concerned this massive, exhaustive tome takes-the-cake for anthologies of its type, and is a book that is phenomenally accessible and easy to recommend, even while the work it contains can be challenging or oblique. It is so Rich, dense, and diverse that there is literaly something for everyone in these pages. I’m glad to hear that there’s a second volume on the way.

Casanova (series), by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba. Published by Image Comics.
While my commentary here at comics212.net may have lost steam due to a profoundly affecting editorial in the back of the seventh issue, my enthusiasm for the series remained high throughout 2006. While it is neither creator’s “first work” in comics, so to speak, it certainly feels like it at times with a boundless enthusiasm and energy on every page. It’s rare to see a series that is so smart, funny, and self-assured hit the stands, bending genres to fit its needs. While it’s true that as a reader and critic I tend to place a high priority on ambition, and though Casanova ultimately did not wholely accomplish everything it attempted, it’s still a remarkably strong effort by all involved and earns it’s spot on the list.

Castle Waiting HC, by Linda Medley. Published by Fantagraphics Books.
Having gone through a number of publishers (including a lengthy stint self-publishing) and multiple formats, it’s interesting to see that Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting didn’t hit a critical or sales ‘breakthrough’ until after it was published by Fantagraphics Books in their 2006 collection of more-or-less all of the material to date. I think it’s because the series was an ill-fit for the world of floppy comics pamphlets and run-of-the-mill trade paperback collections. The lavish hardcover production and tome-like weight of Fantagraphics’ collection added a much-needed gravitas to the proceedings, and encouraged readers to view the work in a different, and obviously more favourable light. While the last third of the graphic novel is definitely hurt by the constraints of the original serialisation of the work, the package as a whole holds up remarkably well, and has quite obviously spurred Medley to start writing for collection in her new series; a welcome change.

Death Note (series), by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Published by Viz Communications, LLC.
Everyone I met in 2006 refered to this as the Crack-Cocaine of manga. Relentlessly plotted, beautifully illustrated, maddeningly compelling stuff. Volumes 1-7 of this series are a near-perfectly told suspense thriller, using the serialization/collection format to its utmost.  

Deogratias, by J.P. Stassen. Published by First Second Books.
Deogratias was the only graphic novel to move me to tears last year. It’s a devestating portrayal of Rwandan genocide, and the level of artistry and sophistication in the storytelling makes it all the more affecting. When it came time to review this book I choked, I couldn’t do it. Mostly because this book should be experienced, and I didn’t feel anything I could say would have any bearing on it at all.

DC: The New Frontier: Absolute Edition, by Darwyn Cooke. Published by DC Comics.
Though it was originally published in 2004, Darwyn Cooke’s epic period superhero piece didn’t get the collection it deserved until the end of 2006, when the whole series was finally collected under one cover and expanded to include new key scenes. I know it seems a little strange, the way this list sandwiches a tale of Rwandan Genocide between a supernatural thriller and a brightly-coloured superhero epic, but books like The New Frontier help to remind me of the positive potential of mankind. I know that sounds kinda corny, but what are characters like Superman and Wonder Woman meant to be if not grand, inspiring icons? That’s exactly what Cooke delivers here, and it’s beautiful.

Dinosaur Comics, by Ryan North. Published at http://qwantz.com.
A secret joy I have in reading Dinosaur Comics is seeing Ryan North take the high-art snob argument AGAINST artistic craft to the Nth degree, every day of the week. Artistic Craft is so unimportant that he can just use the same stock-art every day for years and still tell funny, compelling little narratives with it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Frank Cho! Heh, seriously though, this is some pretty sublime stuff here, with a rythym and reward all its own.

Dork #11, by Evan Dorkin. Published by Slave Labor Graphics.
I’m kind of shocked that, not only did I not see this on many best-of lists, I didn’t hear much about it at all after it had been released. The possibility exists that I was the only one who thought that this was the absolute funniest comic released to print last year, but that would be crazy. Dorkin reminds me a little bit of the lawyer in Chicago, he just gets up on stage and taps as hard as as fast as he can sustaining it to a crescendo in which the murderess goes free. Except Dorkin didn’t walk away with the prize this time, which I find really, really wierd. All I can think of to explain it is a lack of overall visibility, and that sucks.

Dragon Head (series), by Minetaro Mochizuki. Published by Tokyopop.
Easily one of the best manga series being released in English, Dragon Head suffers from having consciously ugly (though exceptionally well-drawn) art and a dark and unsettling plot. It also got knocked out of the public discussion at the end of the year by the appearance of an earlier survival/horror manga, Drifting Classroom by horror master Kazuo Umezu. It’s too bad because I do prefer Dragon Head and it’s slow-reveal mystery plot to Umezu’s Jenga of fuck-uppery, but with the release schedule slowing down dramatically, I’ll still be able to talk about the last few volumes of this series on next year’s best of list too. And the year after that.

Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Volume 4, by various. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
Last year I had a bit of a crisis of conscience where I felt Sammy Harkham’s short story in Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Volume 3, entitled “Somersaulting,” was a truly exceptional piece of work, in an anthology that was otherwise enjoyable but inessential. This year I got over myself and am happy to count this as among the best works of the year, thanks to a short-story by Gabrielle Bell which I consider to be the best of her career (I liked this a lot more than the diary comics that Ware chose for BAC2007) and a surprising short biography by emerging cartoonist Dan Zettwoch (which actually WAS included in the Ware antho). The other contribution, a short by Martin Cendreda (whose work I enjoy) was also solid, making for an all-around winner of an anthology. I was disappointed not to see a volume 5 of this series in 2007.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel. Published by Houghton-Mifflin.
What can I say about this one that Time Magazine didn’t when they named in the best book of the year in 2006? Not best comic, by the way. Best book. Granted, that issue with the stupid mirror cover was obnoxious as hell, but if it means that a talented, hard-working cartoonist like Bechdel can break through to the mainstream with a 1) gay 2) graphic novel 3) from a mainstream book publisher, then they can put as much foil on their covers as they like for all I care.

Get a Life and Maybe Later, by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
A supreme effort by two genuinely nice fellows that I had the pleasure to meet last year, Get A Life collects several albums worth of stories from the French series Mr. Jean. These are fictions of course, but they’re also stories of every day life. Love, loss, friendship, loneliness, it’s wonderful and moving and tres francais. Beautiful art and colour, too. Then you get to read the story behind the stories in Maybe Later, a more sparingly drawn black and white autobiography by the two cartoonists and featuring the events that inspire and are inspired by the ‘fictional’ adventures of Mr. Jean (pronounced, by the way, as the French version of “John”, as in Jean Valjean from Les Mis.). Both of these books failed to capture the public imagination upon their release, and I can only hope that those of you reading this will seek them out–they’re utterly fantastic.

Huizenga, Kevin: Works of 2006. Published by Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics Books, Centre for Cartoon Studies, self-published, etc.
Independent Cartoonist Kevin Huizenga had a banner year in 2006, as his early short stories were collected in the Curses hardcover from D+Q, and Fantagraphics Books released his Ganges #1 as part of the international Ignatz publishing effort. Kevin’s work is narratively inventive and obsessed with the various ways that comics can conveny information; whether that’s statistics, religion, emotion, or anything else for that matter. Huizenga continued to innovate in his ongoing series Or Else also from D+Q, in various self-published mini-comics, and even in a promotional brochure for the Centre for Cartoon Studies art-school entitled How to Think About Learning to Draw Comics.

Japan: As Viewed by 17 Creators, by Various. Published by Fanfare/Ponent Mon.
I’ve written extensively about this anthology already, but let me just say a collection of some of my favourite French and Japanese comics artists, paired with some wonderfully talented emerging cartoonists from those two countries, all creating comics on a subject of great personal interest… it’s an obvious winner. The best manga release of the year (yes, even edging out Tezuka), and probably my favourite overall book of 2006.

Kramer’s Ergot 6, by Various. Published by Buenaventura Press.
I like the Kramer’s Ergot anthologies for the quality of work by known-commodities therin (Sammy Harkham’s story was a highlight, this year), but also because they force me to stop and really consider the work I’m reading how I feel about it, something I rarely encounter in comics. Not the anthology I would come up with, and I’m quite happy with it because of that.

Mome (series), by Various. Published by Fantagraphics.
A frustrating anthology series that took several volumes to find it’s feet, it was nevertheless filled with some fantastic comics shorts in 2006. The 2007 volumes on the whole though have been much more satisfying, with a heady mix of emerging talent and talented eurocomix creators.

Ode to Kirihito, by Osamu Tezuka. Published by Vertical, Inc.
Even after having read the 2007 release Apollo’s Song by the author, a ‘mature’ work about sex and sexuality, Kirihito still feels like a more maturely-aimed and successful work. Genuinely surprising at times (the human tempura!?) and still marked by Tezuka’s trademark melodrama, this is a handsomely produced book that sits quite nicely alongside the translated Japanese fiction that Vertical specialises in, and is a great example of the power and range of Tezuka’s work.

Perry Bible Fellowship, by Nicholas Gurewitch. Published at http://pbfcomics.com/.
There’s that ‘sublime’ again. PBF is a visualy ambitious and clever comic strip with a unique storytelling cadence. Really trying to sit down and write a “PBF-style” comic will show you exactly how difficult it is, and the high-degree of visual alacrity and twisted sense of humour combine into something that is unlike anything else being produced today, on a semi-regular basis even!

Phoenix (Series), by Osamu Tezuka. Published by Viz Communications, LLC.
As I mentioned a couple entries ago, Tezuka’s works, however high their aspirations, are marked with a melodrama and humour that seek to make them as accessible as possible to the general public, but may undermine them in the eyes of more discerning and older readers here in North America. Phoenix is Tezuka’s (unfinished) masterwork, and it brings all of his tics and strengths to the forefront of every volume. The cartooniness and the descent into fourth-wall-breaking slapstick, the marvelous background illustrations, the deeply-felt personal convictions that inform every story. Phoenix is the essence of Tezuka’s manga creation, and every volume is a new window into his idea of what manga should, or could be. If that isn’t worth reading, despite any hang-ups about ‘cartooniness’, I don’t know what is.

Schizo #4, by Ivan Brunetti. Published by Fantagraphics Books.
Brunetti’s journey through life and cartooning continued into Schizo #4, a collection of short strips primarily concerned with biography and autobiography. Brunetti is actively simplifying his cartooning style here and combining spare pen-and-ink with computer colouring for a bold, graphic effect that contrasts mightily with the strips that are partly or completely unfinished as the issue progresses. Schizo excels not only because of the material within, but also because of the picture it paints of it’s own creator, beseiged by loathing and doubt.

Scott Pilgrim 3: Scott Pilgrim and The Infinite Sadness, by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Published by Oni Press.
Both the strongest and weakest of the series to date, Scott Pilgrim Volume 3 was nevertheless a little ray of sunshine for me in 2006. Despite working around comics 300+ days a year, it’s rare to have a series come along that connects with people so deeply, that brings such utter and unmitigated joy to its readers. I read these with a giant goofy grin on my face from start to finish, and I imagine that’s what everyone else who loves this series does as well.

Seven Soldiers (Series), by Grant Morrison and Various Artists. Published by DC Comics.
I said earlier that I value ambition highly… perhaps too highly… and nothing more ambitious has been published in superhero comics in at least the last 10 years as the Seven Soldiers series. Simultaneously a treatise on the nature of superheroes, the nature of storytelling, the reader’s role in the story, and a rollicking adventure yarn, Seven Soldiers sought to explain the nature of the universes (both DC’s and our own) in a whopping 30 semi-concurrently-released comics. Of course it failed, but it certainly did go out with a bang in one of the most satisfying and frustrating single-issue comics of the year, Seven Soldiers #1. As long as you’d read the first 29 parts, of course. The kind of comic that you can get lost for days in, and enjoyably so.

The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. Publshed by Image Comics.
You know, everyone talks about how Soap Opera is a bad thing, but this horror-themed extended character study is a strong piece of writing, perfectly served by its art. While the larger commentary it’s making on society and the human condition is kind of nebulous at best (the “WE ARE THE WALKING DEAD!” speech in issue #24 was pretty damned cheesy), as a sustained narrative that explores ‘real’ people in a crisis sitution, it’s a consistantly enjoyable read. Just don’t tell the zombie fans that they’re secretly reading a soap opera, it’d ruin everything.

We Are On Our Own, by Miriam Katin. Published by Drawn & Quarterly.
The last entry on this list but one of my top-five picks of the year, easily. Katin’s first graphic novel on her and her mother’s escape from the nazi occupation of Hungary during the second world war brings a fresh angle to the stories of hardship and peril that have come out of World War II, and her animated pencil renderings bring a lush, storybook quality pleasantly at odds with the harshness of the narrative (and occasionally changed-up to great effect). This is a graphic novel I’ve been waiting years for, ever since seeing the original art in Drawn & Quarterly’s offices a long time ago. The finished piece is exactly what I’d hoped for, and I’ve spent a good year and a half now recommending this work to anyone who would listen.

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So that’s it, that’s my favourite comics from 2006. I think it’s pretty obvious where my taste differs with the esteemed Mr. Ware’s, and where the boundaries of the BEST AMERICAN series butt-up against the realities of the North American comics publishing industry (hint: manga and euro comics), but all in all I’d put my list up against anyone’s. But feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments section. :D

Tomorrow I’ll scrounge up a list of honorable mentions that include worthy works like The Fate of The Artist, Vampire Loves, and more.

- Christopher

All Flash Comics #1: It’s so… awkward… and self-congratulatory. Ick. I want to say “Hey, Karl Kerschl’s art was the best thing about this” but then I’m sorta-friends with Karl and my opinion is suspect. I dunno. I was reading it and it’s exactly not-bad, not-good in the way that many (most?) superhero comics are these days. The multiple art teams, the overliance on history and continuity, the weird torture of the bad guys… None of it stood out as bad or good, it was just “here is a sequence of events that will keep you reading until next month”. Wow. There’s nothing there for people who aren’t long-time, die-hard fans of the character, and even though I’m somewhere in that sphere I was just… I don’t like this at all. And the cover by Seinkewicz is… distressing.

Batman: Harley & Ivy TPB: This collection of three disparate stories featuring Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy is pretty fun stuff, with some nice art through and through. Has anyone ever looked at the subtext… or even the text… of these stories though? Yikes. It’s exactly “Dudes who are attracted to hawt cartoon characters put them into vaguely pervy situations for their own edification,” which is… every single female hero or villain in comics? It’s fun, just don’t read too deeply into… any… of it. Like the women-in-prison-flight ‘homage’ at the beginning of the second chapter of the titular mini-series, where the butch lesbian prison guards get rough with our two hot antiheroines. Actually, that whole last mini-series feels like Paul Dini letting loose after too many years dealing with cartoon censors and Hollywood… It’s interesting, and like I said, fun… if you don’t think too hard about it. Mmmm… probably not for kids.

Big Plans #1: This is a Xeric-grant winning comic that we got in because we more-or-less support every Xeric Comic. It’s a mini-comic though, which is kind of weird, because I’d always assumed that the Xeric thing was to help you do something a little more professional than something that looks like it came off of the Xerox machine. The comics themselves are interesting, each page a six-panel staccato with lots of white-space elevating stories of the mundane into the… what’s less than profound but still pretty interesting? Well-observed, anyway, particularly the terrorism story. If I picked this up at MoCCA for $2, I’d be pretty happy. For it to be solicited through Diamond at $5, I’m less happy. There’s just not enough to it to justify the price tag, and I can’t help thinking that the author’s chosen format won’t really help him get noticed, let alone further develop his career. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there’s a whole industry for stapled 5.5″x4.25″ comics that I’m unaware of. That are also available at http://www.aronnelssteinke.com/ entirely for free. But yeah, this is one where the format disappointed me much more than I enjoyed the actual content.

Captain America #28: This one felt a bit like a place-holder issue, particularly after the starling revelations and non-stop action of last issue. It’ll read better in the trade. Aside from the bad guys showing you they’re bad by killing a lot of people, and Sharon Carter awkwardly dancing around a few questions… yeah. Brubaker’s setting up the pieces in this issue, which didn’t really grab me the way that the rest of the arc has. Even though it came out a few weeks ago I finally read the newest issue of CRIMINAL, which was similar (setting up the pieces, pulling together the plot, showing what a bad ass you are) and it worked far, far better.

Comics Journal #284: I’ve only skimmed this so far, but man, do I not care about Roger Landridge at all. There’s just nothing there that I find interesting. Anyway, somehow I got sucked into reading Tom Crippen’s piece on the fanboy inside all of us and that was just brutal. Like, massively depressive, mostly because you could insert “There but for the grace of God, go I” after every paragraph. I haven’t seen any online reaction to this column yet–maybe The Journal has stopped being relevant for that sort of thing, I don’t see them stirring up much controversy lately unless it’s fucking with Harlan Ellison–but I’d be curious what anyone else thought. But yeah, I’ve not read much of the rest of it yet. The Gene Yang interview is on my list though.

Don’t Say Anymore Darling: This is a new collection of old short stories from Fumi Yoshinaga, the author of Antique Bakery. It’s mostly yaoi-centric (though there is at least one entirely straight short-story about a marriage that fails due to… well… the crazy, I think) and fans of Yoshinaga’s gentle, humanistic storytelling will probably love this as much as they love everything else she does. Mmm… me included. Granted, I read this while sick in bed with a head-cold so my retention isn’t entirely there, but the stories are all strong little shorts, usually with a nice shock right at the ending to cast the whole thing in a new light just as you end the chapter. I hope the existance of these interesting, sort of random works means that Ms. Yoshinaga is fabulously wealthy and gets to do whatever she wants with manga; I’ll happily keep reading.

Flight Volume 4 GN: Reviewing this is basically impossible since 1/3 of the contributors at any given time are friends of mine, but here goes: Another strong entry in the Flight series. More gorgeous art, more lyrical short stories, definitely worth the cover price. The stand-outs are, once again, Clio Chang (this time with a meta-commentary take on the nature of fables) and Kazu Kibuishi (his story featuring duty and tradition butting heads with desire). It’s a handsomely designed and thoughtfully edited collection, each story sticking around just long enough to be enjoyable, and occasionally leaving you wanting more. I’d have hoped though, 5 years in, to see more of the contributors to the book making more of a name for themselves in the industry outside of the anthology. It still seems like a lot of the breakthrough work is in the pipeline, and as nice as 8-24 pages of work is from many of these creators, I feel like 150 pages of the same is what I really want.

Ghost Rider #13 WWH: I haven’t been “reading” Ghost Rider, so I’m assuming that there’s just someone inexperienced or whatever behind the mantle of the character right now, making the first 2/3 of the book an “inexperienced hero fights Hulk in comedy of errors” routine that was occasionally chuckle-worthy. It all comes down to earth at the end though, when we’re reminded that Iron Man is a bastard, and the Hulk is rightfully seeking Vengence on him, leaving The Ghost Rider to fuck off back out of the crossover. Not bad, I guess? Funny, but hardly essential.

Programme #1: Winner of the “Comic that would most be benefitted by re-reading” award of the week. I think I liked this, all gritty, dirty cold war paranoia mixed with ongoing wars and impotent hulking Americans. I’m not sure though, as scenes rarely last for longer than a page or two, and writer Peter Milligan has had some spectacular misfires as of late. But yeah, despite Jog’s excellent breakdown, I kind of want to figure out what’s going on here for myself, and sadly the cursory reading given to FLASH or GHOST RIDER simply won’t do. At least you’re getting your 3 bucks worth.

Shazam: The Monster Society Of Evil #4: The ham-handed political nature of the story is toned-down just enough to be enjoyable rather than distracting, leading to a fun, over-the-top conclusion. Smith has picked up a few tricks out of contemporary young adult fiction here, making the adults-don’t-believe-kids stuff just annoying enough as to make the kid in me want to jump up-and-down in place going COME ON ALREADY!, which means it’s working. The ending has plenty of heroics, gross moments, a monster-punching or two, and sets the stage for great things to come… which is why what comes next is so depressing. (“Hey kids! That character you just grew to love? HE’S DEAD NOW. Also, his little sister has grown up into a goth cheerleader. Enjoy!”) I’m also wondering about the artificiciality of serialization breaks and their negative effect on the story… but that’s for a bigger discussion down the road.

The Order #1: Sorry Matt. Nothing here grabbed me. And I was actively put-off by the colouring, which couldn’t decide if the lead dude was grey-at-the-temples or not. I’ll read the next issue I guess, but this wasn’t your best stuff and I really, really want Casanova #8 now.

Warren Ellis’ Black Gas 2 #3: I still, honestly, can’t believe that Ellis would let a comic be named after his (presumably) deadly farts. Did no one think about what this would be called? Or maybe they did, and that’s perhaps worse. Ah well. BLEAK! SO FUCKING BLEAK! And, if the gas makes everyone crazy and itching to fuck, how did they all manage to pair off into neat boy/girl pairs? Isn’t that… fortunate? I guess? That the zombies don’t have to have the added stress of having their sexual identities challenged? “Fuck, I just tore the face off that guy but at least I’m shagging the dismembered lower-half of a woman instead of being some faggot zombie!” Ah well. it’s Avatar, you get what you pay for, you just usually get it very late.

World War Hulk #2: Totally enjoyable. Whenever anyone asks me if this is any good (specifically because Avengers Disassembled, House of M, and Civil War weren’t) all I need to say is “Well, Hulk DOES Smash.” I don’t go out of my way to promote this because, quite frankly, I don’t have to. Hulk fucks shit up, which is really all you need from a Hulk comic in the first place and that most stringent of conditions is met? People gladly part with their four dollars. Hulk Smash.

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I also ready a bunch of stuff from previous weeks like SILVERFISH (alright), PHONOGRAM (alright I think, not sure about it), and some assorted manga. i guess being sick has it’s up-sides.

- Christopher

I am in the newspaper. The GAY newspaper. The fine folks at XTRA magazine (publishing in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and even on the internet) comissioned me to write a little overview of what’s hot in gay graphic novels, and I turned it into a sort of fun, on-its-ear SUMMER READING LIST. It saw print on my birthday (yay!), and it went online earlier this week when I wasn’t looking:

Porky #1 & Pornomicon #1 by Logan. Published by Class Comics. 32 pages; $9.95 each.

In the past year Class Comics has begun publishing gay comics from around the world and these two comics from France’s Logan (so hot he only needs one name) are downright dirty, in all the right ways. Featuring worlds seemingly comprised entirely of hot’n'hairy muscle bears with impossible proportions, anyone searching for something a little more hirsute in their smutty summer reading will have it made in the shade. A word of warning: If guys with PIG tattooed on their tummies and sex with the Octopus-faced baddie from Pirates Of The Caribbean (and all that entails) make you squeamish, Logan’s work is definitely not for you.
- Review by Me.

It includes everything on the spectrum from the suggestive to the smutty, and all points in between. It was a lot of fun to write too, and even more interesting? I WAS EDITED! Usually I just rail on and on here at the blog, but I got to work with an editor who actually made the piece stronger and tighter overall! Suck on that, Internet!

For those of you that need a reason to click through the link, here’s what I reviewed: Stripped: The Illustrated Male, Porky #1, The Pornomicon #1, Fun Home SC, Aya HC, All-Star Superman, Casanova: Luxuria, PRISM: Your Guide to LGBT Comics, Shirtlifter #2, and Young Bottoms In Love. There really wasn’t much point in picking stuff just to rag on it, so I’ll spoil the surprise and say that I generally liked all of the books in the review.

They even let me plug The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which was really rather nice of them. I’ve got another article for them almost completed which has a decidedly Eastern bent. I’m sure you can figure it out…

I hope my friend at Fab doesn’t get mad that I wrote an article for Xtra. DRAMA. :D

- Christopher
Image from this year’s PRISM Guide, which you should all go buy to support a worthwhile organisation.

 

An Appreciation of Questionable Content

Do you know what I did Saturday? If you do, that’s actually a little creepy. But I’ll tell you anyway: I read all 900+ pages of the webcomic Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques, freely available online at http://questionablecontent.net/. It’s a four-panel “gag” comic with a heavy daily continuity, making the each strip essential for hardcore fans, but making the comic as a whole fairly accessible for folks just jumping in, espescially if they ‘get’ that days’ joke.

I’m bad at webcomics, only reading (with a few small exceptions) the strips that my friends do. Luckily, I’m friends with R. Stevens of Diesel Sweeties, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, and Ramon and Rob over at Butternut Squash, so I’ve got most of the best and most popular webcomics covered. But every once in a while, I’ll be introduced to like, Jeffrey Rowland (of WIGU and OVERCOMPENSATING), or Jonathan Rosenberg (of GOATS) or my dear sweet Dr. McNinja Chris hastings, and I’ll be all “Oh, you do a webcomic? Really? I’ve never heard of it…” and make a total asshole of myself.

So at the Paradise show a few weekends back when I picked up a bunch of the shirts from QC, I figured that maybe I could avoid making an ass of myself IN FUTURE by… you know… reading the comics. Plus I think Mal told me that I should at one point. Anyway, it’s all a very good idea, and a time-consuming one, but what better use for 7 hours could I possibly have had?

Right off the bat: If I didn’t have a vested interest in finishing this series, I would have given up in both anger and frustration about half way through. The sexual politics of the first few hundred strips are, to put it bluntly, completely fucked up, and so aggressively wrong-headed that I actually considered stopping at strip 400 to write this post with a WHAT DO PEOPLE SEE IN THIS? HOW IS EVERYONE NOT KILLING THEMSELVES? sort of a vibe going on, which probably wouldn’t have been the best or most productive review. Thankfully at strip 500 the author decides that enough is enough and that a beloved lead character really oughtta stop emotionally and physically abusing the rest of the cast, and does, and that character has been working to redeem themselves ever since. Since this thread of emotional and physical abuse is kind-of the emotional core of the entire comic and the springboard for much of the plot, that it is so completely fucked up will likely turn off… many? Most? of the people I would normally send over to read it, if I didn’t specifically qualify the early strips with: Don’t worry, it’ll turn out okay in the end. The horrible attitudes towards sex and intimacy disappear about half way through, and from then on the strip really blossoms into something excellent. So, yeah. Either start at strip #500, or just grit your teeth like I did.

The strip is excellent though. Even through the occasionally torturous first half, there’s a humour, levity, and real heart to the series. Questionable Content is about a group of young adults in their early-to-mid 20s, working crappy jobs and hanging out and commenting on popular culture. Relationship-oriented drama and humour, through a Pitchfork Media sort of lense (but ironically). It’s a sitcomic… kind of like a gritty, lo-fi Friends with concessions to genuine whimsy and innovation vis-a-vis the occasional talking robot, magical creature, and wrong-headed superhero. Man, if ragging on the sexual politics didn’t piss people off, comparing this to Friends probably will… But seriously, millions of people watched Friends, what’s the big deal? It was a popular show that made you laugh once! Admit it!

(Look! They’ve even got a couch!)

Anyway… As I was mentioning I did really enjoy my experience, and have made visiting the site to see the newest strips part of my daily routine as of Monday morning. I guess what I really liked about it, especially reading it all at once, is seeing where the author’s eye tends to land, and seeing how the strip is shaped because of it. The afformentioned popular culture references usually take the form of band and music genre references, and it’s interesting to me because from 2003-2007, the time that the strip has been running, the authors musical interests have taken a similar path to my own musical interests and experiences. Music has a huge role in the strip, with characters being defined by the music they listen to, their romantic compatibility presaged by their musical compatibility. Sayeth the character Marten in regards to a potential relationship: ”Man I hope that doesn’t become an issue with Dora. What if she can’t stand my musical taste? I mean, I know she likes the Flaming Lips, but we don’t really have a lot in common musically.” It’s just one of the many moments where music defines the various characters and situations, and it really works to give the strip a cohesion that a lot of comics lack.

But the real payoff is in seeing the characters that are introduced and ‘don’t make it’. What if everyone decided that they didn’t like Joey after the first season, and they made Mark and Carol permanent cast members instead? Wouldn’t that be weird? Heh. I love seeing the author’s process and development on the page (and just an aside here: the art undergoes a fairly substantial upgrade from start-to-finish as well, with the most recent strips looking fairly slick and cartoony, and the early strips… Well, there’s a charm to them for sure, but…) and seeing the realisation that the uptight coffee barista wasn’t going to work out, or that the first iteration of a character was a bit… shallow… and needed to be overhauled. It’s great. Author Jeph Jaques even manages to do that rare thing in almost any kind of long-form serialised comics: have the characters grow and change, and have it feel natural. The plot develops out of the characters’ attitudes and behaviour, it’s what good storytelling in this genre of comics is all about.

Actually, one of the things I was going back and forth on with this series was the constant external thought process of all the characters. I can’t tell if I find it refreshing or annoying. No one seems to have an inner monologue, or a thought that doesn’t go unspoken. It might be why I found the early going so difficult as well, because the behaviour of some of the characters was really aggrivating, but hearing their constant justifications for that behaviour was just waaaay too much. It does work really well for the humour though, and even seeing characters fumble through social interaction and dating is fun when they can’t stop babbling to themselves. But if one more character utters “I have issues!” unselfconciously… I dunno. It will probably spark The Rapture or something. Not the band The Rapture either, but the Jimmy Swaggart Rapture. The Charleton Heston Rapture. (Both of those would be good band names).

Anyhow, if you’re looking for another enjoyable, subtantial comic strip to add to your webcomics browsing, I can definitely recommend Questionable Content. Even their shirts are very good. I mean, She Blinded Me With Library Science? That’s gold, Jerry, gold! Wait, that’s a Seinfeld reference, not a Friends reference. So much for my strong closing remark. Ah well.

Sorry.

- Christopher

–

Meanwhile, in the ‘books I am sadly not being paid to review’ dept., King City is exactly as good as I was hoping it would be, and possibly moreso. It’s totally worth running out and picking up. I got asked 5 or 6 times if it was any good this week at work, and now that I’ve read it I can answer with an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’. Maybe if I finish the reviews I’m working on, I’ll do one of this too.

- Christopher

Casanova #3
By Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba
$1.99, 16 pages, Two Colours
Published by Image Comics

Reviewed by Christopher Butcher

PREVIOUSLY IN CASANOVA
  Casanova Quinn—a bon vivant in two different timestreams—is kidnapped from his home in Timeline 909 and forcibly brought here, to Timeline 919, to serve at the behest of superterrorist Newman Xeno, leaders and CFO of gloom-and-doom corporation W.A.S.T.E., to betray his own father, Cornelius Quinn, the strongly-jawed and ruggedly-moustachioed leader of E.M.P.I.R.E., known to you and me as the good guys.
  Where Cass comes from, he’s the bad egg and his twin sister Zephyr was the apple of E.M.P.I.R.E.’s eye—but in the 919 she rolls suspiciously more sinister, usually draped on Xeno’s arm, and is just aching to put the screws to daddy. And wouldn’t you know it, here it’s Cass that’s the big hero, so in he slips to E.M.P.I.R.E. to act as his own evil twin. 
  Tasked by E.M.P.I.R.E. to infiltrate exotic Agua Pesada and retrieve a deep-cover agent named Winston Heath who had gone several degrees south of crazy, and counter-tasked by W.A.S.T.E. to kill Heath, Cass was trapped between a rock and a dead place. Killing Heath in self-defence and destroying his compound, Cass then shot his sister and left her bleeding on a rooftop while Agua Pesada went shithouse. 
  And as he made his great escape, Cass asked Zeph the one question she’s dreaded having to answer: 
  Where’s Mom?
     – Matt Fraction, Inside front cover of Casanova #3.

It’s been three issues and I haven’t actually talked about the covers to the series. I’ve been including them with the reviews (or as Gabriel Ba described them, analyses,) but the covers themselves are so completely different than the interiors and yet complimentary too. Not to mention ballsy as fuck starting next issue. But yeah, the sickly-green that tones the interior art is kept as far away as possible from the sixties acid-orange, lush grape, and black and white that stain the covers. The cover illustrations eschew black linework entirely, opting instead for bold graphic shapes and characters composed entirely of colour. It’s a gorgeous effect, the comics look like nothing else on the stands. Each of the first three covers also includes the tiniest little bits of red accent, which totally pop and provide a delicate counter-balance to big bold areas of colour. I’m curious how much of the covers are designed by series artist Gabriel Ba, and how much of the design comes from author Matt Fraction, an accomplished designer in his own right who has a few things to say about cover composition. Matt, if you ever feel like doing a whole bunch of unpaid work, I’d love to see some writing about comic cover design (and Casanova’s design in particular).

Meanwhile, story structure happens! In this issue Fraction plays with threes; the story comprised of three inter-related 5 page vignettes with a one page epilogue. The three stories are Right Now, 7 Days Ago and 97 Days Ago, and each story arc/time period also corresponds to a different ‘side’ of Casanova in this new timeline: His Own, E.M.P.I.R.E.‘s, and W.A.S.T.E.‘s.. The story cycles through the three storylines, a page from each until the issue is over (plus the one-page epilogue). The stories are chronologically distinct, each following it’s own order of operation and taking place at a different part in the overall timeline. However, just for shits-and-giggles, I went back and re-read the story not as it’s presented, a page from each thread at a time, but the whole thread from start to finish. It helped open up my thinking on this issue. Anyone can tell three five-page stories and then just shuffle ‘em up, but then it’s just crap. This issue works like a 15 scene short film, each page a whole that works within the larger whole of the issue (sort of like how each issue is distinct but works within the larger context of the 7-issue series). What’s really phenomenal is that each page/scene is cognizant not only of the scene that follows it from the other storyline, but of the next scene in the story arc as well! For example, Page 1 ends on special agents Kennedy and Johnson telling Cass it’s time to go and get the show on the road, a pretty effective way to jump-start the issue. The next sequential page has Casanova in front of E.M.P.I.R.E., seven days ago, being returned to active service, which fucks with your head a little by implying that K&J brought Cass to the E.M.P.I.R.E. tribunal, even with that big SEVEN DAYS AGO at the tip of the page. The next page in the story arc though, features Cass, Kennedy, and Johnson out on the road in their convertible the story flowing along marvellously and not suffering a whit for the two pages of different storylines between them. Good stuff.

The other strong bit about the issue brought about by the story structure? The one so obvious it’s right under your nose: Telling a successful story where each scene is exactly one page long. In his previous writing about comics writing, Fraction has talked about the rhythm of a story, of the page. Here the rhythm is very consistent and aided by the scene-per-page rule, resulting in a sort of a meditative lull inspired by the quiet, reflective nature of the Right Now and 7 Days Ago sections, and then gloriously interrupted by the sharp intense shocks of the 97 Days Ago pages (Revelations! Torture! Sex! Violence! More revelations!). Sort of a bum-bum-BAM-bum-bum-BAM sort of a thing. Neat stuff, and I’m kind of surprised that Fraction didn’t dig into that more in the back-matter, as I think this issue probably makes for the clearest and easiest-to-follow learning-aide for “story beats” of any comic I’ve come across.

So, yeah, on one level coming up with a structure and then trying to force a story into it is wankery; the exact opposite of art and entirely artifice. But on the other, sometimes it works too, and as long as the story manages to cover it’s ass and remain internally consistent (it does) and thematically consistent (it does) then why not, you know? The results are great; don’t listen to McKee because it turns out there’s more than one way to tell a successful story after all.

But… speaking of the back-matter, it lets loose a wonderful little secret that never was: this three-focussed issue was originally intended to have three unannounced variant endings! I love shit like that, it’s even better than having 13 variant covers on Gen 13 #1. Apparently printing variant interiors is more expensive than one might expect, and so (sadly) the idea was scrapped. The rest of the back-up material included this issue shows the reader how Matt Fraction turns a fun day in San Francisco into an issue of Casanova; a neat trick.

I want to state for the record that I do enjoy the storytelling, but I find that my mind craves order and I’m having a hard time intuiting why the creative team is making certain storytelling decisions. The big issue for me is that Casanova’s visual storytelling is based on a 4-tier page: 4 “rows” of panels each. To explain via famous example, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen is based on a 3-tiered page, and more specifically a 9-panel grid of 3 panels on each tier. Reading an issue of Casanova, it seems that the 4-tiered approach seemingly disappears at random, sometimes having 2 of the tiers compressed into one creating a differently balanced page, or sometimes featuring three equally weighted tiers. It took me three issues to really notice that the storytelling structure in that regard wasn’t consistent, so it’s probably not even a problem so much as a ‘quirk’, but part of my brain is craving a more consistent application of this structure so that when it is broken it’s really notable and affecting. I dunno. Maybe Ba’s style just resists a rigid grid (though he used it to amazing effect last issue in the fight-scene between Casanova and Winston Heath), maybe it’s just not what the series creators want. But it is noticeable…

As to where this issue fits on the whole? If issue one was puberty, the lead character being forced into a strange new status quo, and issue 2 was a young man testing his boundaries, then issue 3 is all about the punishment; reproach. But the punishment is all for his own good and no one goes home mad at the end of the day (heh). And pretty soon, our boy’s going to start being interested in girls…

- Christopher Butcher

Casanova #2

Reviewed by Christopher Butcher

PREVIOUSLY IN CASANOVA
   We met Casanova Quinn in the act of stealing the Seychelle Ruby, which turned out to be Ruby Seychelle—a beautiful robot concubine to criminal data mogul Sabine Seychelle. From there, Cass’ night goes very badly.
   Something’s happened to E.M.P.I.R.E.’s star agent and Casanova’s twin sister Zephyr—namely, she died. Cass and his father fight at her funeral. Afterwards Cass has a cracked jaw and a mysterious doohickey in his pocket. The mysterious doohickey… OF DESTINY!
   We won’t blow it for you, but by the time the smoke cleared, Cass had been abducted into another timeline by Newman Xeno, his father’s arch-rival and the ruler of W.A.S.T.E., an ambiguously-named Pynchon reference that exists to make Cornelius Quinn’s life miserable. Here in Timeline 919, it was Casanova that was E.M.P.I.R.E.’s star agent, and Zephyr that was into all the sketchy shit—and nothing is sketchier or shittier than Newman Xeno, who is totally her boyfriend.
   And now, with both the Quinn kids in his pocket, Newman Xeno has sent Casanova to integrate himself back into the awaiting arms of E.M.P.I.R.E.… 
   - From the inside front cover of Casanova #2, by Matt Fraction.

Casanova #2 is a second first-issue of sorts… With #2 the series adopts its standard format of 16 pages, its fully 5 pages of notes and back-up material, and introduces the character’s new status quo: totally fucked. That’s the problem with being a triple-agent, there are rarely easy assignments.

The theme for this issue? Loosely “fathers and sons,” but more accurately “creators and creations.” Speaking of the wall of sound technique that author Matt Fraction described last issue, this issue positively resonates with the familial interactions, layered on top of and often bumping into one another. E.M.P.I.R.E. (which is a pain in the ass to type, by the way) inserted double-agent Winston Heath into a hot zone, created a whole new personality and life for him. E.M.P.I.R.E.’s director is sending his son in to retrieve the agent. The bad guys want him killed. And the double agent? Why, he’s been writing a comic book version of his life and just wrote his own death scene at the hands of… well, you can figure it out. This issue really digs into its themes by setting Cass as a sort of ultimate teenager; rebellious, horny, buzzing with energy and testing his boundaries. Casanova either attempts or succeeds to rebel against literally every father/creator-figure in this book, this issue, to various (and shocking!) effects. The end of the issue features three great “Fuck you, Dad!” moments that really hammer the point home. He better watch out or he’s gonna get grounded…

Speaking of hot zones, the area is very hot indeed; the setting for the issue is a tropical city that’s powered by massive amounts of sex energy flowing through the air. A non-stop orgy fueled by Mother Earth’s own orgone, and facilitated by an army of buxom sex robots. Sex in comics is always… interesting. If it’s fun and enjoyable sex, it’s labeled porn. If it’s dirty, ugly, awkward sex, then it’s probably a Dan Clowes comic (no offence to Mr. Clowes of course; his sweaty, uncomfortable sex scenes are always wonderful to read). There’s very little sexy middle ground in comics, characters polarized firmly to virgin or whore. I can appreciate the way that superhero writers like Gail Simone get behind and defend the characters they write as sexy without being… well, slutty I guess, but when the dude actually drawing your book is simultaneously showing your character’s tits AND ass, that kind of flies right out the window. And Lost Girls by Moore and Gebbie as a work exists to celebrate sexual diversity, but it all feels strangely clinical and un-scintillating to me. Luckily, Matt Fraction addresses that issue head on. Sure, all of the female characters in the first two issues have been either sex objects (sometimes literally, as in the case of the many sex robots…), or his creepy sister, but this issue? Two naked dudes fight for four pages while the sex robots are liberated and rebel against their depraved master! Hott! Seriously, cocks-a-flappin’, muscles tensed, men flying through the air all the while debating the central theme of the issue—creator versus creation—and the whole thing ends in a great big violent metaphorical cum-shot! It’s a first in my comics reading.

Gabriel Ba is ideally suited to this book, by the way. His work has a sort of organic angularity that lets characters go from fashion-illustration lovely to comically (or terrifyingly) grotesque in a panel’s time, and still look consistent and “on model” throughout. He knows when to use shadows, when to reduce or add detail, and how to design pretty-much anything, apparently. It’s kind of amazing, actually, how thoroughly realised the world of Casanova is (and he does it all on a book that averages 7 panels a page!). I bring this up because in the back-matter of this issue, we see little snippets, panels and illustrations, from the comic that double-agent Heath had been creating. After 16 pages of Ba’s carefully chosen lines and details, the feathery pencil realism of the super-spy-comic-within-a-super-spy-comic is jarring as hell. It’s a bit like Phil Jimenez taking over for Mike Mignola half way through an issue of Hellboy. While the other art isn’t “bad” and might even be more palettable to a wider spectrum of the comic book buying audience (“superhero fans”), instead we get a style that gives the book a unique visual description, a look unlike anything on the stands. While I may reference author Matt Fraction more frequently in these reviews, I want to state for the record that Ba’s art is absolutely essential to the success of this book, and I can’t actually think of another artist who could tackle this.

Speaking of the back-matter of the book; this issue sees Matt Fraction provide five full pages of notes and background on the issue. Part of the appeal of the format, part of it’s manifesto if you will, is to create a solid read. Something that feels like it was a good chunk of story with a beginning, middle, and end, and worth much more than the $2 you paid for it. It’s a bit like, say, an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. One of the good ones from the middle there. It’s only 40 minutes long, yeah, but instead of the 20 minutes of commercials you’re normally stuck with, at the end Joss Whedon comes on screen and talks to you about the episode and, you know, how things are going. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

This issue’s back-matter also seriously digs into the process of writing a comic book, specifically Fraction’s and specifically this issue. Honestly, if you’re an aspiring comics creator you’ll probably get more out of this than looking at someone’s scripts or reading a hundred Newsarama interviews. THIS ISSUE: FRACTION ACTUALLY TELLS YOU WHERE HE GETS HIS IDEAS FROM. The unanswerable question answered in 5 pages. It’s kind of shocking.

Er, I guess we’re at the end now. I enjoyed this issue quite a bit, but then I’ve enjoyed them all so as a series of “reviews” this probably doesn’t work at all, actually. I’ve just given it away: It’s all good, go buy it! Sorry. Still, 4.5 Days of Casanova continues soon.

- Christopher

On that note, second review in a little while.

- Chris

CASANOVA #1
By Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba
$1.99, 28 pages, Two-Colours

Reviewed by Christopher Butcher

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF CASANOVA
His father Cornelius is the Director Supreme of E.M.P.I.R.E., an international task-force established in the name of maintaining peace, law, and order across the face of the Earth. His twin sister Zephyr is E.M.P.I.R.E.’s star agent, currently tasked to investigate a disturbance in the very fabric of the space-time continuum. The entire planet is under the Quinn family’s jurisdiction. So what does Casanova Quinn choose to do for a living? Read on…

So begins Casanova #1, and not in the text of the piece, but in a small bit of preamble tucked into the credits page on the inside front cover; your first clue that the material that surrounds the story will end up being just as important as the story itself.

Casanova #1 is an object, an objet d’art if you will. It’s growing increasingly rare that the monthly comic pamphlet is meant to be read or purchased for any other reason than fanboy necessity: the need to know what happens to your beloved character next. That raises the question of why a non-superhero-oriented title, hell, a non-Marvel or DC title would bother being launched on a monthly basis at all? To side-step that issue entirely, I’ll say that when the book’s objectness, its ‘single-issueness’ is as considered and successful as this the “whys” are less important. In an industry where the importance of the non-superhero pamphlet had to be forcefully, aggressively reclaimed by oversized, dust-jacketed, thick-papered waves of comics (see: Ignatz), the idea of launching a new ongoing series of pamphlets needs an ideology: a manifesto. Casanova as a series is designed to be read an issue at a time, enjoyed an issue at a time, and then perhaps considered as a whole after the fact. Comprised of 16 pages of story with a limited colour palette (one sickly shade of green and black and white), 5 pages of back-up material, and some lovely art and a straight-ahead story recap, the format itself is modeled after the perfect pop single: Short, sharp, and impossible to get out of your head. The success and authorial intent of the format of this book are why this is a review of the first issue rather than the first trade paperback; the format works. On his message board author Matt Fraction stated that “…any of the single issues of CASANOVA so far could theoretically function as whole-arc endeavors scattered across three, four, five, six 22-page chapters (at least that *I’d* read, which really is the only barometer I have). And I’d be okay doing that, were that the format we were in.” But it isn’t, and isn’t that a nice change of pace?

(As an aside, between the “Fell format” that Ellis & Templesmith’s Fell and Fraction and Ba’s Casanova publish in, the Ignatz books, Grant Morrison’s fantastic and flawed Seven Soldiers ‘modular storytelling’, and even DC’s 52, 2006 was a very good year for the reinvention of the floppy comic.)

In my reading of the series it’s the format—the presentation of the material—that defined it. While the first issue side-steps the 16-page imposition with a 28 page introductory story, the ideology remains intact: a great story, done-in-one, that gives you a helluva lotta bang for your buck. The first issue is the exact opposite of “all set-up,” the de-facto description of pretty much any new series launch. It also eschews the stylized in-media-res that substitutes for innovation in… pretty much any other new series launch (aside: I guess it’s technically in-media-res, but really it just feels like it begins at the beginning…). Instead? The comic treats you like you’re a grown-up. Admittedly, it treats you like the kind of grown-up who grew up on all the things that author Matt Fraction likes (super-spies, comic books, pop music, middle-brow sci-fi) but still, it’s refreshing for a comic to assume that when an obvious spy character is on a mission and things are going wrong that we don’t need detailed captions explaining the whys and wherefores. It asks the reader to have a little faith that everything will be explained in time, and by the end of the first issue it is: bravo. In fact, Fraction and artist Gabriel Ba go so far as to undertake a meta-narrative manoeuver on page two, having the characters pulled outside of the narrative to directly address the reader with information that is both inessential and colourful. It’s exactly the kind of information that might normally be clumsily inserted to dialogue or captions, that adds to the mood and tone of the piece. The meta-narrative effect is successful precisely because the book deals with things like parallel dimensions and alternate-earth versions of characters and events; Fraction is clearly banging the crap out of reader expectations on a giant anvil, and it’s disorienting as hell for both the characters and the reader, but it (again) assumes you’ll read all the way to the end of the book before making up your mind. A rare feat. Today I read an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man that was so unconfident in its emotional climax that it spelled it out on the cover, just in case you missed it.

…I don’t need to slam other comics to praise this one, but like I said this series has a strong “manifesto” vibe to it and I tend to fall in for those hook, line, and sinker. This is a dense comic book, the ideas flying fast and furious and even seemingly discarded. I commented recently that it took me three attempts to really feel like I “got” the first issue of this book because I didn’t commit enough of my attention to reading it. A lot of that is because there are just so many ideas being communicated to the reader. Offhand comments like “…designed by X.S.M.” or “the legendary Fakebook of the cosmos!” are tossed out at a rapid pace, with nary an appearance again in the issue. As I’ve said though, it does pay off down the line. We will find out who X.S.M. is in an issue or two, and that discovery and the story that accompanies it add layers of depth and understanding to the events of this first issue. It’s… rewarding.

Gabriel Ba’s visuals afford the same ingenuity: flying motorcycles, bug-shaped psyches, even the pattern on the bedsheets are all visual signifiers of a deeper and more considered world than usual. Ba brings a level of visual sophistication, class, and detail to the series that demands you pay attention to every carefully chosen little object or fashion tic. The reduced colour-palette and noir stylings of the art just seem to draw a deeper focus than the wash of most computer-coloured mainstream books… ah, but there I go making those nasty comparisons again. Suffice it to say, Ba’s work echoes Eduardo Risso and Mike Mignola in a loose and cartoony way that fans of either artist will appreciate, and that serves the story beautifully.

I’d be lying if I said that at the end of the first issue I wasn’t still a bit confused or unsure of where the series was going. It’s a bit like the first time you try sushi: your mouth likes it but your stomach needs a little while to make up its mind. I enjoyed great big parts of the series (if for nothing else on the first read, then for it’s audacity) but on later reads, particularly when the series is read on the whole, a larger picture is unveiled. A meta-plot for your meta-narrative. The seemingly slapdash nature of the concepts and throw-away lines in this issue are anything but; it’s all in there for a reason—even the stuff that doesn’t make sense and the stuff that contradicts the other stuff. Apparently you just can’t fuck with the space-time continuum and expect everything to come up roses, and this issue is akin to a snowball set rolling down a very large hill—it’s picking up new stuff all the way down, but the structure is still solidly constructed from everything that’s come before.

For those of you without the benefit of $13.93 to buy the whole series, those who might only be able to afford a risky single-issue purchase and are now concerned about the integrity of this single-issue, fear not: there’s an afterword! It deals mainly with the idea behind the series, about the format and the germs of ideas in Phil Spector singles and “Danger: Diabolik” and whatnot, but reading the afterword (or ‘backmatter’ as the ‘Fell Format’ creator Warren Ellis describes it), one gets the sense that this is not simply shit being thrown against the wall to see what sticks; there’s a plan and there’s six more issues coming and we hope you had a good time but tune in next month so I can blow your socks off again. The backmatter rounds out the offering, makes it a whole.

I have no doubt in my mind that this is all just too much for some people, but believe you me I was well and truly pacified when I closed Casanova #1. I was thoroughly on board, and if having a blog and valuing my opinion highly has taught me anything, it’s that you’ll be on board too.

- Christopher Butcher

In his newest Conversational Euro-Comics column at Comics Reporter, Bart Beaty provides an overview of the forthcoming “Angouleme Essential Awards”, to be handed out at Festival International de la Bande Dessinee. It’s a great article and totally essential reading, so hurry up and go read it. He also name-checks me in the article, when talking about the manga entries on the 50-volume list of books elligible for the top prize:
“Manga is also well-represented by Avant la prison (Kazuichi Hanawa), Gyo (Junji Ito), In the Clothes Named Fat (Moyoco Anno), Jacaranda (Kotobuki Shiriagari), Ki-Itchi (Hideki Arai), Non Non Ba (Shigeru Mizuki), Sorcieres (Daisuke Igarashi), and Zipang (Kaiji Kawaguchi). I’m not sure which of these seven series is available in English (I’m sure Chris Butcher or Dirk Deppey can help us there).” – Bart Beaty, Comics Reporter.
So I figured, why not? Let’s talk about which manga are or are not available in English.

Avant la Prison, by Kazuichi Hanawa. Hanawa’s Doing Time is published in English by Fanfare Ponent-Mon, and it’s a monotonous, unflinching portrayal of life in a Japanese prison. While it’s considered a fairly difficult read, I can definitely recommend it as a unique and engrossing manga. This volume acts as something of a prequel to Doing Time, and we all hope to see it follow Doing Time to the shelves… Eh, Stephen?

Gyo, by Junji Ito. As readers of this blog are aware, Junji Ito’s Gyo is published in English by Viz LLC, and books 1 & 2 were released in the 6×9 format in 2003 and 2004. Generally considered inferior to his Uzumaki series, Gyo has an aborted finish, but does deliver some truly terrifying visuals and moments (Sharks… WITH LEGS!). Also available from Junji Ito are Museum Of Terror Volumes 1-3 published by Dark Horse.

In the Clothes Named Fat, by Moyoco Anno. Despite an English title, this single-volume manga by Moyoco Anno is not available in English. It seems like a book worth translating though, as it deals with a woman who tries to lose weight to interest a man, and the body-image-related downward spiral she enters. Luckily for you reader, Moyoco Anno has been published in English before. A lot, actually: Happy Mania from Tokyopop features a desperate 20-something woman looking to settle down and find the right man, but Mr. Right-now will do; Flowers & Bees from Viz actually deals with body-image issues amongst men in a humourous way; Sugar Sugar Rune from Del Rey Publishing is an all-ages affair that has young witches breaking boys’ hearts for power; Anno even has a cute short-story in Japan: As Viewed By 17 Creators published by Fanfare Ponent-Mon.

Jacaranda, by Kotobuki Shiriagari. Totally and completely unavailable in English, and probably pretty unlikely to become so. This single volume appears to be a meditation on the human condition as viewed through the lense of the apocalypse–a giant plant grows up in Tokyo overnight oblitterating the city–but actually might just be a comedy, pages and pages of death and destruction included. I hope we order a copy of this into my store to look at, hint hint.

Ki-Itchi, Hideki Arai. Man, this is so unlikely to come out in English. Evar. Volume 1 is about a hyper-violent three year old boy who doesn’t show any emotions and is constantly lashing out at the world. It’s sort of a more-realisitically drawn Dark Crayon Shin-chan you know? Then, at the beginning of the second volume his parents are killed by a mugger and he’s left with no family and no understanding of what happened. Fierce socio-political commentary. I would totally, totally buy this if it were in English.

Non Non Ba, by Shigeru Mizuki. Oh wow. So I didn’t recognize the name, but following a viewing of the Takeshi Miike movie “The Great Yokai War” I did a little bit of digging on “yokai”, the various Japanese forest spirits and demons that make up Japanese mythology. It turns out that Shigeru Mizuki is probably the best-known manga-ka of yokai stories, and his ‘Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro’ is considered a shonen horror classic. NonNonbâ appears to be Mizuki’s newest manga, another yokai tale about a boy who befriends a yokai and the problems it causes to his day-to-day life. Sounds really neat, actually, and seeing as we got some of Kazuo Umezu’s excellent classic horror manga this year with Drifting Classroom from Viz, I think some Mizuki would go down nicely…!

Sorcieres, by Daisuke Igarashi. This would be known as “Witch” in English (making it, what, property #4 with that title?), but isn’t currently known as anything because it ain’t in English. We just got a copy of this book in this week at The Beguiling, because it was actually recommended by Black & White creator Taiyo Matsumoto in the back of the sixth French edition of his No. 5 series. Confluence! The plot seems a bit… magical such and such quest for grown-ups, but the art is lovely. It’s like a sketchy euro-Otomo, where every drawing looks absolutely effortless and dashed-off, until you realise that a) they’re beautiful, and b) he is not drawing easy-to-draw things. Absolutely beautiful, and I could totally see Dark Horse picking this up and fitting it seemlessly into their current slate of releases. YOU HEAR ME, CARL? :)

Zipang, by Kaiji Kawaguchi. You’re totally unlikely to see this this in English, as Kawaguchi’s previous English-language manga, the excellent socio-political drama Eagle from Viz, did not do well. This series, about a navy battleship from the Japanese Self-Defence Forces transported back to WWII, sounds like a gripping, mature story of tough choices and tougher consquences. So, TS, buy more Naruto.

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There you go Bart, et al. I hope you enjoy this little run down of great manga that I cannot read as much as I enjoyed researching it all, only to find out after-the-fact that there’s an English-language description of most of these books in a Festival Program (right click save as) and that David Welsh covered some of this in his column 4 weeks ago. Le Sigh.

- Christopher