March 12, 2010 Toronto—Running the gamut from the acclaimed to the unconventional, the 15 finalists for this year’s Doug Wright Awards were announced today in Toronto.

Hand-picked by an esteemed panel of comics experts, the 2010 finalists represent the finest, most thought-provoking work produced by Canada’s vibrant comics community.

The shortlist contains works that explore diverse subjects, from the legendary life of Kasper Hauser and the fictional life (and death) of a fading TV host, and spans a range of formats, from wordless lino-cuts graphic novels to “manga” inspired by Western Canadian Haida mythology.

The Doug Wright Awards finalists for Best Book are:

Back + Forth by Marta Chudolinska (The Porcupine’s Quill)
George Sprott: (1894-1975) by Seth (Drawn and Quarterly)
Hot Potatoe by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly)
Kaspar by Diane Obomsawin (Drawn and Quarterly)
Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Douglas and McIntyre)

The Doug Wright Awards finalists for Best Emerging Talent are:

Adam Bourret I’m Crazy
Michael DeForge Lose #1 (Koyama Press), Cold Heat Special #7 (Picturebox)
Pascal Girard Nicolas (Drawn and Quarterly)
John Martz It’s Snowing Outside. We Should Go For a Walk.
Sully The Hipless Boy (Conundrum Press)

The finalists for the 2010 Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, “nominally-narrative” comics) are:

Bébête Simon Bossé (L’Oie de Cravan)
Dirty Dishes by Amy Lockhart (Drawn and Quarterly)
Hot Potatoe by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly)
Never Learn Anything From History by Kate Beaton
The Collected Doug Wright Volume One by Doug Wright (Drawn and Quarterly)

Founded in 2004 (in a dimly lit Toronto bar) to celebrate the finest in English-language comics and graphic novels, The Doug Wright Awards have since evolved into one of North America’s foremost comics awards and one of its most anticipated events.

Wright Awards finalists defy easy categorization, and include past and present masters of the form and off-the-beaten-path newcomers alike, all vying for one of the most unique and coveted trophies in comics.

This year’s nominees were chosen by a five-member panel who chose from works released in the 2009 calendar year. The panel included: comics historian and author Jeet Heer; filmmaker Jerry Ciccoritti; cartoonist Chester Brown; Walrus comics blogger Sean Rogers, and; writer and Sequential.ca publisher Bryan Munn.

The winners are chosen by a jury that includes cartoonists, writers, actors, directors, musicians and, on occasion, politicians.

A featured event of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF), the 2010 Doug Wright Awards ceremony will take place on Sat. May 8, at 7 pm at the Toronto Reference Library’s new Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, 789 Yonge Street.

For more information, please contact:

brad@wrightawards.ca
mackbrad@gmail.com

About The Doug Wright Awards

The Doug Wright Awards are a non-profit organization formed in 2004, and are named in honour of the late Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright. The annual awards recognize graphic novels, comics, mini-comics, and experimental comics-based works published in English (including first-translated editions). To be eligible, a work must be a first-edition, full-length or a collection, and created by a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada. www.wrightawards.ca

About the Toronto Public Library

The Toronto Public Library is the world’s busiest urban public library system. Every year, more than 17.5 million people visit our 99 branches and borrow more than 31 million items. To learn more about Toronto Public Library, visit torontopubliclibrary.ca or call Answerline at 416-393-7131.

About the Toronto Comic Arts Festival

TCAF is a celebration of comics and graphic novels—and their creators—that takes place annually in Toronto, Canada. The next TCAF is Saturday May 8th and Sunday May 9^th 2010, at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, and will feature Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth), Dash Shaw (Body World), James Sturm (Golem’s Mighty Swing, Market Day), and Jim Woodring (Frank) and more. For more information please visit http://www.torontocomics.com.

- Chris

I was at the Korean grocery store in my neighbourhood and found these neat snacks based on the anime (and manga I guess) Crayon Shinchan, by the recently departed Usui Yoshito. The writing on the bag is in fact Korean, as it looks like these are snacks based on the cartoon which has been licensed all over the world.

In addition to pasted-on English language ingredients, the back of each bag features different funny little scenarios featuring Shin-chan and his family. The contents of each bag are exactly the same, but I guess if you were a kid in Korea getting a different design in your lunch every day might be cool.

The snacks themselves are pretty good. They’re very lightly sweetened crackers… A little bit of sesame and ‘burnt’, a little sugar and cinnamon. They taste like Asian snack food. :)

Action-Man!

- Chris

Reportedly four years in the making, the line is currently very vaguely defined as simply “a manga line” (no brand either), but the early titles and Thorn’s involvement with Fantagraphics seems to hint at a primarily shoujo-oriented line comprised of mature and sophisticated works, or at least early and groundbreaking ones. The four year date also hints that the development of this line began even before the release of Fantagraphics’ The Comics Journal #269 in 2007, the special shoujo issue which featured a short story by and interview with Hagio. Edit: I got the date wrong, TCJ #269 shipped in July 2005.

When Dirk Deppey broke the news at Journalista this afternoon, the confirmation drew immediate, elated results across the blogosphere… and this was before there was even an official press release. Even editor Matt Thorn seems to have found out about it from the online kerfuffle. But now that the cat is out of the bag, here are all the details I’ve been able to round up.

Cover to A Drunken Dream, by Moto Hagio. Fantagraphics Edition, September 2010.

According to the Press Release from Fantagraphics, the line will officially launch in September 2010 with Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream, a best-of collection featuring a number of short stories from across Hagio’s career. Fantagraphics also announced that Hagio would be a Guest of Honor at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con (coming in late July), so it seems likely that the book will actually debut there along with her appearance (though this is entirely supposition on my part). Over at his blog, Matt Thorn filled in a little more information about the line-up of the short stories in A Drunken Dream:

• “Bianca” (1970, 16 pages)
• “Girl on Porch with Puppy” (1971, 12 pages)
• “Autumn Journey” (1971, 24 pages)
• “Marié, Ten Years Later” (1977, 16 pages)
• “A Drunken Dream” (1980, 21 pages)
• “Hanshin” (1984, 16 pages) [previously published in The Comics Journal #269]
• “Angel Mimic” (1984, 50 pages)
• “Iguana Girl” (1991, 50 pages)
• “The Child Who Comes Home” (1998, 24 pages)
• “The Willow Tree” (2007, 20 pages)

The book is currently set at 228 pages, in a hardcover measuring 7″ x 9″ and in the original Japanese right-to-left orientation. No price has been announced. All of the stories seem to have been published by licensing partner Shogakukan, who as you may know is also one of the partner-owners of American manga publisher Viz LLC.

Hagio is an incredibly important manga creator though to date only a few pieces of her work have been released in English, including A,A’, They Were Eleven, and the short story “Hanshin”. As a founding member of “The Magnificent 24″ group of female creators, she revolutionized manga for girls and pioneered the shoujo manga genre in the 1970s, drawing from influences like the radical youth culture of the 60s, rock and roll music, and European cinema. Hagio is the winner of a number of prestigious manga prizes, including the Tezuka Cultural Prize. The interview with Hagio and career overview in TCJ #269 is really outstanding, and I strongly recommend tracking down an issue if you’re a manga fan.

Cover to Wandering Son Book One. Fantagraphics Edition, December 2010.

In December 2010, Fantagraphics will release the second work in the line, the transgender-centric manga Wandering Son by mangaka Shimura Takako. Originally called Hourou Musuko in the Japanese, the series follows two young friends; Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. Far from the comedy antics of gender-bending series like Ranma 1/2, the series is apparently a straight-forward exploration of the two characters as they struggle with puberty, gender identity, and growing up.

The first book is also in a 7″ x 9″ hardcover format, Japanese right-to-left orientation, with no announced price.

Interestingly, Wandering Son is currently ongoing in Japan with a tenth volume scheduled for release later this month, making it a radical departure for Fantagraphics and “art manga” publishing in general, which has yet to tackle an ongoing series. Even more interesting, the series is currently serialized in the magazine “Comic Beam”, a seinen (young men’s) manga magazine which runs all kinds of series–from Kaouru Mori’s Emma (published in the U.S. by CMX), to Junko Mizuno’s Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu (Last Gasp), to the dark/sexy adventure series King of Thorn by Yuji Iwahara (Tokyopop)–a far cry from straight-ahead shoujo. The strangest bit? While Dirk Deppey announced Matt Thorn’s manga line as a partnership with Shogakukan, Wandering Son and “Comic Beam” are published by Japanese publisher Enterbrain, showing that the line will not be entirely populated with Shogakukan titles.

In conclusion: Great day to be a manga fan.

- Chris

Sources:
Fantagraphics Official PR
Dirk Deppey’s Announcement at Journalista
Matt Thorn’s Announcement
Anime News Network Announcement
David Welsh, Manga Curmudgeon
Horo Musuko (Wandering Son) at Wikipedia
Anime Vice, the first site to spot the books at Amazon

Very, very good news.

Edit: Much longer post (by me) here: http://comics212.net/2010/03/09/matt-thorn-to-edit-curate-new-manga-line-for-fantagraphics/

- Chris

Most of the Random Japan posts here are about food, because (more often than not) food was a sort of in-between thing when I was travelling. My visits to Akihabara were punctuated by a stop for Ramen, a stop for McDonalds, and a stop for Curry, but none of those three things really has much to offer by way of commentary on Akihabara… at least so far as the contents of this blog are concerned. But they’re a fascinating glimpse into day-to-day life in Japan, so I documented as much of that stuff as I could.

Case in point: Lotteria. One of Japan’s big fast-food chains, coming up alongside McDonalds, and Mos Burger. Where McDonald’s is all about its brand, and Mos Burger is all about ‘freshness’, Lotteria seems to be all about making as many random burgers as possible. Lotteria is a cross between food manufacturer “Lotte” (they make lots of kinds of candies and snack foods amongst other things) and “cafeteria”, which is a delightfully Japanese mash-up. Case-in-point on the weirdness front btw, that to the right is a burger with two patties, a fried egg, and teriyaki sauce. It was delicious.

I really dug Lotteria, their particular brand of fast food was just this side of obscene (seriously, check out their website – anything with melted cheese on it looks like a heart attack). But one of their best menu items is also one of their simplest and most straightforward: The Lotteria Potato. The potato comes inside this cute, branded box, alongside a rather generous helping of sea-salt in a little packet.

This particular Lotteria Potato was purchased from inside Sapporo JR Station, at the last possible minute before I’d miss my train and be stuck in Sapporo for another 12 hours. You can see it alongside our drink-of-choice on the trip, Kirin Lemon Chi-hi.

Opening the box reveals the potato. So far as we can tell, it’s a whole potato that’s been par-boiled and then sliced. It is then deep-fried to order, resulting in a very crispy skin and as the potato blooms in the friar, crispy and delicious insides. It sort of fans out, and is attached at the bottom. It’s sort of like a blooming-onion, but less unhealthy.

The delicious sea salt is then sprinkled in-and-on the potato. If the Potato is fresh enough, the salt will adhere to the bits where there’s still cooking oil on the exterior. At this point the potato is really, really hot, btw. So despite the fact that it looks and smells delicious and the salt is melting on top of it, consuming it at this point will burn your mouth.

Instead, you just take arty pictures of the potato, waiting for it to cool, wondering how you’re ever going to get a blog post out of pictures of a potato. And yet, here we are.

Andrew estimates he had three of these in three weeks, I think it was closer to five. For those of you travelling to Japan, I heartily recommend the Lotteria Potato.

Actually, we just learned something. I had my friend Dave translate this for me, the menu item listing for the Lotteria Potato. Apparently, in the lower-left corner there, it lists additional sauces for your potato for a small extra charge. They are “butter” and “caramel sauce”. Seriously. So in closing, I guess I’d like to apologize to all of you for not being able to tell you what a salty fried potato with caramel dipping sauce tastes like, as I wasn’t able to read the signage at the time. Should I have occasion to return to Japan, I promise you a full run-down.

- Chris

Dork Volume 2: Circling the Drain

Hello! And welcome to the first FUN strip in the second trade paperback collection of DORK: Circling The Drain. This is also from issue #8, as neither issue #6 (the special Eltingville Club issue) nor issue #7 (the Evan Dorkin’s nervous breakdown issue) had any FUN strips…!

As always, you can buy all 11 issues of Dork as well as the two trade paperbacks and a host of other great work by Evan Dorkin at the SLG Publishing website, http://www.slgcomic.com/.

Thanks again to Evan and the guys at SLG for letting me run all of this stuff, and thanks everyone for reading and commenting and sharing and all that, awesome times.

Here’s to hoping I can maintain the ‘daily’ in the title for the next few months!

- Chris

Actually, no. Comics are not ‘too expensive’ at all. Some of them are pricey, like $50-100 omnibus editions, but they’re very much in line with what everything else costs, particularly printed matter (trees, ink, and labour are not “free”, Johnston).

If automobiles were 90% off today, and people who liked automobiles and had a couple already and might like some more splurged on a bunch of cheap automobiles, we would not take home the message “well, automobiles are too expensive,” because that would be utterly stupid. We would take home the message that “people like a deal” and “90% off is a good deal”.

But comics go on a sale–admittedly one that is entirely in error according to Johnston himself–and the message he takes away from it is “well comics are just too expensive and ‘people’ would buy more if we sold them for less than it cost to print them, let alone pay the creators.”

Talk about the self-loathing of comics fans…

- Chris

And this strip marks the end of DORK #5, which had a massive 8 pages of FUN strips in just one great issue!

I just wanted to take a second out to apologize to all y’all, and especially Evan, for the delays in posting these awesome strips over the past few months. Really, I meant to do this daily, and didn’t, and I’ve let everyone down. But I am really gonna try and get my sh!t together and get the next few months of strips up and ready-to-go.

Thanks for your patience!

- Christopher

Sorry i got a late start, I was actually finishing my Marvel numbers. Did you know that, not counting posters, Marvel has 215 line items of product this month? Lots of variant covers in there, but it all takes time to count, and rack. I checked the previews order from 3 years ago and there were only 113 line items. They’ve doubled their output in 3 years, which is… well, it explains why there’s so little space on our shelves. But, and here’s the kicker, we’re only ordering about 15% more Marvel books total. A 90% increase in line items for a 15% increase in sales. That’s fucked-up.

3:02pm: Actually, speaking of continuing on from yesterday, I was pretty gung-ho about the Adam Hughes artbook COVER RUN from DC yesterday, but a commenter pointed out the ‘fine print’ of the solicit, that the book isn’t complete but is instead a ‘best of’, AND it’s printed at regular comic book size. At 208 pages for $40 for an incomplete book, my estimation of the project has dropped considerably… as have my sales. So, sorry I got that one wrong, I’ll go back and ammend after I get this done.

3:05pm: Okay, so here we are on page 186! It’s good to see GROWING UP ENCHANTED in print again, as it was an early for-kids series that maybe was ahead of the graphic novel curve. Luckily AAM Markosia is bringing the work back as a graphic novel, $9.95, 112 pages. Hopefully we can get it locally as well (I think the creators are in Ottawa) because Diamond’s discount on Markosia is pretty awful. :-/

Meanwhile, same page, TERRY MOORE’S ECHO continues with a fourth collection, COLLIDER, for $16. Moore’s quick, non-arc oriented 5 issue collections are really handy at keeping the series in print for both audiences, I kind of wish more serial comics guys were following his model. I guess Jeff Smith is with his collections every 3 issues, but those aren’t coming out at quite the same pace as Moore’s new series.

And a couple of reprints (same page)! SLG has a new printing of perennial favourite JONNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC: DIRECTOR’S CUT for $21.95, and Phil Foglio’s Airship Entertainment has a long-awaited new printing of GIRL GENIUS VOLUME 2 for $22.95. Oh, and I mis-read. GIRL GENIUS VOLUME 9: AGATHA HETERODYNE AND THE HEIRS OF THE STORM is in fact all new, and comes in a $22.95 softcover or a $48.95 hardcover.

3:23pm: And here we are, page 192 and Avatar seems to have just-about their cleanest layout ever. It’s still not… good. Like I still don’t think their guys have any design training (inconsistent margins are the obvious giveaway), but, yeah, at least I can tell which solicit refers to which book. On that note, book of the month from them is THE LITTLEST ZOMBIE #1, because zombies still sell and it’s written and drawn by Fred perry (Gold Digger), and his fans will buy anything he does (as long as he does the whole thing).  Ben Dunn’s… tightly… photo ref’d Robin Hood is just weird.

3:27pm: So, I don’t know how to say this because… well, I have a lot of friends doing licensed books. But seriously? Archaia’s FRAGGLE ROCK #1 may be one of the nicest-looking licensed books of ALL TIME. The image in the previews catalogue is pretty shitty, it doesn’t look even half as good as the preview art I saw, so i went and grabbed the cover from the website. Check this out:

Like, where do you even start with that? They’re photo-reference digital painting fraggles. That’s fucking gorgeous. Those are some pretty, pretty Fraggles. Oh, and you can click for larger.

Fraggles.

Anyway, FRAGGLE ROCK #1 is $3.95, 32 pages, and follows on the free comic book day preview story.

3:46pm: The “Tasty” cover of Crossed #7 features baby-eating.  But more fucked up than that.

3:57pm: Just realized I haven’t really had a lot to say about the last few pages. I do think that it’s neat that Page 230 has STAN DRAKE’S THE HEART OF JULIET JONES VOL 1 from Classic Comics Press. That should make a few of our customers very happy indeed… And who would’ve thought that Mary Perkins On Stage would’ve gone for 7 volumes now?

4:37pm: Jeez, sorry folks. I do this while working at the store, and sometimes I gotta stop typing and stop ordering comics and help some customers out. It makes my job a little harder, but at least I am helping the customers out… Oh, and we’re also putting in tons of new shelving at the moment, so it’s noisy as fuck in here. Ah well.

So where were we?

Page 235 has KEVIN SMITH’S GREEN HORNET #2, though the first issue actually drops tomorrow and I’m really anxious about how it’s going to sell. I kinda wish I could set my numbers after seeing the actual in-shop reaction. What makes me doubly anxious is that this month D.E. launch two more Green Hornet Ongoing Series, YEAR ONE and KATO. I hear next month they launch two more.

Remember what I said up top about Marvel Comics releasing twice as many series for an extremely marginal increase in sales? These are the lessons that the industry is learning, and it’s a fucking nightmare… particularly if you’re trying to figure out how to order this shit.

5:08pm: Fuck, it is busy today.

So we’re on page 258, Gestalt publishing has “Changing Ways” by a fella named Justin Randall. It looks alright, but I almost 0′d out my order for it. Why? Because the solicit information is a plot synopsis. It doesn’t tell me anything about why I should order a 120 page book for $18. I’d never heard of it before page 258 of the previews catalogue. I googled the author, and his homepage is the first search result for his name (good for him). It’s a photo-ref’d work, looks a little Ben Templesmithy in a good way. It turns out this creator has pro credits on: “30 Days of Night, Silent Hill, The Executioner, Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, 24Seven, Popgun, and Flinch” amongst other stuff, and he’s a University lecturer and commercial illustrator. All of that would’ve been a lot more helpful to me, when it came to ordering this book, than a sort-of interesting plot synopsis. That “volume 1″ on the cover is a piss-off too, because it implies that this 120 pages for $18 isn’t even a complete story.

So, yeah. I am an open-minded retailer, but even I’m not ordering everything in the catalogue. Pubs, creators, SELL ME on your work, on your book as a project. Don’t just pitch me on the story, because that’s just not enough. I need to know if your stuff is gonna sell.

More on Changing Ways at http://www.changingwaysbook.com/.

5:17pm: Meanwhile:

SQUEEEEEE. LAST UNICORN COMICS. IDW, page 259, 4 issue mini-series for $3.99 each. I’m likely going to wait for the trade on this one, but man, does this thing look pretty. That’s the Variant cover by Frank Stockton, the regular cover is lovely too.

EDIT: 8:39pm: The writer of KILL SHAKESPEARE #1 (page 263, IDW, 32 pages for 3.99) showed up to remind me that his book exists. Seriously, I am very sorry for having forgotten it. We’re ordering like a hundred copies. We’re doing a special signing with the entire creative team, including writers mcCreery and Del Col, Artist Andy Belanger, and Cover Artist Kagan McLeod, to celebrate the release of the first issue. It’s basically Shakespeare’s characters meets Marvel’s SECRET WARS, where they all end up on an island together and fight. It sounds great, we’re totally excited about it, and my excuse for having missed it on the first pass is that it was my 400th consecutive page of solicits (counting Marvel’s book) without a break.

Anyway! Seriously, check it out, it should be really neat. Website at http://killshakespeare.com/

5:23pm: Page 264? Sorry IDW, you heard mommy. No more Wire Hangers.

5:24pm: “I am shocked by the world’s appetite for Ashley Wood,” says my co-worker, and I may agree with him but I’m still looking forward to ASHLEY WOOD’S FUCK IT! #1, a 12×12 inch magazine assembled by Wood and co. I am expecting to sell quite a few of this one, as it’s about all kinds of artists (including Wood), and we haven’t really hit the ceiling yet for cool art magazines. I’m sure it’s coming though. 48 pages, $9.99, page 264.

5:35pm: Holy shit a Danger Girl HC. Coming in between Absolute Danger Girl ($75 360 pages, 8.5×13), and the softcover Danger Girl Ultimate Collection ($20, 256 pages, 7×10) is IDW’s new edition, DANGER GIRL: THE DELUXE EDITION HC ($50, 262 pages, 8×12). With a cheap softcover still in print from DC and 10,000 copies of the Absolute out there with another 100 pages of bonus material… I have no idea who the audience for this is supposed to be. And I’m actually a Danger Girl fan (secret shame, I know I know).

5:46pm: And IDW closes out their section with one of my picks for book-of-the-month with SWORD OF MY MOUTH, the new graphic novel from Jim Munroe and Shanon Gerard. Set in the same world as Munroe’s hit graphic novel THEREFORE, REPENT! the book follows survivors of what some people believe to be “The Rapture” to the burned out hollow of Detroit. Munroe’s first graphic novel (with Salgood Sam on art duties) is a great read, and I’m expecting similarly great things from this new sci-fi/fantasy entry. Don’t let the religious tagline of the series, A POST-RAPTURE GRAPHIC NOVEL, fool you. This isn’t about religion so much as it’s about humanity and belief, and it’s great.

Full disclosure: Jim has become a friend over the years of working here at The Beguiling, and SWORD OF MY MOUTH is likely to debut at or around TCAF this year. I’d buy it anyway though :)

6:11pm: Actually, I forgot to type anything this time, and got ahead of myself. Speaking of TCAF dudes, Dash Shaw’s BODYWORLD HC is on page 283, and it’s gonna run $27.95 for 384 pages. It’s going to collect Shaw’s outstanding webcomic, and by all accounts the package is going to be as fascinating as the contents. Good stuff.

Same page, RAW Jr has the third Benny & Penny kids book, THE TOY BREAKER, which sounds kind of hilarious and amazing. $12.95 in HC.

6:16pm: Top Shelf has got a whole bunch of Swedish cartoonists with new work this month, which is really exciting! A bunch of pro-level guys with interesting artistic styles. I’m pretty excited about these books. For more on all of them, head over to Top Shelf’s recently re-designed website at http://www.topshelfcomix.com/news/521.

6:19pm: Because of the way I order manga (months and months in advance), my immense enthuiasm for the new SigIkki solicitations in this issue of Previews has dulled somewhat. But that said, I’ve greatly enjoyed all I’ve read of I’LL GIVE IT MY ALL TOMORROW by Shunju Aono and SATURN APARTMENTS VOLUME 1 by Hisae Iwaoka ($12.99 each, about 200 pages, page 301) and I strongly recommend you check them both out. Actually, rather than wait for the books in a few months, here’s yet another reminder to head over to http://sigikki.com and read a bunch of chapters of these, and other series, for free.

6:28pm: As we reach the end of the Comics section, we happen upon the nice folks at Vertical who are bringing Osaum Tezuka’s ODE TO KIRIHITO back into print in two volumes ($14.95, about 400 pages each), which is lovely.

But for hardcore fans, the real news this month is the release of TWIN SPICA VOLUME 1, at 192 pages for just $10.95.  So far as I can tell, TWIN SPICA is the spiritual successor, at least for more mature manga fans, to PLANETES the critically accclaimed (though low-selling) sci-fi series from Tokyopop. TWIN SPICA follows a group of teenagers in Japan’s Astronaut vocational school, and sets their everyday lives against the larger concerns of manned interplanetary spaceflight, politics, and social commentary. It’s supposed to be very good, and I have to admit I’m pretty stoked about it now myself… and I really had no interest initially when I saw the cover. I have a feeling this is going to fly under the radars of some sci-fi and manga fans who might otherwise write it off as yet another ‘cute girl’ series, and that would be a shame. Looking forward to the first volume.

Edit: The previews lists this first volume as being 480 pages. That is incorrect.

6:40pm: What the hell, I’m making good time. Let’s go through the books section.

Page 313 & 314 have the first two books in the NATE BANKS novel/comics hybrid series from Scholastic, with art by mini-Marvels creator Chris Giarusso (who apparently doesn’t get cover credit at Scholastic: Lame.)

Page 314 sees the soliciation of ART IN TIME: UNKNOWN COMIC ADVENTURES 1940-1980 HC by Dan Nadel, a sequel to the groundbreaking ART OUT OF TIME collection, which explores a bevvy of pre- and post-code comics that will blow your mind! That’s $40 in hardcover for 300 pages or so, from Abrams. Dan’s going to be at TCAF hyping this one too, which is pretty exciting for me. :)

Page 314 also has the new COMIC HEROES MAGAZINE #1, a movie-oriented magazine from the SFXmagazine people out of the UK. Apparently it comes with free Watchmen 1″ pins, which, if you know about Alan Moore and Watchmen, is kind of hilarious and ironic. 132 page magazine for… whoa! $19.99! Holy shit. How much is that on newstands I wonder?

Page 322 has INSTRUCTIONS, the new children’s book from Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, following up on the spectacular success of their BLUEBERRY GIRL collaboration last year. Instructions will set you back fifteen bucks for 40 pages of beautiful art and what is sure to be a charming story. Oh, and Previews has f’d this one up too, claiming it to be 160 pages. Oh, Previews.

6:59pm: And we’re done.

Well, we’re not done. I still have to go through and add in the customer special orders, then do the data entry and upload. I’ll be here late! But the hard work is over.

Thanks to everyone for reading. Peace out!

- Chris

6:55pm: The Covers this month are… well the Iron Man one is nice, the Brightest Day one is meh, but at least they’re both tied to salable product. And have no doubt, both of those products will sell well.

It is nice when the ordering catalogue I order my comics from is interested in helping me sell comics…

7:01pm: Man, I’m not even going to pretend to read those front pages of the previews catalogue this month. I can’t deal. I will just jump right into Page 25: Dark Horse!

Page 26 actually. We got an original series from DH called “HELLCYON” which is… a dude in an orange Kaneda-from-Akira jumpsuit on a bitchin motorcycle that ALSO turns into a robot. Looks like a sort of “sum of its parts” thing for people that are livid that there isn’t a volume 7 of Akira. I am not against this, but it doesn’t look like it’s bringing a lot to the party.

Meanwhile, Page 33 sees a resolicit for THE END LEAGUE VOLUME 2, which now collects the entire last half of the series. I have no idea if this series ended well, or if it even ends rather than just… stops… due to lack of sales? Ihope it’s a good conclusion, I really liked the first half.

7:09pm: Still on DH, page 35: 600 page omnibus featuring ALL of Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons’ MARTHA WASHINGTON? For $30? Sounds like a plan. THE LIFE TIMES OF MARTHA WASHINGTON IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY drops June 30th.

Hahaha… oh shit, I totally just laughed out loud. Apparently on page 36 they are, in fact, re-soliciting Jim Steranko’s RED TIDE, which may have been solicited during the very first month I worked as a comics retailer…. in like 1997 or something? Hey, I hope it comes out, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

7:19pm: Page 44 has a brand new HELLBOY collection! VOL 10: THE CROOKEDMAN AND OTHERS collects the Mignola/Corben mini-series, and a couple of short stories and one shots not previously collected. All for $18, June 23rd.

7:21pm: Flipping the page reveals one of my favourite books of the month…! BEASTS OF BURDEN HC collects the recent 4-issue mini-series from Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson, one of my favourite minis of 2009 and a gripping, funny, beautiful adventure story on the whole. It also includes all of the “Dark Horse Book Of…” prequel short stories and maybe some extras. 168 pages for 20 bucks in hardcover, coming June 16th.

Seriously, one of the best books in the catalogue this month! Pick this one up, or at check out the single issues still available from better comic book stores everywhere…

7:27pm: In the category of delightful extravagances comes THE ART OF BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL on page 50, a 160 page hardcover for $29.99. BotI creator Hiroaki Samura is an amazing illustrator as well as being a great comics guy, should be a lovely book…

7:30pm: And now we’re onto the DC COMICS section, page 63. I don’t really have a lot to add about the Brightest Day stuff. It’s gonna sell to fans of the material, we’ve got really good tracking on it thanks to 9 or 10 months of BLACKEST NIGHT. I will say that I appreciate DC offering full-returnability (with a small penalty) on the first 6 issues to build up interest, that’s definitely the right way to launch a series like this… and That recentlyannounced white ring dealy isn’t going to hurt either. Ultimately, it looks like a successfully-positioned launch. Good for them. (Likewise, I have little to add about Flash or JLA, though at least they managed to get some cover art for JLA this month…)

7:37pm: Meanwhile, I do think it’s very interesting that they’re putting out BLACKEST NIGHT DIRECTOR’S CUT (page 68), which seems to be a bunch of the trade paperback bonus material in its own book. I actually can’t figure out how much to order, because it seems like all the secret-reveals it promises are gonna end up on the internet within hours of being printed… Still, there are a lot of completists out there. I’ll order low and bump it up if we’ve got a lot of pullfile customers who want it.

On page 69 comes the original Joker graphic novel ARKHAM ASYLUM: MADNESS by Sam Kieth. Given how well Arkham Asylum-anything stuff is selling thanks to the game, and with the JOKER ogn firmly in mind, we’ll be doing a solid initial order on this one.

7:46pm: So the FIRST WAVE stuff. I dug that Batman/Doc Savage crossover from a while back, I thought Phil Noto’s art was a nice fit for Azzarello’s script. It updated the characters but didn’t pull things too far away from what people like about them… But the cover for DOC SAVAGE #1 by JG Jones just looks… Stiff? Old? I dunno. I think about how John Cassaday updated the character in Planetary, and that really worked. This… I’m not feeling it.

That said though, THE SPIRIT #1 with a cover by Ladronn? That looks great, really contemporary but still gritty and energetic, and I absolutely love what Tony Harris did for the variant cover on FIRST WAVE #2. I think paying homage to the pulp past but updating the books is the way to go… I’m just not convinced that Jones’ look suits the new direction. Got my fingers crossed though.

8:02pm: I haven’t forgotten about you guys, there was just a whole-lotta nothing in the middle section there. Well, nothing worth pulling out and noting, I guess.

All of that changes on page 87, with the long, long-awaited COVER RUN: THE DC COMICS ART OF ADAM HUGHES. In work for a very long time I believe, this will collect all of Hughes covers in one place, alongside prep-work, commentary, and more. Should basically sell-itself, so long as the presentation and printing are up to snuff. $40 for 208 pages, page 87, HC.

Also on Page 87 is the Deluxe HC collection BATWOMAN: ELEGY, collecting the first 8 issues of Rucka and Williams’ Detective Comics run. The oversized HC will show off Williams’ art very nicely, and at onl $24.95 for 192 pages it’s actually pretty reasonably priced. I’m not usually one for HCs, but given the size and price-point (and Williams being awesome) I might just pick this one up.

8:10pm: Huh, page 90, it looks like starting with the Willingham run onJustice Society, they’re going to skip the ridiculous premiere HCs and go straight to the trade paperback. Our sagging shelves thank you, DC. JUSTICE SOCIETY: BAD SEED is the first out of the gate.

Meanwhile, on the opposite page [91] comes the oversized HC collection of Grant Morrison & Co’s SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY VOLUME 1, weighing in at $40 and 400 pages. Collecting the first half of the series. I’ll be picking that one up.

Ooo, and on page 94 it looks like DC are doing a whole new round of WHAT’S NEXT samplers to introduce people to their trade paperback lines. Anything with a media-tie in it looks like. Check out $1 introductory issues of BATMAN & ROBIN, HUMAN TARGET, GREEN LANTERN, THE LOSERS, and EX MACHINA.

8:19pm: Well that certainly took long enough. Now on issue #15, BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM finally gets a trade paperback collection of the first six issues. 144 pages for $12.99. DC, guys, step it up a little if you can eh?

And while I am speaking to DC’s kids collected editions dept (heh), where are the rest of the themed collections from CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK? You guys must’ve done 2 or 3 hundred pages of BEN10 by now. Do you think you could manage a trade paperback collection? Or a new Looney Tunes maybe? It’s a little depressing, given your wealth of material and your vast resources how few kid-oriented collections are coming out. I know the digests didn’t pan out the way that you wanted, but… still…

8:29pm: Apparently it’s THE month for long, long delayed projects! NEIL YOUNG’S GREENDALE HC has been in the works since at least 2007, although the rumours extended back even further. While originally Joe The Barbarian artist Sean Murphy was on board for the book, in between concept and execution the art chores were handed to Cliff Chiang, one of my favourite mainstream comics illustrators. As for the book itself, there’s no previews up online anywhere I could see, but I trust Chiang to deliver a pretty-looking book. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed Dysart’s work, but I’m willing to give it a shot. Either way, it’s going to make a hell of a media splash, particularly here in Canada. We’ll be invested in it. 160 pages of original graphic novel for 20 bucks, drops June 9th.

8:43pm: Page 112, does anyone else think it’s wierd that CODENAME KNOCKOUT VOLUME 1 is getting collected? Did it get optioned somewhere and I missed it? Still, big ups to Robert Rodi for the royalties that’ll get sent his way. :) 160 pages, $19.99, ships May 19th.

Stuck Rubber Baby - New HC edition art by Howard Cruise

8:47pm: Wow, very good month for Vertigo…! On page 118 they’ve got SWEET TOOTH v1: OUT OF THE WOODS, collecting the first 5 issues of Jeff Lemire’s new ongoing series for just $10. Same page has Lemire’s original graphic novel THE NOBODY in softcover for $15. I’m just going to insert a little plug here, and mention that Jeff Lemire will be one of our featured guests at The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, may 8-9 in Toronto Canada. For more visit http://torontocomics.com.

Ahem, that out of the way, let’s look at the opposite page (119) and see a brand new edition of Howard Cruise’s STUCK RUBBER BABY, an incredibly, visceral semi-autobio account of the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and women’s librartion in 1960s America. It’s a great, great graphic novel and deserves considerably more acclaim than it’s ever gotten. I certainly hope that this new edition (with an introduction by Alison Bechdel!) will draw it some deserved acclaim.

8:53pm: Well how about that! It’s the long-awaited sixth volume of Fred Gallagher’s hit webcomic MEGATOKYO! This one collects chapters 9 and 10 of the online series 240 pages for 11 bucks. Not that I’m DC or Fred Gallagher, but if I WERE DC or Fred Gallagher I’d maybe do more frequent, thinner collections of this series so it isn’t 3 years between new collections. Just a friendly bit of free advice… (Page 122)

9:09pm: Okay! We’re back and on page 138, THE IMAGE COMICS SECTION! What wonderful stuff as Image got for us this month? Why, it’s TURF #1, the first issue of the mini-series by UK television presenter, documentarian, and comics-uberfan Jonathan Ross. Showing excellent taste, Mr. Ross has brough Tomy Lee Edwards along for the ride, in this cross between 1920s gangsters, vampires, and a crashed spaceship. I came across a preview of this one in last week’s THE WALKING DEAD #70 and I dug it, and it turns out the same preview is duplicated here in the Previews starting on page 140. It’s really solid, and then a spaceship lands (which is a little jarring) but, all-in-all, it’s a pretty compelling first few pages (a little dense though…). Definitely going to be a neat first issue.

9:14pm: Wow, it looks like everyone’s getting on the dollar-comic bandwagon, and Image Comics is releasing 10 different first issues for just a buck a pop (p144-145). I… I don’t think I’m down with most of’em, to be honest. I’d say we’re going to do really big orders on The Walking Dead, Chew, and Invincible, solid orders on Age of Bronze, Girls, and Proof, and… well, it’s nice that the Image-founder superhero books are there, I just don’t see their usefullness to me and my store. Of course, maybe those are the four that are going to net the highest sales. Diff’rent strokes.

9:39pm:THE LIGHT #1 is… it reminds me a lot of the current apocalyptic road trip fiction that’s going down right now, with The Road and Book of Eli and Blindness and all that. I can’t tell if it’s too close, and it’s not going to appeal, or if it’s just into that niche of contemporary fiction and will, instead, do awesome. Then again, maybe it’s more of a trade paperback book anyway? Hmm. Conservative order, hope for reorders.

9:42pm: So, let’s play a little game where we look at the last few issues of in-store dates for Spawn, in honour of the Due-April-2010 solicitation for SPAWN #202.

Spawn #191 – Due April 09, Shipped April 29th (so far, so good)
Spawn #192 – Due May 09, Shipped June 3rd (oops, slipped a week or two)
Spawn #193 – Due June 09, Shipped July 1st (almost picked up the slack!)
Spawn #194 – Due July 09, Shipped July 29th (way to go, back on schedule!)
Spawn #195 – Due August 09, Shipped October 21st (Uh oh).
Spawn #196 – Due September 09, Shipping March 3rd, 2010 (oh noes…)

There’s just a tiny peek into my world.

Now, ask me how many times I’ve been asked for WALKING DEAD VOLUME 5 HC in the last week, due out before Christmas (seven).

9:53pm: Meanwhile, in happier news, Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber have hit every on-sale date for their new mini-series UNDERGROUND, a spelunking adventure comic with great characterization and art. If you somehow passed on the mini-series (the final issue ships this week), definitely don’t miss out on the UNDERGROUND TP, coming this April. 126 pages, $15, fine fine adventure comics. (page 158)

10:00pm: Okay, and we’ve just finished out the Image section and we’re on to MARVEL! Kids, switch over to your Marvel Previews.

Page 1 and… Dude, I’d really like to be on-board for “Leonardo Da Vinci, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” but I do not think I am. I’m sorry. Though kudos to Dustin Weaver for doing a bang-up Traves Charest impression with that cover. Really, bravo, that’s some very good Charesting.

10:04pm: Page… 4. “Iron Man by Design Variants”. Every issue this month will have a variant cover with artists doing their take on the Iron Man armour. I’m not really blown away by any of the art on display, sad-to-say.

Flipping the page and we get to the actual comics. SIEGE #4 wraps up the mini-series with the return of Iron Man. The following pages seem like epilogue after epilogue, which makes me wonder if they’re going to make any attempt to collect this in a way that makes sense to the story, or if they’re going to go the normal route of a half-dozen inter-related collections that add up to “what happened”. Because, it would be nice if they could just put out “stories” every once in a while.

10:08pm: Ultron looks fun to draw. (page 10)

10:09pm: I can’t be the first person to say this, but here goes:

“Bryan Hitch is drawing NEW AVENGERS FINALE? Here’s hoping that that the first issue of that new Avengers series doesn’t give away what happens in it. Or the second issue. Or the third issue.”

Ba-dum-bum.

10:14pm: Huh, Marvel’s adapting Philip K. Dick’s ELECTRIC ANT with a five issue mini-series. That’s pretty cool.  I think I’d seen reference to that, but didn’t realize it was coming so soon. Written by David Mack, cover by Mr. Paul Pope, though I’m not familiar with interior artist Pascal Alixe.

10:18pm: So… Marvel is solciting the second printing of “Deadpool Corps #1″ alongside the first printing of that issue. That’s… well, whatever.

10:20pm: Oooo! Page 34 has the first issue of Brendan McCarthy’s three-issue Dr. Strange story, cleverly called SPIDER-MAN: FEVER #1 so that people that think they don’t like Dr. Strange will pick it up. McCarthy’s a great artist and has a truly unique voice in comics, it’s frig’n bizarre to see him doing a mainstream marvel book but shit, why not right? Awesome days. Another one of my picks of the month.

Oh, 32 pages, $3.99.

10:26pm: So FALL OF THE HULKS leads into WORLD WAR HULKS? But FALL OF THE HULKS: SHE HULKS is still going on when the WWH book starts. Poor planning, or just a mini-series redundant to the main ‘through’ of the series?

10:30pm: Page 56 and 57 have Marvel relaunching their young-readers line, with SPIDER-MAN #1 and SUPER HEROES #1, both with a “Marvel Adventures” tag on the cover, but seemingly not in the solicit description. Still, that cover by Karl Kerschl is lovely on Spidey #1, and the books sell consistentlyhere at the store. Here’s hoping that the relaunch will see a boost in sales.

10:37pm: I know it’s for a good cause and all, but the fact that NEMESIS #2 by Mark Millar, solicited for April, wasn’t so far along in the production schedule that Millar could auction off the name of the character? It does not fill me with confidence that this series will come out on a schedule any different than Kick-Ass, which is to say a sort-of pathetic schedule.

10:47pm: Okay, that’s it folks! Thanks for reading! We’ll pick it up tomorrow morning with the back-half of the catalogue, and all of the wonderous new books sure to be contained within!

- Chris

Deb Aoki spent the night asking difficult questions on Twitter, about the difference between what Simmons did and what thousands of anime-convention artist alley kids do every year, when they sell their own illustrations and stories based on the work of famous manga creators like Tite Kubo. The short answer is that anime fandom sat up and said “NO! We do what we do out of love and have very strict rules about that sort of thing!” and blah blah blah, which basically ammounted to “It’s us doing it so it’s okay, but Nick Simmons is them, so he’s a pariah we’re all going to tear our garments over.”

Got news for you, champs.

When you sell illustrations, or short stories, featuring your favourite characters, you’re entering into exactly the same dirty world of “commerce” that poor Nick Simmons did. You may be, in your head, doing it in ‘tribute’ to the manga or the creator, but out in the real world? You’re ripping him off, just like Nick Simmons did. You’re more honest about your sources, but you’re less creative. You may even have a much higher degree of craft, but as soon as you violate someone’s copyright or IP in that way, making money based on (legally and artistically) derivative works? You’re all just a batch of Nick Simmons, building your careers on the backs of others creators.

Are there lots (lots) of people who do it? Yes. Is their a “community” of like minded people all telling each other that what they do is okay? Fuck yeah! Does it make a lick of difference…?

Here’s the thing: I’ve got infinitely more respect for obvious thief Nick Simmons than I do for the legions of artist-alley dwellers selling mass-produced copies of their fanart for characters. Nick Simmons is (badly) taking his influences and turning them into something (horribly derivative but at least nominally) “new”. It’s not original, it may not even be good, but every artist or writer is comprised mainly of the sum of their influences and experiences. But at least Simmons on his first shot out of the gate managed to synthesize all that shit into something other than “Here is a terribly drawn portrait of two BLEACH characters making out, in tribute to an author who clearly never wanted this to happen or he’d have done it himself. I am charging $10 for this colour photocopy.”

Paying “tribute” to an author like Kubo by selling work based on his creations is about the same as “building his popularity” by distributing illegal scans and fansubs of his work, I personally put the two in exactly the same category: complete fucking fiction.

What I’m saying is Nick Simmons’ behaviour is embarrassing and the work is getting the smackdown it deserves. But North American anime “fandom” for their legion of sins have no reason to be so comfortable in their condemnation, particularly because the behaviour they condone–and celebrate–is worse.

- Chris
P.S.: I love fan creations, I am happy that people legitimately pay tribute to artists they love on DeviantArt and in the myriad of Fanfic communities. Sell that work and you cross a line.

Edit Sat Feb27: Normally, I wouldn’t bother approving some of the stuff in the comments section, because there’s a combination of wrong-headedness and pomposity from a bunch of alias’d anime fans that’s off-putting at best, but I decided this time out to let the comments ride. Mostly because I think that the more ridiculous comments speak for themselves, but I also kind of knew that this would be a contentious one going in. As such, I don’t particularly recommend reading the comments here, but instead would recommend that the most compelling rebuttal to my ideas comes from Simon Jones at Icarus Comics, http://www.icaruscomics.com/wp_web/?p=4319, and you should check those out if you’re interested in more on the subject.

For my part, I do understand that plagiarism is bad news, but then I didn’t think that need to be stated. Instead my position was (and still is) that the culture of complacency and all of the mealy-mouthed defence for selling unauthorized work based on a creator’s IP that permeates anime fandom? Far, far worse than any individual instance of plagiarism, no matter how famous the plagiarist is. Seriously, the general attitude of North American Anime & Manga Fandom with its fansubs, it’s scanlations, it’s complete disregard for intellectual property, ethics, or fairness in the face of what they want (everything) and what they want to pay for it (nothing) is so much more utterly damaging to Tite Kubo, to manga and anime, and to Art and Artists hoping to make a living from their Art, than Nick Simmons could ever hope to be. Get your own house in order before crucifying this guy.

Thanks for reading!

- Christopher

Hey there, I know I’m not updating but there’s not much to be done about that at the moment. As it is I’m late for work because I was too exhausted to get outta bed this morning. :-(

But! I am busy doing cool comics stuff for you to read… and to listen to…!

This weekend I was invited to sit in on Deb Aoki’s guest-roundtable for the podcast INKSTUDS, as host Robin Mconnel is taking a two week break from the show. It’s the “Mangastuds” edition, which is hilarious, and features myself, Deb Aoki of manga.about.com, David Welsh of the the Precocious Curmudgeon blog, and Ryan Sands of the Same Hat blog. All lovely people with stuff to say about manga.

The best part? It’s all about “indy manga”, or comics from Japan that might naturally appeal to the tastes of indy comics fans (and creators) here in North America. I think it turned out pretty neat, with lots of recommendations for great work to check out. If you visit the Inkstuds website you can listen to the podcast and get a recommended reading list based on the titles we described in the podcast.

I also wrote a review this week that should be going up any day, I’ll pop in here when it does.

Things should calm down around Saturday afternoon/Sunday, so I’ll likely start blogging in earnest again then.

Thanks,

- Christopher

ITEM! I was once again invited to be a guest on the SPACE Podcast, on February 12th. For those of you not in the know, SPACE is Canada’s science fiction and fantasy television network, sort of like Syfy in the states. Host Mark Askwith and I spent about 30 minutes talking about Sci-Fi manga series and what might appeal to SPACE viewers. I covered the history of Sci-Fi manga in English as best I could (including the awesome PHOENIX by Osamu Tezuka), and then recommended four contemporary series: Naoki Urasawa’s PLUTO and 20TH CENTURY BOYS, Tsutomu Nihei’s BIOMEGA (all from Viz), and the upcoming TWIN SPICA from Kou Yaginuma (Vertical) to appease the increasingly cranky Ed Chavez. Please go listen! :)

ITEM! Jim Rugg is having an AFRODISIAC ART CONTEST, in support of the spectacular new hardcover release of AFRODISIAC, from AdHouse Books. Basically, great an art object that features (or references?) Afrodisiac, and you could win prizes! Like that neat piece of art there!

ITEM! Ryan Sands from SAME HAT! is building a list of the first manga published in English. So far he’s received input and assistance from tons of smart folks, and the list is pretty surprising too. The first-ever manga in English, a fan-translation of Barefoot Gen, is excerpted above.

BONUS ITEM! SAME HAT! also has news of a massive exhibit of GARO, the influential alternative Japanese manga anthology from the 60s and 70s, to take place in New York City just following MoCCA. Go check it out.

- Christopher

Spotted at ‘Plaza’  in Harajuku, July 2009. Ladies Briefs featuring Spider-Man. If you are a nerd who gets a lady to wear these for you, you are a lucky nerd indeed…!

- Chris

We got to Odaiba a little later than I wanted, and ended up missing a chance to see the lit-up Gundam do its whole thing. It had been powered-down for the night, but was still impressive. What was maybe more memorable was the view back across the bay to Tokyo.

- Chris

Love Star.

Sapporo.

Mos Burger X Mr. Donut. L to R: Donut Holes (asst), Chocolate “Cheese Burgers”, Mango Pudding, Fried Dough with Raspberry “Ketchup”.

Convenience Store Sandwiches on white bread. Default flavour is peanut butter, but these are special. Top: Strawberries and Whipped Cream Sandwich. Bottom: Caramel Pudding Sandwich.

Birthday Cake… thing. Thanks Dave!

Harajuku

Delicious.

- Chris

Dustin Harbin secures his spot at TCAF on the 5th floor, alone, by drawing me into a comic strip at his website. I like the illustration of me in the last panel the best but I didn’t want to spoil it.

- Christopher

–

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

From a store just outside Harajuku JR Station, comes these socks. Mickey Mouse as Spider-Man, from July 2009… months before the announcement of the Disney/Marvel deal. Completely unlicensed, entirely prescient.

From my post on Harajuku, which I am working on at the moment.

- Chris

But I guess the photos will have to do.

Worth noting: The bananas were actually pretty good!

- Christopher

Giant Robot Magazine #49 Cover by Adrian Tomine.

I don’t really mention it on the blog here as much as I should, but my favourite magazine is probably GIANT ROBOT, an independently produced and funded mag out of California. I’ve been a fan for years and years now, spotting it on the newstands with a bold logo, great title, and an eye-catching photo of CK model Jenny Shimizu way, way back. #10! It’s a general-interest magazine covering art, life, and culture, but with a focus on Asian culture specifically… both here in North America and internationally. It’s well-written, informative, and a great education in all of the things you aren’t going to find just reading manga and watching anime. It’s also very current, very vital, and when it comes to art and film especially it’s like having a great inside track.

Maybe the thing I like about it the most is that it’s so personal–editors Martin and Eric have been there since the beginning. They open every issue with an editorial and a direct address to the reader that feels real and unrehearsed, unlike so many editorial notes that are perfunctory and exclamatory coming from people with a 1-year-contract, these guys have been there since day one, and each little editorial is like a window into a long distance’s friend’s life. What they’ve been up to over the past few months (had a baby! lost at softball!) and how that might tie to this issue’s stories. Even better through working at The Beguiling and visiting the San Diego Comic Con ever year, I have gotten to know Martin and Eric in person, and they’re smart, friendly dudes who love doing what they do.

GR gives me fantastic artist profiles, stories on food and food culture, even a little bit of politics… That’s great stuff. That’s not just worth paying for, it’s worth supporting directly.

In keeping with their editorial style, Martin and Eric have recorded a video asking GR readers and the general public to lend them a hand in a difficult time:

I don’t think they’ve mentioned it anywhere yet (brave face and all that), but in addition to the kinds of issues facing print these days (declining ad revenue, distribution, sales) they’ve recently been dropped from Diamond’s PREVIEWS catalogue, the only way to interact with the vast majority of comic shops who carry manga, anime and other Asian culture goods. Because of GR’s somewhat erratic publishing schedule I didn’t even notice for a little while–and I’m a fan! I’m not pointing at Diamond in particular as the culprit, just a symptom of lost ground. Print is a ‘war of inches’ right now, and if you lose enough ground on enough fronts, eventually you lose the war. This appeal is to help keep them in the fight.

Please go to http://www.giantrobot.com/donate, and you can read more about what they’re asking for, and why, and why it’s a good idea to help. In addition to just helping keep a great arts and culture magazine going, different levels of donation will net you cool stuff like prints, books, original art, subscriptions and more.

My friend Mr. Bryan Lee O’Malley auctioned off a piece of his original art, and raised $2550 for the cause. Which is awesome. I don’t have that kind of art (or that kind of scratch), so we worked it out and I can probably swing about a hundred bucks to directly support artists and work I appreciate, and it nets me a subscription which is cool. I’m hoping that some of you reading here can spare a few bucks as well, or failing that, maybe take me at my word that this is a great magazine and subscribe? Every issue I find something really great in it, and the re-read potential is high. For just $24 (or $30 CDN) you can get a year of great magazines. Failing that? Grab an issue from the newsstand, comic store, wherever you see it and check it out for yourself. And thanks for reading all of this, I don’t make public appeals like this a regular thing, but GR is worth supporting and worth saving.

http://www.giantrobot.com/donate

- Christopher

The official Kanji of the Year for 2009, as chosen by The Japanese Kanji Proficiency Society? Shin, or ‘New’. Chosen for lots of different reasons, it feels like a lot the end of the last decade was on people’s minds the world over… particularly in Japan where the ruling party since WWII was swept from power! For more on the Kanji of the Year see Wikipedia.

- Chris

Kirin Lemon Strong, 8% alcohol. It’s terrible. Like lemon-flavoured paint thinner. Bought on my first night in Tokyo. This is Chuhai, a sort of only-in-Japan wine-cooler type beverage made with Shochu, which is distilled from Rice, Barley, or Potatoes depending… Chuhai comes from “Shochu Highball”, which is basically a mixed drink made with Shochu. I really dig these chuhai beverages, but this one with the amped up alcohol and chemical lemon taste? No good.

White-Grape flavoured soda at Mos Burger. Really tasty!

“Organic Orange Juice” J-BIO. Tasted awful, like under-ripe oranges. Sitting next to a piece of cheese-twisty-bread. What is the most prominent flavour in the cheese-twisty-bread? If you answered “wasabi/hot mustard”, you’d be correct. Worst breakfast.

Later in the trip, on the way to Sapporo actually, Andrew woke up in the morning and had a regular-strength Kirin lemon chuhai. This was our go-to beverage for the trip, and it treated us very well. Refreshing, with a hint of tipsy.

Asahi Presents: Fruits Party Chuhai! Tastes like muscat (green grapes). Next to it is “Gyoza Flavoured Hokkaido Potato Chips.” Behind it evidence of the more than 20 hours of work I did on Beguiling stuff while on vacation for three weeks.

This is a drinks case in the far corner of the food bazaar underneath Sapporo JR Station. This is the only place in Japan I saw A&W root beer!

This drink case is in the 7-11 attached to the Post Office near Sapporo JR station. In the center near the bottom, you can see two bottles of Rei Ayanami-branded Cafe Latte, clearly the best-selling drink of the day.

Nother shot of the cold UCC Cafe Latte with sexy Rei on it. These are all cold coffees, usually with milk in them. Milk and preservatives.

This was in Kyoto. We ended up staying in a budget hotel right near the manga museum, with lots of residences (and hotels) around. Just north of our hotel was this little scene, 2 vending machines in the outer lobby of an apartment building, with another across the street. Lighthouses that dot the city, guiding thirsty travelers through the urban seas.

Only 100 yen! Deal!

After walking under the blazing sun in Shirahama on Izu for basically three kilometres with no breakfast, I managed to convince my husband that we needed to eat. My increasingly cranky mood may have tipped the scales. We ended up going to the first restaurant we saw, which happened to be a Nagisa beer-themed restaurant, with western meals and really great beer, all-natural, totally unlike the Japanese beers we’d been drinking. Andrew had a pizza for lunch, I had pasta alfredo. It was just us, two sweaty white guys, and tons of Japanese house-wives, all getting lunch. My mood improved considerably after lunch, and I heartily recommend Nagisa Beer.

Our at a proper supermarket in Shirahama, with tons and tons of drinks. Awesome.  Not more selection, but definitely an impressive display! Let’s go in for a closer look.

I bought this Collagen Water, because I heard that it was a thing but I had never seen it on store shelves in Canada. It’s a little like drinking watery lube, with a hint of lemon. So no, I do not recommend it.

In Japan the word “diet” refers to Japanese parliament, and not eating specific kinds of food. So there is no ‘diet coke’ for the most part. They’ve got Coke Zero, which is still Coke Zero, but Diet Coke is called a bunch of different stuff. Currently, it’s No Calorie Coca-Cola Plus! This was a limited edition Coca Cola Plus, with added green tea flavouring. It tasted nothing like green tea, but for a diet coke addict in a country without diet coke… It was basically methadone for my heroin problem.

This is the awesomest canned coffee, BOSS COFFEE RAINBOW. So far as I can tell it tastes like all of the other canned coffees, but it is called BOSS and it has that dude on it, and also a rainbow.

Asahi Cocktail Partner! Made with real fruit juice, and perhaps Vodka! I think vodka rather than chuhai in this one? We tried one, I couldn’t really tell the difference.

The only place in Japan that you CAN get Diet Coke (okay, so I fibbed earlier), is Mickey Ds. While this is basically the size of a Large Coke in North America, in Japan it’s such a freakish size that it comes in a one-piece, sealed container for easy transport back to your home, because you’re clearly not drinking it while out. Japan!

- Chris

Look, it’s a stunning photo of ME, taken by Charlie Chu, Oni’s newest employee (congrats buddy). That photo (or a crop thereof) graces an interview with me at Torontoist.com that went up earlier this week. In it I talk about comics and graphic novels and Canadian publishing and TCAF and The Beguiling and even this-here-blog. Thanks to Dave Howard for conducting the interview, and if you’ve been missing me here as of late you’ll probably get a kick out of the interview –it was taped rather than typed so I’m more off the cuff and rambly than usual.

On that note, my hosting bill came due at the end of January, and after a careful (slapdash) assessment of my finances, it looks like my advertising here at Comics212 over the last two years just barely covered my hosting here at Comics212 for the last two years. That’s the first time that’s happened, which is very nice and thanks to my many fine advertisers for that. Unfortunately, I should probably be doing a heck of a lot better after almost 8 years of blogging at roughly the same address, so more efforts to generate revenue from this site will be forthcoming. On the plus side that probably means I’ll write more…!

Actual blogging resumes later tonight.

- Christopher

“I worked for them as a letterer at an embarrassingly low page rate. I took it to get some more superhero style stuff under my belt, hoping that I could at least use them as a springboard to get better work down the line.

For the first two books, things went ok. However, on the next four, I had to send invoices up to six times with constant reminders in order to get paid. It was crazy how often someone could “lose” invoices or have them “caught by the spam filter”. After having waited about 6 months to get paid, I walked and stopped doing any work for them. They did eventually pay up, but it took a lot of effort to get them to do so.

During the above situation, someone who’d worked on one of the books that I worked on contacted me to see if I’d been paid. He’d taken a back-end deal and was told that the book hadn’t made any money. I wasn’t surprised, to be honest — It didn’t seem like it was going to be a big seller. The person didn’t know much about how distribution worked and thought that it was a lie that Diamond was only giving about 40% of cover price, so I kind of dismissed his claims at first. Then he sent me a spreadsheet of expenses and income that he’d been sent from Bluewater and asked me to look over to see if it made sense. I was shocked to find that the cost of lettering was listed at TWICE what I was paid.

Maybe there’s a logical explanation as to why the lettering cost was listed at twice what I was paid, but I can’t think of what it would be. What it looks like, to me, is number fudging.

- Ed Brisson, comics creator and small-press publisher

So to reitterate: Most creatives working with Bluewater only get paid royalties once a book is profitable. But the accounting to determine whether or not a book is profitable is done by the publisher, and has allegedly been rigged in the publisher’s favour at least once. So to those last, few, desperate people defending the business practices of this company, it’s not just that you’re working for free to ‘get your name out there’ which in this age of social media and webcomics is frankly ridiculous, but this publisher may actually be deliberately cheating you out of money that you would be owed. I would recommend, again, to any creator looking to ‘break into’ comics, to find other routes than through the gutter.

In a completely unrelated matter, in no way tied to the previous statement (particularly in a way that could get folks like Mr. Brisson in trouble vis a vis Bluewater’s constant legal threats), after consulting with my employer we’ve decided at The Beguiling to no longer carry Bluewater’s product. If a customer would like to pre-order Bluewater’s material with payment, we’ll honour that request, because we’re a full-service comic store. But frankly the idea of supporting this publisher with shelf copies (or making money ourselves off of these books) has become incredibly unappealing to us for a variety of reasons.

For more on Bluewater Comics, check out Simon Jones, Tom Spurgeon, Johanna Draper Carlson (2), and Heidi MacDonald.

- Christopher, “every bit helps,” said the old woman as she pissed into the sea.

We launched the TCAF website last week, and I think we finally have all of the bugs worked out and the little changes I wanted made, made. We haven’t really done any official PR yet, letting people discover it on their own through word of mouth, but I imagine that’ll change next week some time. I have one really big meeting tomorrow, and then one ridiculously big meeting on Friday morning, so work time and free time is kind of eaten up by that.

In addition to being angry enough to throw a couple of finger-pointy blog entries up, I decided to forgo 5 or 6 hours sleep this week to write a review for Manga.About.Com, on my favourite release of 2010 (to date), not simple by Natsume Ono. Go check it out. It was interesting because About.com has very strict guidelines about format and length, and it’s the exact opposite of my experiences writing here at the blog… or literally anywhere I’ve freelanced. I’m going to try to keep writing reviews for the site, because I think a few harsh formating choices will make me a better writer. Thanks to Manga.About.Com Guide Deb Aoki for the opportunity.

As for Manga Milestones… #9 is International Manga, probably as typified by Yen Plus #1/Night School by Svetlana Chmakova. I can’t decide how much I want to write about this. I could literally write 2 or 3 thousand words ripping Tokyopop and ADV new assholes, but I’m not entirely sure there’s enough of a point to it. I’ve been going back and forth in my head for a few weeks, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be too busy to write it, but manga influenced comics from Korea and North America were utterly shit-on, 2000-2008. I wonder if dredging up every single way that happened is worthwhile, when the future is so much brighter for all involved now? Still working on it in my head.

#10 is still a secret though.

- Chris @ The Beguiling

You’re both wrong, I’m the new Batman.

Props to Kevin P. for the tip.

- Chris

Torontonian artist and illustrator Gary Taxali has unveiled a near-complete preview of his art show at Narwhal Gallery this Thursday January 28th, entitled “The Taxali 300″. A collection of prints on found objects and ephemera, it’s a wonderful example of his style, influenced by pre-war cartoons and illustrations. A lovely way to spend an hour.

Taxali is notable for having given Google the finger, literally and figuratively, when they approached him and other illustrators to produce illustrations for their various pieces of software, with no intent on paying them. In this instance, it probably would have been a very good ‘portfolio piece’, but Taxali decided that his work was worth being paid for, particularly when a (very) large company making lots (and lots) of money was the one who came calling, asking for freebies. Good on him.

- Christopher

“Bottom line is that if you want to break into the comic book world, or any artistic venue for that matter, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up,”
– Commenter on Newsarama, ‘defending’ Bluewater by calling them “the bottom”

Bluewater Comics has an awful contract that creators sign because they’re desperate to “break into” the industry. Basically, they don’t pay you until a comic book is “profitable” and then it’s a royalty, with no advances. Which is kind of a shitty contract in the book world, but you still see it. The difference is that in this case Bluewater owns or licenses the Intellectual Property (IP) and what they’re doing is developing that IP for other-media on the backs of young freelancers, whom they never have to pay, and that moves from being a shitty contract to exploitation.

Here’s the secret about not getting paid for work: If you’re not being held to a professional standard (and the page rates in the comics industry are often criminally low, and easy-to-hit…) then you’re generally not turning in professional work. Does the poor bastard who turns out an ugly, unedited Ronald Reagan bio for Bluewater think that they’ve got “a portfolio piece”? Do they think they’re “professional” now? No, fuck no. Any self-respecting editor at any company knows that Bluewater is churning out books with very little quality control, that a “portfolio piece” from them counts for very little unless the freelancer was exceptionally talented to begin with. Talented artists: Build your portfolios for and by yourself, and not, say, by providing free artwork to companies who could pay you, but don’t want to. It’s the quality of what you produce that will decide whether you get hired or fired. The “even if we don’t pay them it’s still a portfolio piece” argument is a myth, flat-out, myth, because if you’re putting together a portfolio you put your strongest work in.

(Admittedly, it’s probably a better deal for writers, because it’s harder to ’show’ writing samples than art samples, but I have yet to read any of their bio comics that are any good, and even if someone wrote a stunning biography of Oprah Winfrey, I have a hard time believing an editor is going to look at that and go “Shit, this person writes great trashy celeb cash-in biographies, I definitely want to see what they can do with a completely different style of writing.” Like, it could happen, but colour me unsurprised that it hasn’t yet.)

There are a number of companies that will pay freelancers to do comics, not promise to pay them if certain conditions are met, and leaving behind a long trail of dissatisfied creators claiming non-payment. My advice to aspiring talent is to find them, and realize that starting at the bottom doesn’t necessarily mean the gutter.

- Chris