Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I let a bunch of volumes of Say I Love You stack up, and coincidentally, it was right when the series took an interesting turn. The previous book, volume 9, was more of the high school love story that I was enjoying, but with these books, author Kanae Hazuki begins treating these kids as the adults they’re about to be. It’s fascinating to see the characters grow and the series transition from love story into meditations on growing up and […]
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The Judas Contract is one of the most famous DC superhero storylines ever, from a period when The Teen Titans was one of the most popular books coming out. It was highly ambitious, combining fighting a killer cult, with Brother Blood and his followers questions of trust, as a Titan betrays the team insinuations of sex between Nightwing and Starfire (one of the most shocking and memorable points, given the timeframe) the origin of Deathstroke, a mercenary villain out to […]
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Wonder Woman: The True Amazon is a beautifully illustrated book that doesn’t need to exist. It’s yet another retelling of the heroine’s origin, but that’s not my biggest complaint, since it does a lovely job of actually establishing a believable society for the Amazons. My biggest objection is that this book by Jill Thompson is yet another example of a story that shows how a hero became a hero by doing a bad thing first and seeing how rotten it […]
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I hadn’t realized Kingsman: The Secret Service was as successful as it was, making over $400 million worldwide. That explains why a sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, is coming this September. As with the first movie, this one is directed by Matthew Vaughn and co-written by him and Jane Goldman. It stars Taron Egerton and carried over from the previous, Mark Strong and oddly, Colin Firth. I’m surprised, given events of the first film, he’s still in it, but there […]
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As always, this recipe manga series by Fumi Yoshinaga shares principles about cooking and eating that are universal and welcome, even if I can’t make the exact dishes. (Since the meals are based in Japanese home cooking, they often depend on ingredients, like shirodashi or mitsuba, that I wouldn’t know where to get. I usually end up looking them up on Wikipedia, since they aren’t translated or explained in notes.) But the specific recipes aren’t the point — the key […]
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In trying to catch up with Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun, I found it helpful to keep Volume 4 at hand, because that’s the book that has the cast’s character profiles at the back, and I tend to get the various male supporting characters confused easily. The young women are much more distinctive: there’s viewpoint character Sakura, the nice girl who tries hard and crushes on manga creator Nozaki; Seo, who’s athletic and mean but sings beautifully; Kashima, the androgynous prince who’s […]
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I don’t normally read a lot of 4-koma manga (collections of four-panel strips), because I find them too fluffy and inconsequential. I do like Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun, because it’s got a good amount of in-jokes about making manga, and I appreciated the best-known, Azumanga Daioh. Too many, though, just want to copy that last title by showing a group of girls, each with a mildly distinctive characteristic, and lots of school uniforms. Kiniro Mosaic by Yui Hara has a premise […]
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I’ve already reviewed the three books reprinted in A Treasury of XX Century Murder Compendium: The Lindbergh Child The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans Madison Square Tragedy so I was surprised at how much I was affected by re-reading them. They’re perhaps the most outstanding of the many volumes in Rick Geary’s Twentieth Century Murder series, although all of the books are informative and thought-provoking. Geary tackles famous murders, obviously, but each case sheds light on more than just who […]
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