Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
Kickstarter is so easy to use that a lot of people are rushing into it who don’t have the skills necessary to run their own business, especially when it comes to marketing. With so many people using it for comics, it can be difficult to get attention and meet your pledge goal (especially if you’re asking for thousands of dollars). Many Kickstarters know that they need to get mentions and links to succeed. Earlier today, I got one of those […]
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In volume 8, the boys are now in college, where they run into a classic debate. A former classmate wants Takagi to write prose stories instead of manga because “novels are a higher form of literary expression”. This challenger, Iwase, is quite the achiever, writing an award-winning literary novel while maintaining straight A’s in school. While trying to impress each other, she and Takagi debate whether recognition or sales are more important, plus the value of entertaining people through their […]
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In an attempt to mimic and learn from the young Yotsuba’s acceptance of the world as a place of wonder to discover, I shall not complain about how long it’s been since the previous volume. (Volume 9 was out last year about this time.) Instead, I shall enjoy the stories inside, glad that we have it at all. I’ve talked many times about how funny I find Yotsuba and her unique view of everyday life, as portrayed by Kiyohiko Azuma, […]
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Books can be keys to fostering imagination and new ideas, and some people hate that. Americus, by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill, dramatizes the conflict that occurs when a lonely boy’s favorite fantasy series is targeted for censorship in his small Oklahoma town. There’s even an heroic librarian, to charm those of us who love books and their keepers. Neil and his best friend Danny are mesmerized by the series “Chronicles of Apathea Ravenchilde, the Huntress Witch”, reading every volume […]
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It’s Matt Smith’s second series as the Doctor! The 14-episode set of Doctor Who: The Complete Sixth Series begins with a disc containing the hour-long special A Christmas Carol, a charming story that freshens up the classic Dickens tale with comedy and a giant flying shark. The Doctor has to un-harden the heart of Michael Gambon by going back in time to make his childhood holidays more fun. It’s a brilliant blend of time travel and a story well-known enough […]
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As announced this summer, tomorrow’s Archie #627 is part one of the “Archie Meets KISS” storyline, “Riverdale Rock City”. The publisher has provided the following preview story pages. As you can see, we don’t really meet KISS yet, although the situation is set up: Sabrina and the “Riverdale Monster Society” — a new invention that tells us that Archie and his buddies, including super-scientific Dilton, now a) know Sabrina the Teenage Witch, b) know she’s a witch, and c) believe […]
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Art Spiegelman’s Maus is a completely unique graphic novel, the only comic to win the Pulitzer Prize. It is meaningful — telling the story of Spiegelman’s father, a Holocaust survivor, through his son’s eyes — and worth study, yet it turns on the simplest and silliest of visual imagery — the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice. It opened readers’ minds to what the comic format could do, 25 years ago. Now, this companion volume serves to elaborate on how […]
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The author of The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology returns with another volume in the popular true-science comic series. (Note that with this book, the series pricing goes from $19.95 a book to $24.95, but Amazon has substantial discounts available, and other vendors might as well.) Writer Masaharu Takemura explains in the preface what biochemistry is: the study of the molecules that constitute our bodies … and the chemical reactions that occur within cells. While the science itself is full […]
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