Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
It’s an anniversary for Amir and Karluk, the couple married in the first volume of A Bride’s Story. He’s only 12 years old, and he’s proud to still be growing taller. That leads to the need for new clothes, which drives the couple to a family council, as they struggle with how much he wants to be treated like a man and how much he still needs to be taken care of. The couple’s feelings clash, but at the root, […]
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It’s been a long time — five years and nearly 20 volumes — since I last checked in with Case Closed by Gosho Aoyama. It launched in the US in 2004, and it’s quite impressive to see how it’s still going strong. Although this is the latest book out here, there are 85 volumes in Japan so far, where it began in 1994. Volume 52 was a great choice to try again, since all the mysteries are self-contained, starting and […]
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Late for Dinner is a 1991 science fiction movie (but focused on relationships instead of technology) that is the answer to a trivia question. W.D. Richter, the director of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, only ever directed one other movie. It’s this one. It’s the story of two brothers (played by Brian Wimmer and Peter Berg) from 1961 who accidentally get frozen and wake up 30 years later. One has left behind a wife (Marcia Gay […]
Read moreAfter successfully completing over 2000 strips, eight books, and a cross-country road trip during the past ten years, Danielle Corsetto has announced that Girls With Slingshots will be ending “in the next couple of months”. And of course, the announcement was a comic strip. She’s taking an educational sabbatical for a while. At the site, older strips will rerun with new color and commentary. She plans to bring back the strip and its characters in some undetermined form at some […]
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Three years ago, I enjoyed reading Nelson, a multi-creator anthology from British publisher Blank Slate Books with a huge range of talented names contributing. It’s a terrific exploration of one woman’s life, cultural changes to the country, and a variety of art styles. Now, the publisher has announced a special edition. That post has the full history of how it came about, but the short version is: New cover by Frank Quitely. Signed by all the creators (two by reprint). […]
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I’m not sure the premise of this article, on how Avatar “is all-but-forgotten in the pop culture landscape”, will remain true — particularly when Avatar Land opens at Walt Disney World in 2017 — but it’s a fascinating reminder of how something well-known can burn out quickly, and how fickle popular tastes can be. The James Cameron film is the highest-grossing of all time, and it made 3-D a reputable artistic technique, not just a gimmick, but on its fifth […]
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I previously wrote about Comicsfix, which aims to be a Netflix for comics, an all-you-can-read monthly subscription service. There hasn’t been an official announcement I can find, but they have begun adding older Valiant issues, the first four each of several series, including X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, and Harbinger. There seems to be more to come. They’ve also added a New Arrivals shelf on their library page, so users can easily see what’s new. I took advantage of this reminder to […]
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Honey Blood is a strange choice to translate. It’s only two volumes (with a bonus book of short stories), because it got cancelled in Japan, and its plot is both very familiar and sadly unresolved in its short length. The author, Miko Mitsuki, isn’t well-known here — I couldn’t find any mention of anything else she’s done that’s been translated — so the question arises: why this series? The answer seems to be “vampires” (as you might guess from the […]
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