Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I was eager to read SuBLime Manga’s The Man of Tango, since ballroom dancing is an interest of mine. What better to symbolize and visualize passion and desire than the most sensual dance? Angie (Angel) is a tango teacher and exhibition dancer. He and his partner Bene give lessons, although they get distracted by the men that fall in love with Angie but don’t last with him (which allows for the explicit sex scenes that give the book its mature […]
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I enjoyed Sherlock Bones volume 3 enough that I tracked down the two previous volumes. I found that the cases covered there followed the same pattern, making this a read better spread out instead of tackled all at once, where it risks becoming repetitive. The first book opens with Takeru adopting Sherdog. I had wondered if there were details to how they got together beyond the brief version in the Story So Far section (or at the beginning of some […]
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It’s not out for a couple of months yet in the US (due April 22), but I enjoyed She Is Not Invisible so much that I couldn’t wait to write about it. It’s the story of Laureth, a sixteen-year-old girl who takes her seven-year-old brother Benjamin from England to New York to find their missing father. Only she’s blind, so the travel plans are a bit more complicated than simply borrowing Mom’s credit card. And Benjamin’s got his own weird […]
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I very much enjoyed the shojo manga series High School Debut, so I have mixed emotions about this omnibus news. On the one hand, I’m glad more people will have a chance to read the series; on the other, putting new material in the reprints makes me gnash my teeth, since I don’t want to rebuy books for that reason. Then again, it’s only one book, and it sounds as though 2/3 of it (for the price of 1 1/2 […]
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One of my favorite artists, Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), will be providing an alternate cover for the upcoming second volume of the erotica anthology Smut Peddler (which I am submissions editor for). Here’s a sneak peek, cropped to keep it family-friendly. Click through the image to her site for the full version.
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The Bojeffries Saga is my favorite Alan Moore title. It’s got a strong sense of humor, for one thing, and while the writer is almost single-handedly responsible for shaping the dark and introspective US comic market from 1986-1993 (with Watchmen, which launched the grim’n’gritty trend; Swamp Thing, a key title responsible for the Vertigo imprint; and V for Vendetta, among other works), many of his comics are too depressing for me to truly love them. (And thankfully, this book doesn’t […]
Read moreJustin Stroman provides an excellent rundown of, as he puts it, “legal manga reading sites with either advertising and/or site wide mistakes that’s kind of crippling.” So, ok, you know going in that his experience wasn’t great, but it’s neat to know that there are options out there beyond Crunchyroll Manga and Mangabox (which is a weekly magazine app for mobile devices) and the publisher pay sites. He covers Manga Reborn, Renta!, Amimaru, Balloons & Chapters, Manga Samurai, and Manga […]
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I have no idea why it took this long to do a Scooby-Doo/Batman team-up comic, given how weird the match is but how well it works. Anyway, now we have Scooby-Doo Team-Up, a kids’ comic with adult appeal. Issue #2 features the Mystery Machine kids and the Dark Knight meeting up with the Mystery Analysts of Gotham City (who date from the 1960s) in a story by Sholly Fisch and illustrated by Dario Brizuela. It includes these three pages, my […]
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