January 9, 2011 Johanna Yen Press Manga Reviews 2 comments

Yotsuba&! Volume 9

This series by Kiyohiko Azuma, the continuing adventures of a young green-haired girl who is almost supernaturally innocent, provides a take on daily life that serves as a terrific getaway from the reader’s cares. The first chapter of Yotsuba&! volume 9, which took an unexpected twist, worked as a surprise for me because of how well it’s all drawn. Unusual occurrences are somewhat run-of-the-mill for Yotsuba, anyway, so when something odd started happening, I rode with it until the page […]

January 9, 2011 Johanna Vertical Manga Reviews Leave a comment

Chi’s Sweet Home Volumes 3 and 4

The “cute cat comic” by Konami Kanata continues with some family changes. As volume 3 starts, the big black cat introduced in volume 2 is teaching kitten Chi how to open doors on her own, not an action that’s a particularly good idea. The black cat is the source of all trouble, Chi’s inappropriate parent figure, showing how to mark territory and hunt birds and other ways to annoy people. That indicates how animal instincts don’t always match people preferences. […]

January 9, 2011 Johanna Tokyopop Manga Reviews One comment

Aria Volume 6

During the busy year-end/new start period, sometimes all I’m looking for is a bit of escapism, a read to take me away from mundane tasks and into another world, even if as far-reaching as imagining a job as a gondolier on another planet in the future. Those kinds of stories give me a break from worries, the best kind of manga to read. The message of Kozue Amano’s Aria, made all the more poignant by the slow release schedule of […]

January 7, 2011 Johanna Movie News 3 comments

Studios Announce UltraViolet, New Shared DRM Scheme

As announced yesterday: Six of Hollywood’s largest studios including Lionsgate Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. today announced their support for the UltraViolet service and format created by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE). So what is UltraViolet? It’s a shared digital rights management scheme (first announced last year). The plan is that you buy a TV show or movie once, and you can watch it on multiple UV-enabled platforms, […]

January 6, 2011 Johanna Comic News One comment

Interview With Brian Fies About Graphic Medicine Conference

After getting some information about the upcoming Graphic Medicine conference, scheduled for June in Chicago, from Brian Fies, I asked him a few more questions about the upcoming event. My thanks to him for his time and answers. Q: How did you come to work with the Graphic Medicine conference? I was asked! The organizer of last June’s London conference, Ian Williams — who is both a cartoonist and physician — invited me to give a keynote lecture. I thought […]

January 4, 2011 Johanna Comic News 6 comments

Flex Mentallo Finally Returns to Print — A Brief History and Atlas Letter

Now, this is interesting — Pamela Mullin has just announced at the Vertigo blog (link no longer available) that DC will be publishing the long-out-of-print Flex Mentallo in a “Deluxe Edition hardcover with bonus material” this fall. The four-issue miniseries has been a fan favorite due to its creators — Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely — and unusual meta-fictional treatment of comics and their influence on readers. This isn’t the first “we won’t publish this!” item that has come back […]

January 3, 2011 Johanna Dark Horse 2 comments

Sinfest

It astounds me that such a creative, well-done comic strip as Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest is available daily for free. Such accomplished, high-quality work is well worth paying for — which can be done by buying this collection, and you get the bonus of comics in more permanent print form. I’ve called Sinfest “the best webcomic out there“, and I stand by that judgment. Nothing else combines such beautiful cartooning with such insightful observations and wide-ranging humor. Ishida can draw cute […]

January 2, 2011 Johanna Dark Horse Manga Reviews 3 comments

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Volume 11

story by Eiji Otsuka art by Housui Yamazaki As this black humor/ghost revenge manga series enters its second “decade” of volumes, we begin with a redesign. In place of the previous “brown paper wrapper” approach, in which a khaki cover gives the feel of reading something to be hidden away from the view of others, now the books have a prominent block of black, symbolizing death and the unknown mystery. In another change from previous books, most of volume 11 […]

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