Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
As I feared, Miki Aihara’s worst tendencies are coming to light in Honey Hunt volume 6. Although considered a promising actress-to-be, Yura is also a dishrag, typical of Aihara’s young women. All that matters to her is whether she has the attention of the man she’s crushing on, risking her career (such as it is — she demonstrates no talent, just family connections) for a date. She gets jobs after press coverage based on whom she might be dating. Much […]
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Here’s where Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County hits its peak, covering the 1984 election by having the various animals enter politics as members of the Meadow Party. (This was also about the midpoint of its run, since the strip ran from 1980-1989.) Bill the Cat is running for President in spite of his scandals, bad habits, and state of mortality — dead. Today, when politics have become so nasty and fragmented and hateful, it’s quite amusing to read the satire of […]
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Or the one where the gangly, floppy-haired Matt Smith debuts. (Matt? I suppose it’s no worse than Tom.) Almost everyone is new, actually, with Steven Moffat taking over from Russell T. Davies as head writer and executive producer. I can’t blame them for wanting a change — four successful seasons plus a whole bunch of specials has got to be a lot of work. However, I’m still coming to terms with it all. Smith doesn’t create the same kind of […]
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Akito and Moritaka struggle to become manga-ka (published comic creators) by meeting with an editor at Shueisha (owner of Viz Media) in Bakuman volume 2. They’re getting advice on submitting to the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. (That’s the original home of this manga during its serialization — it’s Disney-style cross-promotion in action!) The advice on making comics seems realistic, at least when it comes to the Japanese industry. I’m not sure a story about kids making professional-level manga can ever […]
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I don’t recall which convention I found this at — probably SPX — but I’m glad I did. It’s an excellent argument for making webcomic books. I wouldn’t have looked twice at the minimally illustrated webcomic, but as a book, I could flip through, find some wisdom, and decide to buy, where I could read it at my own pace. Now I’m signing up to subscribe to the strip online. Ryan Dow calls his work “introspective comics”, and so they […]
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I am really glad I own this movie. I’d meant to talk about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World before now, but there’s just way too much stuff on the Blu-ray for me to get through it all before I tell you about it, much as I tried. Four commentaries! (Which took me a while to find — they’re at the end of the extras section.) Plus an on-screen trivia track that identifies all the real-life locations and music and design […]
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Cowboys & Aliens is Universal’s bid for a big summer blockbuster. It will be in theaters July 29, 2011, but the press has already started, with a release sent out announcing the poster and a trailer debuting on Wednesday. They’ve got some big names in the cast — Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde — an easily graspable high concept, and the ability to say “from the director of Iron Man“, Jon Favreau. It’s all “based on Platinum Studios’ graphic […]
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I loved Sherlock from the opening, where we’re introduced to Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman, Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the very nice porn stand-in in Love Actually). Dr. Watson is still an Army medic, but that means a very different thing to the viewer when the war was in today’s Afghanistan instead of that of 1880. He’s living in a tiny flat, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, with a leg wounded in action, and […]
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