Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I had the pleasure of discovering the work of both Lucy Knisley (Radiator Days) and Erika Moen (DAR) this year. So imagine my glee when I discovered that the two had teamed up for this conversational comic collaboration. The two artists passed the pages back and forth between themselves over a period of about six months. Via the internet, they drew themselves talking to each other, but it’s the subjects they cover that make this fascinating. They talk about deciding […]
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Imaginative adventure is best when underlined by caring young love. Johnny Hiro is a busboy whose girlfriend Mayumi is kidnapped by Godzilla in the first story in this book. While racing to her rescue, Johnny’s mind flashes back to previous times he’d faced great injury. It’s that playful awareness that makes this more than just another slacker-starring action tale. Nothing happens as expected, but even in the weirdest event, there’s a sense of reality that stems from the core of […]
Read moreFor the purpose of this post, I’m using a highly idiosyncratic definition of “best”, based mostly on what I looked forward to and enjoyed re-reading. I have a few subcategories, under which I’ve ranked a maximum of five titles, with #1 being best. Links take you to reviews of the titles. Best New Manga Pluto — Simply astounding, a meditation on the nature of what it means to be human in a time of great crisis, told through a gripping […]
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A Drifting Life is impressive just in its size: 850+ pages about Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s life as a manga creator, from post-World War II Japan through 1960. (Some of Tatsumi’s other works, such as The Push Man and Other Stories and Abandon the Old in Tokyo, are also available in English from Drawn & Quarterly. This volume is flipped, so it can be read from left to right.) In fact, it’s intimidating. All the more so when you realize it’s already […]
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Manga from Aurora, Deux (the yaoi line), and Luv Luv (sex comics for women) are now on deep discount sale for the holidays (link no longer available). (Perhaps I should say “still on sale”, since the last time I talked about Aurora, back in March, they were pricing similarly.) Most everything is four dollars a book, or if you buy sets, the savings are even greater. For example, all 8 Luv Luv titles for $15 (or about $2 a book). […]
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I had thought this charming series ended last year, when the title character, a Victorian maid, captured the heart of her beloved, an upper-class gentleman. However, this year saw the release of three more volumes. These additional books collected short stories featuring other characters from the series, providing additional glimpses into the detailed world built by artist Kaoru Mori. Now, with this final volume, the series really is over, and it’s quite a shame. Mori’s portrayal of the Victorian world […]
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MTV has a five-page preview of the Gossip Girl manga from Yen Press. It didn’t give me the guilty thrill of watching the series, though. First, the narration is wrong. Instead of from a sardonic observer, the never-identified website owner, who both obsesses over and despises the people she covers, the voice here is Blair’s. Who is drawn more like a bikini model than the fashion follower and trend setter she is. I thought the other characters were generic — […]
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Yesterday, DC Comics announced Earth One: two direct-to-book-format stories, one each for Superman and Batman, retelling the origin in modern day, in a “new continuity”, created by names well-known to current comic readers. The reaction was generally negative, although the reason WHY it was disliked varied greatly depending on the speaker. And before I get into all that, note that key details are missing from the announcement, like price point, marketing plans, and release dates, so a lot of reaction, […]
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