Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I’m looking at four title launches Tokyopop has coming out in June. (All prices in U.S. dollars.) Takeru: Opera Susanoh Sword of the Devil volume 1 is a standard format manga title, which means 192 pages for $10.99, their new price point. (But it’s selling at 20% off on Amazon, which puts it at $8.79. That may be why they shifted from $9.99 — under $10 books don’t get discounted as much as over $10 books do, so even though […]
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I enjoyed Guy Delisle’s Shenzhen, so I was eager to try his earlier Pyongyang, in which he journeys to North Korea. I’m glad I did, because I found it to be an ever better book than the other, largely because the country is so much stranger. As in Shenzhen, Delisle is working in North Korea for a couple of months as a supervising animation director. The opening scene, in which he’s taken to worship at a giant statue of President […]
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Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China captures Guy Delisle’s culture shock in visiting a country so very different from his own. Shenzhen is in Southern China, near Hong Kong. He’s been sent to this commercial city in the late 90s to supervise an animation crew. For three months, he’s got to deal with inferior work, a lack of other foreigners, and the things that are common to all big cities: dirt, noise, smells. There aren’t many translators, and those that are […]
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Rick Geary is best-known these days for his true crime stories exploring historical murders, such as his recent The Lindbergh Child. In The Adventures of Blanche, he tackles similar past settings — three world cities during the early 1900s — but the action is definitely fictional. Geary’s traditional pen-and-ink style, with its thick lines and distinctive caricatures, does a wonderful job building a different world for the reader. As Blanche writes home to her parents, we see through her eyes […]
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A journalist is given the task of finding the Ultimate Menu, the best of all his country’s food, for his newspaper’s 100th anniversary. The series that catalogs his quest has been running for over 25 years and 100 books in its native Japan, and highlights have been collected in the Viz manga series Oishinbo a la Carte. The first volume, Japanese Cuisine, focuses on several key meal ingredients, starting with dashi (stock/broth). Additional chapters cover rice and miso soup; sashimi; […]
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Subtitled The Power of Negative Thinking, this series by Koji Kumeta is the story of depressed, suicidal schoolteacher Nozomu. (The title translates as “Goodbye, Mr. Despair”.) Except, not really. It’s really a device to tell stories about his various students, all of which have their own unusual problems. I found it first shocking and then wonderful, because I like black humor. In the opening scene, the eternally optimistic and hopeful Kafuka comes across her teacher trying to hang himself, as […]
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Here starts the promotion for Green Lantern: First Flight: a PR-provided interview with Victor Garber, voice of Sinestro. His bio reads: The Canadian-born Garber first captured national attention in his 1973 big screen debut as Jesus in Godspell. Garber’s film credits include Titanic, Milk, and Sleepless in Seattle, while his television career boasts six Emmy Award nominations spread over four different series, miniseries, and movies. He earned a Saturn Award as Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series for his […]
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The continuing story from the first volume by Aya Kanno here turns into episodic comedy chapters, becoming rather sitcom-like. When I started reading the first story in Otomen volume 2, about a younger, feminine-looking boy who idolizes the macho-seeming Asuka, I thought I’d forgotten too much of the previous book, since I obviously had overlooked Yamato’s introduction. I dug it out only to see that no, he’s just a new character introduced abruptly. Now that Ryo and Juta accept Asuka’s […]
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