Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I tried one of the Antique Bakery volumes two years ago, when it came out. I don’t think I gave it a fair shake, because I recently read all four books in the series, and I enjoyed them a lot. The first volume opens as though this is a yaoi series, which it isn’t (although later, in volume 2, there are overtones and insinuations). A high school boy is confessing his love to a (male) classmate, who rejects him brutally. […]
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Understanding Comics started a revolution in the medium that’s still being worked through. Scott McCloud created this book to analyze how comics work and what the medium is capable of. He did it in a clever and unexpected way; instead of writing text, he drew it as a comic book. A friendly version of himself is the main character, the narrator, leading us through his thoughts on the history of the medium, its strengths and weaknesses, the definition of art, […]
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I’m surprised to see Birds of Prey out on DVD, since I discovered recently that few people remembered it. It ran only 13 episodes in 2002 on the WB, which may have been part of the problem — there wasn’t a WB affiliate in our city at that point, for instance. And it didn’t have the popularity among teens (demographic appeal) that protects other low-rated WB shows. Actually, I’m having a hard time figuring out who the target audience for […]
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Heidi has a list of announced Tokyopop cancellations. The two I’m most concerned with are Kat & Mouse 4 and the next Kindaichi Case Files: The Burial Francs. One of the commenters points out that Kindaichi is a Kodansha title, so with their US branch opening, maybe there’s hope yet to see more translated into English. Kat & Mouse, though, we’ve probably seen the last of, even though book 3 ended with a cliffhanger and I don’t recall if the […]
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I know I’m about a month late, but that’s why I love TiVo. I just got a chance to start catching up on episodes of the Middleman TV show airing on ABC Family. I’d tried the first comic issue back when it was a free taste, and I enjoyed it, but I never kept up with it. I’m glad I checked this out. It stars newcomer Natalie Morales as Wendy Watson (or “Dubbie”) and Matt Keeslar as the square-jawed, straight-edge […]
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The Super-Scary Monster Show Featuring Little Gloomy is quite a big title for this digest-sized book. Writer Landry Walker and artist Eric Jones have tried several different formats for their tales of baby monsters, but this one may be the best yet, suitable for little hands sneaking it under the covers late at night. Gloomy lives in an odd land populated by kid versions of the Universal monsters (Frank the Monster, Larry the Wolfman, the Mummy) and Carl Cthulhu, a […]
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Kaput and Zosky are evil aliens who want to conquer other planets but are terrifically bad at just about everything. As expected from a Lewis Trondheim project (with additional art by Eric Cartier), they’re also wonderfully cartooned and flat-out hilarious. Often, Kaput and Zosky do end up ruling, but it’s by accident, and then they can’t get rid of their new status fast enough, since they have no sense of achievement when that happens. They land on planets with gambling […]
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Of all the Golden Age Archives of early comics DC has made available — Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman — the best read is The Plastic Man Archives. Many of the others have more historical significance to the superhero genre, but Jack Cole’s stories of his stretchable accidental hero are so creative and odd that they’re great reads, even 60 years on. The first volume reprints the Plastic Man stories from Police Comics #1-20 (August 1941 – June 1943). […]
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