From the stack: Tōnoharu

One of my favorite stories by David Sedaris describes an adolescent trip to a summer camp in Greece he took with his sister. There’s the hope that the journey will lead to reinvention and that the anxious, twisted geek he is will give way to someone sophisticated and comfortable in his skin. While his sister accomplishes this without apparent effort or consequence, Sedaris becomes more intensely himself. It’s a funny, poignant look at the tyranny of expectations.

Lars Martinson’s Tōnoharu (Pliant Press and Top Shelf) covers similar territory in graphic fashion. Daniel Wells has begun a year as a teaching assistant at a junior high school in rural Japan, and he has clear visions of what the outcomes will be… “Fluency in Japanese, adoring students and colleagues, a revolutionized curriculum…” It doesn’t work out that way, and no reasonable person could expect it would, but Daniel’s optimism is understandable. Who doesn’t harbor fantasies about the possibility of change in a new setting?

But even if Daniel was a different kind of person, more outgoing or visionary, the village of Tōnoharu isn’t fertile ground for adventure or transformation. It’s an average community, and its residents are courteous, but they have their own lives and needs. This leaves Daniel with the responsibility of adapting, and he’s not very good at that. Martinson is conscientious about keeping the onus on his protagonist; Daniel could embrace the experience and engage the people around him if he chose to do so.

At the same time, I like Daniel and can understand his perspective. He has just enough ambition to embark on this kind of adventure, but he doesn’t have to tools to take full advantage of it. Maybe I’m revealing too much about myself, but I never found his awkwardness that extreme; I found it funny, sure, but not out of scale.

Visually speaking, Martinson uses a fairly rigid grid pattern of panels that ends up looking like a well-organized photo album. It’s a good choice for this kind of material. He keeps his character designs loose and simple and their settings richly detailed and textured. I like that counterpoint a lot, and I always appreciate a strong sense of place in a comic.

One thing I did find odd about Tōnoharu was the overall packaging, which struck me as a little too handsome. The content here is the first part of a longer story. Engaging as it is page by page, it’s necessarily incomplete and doesn’t really take shape as an individual entertainment. The book’s hardcover treatment implies something complete to me; I might have chosen to release the individual chapters in a simpler format and saved the high-end production for an eventual collection. But really, excessive packaging is barely even a flaw, just a bit of contradicted expectations.

Martinson has delivered a fine first chapter to an engrossing, character-driven story. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Easy(going) reading

I can’t resist list-making. Over at MangaBlog, Brigid Alverson shares a request from a reader for “slice-of-life” manga. Excellent recommendations ensue, so I thought I would compile the titles that got multiple nods from the folks leaving comments.

Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (DMP)

Emma, by Kaoru Mori (CMX)

Flower of Life, by Fumi Yoshinaga (DMP)

Honey and Clover, by Chica Umino (Viz)

Japan, as Viewed by 17 Creators, by various gifted people (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

Love Roma, by Minoru Toyoda (Del Rey)

Sand Chronicles, by Hinako Ashihara (Viz)

Suppli, by Mari Okazaki (Tokyopop)

The Voices of a Distant Star, by Mizu Sahara and Makoto Shinkai (Tokyopo)

The Walking Man, by Jiro Taniguichi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

The Day I Become a Butterfly, by Yumeka Sumomo (Juné)

Same Cell Organism, by Yumeka Sumomo (Juné)

There are plenty of great recommendations in the MangaBlog comments thread, both of slice-of-life series and good reads in general. If I missed a slice-of-life title that got multiple mentions, let me know, and I’ll update the list.

Pretty colors

In the latest Flipped, I talk with Bryce Coleman about Tokyopop’s upcoming line of full-color graphic novels.

Upcoming 5/14/2008

This week’s shipping list isn’t as terrifyingly huge as last’s, which is a welcome development. There are still plenty of items of interest, though. (I’ll appreciate the distraction, because the phone has been ringing off the hook with enthusiastic college students trying to sing the praises of presidential candidates. I’m not used to West Virginia mattering during primary season. While it’s a nice change to be in the national spotlight for reasons not involving a deadly mine collapse or the annual legislative pork report, it’s hard not to by cynical about the intensive wooing underway. Anyway…)

There’s a long-ish wait between new volumes of Hitoshi Awaaki’s Parasyte (Del Rey), a retro-cool horror series about a boy and his murderous, sentient hand. It’s worth it, though, as this is a smart, twisty horror story. The art isn’t great, but even that shortcoming adds a certain charm to the proceedings. If your appetite for shape-shifting aliens plotting our downfall has been whetted, give it a look.

As Del Rey goes, I tend to favor their less easily categorized offerings like Love Roma, Genshiken and Mushishi to stuff that’s more in the mainstream shônen or shôjo veins. There have been a couple of recent releases that buck the trend, though. I thought Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail was charming, and I’ve really liked what I’ve read of Yuko Osada’s Toto! Brigid Alverson has a review of the first volume.

It didn’t exactly change my life, but I really enjoyed Takako Shigematsu’s Tenshi Ja Nai!! (Go! Comi). It was a great example of a certain kind of highly polished, amiably trashy, slightly mean-spirited romantic comedy that hit the spot. Shigematsu’s King of the Lamp (Go! Comi) struck me as a throw-away, but the manga-ka’s credit is still good with me. Hence, I’m looking forward to the arrival of the first volume of Ultimate Venus (again, Go! Comi). Bring the trashy, mean polish, Shigematsu.

Kamisama Kazoku (Go! Comi), by Yoshizaku Kuwashima and Tapari, sounds like it will be neither trashy nor mean, but I’m intrigued all the same. It’s about a boy who just wants a normal life, even though he’s the offspring of a pair of over-protective gods.

A four-panel comic about a tomboy who carries a coffin around and has a bat for a best friend? What kind of stone need I be made to resist such a thing? Yen Press offers the first volume of Satoko Kiyuduki’s Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, and it will be mine.

From the stack: Life Sucks

I experienced a mounting sense of unease as I read Life Sucks (First Second), and it was only partly due to the increasing menace of the book’s events. Things do get tense as it goes along, but my discomfort stemmed from the fact that an amiable comic was becoming, if not precisely the kind of story it mocked, something I found equally deserving of disdain.

I should admit that I’m a hard sell for vampire stories to begin with, for many of the reasons creators Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria and Warren Pleece cite in the early going. I find the gloomy, self-pitying romanticism of many of them off-putting and outright dull, so anything that promises to take the wind out of those particular sails is generally welcome. (Joann Sfar’s Vampire Loves, also from First Second, is a winning example.)

Life Sucks starts well. Dave has been turned into a vampire because his sire needed someone to work the night shift at his convenience store, sticking Dave with a lifestyle he never chose and its depressing mechanics of servitude. He’s nauseated by blood, so he subsists on plasma, which leaves him without any of the physiological benefits vampirism can offer to the aggressive. He wasn’t exactly on the fast track before he was made, but now he faces a long, lonely lifetime of changing the dates on the milk and restocking the beef jerky display.

I’m fairly sure I could have read an entire graphic novel about Dave carping about his circumstances, hanging out with his friends, and getting badgered by his boss, Radu. (Radu has traded in capes and castles for track suits and entrepreneurship, abandoning Transylvania for California.) Dave is mopey, but at least he has reason to complain, and his friends are endearing.

Unfortunately, Abel and company decided at some point that a plot was necessary. And here’s where I encounter a problem with evaluating the book objectively, because it hinges on two devices that I always find particularly objectionable. One is when two characters place a bet on which of them can win the heart of a third. Once that element comes into play and a person is treated like a trophy, you’ve generally lost me, no matter how deservedly miserable the outcome is for the wagerers.

The second element that chafes is when a character lies or withholds information that could protect another character, especially if that kind of dishonesty serves no meaningful purpose. Mileage on whether the dishonesty in Life Sucks was necessary or at least in balance with the alternative will obviously vary, but it struck me as a choice made because there would have been no more story if it hadn’t been.

So I can’t say for sure if the presence of two driving bits of narrative that I can’t stand under just about any circumstances makes Life Sucks bad, or just bad for me. I do think the conclusion is bizarrely staged, with significant events described after the fact instead of actually rendered for readers (not that I yearned for it to be longer). And I do think Rosa, Dave’s inamorata, starts promisingly but ends up behaving in ways that drive plot instead of making sense. And I do think “I can barely stand to look at you” is an appallingly bad line of dialogue anywhere outside of a Barbara Stanwyck movie.

But overall, I just don’t know. Part of me feels that this book simply, empirically doesn’t work, but another part wonders if my personal biases are overtaking my judgment.

(This quasi-review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Particles

Kate Dacey has more of her always-terrific reviews up at Manga Recon, looking at some recent shôjo releases. She saves me the trouble of thinking too deeply about Arina Tanemura’s I.O.N. (Viz).

As Kate points out, it’s very much a debut work, but it helped me crystallize my thinking about Tanemura’s work. She’s undeniably talented (and very popular), but here’s the thing: whenever I read her work, I feel like I’m watching an audition for a musical-theatre repertory where someone has to prove that they can sing, act and dance without the requirement of making those qualities come together into something larger. I always feel like there’s some guiding principle missing from the mix in her manga.

I’m almost always fond of the freakish supporting characters that haunt the fringes of Tanemura’s stories. It’s just the leads and what happens to them that don’t hold my attention. (Of course, I haven’t sampled Full Moon yet.)

The first hit’s free

I missed Free Comic Book Day, but I managed to get my hands on a copy of Thomas F. Zahler’s Love and Capes #7 (Maerkle Press). As I understand it, one of the missions of Free Comic Book Day is to introduce people to comics they haven’t tried previously in the hopes of convincing them to purchase said comics in the future. Mission accomplished, Free Comic Book Day.

My favorite parts of super-hero comics have always been the in-between moments, the interpersonal soap opera that fills the gaps between big battles. Love and Capes is nothing but those in-between moments, following the developing relationship between a Superman type and a bookstore owner. In this issue, Mark (also known as the Crusader) is trying to figure out the right way to propose to Abby. He seeks advice from his parents, his colleagues, and Abby’s younger sister, Charlotte.

The first thing that struck me about the book is that it reads less like a comic book than a collection of individual strips. Just about each page is a romantic-comedy beat with its own punch line, moving the story forward but standing on its own. (It’s kind of like For Better or Worse without the icky gender and relationship dynamics.) The characters are sturdy and likeable enough to keep the rhythms from becoming repetitive.

I also found the book admirable in the way that it sticks to its mission. Some revisionist genre parodies can’t seem to resist becoming exactly the kind of story they’re tweaking, and that strikes me as defeating the purpose of providing an alternative. Love and Capes maintains its tone throughout, sort of a fusion of Mad About You and Astro City. (There’s one sequence where Abby keeps Mark company during monitor duty, which created a singularly unpleasant callback to another comic, but that’s hardly Zahler’s fault.)

Mark and Abby may not be the most sharply etched of characters, but I like them. They’re functional adults in a believable relationship, and their individual qualities fuel the observational humor nicely. They’re also on equal footing; each has a life and work that they value, and they support and respect one another. Zahler’s cartoon-y illustrating style suits the material well, providing open, funny visuals.

What else can I say? It’s a charming, easygoing book about sympathetic people in weird circumstances. It uses those circumstances for comedy and contrast, but it doesn’t let them overwhelm the core charms of the story.

(A collection of the first six issues of the series is due out in November, and Zahler has put a large number of preview pages online.)

The Speed-Elvis connection

There was a nice piece on the origins of Speed Racer on NPR’s Morning Edition.

I don’t really have any interest in seeing the movie. I’ve never been able to stay awake through any more than ten minutes of any of the Matrix movies, and the advertisements for the Speed Racer movie make me feel like a seizure is imminent. But the radio piece offers an interesting look at the property and its cross-cultural appeal.

Upcoming 5/7/2008

Record gas prices? Check! Skyrocketing food costs? Double-check! Humongous list of new comic book releases for the week? Triple-check!

Some of these series have been running for some time now, so it might be useful to provide some introductions. Also, I really like Manga Recon’s new Weekly Recon format, so I’m going to swipe it.

Crayon Shinchan Vol. 2, by Yoshito Usui, CMX: I can’t really put it any better than Matthew Brady: “Also: kids are horrible, awful creatures. Good times!” Exactly. If I’m going to be completely truthful, I’ll admit that I prefer the anime to the manga, but the second half of the first volume of the manga, when the setting shifted from home to school, was laugh-out-loud funny. Great. Now the infectious theme song is running through my head again.

Eden: It’s an Endless World! Vol. 10, by Hiroki Endo, Dark Horse: A bizarre virus has decimated the population, leaving all kinds of power struggles in play. Corporate moguls, political bigwigs, and terrorists fight for the future of a world that may not be worth the trouble. It’s beautifully drawn and often quite gripping as it combines the personal with the political.

King of Thorn Vol. 4, by Yuji Iwahara, Tokyopop: Another post-viral-apocalypse comic that’s much more conventional in its structure. Think The Poseidon Adventure set in a cryogenic research facility. A group of disease carriers wake up to find themselves abandoned in said facility, which is overrun with bizarre monsters. The demographically familiar band struggles to find a way out and, honesty compels me to admit, to display distinct personalities beyond their character types. But Iwahara’s art is a treat.

Kitchen Princess Vol. 6, by Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi, Del Rey: The orphan child of two gifted pastry chefs bakes her way into a snooty private school to track down the boy of her dreams. That sounds awfully saccharine and formulaic, and the series started off in that vein, but the creators have taken off the oven mitts and started delivering some serious emotional punches as the series has progressed. The previous volume ended on a cliffhanger rather more perilous than is usual for school-romance manga, and I’m eager to see what happens next.

High School Debut Vol. 3, by Kazune Kawahara, Viz – Shojo Beat: This imprint has three crack-tastic releases this week. The premise of this series – a sporty girl enters high school and decides she wants a boyfriend, securing a hunky male mentor to advise her on issues of dateability – is extremely formulaic and blissfully irrelevant in light of its other charms. Those include terrific characters and emotionally specific writing that can really make you catch your breath. I’m perfectly happy to see a familiar formula executed with panache, but I think I’m even happier to see one subverted so feelingly.

Hikaru No Go Vol. 12, by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata, Viz – Shonen Jump: I went on about this title at some length in yesterday’s Flipped column, so I’ll just summarize its selling points: likeable characters, terrific art, and a surprisingly intriguing and flexible premise about a board game.

Nana Vol. 10, by Ai Yazawa, Viz – Shojo Beat: Two young women named Nana meet on a train to Tokyo and strike up an unlikely but enduring friendship. The series consistently provides sexy urban soap opera, and it’s currently in the midst of a perfect storm of personal and professional conflicts.

Salt Water Taffy Vol. 1, by Matthew Loux, Oni Press: This is delightful, as I mentioned in a review last week. Loux introduces his protagonist brothers to the weird and wonderful charms of a coastal town in Maine.

Sand Chronicles Vol. 2, by Hinako Ashihara, Viz – Shojo Beat: Ashihara doesn’t ask for much; she merely wants to rip your heart out with her pitch-perfect episodes from a girl’s coming of age. Like High School Debut, there’s a shocking quantity of recognizable human behavior here. Unlike that worthy book, Sand Chronicles doesn’t even pretend to follow a formula as it cherry-picks key moments from the adolescence of its engaging heroine, Ann Uekusa. Extremely absorbing, grounded storytelling, and beautiful art.

Where’s Waldo?

Looking through the May Comics Bestsellers at Publishers Weekly, I’m kind of surprised to see that Marvel’s Secret Invasion #1 didn’t even make the honorable mentions that follow the list proper. A look back at the lists for the year so far reveals that only one pamphlet has even gotten the “Take Note” mention, an issue of the Buffy comic.

I’m sure the comic will rank highly on ICv2’s comics list for the month when it comes out, and the eventual collection will fare at least as well as those for Marvel’s Civil War event did. And really, since there are no concrete details on what kind of and how many retail outlets are sampled to compile the list, it’s just a curiosity.