Housekeeping

I don’t know what the trigger was, but I finally reached the point where I couldn’t stand staring at all of this unrelieved text, so welcome to the glorious new era of the occasional cover image or scan. I begin with attractive men contemplating pastries. Now if I could just figure out how to wrap text around an image, I’d be golden. Oh, and if there were any other WordPress themes that I could stand, I’d probably change that too, but that will have to wait. And I don’t really mind the mighty red pen.

In other navel-gazing, I’m thinking it’s time to change the blog’s name. At over 40 years of age, it’s impossible to be precocious about anything but decline, so that’s a problem. It’s also awkward to say out loud on the rare occasions that require me to do so. (Maybe that’s why I don’t go to many conventions… fear of speaking my blog’s name aloud, like it’s “Candyman” or something.) But I don’t really have any alternatives in mind at the moment, and I wouldn’t change the address or anything. Still, I’ll always jump at an excuse to post a poll:

Standing alone

And I thought the seinen category was tough. That was before I saw the Best New One-Shot Manga poll over at About.Com. Looking at the list, I’m reminded that there might not be tremendous volume in off-brand, non-genre manga, but there’s significant variety and serious ambition on display, and publishers (from ultra-mainstream Viz to boutique operations like Last Gasp and Fanfare) are to be applauded for pushing the boundaries of what’s available. 2008 may not have been the year that manga grew up, and 2009 and 2010 might not either, but I think the fact that Deb Aoki can assemble such strong slates in these potentially marginal categories indicates that the foundation for that maturation is solid and getting more solid all the time.

Of course, a crappy economy may suspend the maturation for a while, but I’ll go with optimism at the moment.

Make it stop

Okay, I totally agree with Tom Spurgeon’s sentiment here, and I thought Heidi MacDonald did a nice job outlining the special blend of greed and disorganization behind it all, but who would have ever thought things could get worse?

Comics, once again I have underestimated you.

Think of the children

Comics for kids are in the spotlight in today’s poll at About.Com, asking readers to pick the Best New All-Ages Manga of 2008. You can see the full list of active and pending polls here.

Upcoming 1/14/2009

I’ve gotten the year right three weeks in a row. Go, me!

Time again for a quick look at this week’s ComicList:

Okay, now how exactly did this title slide under my radar? Ghost Talker’s Daydream (Dark Horse), written by Saki Okuse and drawn by Sankichi Meguro, triggers both my “not for me” alarm and my “this is too bizarre to not at least sample, even if I’ll never feel clean again” alarm. An albino virgin dominatrix who sees dead people? It’s like Lady Heather from CSI crossed with The Ghost Whisperer. Reviews have been mixed, but morbid curiosity threatens to overpower good sense on this one. The third volume is due out this week.

In much more familiar territory, Viz unleashes a hailstorm of some of its best shôjo titles, from Nana (volume 14) to High School Debut (volume 7) to Sand Chronicles (volume 4) to a bunch of others that are regarded very warmly by fans and critics but that I have yet to sample in depth because there are only so many hours in a day.

Globalization, mobilization

Deb Aoki has another poll out, this one focused on 2008’s Best New Original English Language Manga. I voted for Nina Matsumoto’s funny, polished Yokaiden (Del Rey), but I suspect all will be crushed in the wave of support for Anima (Yaoi Press), by Dany and Dany. In the handful of hours since the poll was posted, Anima has already received more votes than the two front-runners in the shojo poll have in a week.

Playing favorites

I always feel kind of Tom Sawyer-ish when the effort I expend on a Flipped column is limited to writing a couple of transitional sentences and begging other people to contribute the rest, but I always enjoy the results. This week, I asked some folks in manga publishing to offer up their favorite titles from 2008.

Oldies, goodies

Deb Aoki is still going strong with her manga polls over at About.Com, this time asking readers to vote for the Best New Edition of Classic or Reissued Manga of 2008. Strong as the field is (though it’s sad that there’s only one eligible title by a woman), I had to go with Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo (Vertical), which was funny and moody and tragic and bizarre in that singularly Tezuka way.

Speaking of Tezuka, Matthew J. Brady has a great back-and-forth with his younger brother Noah, over at Warren Peace Sings the Blues. Tezuka features prominently in the discussion, and while neither demonstrates proper reverence for the Creepy Little Tumor, the Dororo love is rewarding.

Big reader

Writing for The New York Times, publishing beat reporter Motoko Rich mixes things up by reporting some good news for a change. According to a survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, adults are reading more books just for the pleasure of it:

“‘There has been a measurable cultural change in society’s commitment to literary reading,’ said Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. ‘In a cultural moment when we are hearing nothing but bad news, we have reassuring evidence that the dumbing down of our culture is not inevitable.’”

The NEA initiative is called The Big Read, and it has its own blog. Here’s the link to the survey, though it doesn’t seem to be loading for me at the moment.

I haven’t had enough coffee yet to figure out how they might do this, but it would be neat if comics publishers participated in some way. The Times article doesn’t specifically mention graphic fiction, but I don’t get the impression that it’s excluded. I’d like to see the NEA ask if the increase in reading for pleasure (or just what portion of reading for pleasure) is contributed by comics.

A bargain

Oh, if I lived near Manhattan and had $500 to spare, I would so go to this. The only way it could be better would be if Neil Patrick Harris played Henrik, the hot, repressed cellist/seminary student.