Friday conundrum

Here’s a thinker. This piece by Tom Spurgeon on DC’s refusal to allow a Batman story by Paul Pope to be included in the next Best American Comics anthology from Hougton Mifflin has two competing effects. On the one hand, it makes me want to read Pope’s Batman: Year 100. On the other hand, it makes me not want to give any money to DC because… well, because that’s really dumb. I mean, people were complaining about how narrow the focus of last year’s Best American Comics anthology was, and here’s a gift-wrapped opportunity to partially reverse that while showing that DC can produce interesting, innovative stuff, even with one of its cornerstone trademarked properties, and they not only decline, they take forever to do so. Oh, work-for-hire… you’re not having a good week, are you?

So can anyone recommend some Paul Pope books that won’t involve giving any money to DC?

Full frontal

It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of the graphic novel section at the local Barnes & Noble. Not too long ago, it cut the space for the game guides in half, giving manga another bank of shelves. (It has four of the eight.) Now, one of the graphic novel banks has been converted to a face-out display with a big “DC Comics” header.

It displayed nothing but trades of DC’s super-hero properties, which struck me as a little odd considering how well some Vertigo books do in bookstores and how much they’d apparently like some of their other imprints to do well there. That seems like an impressive investment on DC’s part. I wonder if Barnes & Noble tried anything resembling a bidding war among publishers in offering that kind of real estate.

Has anyone else seen a DC-centric shelf bank at a Barnes & Noble?

Just curious

On the list of things I’d love to read: DC’s cease-and-desist letters to Playboy, if they actually exist. Comment makers over at The Beat suggested, probably quite correctly, that Playboy has been down this particular road often enough that it’s expert at just avoiding actionable copyright infringement.

I mean, looking back on the vigor DC demonstrated with that Batman-and-Robin slash art exhibition from a couple of years ago, I can’t imagine there isn’t some amusingly forceful legalese floating around out there somewhere. Right?

Previews review - Jan. 2009

It’s Diamond Previews time again. Let’s dispense with the formalities and get right to it.

There’s a clear and present Pick of the Month (that I probably won’t pick up at the comic shop because it will be widely available at a better price elsewhere). Pantheon is releasing the second volume of Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat, which is certainly cause for raucous celebration, at least in my house. The debut volume was my first exposure to Sfar’s work, and I’ve been watching like a hawk for more of this intriguing story. (Page 327.)

I’m not familiar with the work of Ulf K., but Top Shelf’s solicitation for the Hieronymus B. graphic novel is intriguing. The book is being simultaneously released by five international publishers, and the preview pages at the publisher’s site are appealing. (Page 354.)

I was thinking yesterday that people using “with Oscar-winner so-and-so” to entice viewers to watch a given movie should only be able to use the phrase when the cited individual actually won and Oscar for the movie in question. I’m thinking along the same lines when I see a publisher say a book is like Scott Pilgrim, even when the book is being released by the publisher of Scott Pilgrim. Maybe they could give Bryan Lee O’Malley some kind of signet ring, and he could grant approval for use of the comparison, but he’s probably too self-effacing to go along with something like that.

Anyway, Oni is pitching Lars Brown’s North World to fans of not only Scott Pilgrim, but Gross Point Blank, Lord of the Rings, and Buffy, which is some kind of ultimate ven diagram of geekery. There’s no information up on Oni’s site yet, but you can check out the webcomic here. It looks like fun in a game-logic sort of way, with Brown blending role-playing game elements with comedic slacker angst. So… yeah… like Scott Pilgrim. (Page 326.)

If Tom Spurgeon’s holiday interview with Simon Gane made you want to read something Gane has drawn, you really couldn’t do better than Paris, written by Andi Watson. It’s a gorgeous, romantic mini-series that seemed to have been conceived with the sole purpose of letting Gane draw the hell out of it, which is all the purpose it really needs. SLG offers the collected version again in case you missed it. (Page 213.)

DC releases a full-color omnibus collection of the first sixteen issues of one of the best super-hero comics of the last fifteen years, James Robinson’s Starman. It’s got gorgeous Tony Harris art, a terrific cast, and a really nice generational-hero set-up without ever seeming like an airless exercise in continuity flogging. It’s kind of pricey at $49.99, so I would probably be inclined to wait for a paperback version if I didn’t already own the collected issues in one form or another. (Page 92.)

And last but not least, one of my favorite manga series comes to an end. Tokyopop releases the final volume of Minetaro Mochizuki’s Dragon Head. Mochizuki has served up some incredible thrills and chills in ten volumes of character-driven survival drama. I still can’t understand why this series wasn’t a big hit. (Page 351.)

The year in fun (2007)

From a fun comics standpoint, 2007 was absolutely awesome. You know how I know? I had a hard time keeping the list below to 26 items. Okay, it’s an arbitrary number, and I could have just listed everything, but I thought I would make a stab at some pretense of discernment.

I’m not saying these are the best comics of 2007, though I’d put several in that category. I’m never entirely comfortable with that label, because I haven’t read everything and worry that my tastes are too narrow to make a reasonable stab at such a project anyways. But I have no trouble telling which comics I had a lot of fun reading, so here they are.

(Doesn’t the jump create a breathtaking level of suspense? Well, doesn’t it?)

(Updated because I can’t keep my years straight.)

Friday rambling

How I get in the holiday spirit: I substitute “killer bees” for key lyrics in many beloved Christmas carols. It works in almost all of them.

Commercials I really hate: Okay, I get it, T.J. Maxx. There’s something pumped into the ventilation system at your stores that turns people into insufferable bargain braggarts. Consider me warned.

Oh, and I can’t forget Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry, the bauble outlet of choice for viciously competitive people who weigh love based on brand names.

Future shop: ICv2 runs through some upcoming releases from DC, including the single-volume Shirley from Kaoru (Emma) Mori. If I didn’t already own the entire run in one form or another, I’d also have my eye on the Starman Omnibus, one of my favorite super-hero titles ever. (Okay, writer James Robinson had a tendency to give his pet villainess, the Mist, the full Dark Mary Sue treatment to make her seem threatening, but it was great all the same, and the later issues give you the opportunity to see why many people liked Ralph and Sue Dibny.)

Not dead yet: The fifth volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse) is much better than the fourth, which cheers me. (Again, the fourth was still very good manga, just not what I’d come to expect from the generally stellar series.)

Sir, it’s too good, at least? Mely notes that Stephen Sondheim has given his thumbs-up to Tim Burton’s movie version of Sweeney Todd, which has apparently been nominated for Golden Globe awards before it’s even opened in cinemas. (I’ve always found the Golden Globes to be the least persuasive of movie award programs.) I’m unconvinced. I love Sondheim, and I think he’s brilliant, but he has shown a worrying tendency to roll over for celebrities in the past. (I mean, he rewrote the lyrics to “Send in the Clowns” for Barbra Streisand. I know it’s his song, and he can do what he likes with it, but that song is one of the perfect gems of the musical canon.)

Harmonic convergence

For a while now, people have been driecting a sometimes critical eye at the treatment of women characters in Marvel and DC comics, wondering if there might not be some unfortunate trends in evidence. (Latest example: half of one of a few happy super-hero couples was found dead in her kitchen, the venue of choice for such discoveries, by her husband, who’s really, really sad.)

Then, people were discussing the state of comics journalism and whether its practitioners might aim a little higher.

Then, prominent comics bloggers started to notice one of those cyclical mini-waves of people dropping Marvel and DC monthlies.

Now, Newsarama has posted an interview with Brian Bendis with the apparent purpose of congratulating him on avoiding that silly, knee-jerk feminist backlash that so often results from sequences like that found in New Avengers #35. After accepting the kudos of Matt Brady and bemoaning our excessively sensitive times, Bendis assures readers that he went out of his way to avoid the interpretation that…

“…something rapey was happening.”

Well, I’m convinced.

Upcoming 9/12

This is one of those weeks at the comic shop that doesn’t look especially overwhelming at first glance, but becomes a buffet upon closer scrutiny.

In fact, I couldn’t really select a Pick of the Week, though I think I’d have to give DC the Publisher of the Week. How do they accomplish this, you ask? Variety.

First there’s a new volume of Kaoru Mori’s Emma, which is a bit late but no less welcome for it. Then there’s the first release in the second wave of Minx books, Confessions of a Blabbermouth by Mike Carey, Louise Carey, and Aaron Alexovich. M. Carey contributed the script for the excellent Re-Gifters, easily my favorite book in the line, so this will definitely merit a read. And while I found DC’s last effort at reviving the franchise completely incomprehensible, John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad stands as one of my favorite super-hero team books ever (though it rarely featured any actual heroes). I don’t see any obvious deterrents to coherence in the solicitation for the new mini-series featuring Ostrander’s cast, so I might have to give it a try.

That said, DC has Viz hot on its heels, and the manga publisher seems to be going for the “massive show of force” technique. Yes, lots of Naruto is on the way, but there are also new volumes of excellent ongoing series like Beauty Pop and Gin Tama, and a really, really lovely treatment of Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkonkinkreet, with three volumes of weirdness packed into a satisfyingly hefty package. I’m about halfway through it, and it’s pretty amazing.

If the Suicide Squad thing tempts me sufficiently, I’ll be picking up three whole floppies this week. The other two are the eighth issue of the second volume of Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting (Fantagraphics) and the fifth issue of the endearing Maintenance (Oni).

And last but not least, Tokyopop reminds me that I don’t need to lead a life void of Meca Tanaka manga just because Omukae Desu is done. The third volume of Pearl Pink is out, which puts me only one volume behind. (I know. That’s how it starts.) Because I’m not reading enough quirky comedies about would-be teen idols.

Upcoming 7/18

I’m not going to lie to you. There’s plenty of good stuff arriving at the comic shop this week, but the bulk of my anticipatory energy is reserved for the final book in the Harry Potter series. I’m not going to dress up as a Death Eater and head to the bookstore at midnight, and I’m not going to hunt down purported spoilers on-line, but I’m a big nerd all the same.

(I haven’t seen the fifth movie yet, because I’m waiting for the crowds to die down. I am really happy to hear from various reviews that the actor who plays Luna is spot-on. I love Luna. That probably means she’s going to die in the last book, doesn’t it? No! I can’t let myself believe that!)

Okay, now that that nerd-splosion is out of the way, on to the ComicList for Wednesday. And really, there are some delightful books on offer. Since the site itself seems to have exceeded its bandwidth, I’ll point you straight to Diamond instead.

Jeff Smith’s Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil (DC) has been a real pleasure to read, and it concludes today with the fourth issue. It’s been an extremely clean, purposeful book, and by “clean” I don’t mean “family friendly,” though it’s that, too. I just mean that all of the elements of Smith’s work are neatly and effectively in synch. (For those of you who passed on the individual issues, DC already has information up on the deluxe hardcover, due in October.)

I’m still looking forward to Byun Byung Ju’s Run, Bong-Gu Run! (NBM), which is set to arrive at the local comic shop today.

It’s a good week for fans of Fumi Yoshinaga, who has two books arriving: Don’t Say Any More, Darling (Juné) and the third volume of The Flower of Life (Digital Manga Publishing). I don’t really know much about the former, but it’s hard to go too wrong with this particular manga-ka.

Of course, I’ve been posting about the latter ad nauseum, because it’s awesome. It’s like the high school down the block from Bakery Antique, with Yoshinaga operating on all cylinders and creating a lovely, funny world of exuberantly odd youth. No one quite occupies the same narrative turf as Yoshinaga, gently intersecting young and old, wise and foolish, and funny and sad. It’s just exquisite.

Insert “flexing muscles” pun here

According to this piece in Publishers Weekly (found via Blog@Newsarama), DC has joined forces with Flex Comix, a newish Japanese manga company that provides digital content for handheld devices, with eventual collections in print. Why would they do such a thing?

“DC Comics president Paul Levitz described Flex Comi[x] as an ‘innovative force.’ Flex Comi[x] CEO Seiji Takakura said the new venture ‘will bring authentic Japanese manga to the worldwide English-language audience in new and exciting ways.’”

That strongly suggests Flex’s interest is in building with a U.S. manga imprint to facilitate English-language licenses for its properties. And while DC probably wouldn’t mind having a first-look relationship with a Japanese publisher, something tells me that’s not their only interest in the partnership.

Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing notes:

“[T]his news combines manga, one of the biggest stories in the past ten years of comics, with alternative digital distribution, which may be the biggest news for the next ten. This will, at the very least, give DC valuable experience in both key areas as they develop a future online strategy for their own domestic output.”

I think the experience is probably the key attraction. DC doesn’t seem to have trouble securing interesting properties for its CMX roster so much as marketing those titles as successfully as some of their competitors in the category. And given that Flex is in its early days in terms of content creation (it’s only seven months old), there’s no guarantee that it will funnel solid sellers (or even licensable properties, as Jones notes) into CMX.

So that leaves digital distribution as the likeliest lure, which certainly makes sense. I suspect that any licenses DC picks up from Flex will be gravy, and that the success or failure will rest on the portability of Flex’s business plan and how it helps DC to position itself to digitally distribute its own properties when handheld technology catches up. (I think digital distribution of DC’s properties in Japan would also fall into the category of gravy, though I don’t know enough about the demand for U.S. comics in Japan to parse that. Every source I’ve run across indicates that demand isn’t exactly roaring, though.)