Quick Manga Reviews

FLCL, vol. 1

by Gainax & Hajime Ueda

I really wanted to like this. The art by Ueda has a unique, rough style that melds a manga flavor with something resembling Jhonen Vasquez, and the premise--a boy in a slightly surreal Tokyo suburb must help an alien fight robots from destroying Earth--held promise. The problem is that the only reason I know that's the premise is because I read it on the back cover blurb. The story here is totally incomprehensible. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I like to at least have a chance at understanding what my comics are about.

Rating: 1.5 (of 5)




Imadoki! Nowadays, vol. 1: Dandelion

by Yû Watase

Ah, see, now this is how you do a shojo comic. As a new scholarship student at an elite academy, bubbly Tanpopo Yamazaki only wants to make friends. And no matter how much the rich students snub her, she's goign to keep trying until they come around. Her tactic? Start a gardening club! Watase's art is in top form, with strong characters and backgrounds and dynamic yet easy-to-follow storytelling. But it's the personality of the heroine that draws you in. Compared to many mopy shojo protagonists, Tanpopo's sunny disposition and never-say-die attitude is a welcome change. While I tend to burn out on shojo series after a few volumes as they become repetitive (e.g. Kare Kano), I hope that Imadoki! will remain fresh for a while. (Note: Viz rates this 'T+' for 'older teens' though I have no idea why, as there's no reason why younger kids couldn't read and enjoy this. Perhaps things get more intense later in the series?)

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)

Making Music

Jon Silpayamanant over at Mae Mai has posted a cover of "Dancing Queen" by his band Il Troubadore. Some time back I urged Jon to try this ABBA classic, so I'm glad to get a chance to hear their version, done in a Renaissance band style on mandolin and cello.



And since one musical turn deserves another, I've put up a song I created a few months back: "Peach Pit". Enjoy...

New This Week: December 29, 2004

Based on the NCRL list for this week's comics shipping from Diamond, here are a few things to look for at the local comic shop tomorrow:





The pick of the week is the third collected edition of Girl Genius by Phil & Kaja Foglio. If it seems like just a couple of months ago that the pick of the week was Girl Genius vol. 2, well, you're right. And since I know that you enjoyed it, I'm sure that you'll want to pick up volume 3 as well.





In other comics:



Antarctic has the collected edition of Rob Espinosa's Courageous Princess; if you've enjoyed Rob's Neotopia, you'll want to pick up the collection of this earlier work in the same vein. Antarctic also has the sixth issue of Ben Dunn's Heaven Sent.



Avatar has the second of Warren Ellis's Aparat one-shots, Quit City, with art by the wonderful Laurenn McCubbin.



Dark Horse has the first issue of Concrete: Human Dilemma.



DC has the fourth issue of Adam Strange, the debut of the once-again-rebooted Legion of Super-Heroes, and the conclusion of Ed Brubaker's Tom Strong two-parter (issue #30).



Image has Wildguard: Fire Power, a one-shot follow-up to Todd Nauck's mini.



Marvel has the delayed third issue of the latest Kabuki series, a new issue of the much-delayed Ultimate Nightmare (#4), a new issue of Supreme Power (#14), and almost all of the What If one-shots.



Viper has the final issue of Daisy Kutter (#4).



Viz has new volumes of Fushigi Yugi (v. 13) & Inu Yasha (v. 20).





Remember when the week between Christmas & New Years was a true skip-week, and DC and Marvel didn't publish any comics? It was a great time to break out of the mold and try an indy comic or two. So even though DC & Marvel are publishing some comics this week, make it a point to try something off the beaten path; give a title from Oni or AiT/PlanetLAR or Slave Labor/Amaze Ink or Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly or Alternative a try. Who knows, you just may find something that you like!

Rarebits

Last night I dreamed of Marv Wolfman.



I'm not really sure why--I've never actually met the man, and while I've certainly enjoyed many things he's written over the years, I don't think I've read anything by him recently. But dream of him I did.



Marv didn't show up until the third part of my dream; the first part involved me helping out at a public library (but not any public library I've ever been to in real life...) creating a series of displays of children's books for each major section of the Dewey Decimal Classification. This somehow transitioned into a dream where I was in the Babylon 5 universe, aboard a giant Earth battleship. We captured a malignant alien entity and were holding it captive in a stasis prison (whose other captives included one of the Shadows and Mexican General Santa Ana...) The evil alien entity escaped by possessing the body of a female vice-admiral, and as the entity/vice-admiral wandered the corridors of the battleship I found my perspective in the dream morphing into the vice-admiral's, where I was in my body but unable to affect it's actions as I watched the evil alien entity go through its nefarious paces (oh, Freud would have a field day!)



Which brings me to Marv Wolfman. As I turned a corner in the battleship I found myself back to being me again and in control of my own body. I was now in what appeared to be a shopping mall but in the dream I took it to be a convention center. As I turned the corner, I ran into Marv Wolfman. Now I couldn't tell you what Marv looks like in real life, but in my dream he was tall, with slightly greying hair and a goatee, and I instantly knew him to be Marv Wolfman despite the lack of any sort of identifying badge. I wold him how much I liked his wook on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics, which is odd because he's never written any. But Marv took my compliment in stride, and asked me which of his works I liked best. I told him that I of course liked his work on Teen Titans, but what I really thought was underrated was his work on the Star Trek comics; I was thinking of the early DC Star Trek, but Marv didn't write those either, although he was the series editor for a time. I was just about to mention his work on The Adventures of Superman when Marv said that he had to get back to a panel he was on; we shook hands and then I woke up.



Not much point to retelling all this actually, except to thank Marv Wolfman for being a consummate professional to a blathering fanboy in his dreams.

Christmas Loot

Thank goodness for Amazon wish lists, as my comics-naive relatives don't have to wonder what I want, or try to negotiate with clerks at the mall bookstore to figure out exactly what's on my list.



So on Saturday morning I opened up packages containing: The Complete Peanuts: 1953-1954; the Strangers in Paradise Treasury Edition; The DC Comics Encyclopedia; and The New Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Stories: From Crumb to Clowes.



As if I didn't have enough stuff on my to-be-read stack!

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

For our return to regular Monkey Cover features I present Murphy Anderson's cover to 1955's Mystery In Space #23. I can think of no better way to end the year than with "Monkey Rocket to Mars!", illustrating Otto Binder's story of Earth's first visit to the red planet.

Image is courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.

Christmas Covers - December 25

For each day of December until Christmas I'm featuring a Comic Cover Advent Calendar. Just move your mouse over the image to reveal today's special Holiday comic cover. Click on the image to get a larger version from GCD.

Today's cover is a scene of the nativity from 1946's Treasure Chest vol. 2 #9, by an unknown artist.

Christmas is finally here, so that'll do it for our Comic Cover Advent Calendar for this year. I'll be back next December, as there are plenty of good covers left, and each year brings even more holiday-themed covers to add to the mix.

(You can find more comic cover Advent calendars at Polite Dissent and Raw Feed.)