Rude Wonder Woman

Your 'awwww' moment of the day, courtesy of Steve Rude (via Dirk):




DC need to find a way to get Rude drawing Wonder Woman, stat. Yeah, I know he's gearing up to do a new Nexus series, but after that they should sign him up to draw a presitge format WW series with a modern-retro feel (a la Jeff Smith's Shazam!)

New Library Comics: Week of March 26, 2007

Here's a list of the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Action philosophers! /Brooklyn, NY : Twin Comics, 2005- no. 3

Deitch, Kim. The stuff of dreams! /[Seattle, Wash.] : Fantagraphic Books no. 3

Hankeiwicz, John. Tepid. /Westmont, IL : John Hankiewicz 2003 Summer

Horrocks, Dylan. Pickle. /Cambridge, Ont. : Black Eye Productions, 1993- no. 9

Huizenga, Kevin, 1977- Or else. /Quebec, Canada : Drawn & Quarterly, c2004- no. 1

Kochalka, James. Conversation. /Marietta, GA : Top Shelf Productions, c2004- nos. 1-2

Kochalka, James. Super f*ckers /Marietta, GA : Top Shelf, 2005- nos. 271, 273

Moynihan, Jesse. The backwards folding mirror /Philadelphia, PA : Nonlocal Books, c2005- no. 1

Nilsen, Anders Brekhus, 1973- Big questions. /Montreal, Quebec : Drawn and Quarterly no. 7

Ryan, Johnny. Shouldn't you be working? /Seattle, WA : Fantagraphic Books, 2003- no. 1

Seth, 1962- Palooka-Ville /Montreal, Quebec : Drawn & Quarterly, 1994- nos. 1, 5, 7, 13-17

True porn. /Gainesville, Fla. : Alternative Comics no. 2

Turtle Covers

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

A turtle scared of a frog? No! But an alligator? quite probably. It's the 1958 cover to Tuffy Turtle #1.

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

Yet Another Music Moment: Weekend Tracks

Here are a few music tracks for your weekend listening, courtesy of Last.fm:

Review: Emma

Saving the best for last in my look at recently-read manga:

William is the eldest son of a wealthy family. Emma is a former street urchin raised to be a proper British maid in Victorian England. Will they find a way to bridge the gap of class distinctions and recognize their true love?

The plot of Emma vol. 1 (CMX, $9.99) by Kaoru Mori sounds like the typical setting for yet another shojo manga. Except it's not; Emma is seinen, manga intended to appeal to young men. I find it interesting that there's an entire subgenre of manga that are essentially romance comics for boys & young men, and Emma is a stellar representation of that genre.

Mori's art and storytelling in Emma are astounding, the attention to detail, lush background, and sense of place and space all contribute to making Emma a winning reading experience.

I won't say any more of the plot so as not to spoil your enjoyment, except to mention that there are elephants...

Of course we know that William and Emma will somehow end up together when the manga finally ends; it's the journey that makes all the difference, and in Kaoru Mori's Emma it's a journey well worth making.

Rating: 4 (of 5).

Review: Dr. Slump

Continuing my look at only-from-Japan manga reading from last weekend:

On the nearly completely opposite end of the manga spectrum from Project X: Cup Noodle is Dr. Slump vols. 1 & 2 (Viz, $7.99 ea.). Created in the early 1980s by Akira Toriyama (who would later go on to produce the ultra-popular Dragonball manga), the basic premise of Dr. Slump is that scientist Senbei Norimaki creates Arale, a girl robot. Hilarity ensues.

The art, plot, characters, etc. in Dr. Slump all point to it being a comic for ten-year-old boys, which in fact was its target market in Japan. So why does Viz rate it as T for Teen? Cultural differences. Despite a certain amount of editing, there are still plenty of scatalogical and sexual references at a level that can be appreciated by ten-year-old boys but which certain segments of American society think they shouldn't be exposed to. For instance, the plot of one early chapter involves the fact that Senbei failed to provide Arale with a vagina, since he has no idea what one actually looks like.

That's not to say that Dr. Slump is all sex & poop. There's plenty of other wacky hi-jinks and flights of whimsy, puns and pop-culture references, and even an occasional insight or two. The characters in Dr. Slump are also frequently aware that they are characters in a manga and provide some meta-commentary. One favorite episode in vol. 2 has Senbei creating a reality machine: any picture placed in the machine is turned into an actual thing. Akane--one of Arale's friends--decides to place a photo of the universe inside the machine. Then Arale cuts off a page of their own manga and places it in the machine too.

As I mentioned, Dr. Slump is a manga that appeals to ten-year-old boys; but then we all have a ten-year-old boy inside of us. I'm not sure I'll want to read more than a couple of volume before it gets old, but it's a good way to regress.

Rating: 3 (of 5)

New Library Comics: Week of March 19, 2007

Here's a list of the comics we added to our library collection last week:


Blab! (Princeton, Wis.) Blab! /[Chicago, IL : Monte Comix Productions, c1986- no. 16

Centrifugal bumble-puppy. /Agoura, CA : Fantagraphics Books, 1987-1988. nos. 1-7

Horne, Joyce. A softer world : truth and beauty bombs /Vancouver, BC : Loose Teeth Press, 2006.

Jones, Keith. Bacter-area /Montreal, Quebec : Drawn and Quarterly, 2005.

Max, 1956- Hechos, dichos, occurrencias y andanzas de Bardín el Superrealista /Barcelona : Ediciones la Cúpula, c2006.

Subliminal tattoos. /Vancouver, WA : Robert DuPree, c1994- no. 2