Comic World News

April 22, 2008:
CWN and the Grand Finale! -

February 4, 2008:
In Conclusion - David ends his CWN run with Tezuka's MW from Vertical

February 2, 2008:
Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove -

February 2, 2008:
The Shoegazer Returns - A New Year Begins, And Our Narrator Makes A Pledge

January 30, 2008:
Tim's Reviews -

September 13, 2007:
Wizard World Chicago Loot, Part One - Stykman, Empty Chamber, the Ztarian Saga, and yes, Little Bunny Foo Foo

February 15, 2007:
I Come Not to Bury Nick Cage... - But to mourn the death of my punchline

November 20, 2006:
The End - Rich's last Chicks & Romance

November 8, 2006:
Joann Sfar's Klezmer - And a Front Racks Hiatus

October 4, 2006:
This Month's Guest: Dave Gibbons - From the pages of Elephantmen!

September 18, 2006:
Back in Berlin - or How I spent my summer

July 29, 2006:
KICKING UP A STORM - An interview with David Lloyd

June 19, 2006:
You Ain't Never Had A Friend Like Me. - Graeme looks at Spidey's "genies"

December 18, 2005:
Disappointed - Sad news for fans of Busiek's CONAN, Stephen King, and others

December 13, 2004:
JUSTICE UNPLUGGED 2 at last !!! - By Fabrice Sapolsky & Xavier Fournier

December 2, 2004:
THE TWELFTH AND FINAL STEP - Say it ain't so, Dan.

November 23, 2004:
The importance of editing -

September 29, 2004:
Mystery and Conundrum indeed! - Where in the world is Jason Pomerantz?

September 13, 2004:
Hello and Goodbye and Hello Again - Change is in the air at CWN and it smells sweet.

August 12, 2004:
The Rise of the Web Toon - New Business Model or Dumb Luck?

July 30, 2004:
The Name Says it All... - Spin Doctors revamp Boomerang.

July 27, 2004:
Bigger Isn't Always Better -

June 8, 2004:
Pre-emptive Strike: MoCCA Arts Festival - Looking forward to the con, rather than looking back at it

The Layer Method
Our top Secret time-saving technique for creating and merging balloons and tails in Illustrator.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Hiroki Endo�s Tanpenshu and Looking at ICv2 Guide

Hiroki Endo�s Eden: It�s an Endless World! (Dark Horse) is a long-form science-fiction saga that follows a group of survivors in the wake of disease-driven devastation. It�s a map of corruption and opportunism, leavened by individual moments of decency and compassion. Endo is looking at the things that survive an apocalypse, and it makes for riveting reading.

Tanpenshu (also from Dark Horse) is a collection of Endo�s short pieces, and they take a gentler, more focused look at some of the same philosophical territory � unexpected compassion in a brutal world, the appearance of innocence covering a core of corruption, and the realities of an improvised community. It�s riveting reading too.

The volume opens with �The Crows, the Girl, and the Yakuza.� A wounded gangster winds up in the care of a young homeless girl who�s become de facto mother to a flock of damaged crows. If your Strained Metaphor Alarm is sounding, that�s a fair reaction, but Endo invests the trite scenario with enough emotional specificity to sustain a much longer story. The characters don�t stray too far from their expected roles, though they do inhabit them more fully than you might expect.

�Because You�re Definitely a Cute Girl� travels familiar territory as well. It�s no longer shocking for the pressures of adolescence to manifest in shocking ways, but Endo�s execution is masterful.

Mina, the title character, has faced a string of painful losses and some difficult responsibilities in addition to the mix of dashed hopes and petty humiliations that come with being a teen. Instead of giving her the tools to cope, these cumulative miseries have left her completely detached from what she perceives to be normal feelings. She reads Jung and asks questions, and she tries to process the answers, but she�s seen too many contradictions to accept them blindly.

As nuanced as the character work is, what really strikes me about this story is the emotional pacing. It initially feels casual � a string of highs and lows, banal moments sprinkled with unexpected but incisive bits of grotesquerie. As Mina�s desperation increases and each encounter suggests that she�s a failure or oddity, the tension builds appropriately. But even as that�s occurring, Endo resists a conventional narrative arc, staying faithful to the extremes of his protagonist�s curious approach to despair. It�s fascinating.

After delicately rendered metaphor and a chillingly precise portrayal of psychological decay, �For Those of Us Who Don�t Believe in God� provides a kind of relief. Like Hiroaki Samura�s Ohikkoshi (Dark Horse again), it�s a slice-of-life dramedy about college students. In both, a likeable crowd of near-adults juggle friendship, sex, and the unnerving prospect of undirected independence. Samura�s appealing telling was all quirky benevolence, a nostalgic mix-tape to the point in life where self-determination isn�t weighed down by responsibility. Endo takes more of a diarist�s approach, occasionally spiking the story with troublingly realistic dynamics.

�For Those of Us�� focuses on a theatre troupe mounting an experimental piece on capital punishment. The work actually seems like the kind of play Endo would write � shocking but ultimately humane and steeped with philosophical commentary. The process of staging it naturally heightens the emotional atmosphere, but Endo doesn�t go so far as to suggest that it�s the single driving influence in his characters� lives. It provides a hothouse, accelerating and accentuating what probably would have happened naturally.

It�s kind of Endo in miniature. In Eden, he infuses philosophical musings with deeply personal moments, spread out in a measured, almost leisurely way. He accomplishes the same thing here, though within the space of about 90 pages instead of a dozen volumes and without the benefit of any fantastical elements to punctuate the humanism. He handles a sprawling cast amazingly well, providing rounded individual portraits while building a rewarding architecture of interactions and relationships. Endo puts a number of elements into play and balances them with great skill.

I always enjoy the opportunity to see a manga-ka experiment with shorter pieces. Tanpenshu is an especially rewarding example. I�d already admired Endo based on his work in Eden, and this collection provides compelling evidence of his creative range.

*

You won�t find Tanpenshu mentioned in the ICv2 Guide #39: Anime/Manga. You also won�t find Love Roma or The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service or Afterschool Nightmare or Shout Out Loud! or any of a number of other intriguing, worthy titles that could make the world a better place if more people would just read them.

This annoyed me initially. All due respect to Naruto and Fruits Basket and Bleach, but something struck me as almost remedial of having to explain their virtues to people who sell comics. Then I reminded myself that comic shops are not universal bastions of variety and that there are some that consider Vertigo �indy.�

I also had to remind myself that ICv2 is not an advocacy agency for quality product. That�s not a slam. Their purview is to provide comics retailers with useful information that can help them stock their stores with saleable material. And for a lot of them, I�d imagine the news that a lot of people like Death Note is not only news, but useful news if they want to start adding some manga to their shelves.

From my non-retailer, manga-centric perspective, the guide seems to fill its function well. It provides an overview of manga in the direct market, runs down the hot properties from 2006, and points to upcoming releases that ICv2 credits with sales potential. It gives a partial estimate of the number of volumes publishers expect to release in 2007 and highlights some trends worth watching. (ADV promises 33 releases in 2007. One of them had damned well better be Yotsuba&! 4. And where is Digital Manga? Is there some ongoing feud I don�t know about?)

It is a little odd to see sh�nen-ai and yaoi tagged as big winners for 2006 and only one title from the category listed in ICv2�s Top 50 Properties (Tokyopop�s Loveless). In my obsessive but non-professional observations of graphic novel sales figures at ICv2, these kinds of books do startlingly well whenever they ship, especially when you consider that not every store carries even mainstream manga. A fuller introduction might have been helpful for retailers whose notion of male-male romance in comics is limited to the gay-bashing issue of Green Lantern or the fact that a high-profile comics creator flipped out when he found out a member of Infinity, Inc. had come out of the closet.

There is plenty of love for boys� love in the Top Manga Launches list, which upon closer inspection is refreshingly eclectic. Mixed in with the more predictable hits are global titles, light novels, manhwa of every flavor, and even some artsy classics. (One niche that gets no love at all is ero-manga. Sympathy bouquets can be sent to Simon Jones at Icarus Publishing. Heaven knows he�s trying.)

The manga reviews are apparently a new addition to the guide, and this section seems like the best opportunity for advocacy of quality (but possibly marginal) titles. It seems kind of wasteful to review titles that were already profiled fairly extensively in the top properties list when there are books that could really benefit from the right kind of nudge. (You won�t hear a whisper about Dragon Head or ES: Eternal Sabbath, but Kilala Princess gets three stars. Snow White and Cinderella seem pleased.)

But again, I�m probably letting my preference for advocacy obscure what the guide is trying to do and is doing reasonably well. I doubt the book would be of much use to shops already steeped in manga, but for retailers trying to widen their offerings, it�s a solidly informative resource.