Monthly archives: November, 2009

Something I often find interesting is looking at what the non traditional comics fans are reading.  Thankfully lately it is easier to get an idea of what interests the general public.  Things like the New York Times best sellers list for Graphic Books help show what is popular among the traditional booksellers.   Librarian Robin Brenner recently wrote an interesting column on the circulation numbers of graphic novels among children at her library. Manga, not surprisingly, dominated the lists as it is clearly easier to get kids and women to read manga then it is American style comics.  One surprise among the lists showed that the Immortal Iron Fist is quite popular with the kids.  I’m glad to see that since I’m a big fan of that book.  Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction did a amazing job of fleshing out the history of Iron Fist. (more…)

It’s a busy week for releases and I’m sure there will be plenty of reviews and comments on various Blackest Night and other high profile books.  I thought I would focus on something with a slightly lower profile, that being Gotham City Sirens.  The series revolves around Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy finding themselves living together in the aftermath of the recent changes in the Bat Family of books.  Writer Paul Dini and Harley Quinn together again was all the incentive I needed to pick up the first issue.  The latest issue sees the end of a three part storyline where Gaggy, one of the Joker’s old sidekicks, impersonates the Joker and tries to kill Harley for being the girl that ruined the good times with his old pal the Joker.  Gaggy’s back story ends up being a interesting look at how the Joker went from being the laughing criminal to the sadistic killler that he is now.

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It’s not affiliated with the official Comic-Con, but a local organizer is building on San Diego’s reputation as a happening spot for conventions.

From San Diego CityBeat:

With four-day San Diego Comic-Con International passes unprecedentedly selling out in early November, does San Diego need another con? And four times a year at that?

If the hundreds of attendees at the first San Diego Quarterly Con last Sunday are any indication, then, yes, there is a need.

“There’s a big enough collector market that still exists in San Diego and wants to come to this,” said Roy God Damm, self-professed “spokesman of the underground” and attendee at Sunday’s event.

“Everyone’s sick of eBay; they’re sick of paying people to ship their stuff. It has to come back down to this level; otherwise collecting is dead.”

While there are many things that annoy me about Marvel one thing I have consistently enjoyed is the Punisher ever since Garth Ennis rebooted the character a decade ago.  I was sad to see Ennis’s real world Max line take on the Punisher come to a end, but Duane Swierczynski did a good job of filling in before Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon relaunched the Max line book this month.  I had pretty high hopes coming into this book since I am a fan of Aaron’s Scalped, if you are not already reading that I highly recommend it, and Dillon for many years now has been one of the best to ever draw the Punisher.  The first issue did not disappoint as it sets up what will be the Max line version of the Kingpin.  Fans of the Ennis and Dillon run will like this as well for if I did not know any better I would have thought Ennis had written this issue himself.

Over in the Marvel U proper Rick Remender has a very different but equally entertaining take on the Punisher.  Issue #11, out this week, is my highlight of the week.  It is a very good jumping on point for those not already reading as the book goes in a very different direction after the events of the List where the Punisher was literally cut to pieces by Daken, the Dark Wolverine.  This issue sees a strange group of Japanese men hunting down and killing monsters of the world.  Many of the monsters have taken refuge in the old Morlocks tunnels in New York.  After gathering up what parts of the Punisher they can find, Morbius the Living Vampire in a Doctor Frankenstein like role pieces the Punisher back together again in the hopes that the Punisher will defend the monsters against whoever it is that is trying to kill them all.

Remender has crafted a very strange but highly entertaining story.  Tony Moore comes on board as the artist here and he is perfect for the job as it involves drawing Marvel’s Legion of Monsters.  Anyone who enjoys this issue should also check out Fear Agent which is from the same creative team.  Fear Agent also features the art of Jerome Opena, the artist of the first several issues of Remender’s Punisher.

MG Doom vs. Manga ends in a no contest

My fight with manga is now over after a rather dumb technicality on my part.  I was pouring through lists of manga to try and come up with my own list of manga worth reading for someone like me.  It turns out there is already a site that does this and more.  The saddest part is that I came across that site a couple months ago but did not think to bookmark it.  All my anger and frustration towards manga was for not.

With that said I encourage anyone interested in manga to checkout mangaupdates.com.  All you have to do is type something like Pluto into the search and it will bring up the information about the title as well as give you a nice long list of recommendations of similar manga.  It was the one little thing I was desperately looking for.  Even if that doesn’t work there is a very active message board on the site with a section dedicated to recommended reading.  I can vouch for the recommendation lists in the profiles as they were many of the same titles I was interested in after pouring through the lists and reviews the old fashion way.

Speaking of manga  sankakucomplex.com has a very interesting post about the current problems manga is facing in Japan with declining sales.  Icarus Publishing has a good post as well based on the Sankaku Complex article.  This is another example of a print industry facing a digital world.

Word Balloon (more…)

A fellow Doom, the Doctor to be precise, will be going to war this February in the DoomWar mini series.  CBR has a interview with editor Axel Alonso and artist Scot Eaton about the project.  To sum up Dr. Doom tried to kill T’Challa the Black Panther leading to him being gravely injured and his sister Shuri taking over as the new Black Panther.  The war will be a T’Challa strikes back type thing with T’Challa and wife Storm calling on their friends from the Fantastic Four and X-men for help.  It remains to be seen if Dr. Doom will call on the members of Doomkopf to stand by him in some Doomish manor.

Honestly I’m not terribly interested in this aside from the entertaining name, but it is a good example of Marvel’s current stadgedy of having many smaller events instead of one big event.  While it is good to see Marvel listening to the fans who complained about event fatigue after being warn out by Secret Invasion, I think they are spreading themselves way too thin with these mini events.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with a big annual events as long as they mean something.  The problems I had with Secret Invasion as well as DC’s Final Crisis was that I did not feel like either really meant anything in the end.

DC’s Blackest Night has been a good example of an event done right with a strong lead in and a meaningful point to it all.  Over at Marvel we have Dark Reign the event that isn’t called a event leading us to the Siege mini event that will see the end of Dark Reign and me feeling very tired of the the word “event.”  I will read Siege but I ultimately do not care one way or another about it because Dark Reign has been so spread out that the bad parts cancel out the good parts leaving me feeling rather indifferent as whole.  I do like Norman Osborn being the villain in control and would have preferred he have a longer run in that role.  It will be interesting to see the sales numbers once Siege starts up next month since DC has recently taken a firm hold of the top ten thanks to the Blackest Night.

Despite all the helpful information I have received this week regarding manga I still can’t shake the feeling of being overwhelmed by it. Daryl Surat of Anime World Order has been a big help in explaining why I have had so many problems.  Essentially the manga translated into English has been the type geared towards boys and females.  This is not to say all manga is like that but it’s easy to think that because the most popular translated manga are geared for those demographics and rightly so because those who read American comics are already well taken care of.

Here are some of the things that give me problems.  Like most that read American comic, I believe the artwork is very important.  I personally do not enjoy the style you see in popular manga or anime as I prefer a more illustrative look to a cartoonish look.  Whenever I see manga that has some combination of samurai legends, girly romances, settings in a schools, or Dragon Ball type battles I tend to tune out and go back to the American comics I know.  These are the things I constantly run into when trying to find manga that interests me.  This is not to say I will not read manga involving those things but it has to be pretty unique and special to get me on board.

A key problem in this is that I still enjoy American comics like I always have. (more…)