coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee

I’ve recently been introduced to Greg Rucka’s work.  I like it though it tend to get repetitive.  Kelly Thompson over at Comics Should be Good reviews his latest, Stumptown.  Be sure to read the comments!

It’s not a graphic novel but it is a movie I’m considering seeing – Pirate Radio.

Here’s some Blackest Night commentary.  (link via Journalista) It’s not collected so I haven’t read it yet but I want a promotional ring!

There’s a bunch of quick manga reviews, including Nana vol. 19, over at Manga Recon.

Now I won’t claim to completely understand anything that goes on in Junko Mizuno manga.  A lot of times I just open it up and go for the ride, then try and wrap my head around it later.  Sometimes much later.  I’m still rereading part of Pure Trance,  looking for some clue as to what it all means.  If it means anything.

Pelu is essentially a fluffyball little male creature that used to live in the body of a female alien.  Also in the body was a female version of Pelu and the biology of this planet dictates that Pelu and his wife (?) would make a baby inside the alien then the alien births the baby who is just like the alien.  It’s an all female planet so all the babies are female with little fluffy balls inside of them.  But Pelu escapes when the space hippo eats his host, biting her in half and he crawls out.  Yeah.  I’m serious.

Alone and wanting a baby of his own because he feels like a child will make him belong, he decides to head to the Space Hippo’s home planet, Earth.  Once there he begins his quest to find a wife and have a baby.  He encounters a singer, a rich girl, a clam diver and a highschooler.

The thing I love about Mizuno is that she writes about women as if the whole world were women, and in some cases, it literally is.  Most literature written for and by men is this way.  We even have the saying “it’s a man’s world” because, well, it is.   A male protagonist means the book is for everyone.  To set up a female protagonist is to write for women.  The experience of femininity is singular while the experience of being a man is universal.  Mizuno flips that.  Men in her stories are often caricatures, sad, lonely desperate creatures who’s destinies are tied to the destiny of a woman.  Though Pelu is technically male, he is not a man.  He is desire.  Not just sexual but the desire to belong, to relate and to procreate.  Should men read this I think they would be liberated.  Literature has denied men these feelings for too long.

Then there is, of course, the artwork.  Mizuno’s style is hyper-color.  Her eyes are wider, breasts bouncier, bodies rounder creating a sense of unease and awe.  Like you’ve eaten too much candy.   There’s so much to look at.  Her worlds overflow with flowers and bunnies, so cute but sinister.  As if she’s reminding her reader that the world, for all it’s beauty, is also withering and rotting.  Her characters live their lives and make their choices within the limitations of the world they live in.

I don’t think I could hate a Mizuno manga if I tried.   I knew I would love Pelu and I did.   Some may not like the short story format but I enjoyed seeing so many ideas in one volume.  I would want every page of this manga displayed on my wall!

Oh well, there’s always the New York Times bestseller list.

Of course, R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis is at the top.  I heard a review on NPR and although I’m not a big Crumb fan I would like to read this one.

I can attest that the Wizard of Oz has some breathtaking artwork.

As for the superheroes, Geoff Johns is awesome and brings home Final Crisis.  I might read Batman: Cacophony but only because I love the word “cacophony”.  Deadpool is pretty ok with me as well.

Is anyone else surprised to see Pride and Prejudice on the list?  Not because it kind of proves that women are buying comics, though I could speculate that it does, that or highschoolers thinking they’ve got an easy way out but because, oh I don’t know…Pride and Prejudice is so boring!  But it’s everywhere.  Still for those of you who love it, here’s another way to get a Bennet fix.

No surprises on the manga list.  I recommend Black Bird and Ouran High School Host Club.

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got today.

Finally, fall is back!

Robot6 gives us two reviews in one.

Danielle Leigh has a few suggestions.

Ed Sizemore convinces me to mark MariaHolic off my to-read list.

Finally, MangaRecon has a review of Please, Please Me which looks cute.

Then this “graphic novels and similar genres like manga, a popular Japanese style of graphic novel that often involves science fiction or fantasy themes, and animé, also heavily Japanese, share a method. They tell stories within the context of cartoon drawings.”   First, manga is not a genre.  Also, anime and manga are not heavily Japanese – they are, with the exception of their translations, completely Japanese.  I’m not sure this reporter got that.  It’s like he thinks they are just influenced by Japanese art and made here in America with American writers and artists.

But I can’t get on them too much.  In the end, silly article or not, graphic novels are being embraced by these libraries and that’s a good thing for the adorable Tushar who states -

“I like fiction — not real,” Tushar says. “I like to read when I’m bored — and I’m bored a lot.”

“In ‘Sakura,’ there are these magical cards and she has to collect them,” Tushar says. “And in ‘Naruto,’ well, there is violence in there. They have to fight enemies. But sometimes they get wounded.”

They should have just let Tushar write the article.

I’m at a loss of what to read next.  There’s so many on my list, I think I’ve narrowed it down to five – will you help me choose?

Detroit Metal City (DMC) – This strange little manga is about a heavy metal rocker who dreams of boyband success.  Very weird but lots of people are saying it’s really good.

Ember Fury – The child of celebrity parents deals with her stress by setting stuff on fire.  The artwork looks neat and I’m a sucker for angry teenagers.

MariaHolic – a yuri obsessed teenager joins an all girls school in hopes of finding her love.  But the perfect woman turns out to be a cross-dressing pyscho-man.

Cigarette Kisses – a yaoi about two men who almost get together when one decides to marry a woman.  Years later they meet while smoking and um, I’m assuming things get hot!

Umbrella Academy: Dallas – I loved loved loved the first volume.  Seriously, loved it.  Enough to give Gerard Way’s band another try but no, the band still sucked.

So, which would you read?  Have you read any of them and think maybe I can skip it?

Yes, I'm still reading over your shoulder.

Danielle Leigh’s Reading Diary at Comics Should Be Good contains Hero Tales volume 1.

I can’t really follow all of this rant on the Brave and the Bold (ha, I totally wrote the Bold and the Beautiful at first) but you might like it.

I really enjoyed Solanin so I’m excited to get the manga-ka’s latest set of short stories even if, as Matthew Brady says, it isn’t as good.

Kate Dacey reviews Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu -the title that my comic book store was supposed to be ordering for me over a month ago!  What the hell?

Not that I think Small is lying.  I’m sure he’s not.  However, it does, or should I say would, read like a formulaic childhood from hell turn to adult success if it weren’t for the artwork.  Small recognizes that he tells better stories when he’s silent.  He’s been silent a long time.  A ragged surgery for a cancerous tumor leaves him without a vocal cord.  At 14 he is physically trapped  in his own mind, unable to express himself.  He becomes his family’s quiet observer, an inconsequential scapegoat for his mother’s anger.

Small is at his best when his character don’t speak.  When his mother thwaks shut a cabinet, or his 6 year old self literally dives into his artwork.  His drawings carry their expressions so perfectly that often I could just skip the text.  I didn’t need to be told that the boy was angry, depressed and intrigued by his new speechless life- I could see it and in just one panel.  In fact I wish I could draw this review just to really give the sense at what art can do that a stumbling, rambling bunch of akward text cannot.

So, thanks Bill for forcing this one on me.