Dark Horse Comics
Yes, I realize that Adam Warren is not a Japanese person, and that this book was not produced in Japan, and is thus not a Japanese comic, and thus is not really manga. But I’m including it here because Warren draws as well as writes this, and his is a heavily influenced manga style. Additionally, Dark Horse is publishing this closer to manga-size and format, and I’m assuming it’s going to be shelved with manga in most comic shops and book stores, so for the purposes of this post, we’re just going to go ahead and call this manga, cool?
Anyway, Empowered is an ironically named superheroine who comes across as a more shapely version of Ally McBeal. She’s a got a superhero physique, but tragically low self-esteem, almost pathological neurosis and trouble being taken seriously by her peers in the Superhomeys (Probably the second best superhero team name of all time, right behind James Kochalka’s Superfuckers). Like Ms. McBeal, she’s pretty pathetic most of the time, but it’s played for laughs of the laughing-along-with rather than laughing-at variety.
Her powers come from her costume, a body stocking that gives her super strength and the ability to shoot lasers from her hands, but also tears very, very easily, and the smaller her costume gets, the weaker her powers get.
So 75-percent of her adventures end with her barely clad in a badly Swiss-cheesed costume, bound and gagged by the bad guys, awaiting rescue from some other superhero.
It should come as no real surprise that she got her start in a series of fetish sketches by Warren, who, in addition to being one of the first U.S. artists to fully embrace Japanese animation and comics storytelling styles and techniques, is also one of the sharper writers when it comes to integrating sci-fi technology and fourth-wall-abusing metatextual meaning into comics.
Over the course of 240 pages, Empowered quickly grows from three-page parody stories to a much more complex narrative involving Emp, her semi-reformed villain/boyfriend Thug Boy, her villainess-turned-best friend Ninjette and an interdimensional Lovecraftian monster god that they’ve trapped in a set of “Cosmichains” and made their prisoner/slacker roommate.
A sort of R-rated sitcom exploring geek culture from the inside out, Empowered has its cake and eats it too—it’s full of exploitative, titillating imagery, but it also features the healthiest and most realistic romantic relationship ever featured in any comic book also featuring capes and masks.
Gothic Sports Vol. 1
Tokyopop
Sixteen-year-old Anya has just transferred to Lucrece High Scooh, for one simple reason—they have the best sports teams in the city, and she dreams of playing for one of them. Unfortunately, she has more heart than experience, as she’s never actually played on a sports team. Of any kind.
After washing out at basketball try-outs and learning the school’s soccer team won’t let girls play, she rallies the school’s other misfits and outcasts to form her own soccer team. But to gain official recognition, they must first defeat the school’s real soccer team in a match.
German writer/artist Anike Hage’s geeks vs. jocks high school comedy isn’t terribly gothic in its storytelling or aesthetic, and gets its name instead from the team’s uniforms, stylish black and red creations designed by the team’s Gothic Lolita (and fashion fan) Filiz.
It’s a charming enough series, even if this first volume of the story fails to live up to the promise of the intriguingly mismatched words that make up the title. And let’s face it, that is an incredible title. Unfortunately, it plants in my head a comic story that is much, much cooler than the one Hage gives us here (Is it possible that a title can be too good?).
It also ends on something of a cliffhanger, just before the real soccer team and the goth one are set to square off against one another, which leaves me balancing on a fence; I do want to see how it turns out, but I’m not so enamored of the book that I’m sure I want to pick up volume two.
Avril Lavigne’s Make 5 Wishes Vol. 1
Del Rey Manga
I honestly have a hard time imagining how this particular graphic novel even came to be. Artist Camilla D’Errico’s concept sketches included in the back of the volume seem to indicate that she was working on a story called “Iku and Oni” at some point, using these character designs and basic concepts.
The story she tells along with scripter Joshua Dysart seems like it could have been told perfectly well without Lavigne’s involvement.
And what exactly is Lavigne’s involvement? Well, the credits bill her as “starring” in the book, and she writes the introduction and ... that seems to be about it. (When Tokyopop published Courtney Love-related manga Princess Ai, Love at least got credit for co-creating the character).
So the cynical reading is that they just kinda slapped Lavigne’s name on the thing to boost sales, a move that worked, as Del Rey issued a press release saying the first printing sold out within four days, forcing them to go back to press for a second printing.
But it’s hard to stay cynical about a book this charming for too long. Forget what the credits say, Lavigne actually only co-stars. The real star is troubled high-schooler Hana, a friendless, lonely and unnoticed girl who amuses herself by pretending to be different people online and striking up friendships with people she knows in real life but never speaks to, listening to Lavigne’s music in her headphones to drown out the sound of her parents fighting and talking to Lavigne, a sort of imaginary friend who also acts like her conscience (I’m not up on what high school kids are listening to any more, but one would think Hana would be attracted to a musician with a darker and more melancholy sound than Lavigne; if this were set back when I was in high school, I would imagine Hana listening to Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson, or, if she had a cooler older sibling or cousing to introduce her to their music, maybe The Smiths or The Cure).
When Hana stumbles upon the website make5wishes.com (go check it out; it’s there), she places an order and receives an adorable but scary little red demon, one which looks like something of a combination between Disney’s Stitch and a Chinese lion—in a box, and it promises to grant her five wishes. It does so, but monkey’s paw-style.
While the titular pop star’s presence will likely scare away some regular comics readers (though far fewer readers than it will attract), if you take Lavigne out of the equation completely, it’s still a beautifully constructed book, with D’Errico’s rough, manga-inspired pencils colored without any ink laid on top of them. There’s also a pretty interesting story about the redemptive power of pop music in here as well, if you’re willing to look for it. Even pop music that comes courtesy of the singer who gave us “Sk8er Boi.”
The book’s color art and somewhat higher-than-usual production values (nice cover and paper stock, etc.) makes it’ a bit pricey for those of us used to the $9.99 price point for manga, but it’s definitely worth a read while loitering in a big box bookstore, or a check out form the library.
To Terra… Vol. 1
Vertical
I was really looking forward to this nice-looking, 350-page volume from Vertical, having immensely enjoyed the last release from the company I had read. The book design is perfect; it’s the sort of book that serves as a sort of little rectangular paper sculpture all by itself, the kind of book I might buy just because I like the way it looks sitting on a shelf or strewn on a coffee table (Okay, I’m not rich enough to actually buy books based on how well designed the spines and covers are, but sometimes it is a factor, and if I were rich enough to do that, I would have done it with To Terra…)
The interiors are just as beautiful. Keiko Takemiya’s art is pretty dated—a glance says late-‘70s Japan—but that’s hardly a bad thing in my book. The ‘70s-ishness of the design might have made it look cutting edge upon original publication, and out-of-date in the ‘80s or ‘90s, but now it’s old enough that it looks unusual again. As a member of a generation who considered the first two Star Wars flicks, G-Force/Battle of the Planets and Voltron the pinnacle of science fiction entertainment, this look seems perfectly space opera to me personally.
Designs aside, Takemiya’s pages are all wonderfully constructed; packed with panels and visual information, but easy to read.
While the age of the book contributed to its otherworldly, sci-fi feel, I think it may also have hurt the specifics of the story, as what might have seemed forward-looking in the late seventies now seems rather played out. In fact, several elements of the book seemed to echo ones I’d just read a few months ago in Phoenix, a superior manga.
It’s sometime in the far future—“the year XXXX”—and mankind’s unchecked over-development lead Terra to the edge of a man-made apocalypse, the environment buckling under the weight of humanity and its abuses.
Luckily, our descendants have developed space travel and had begun colonizing space before they’d killed themselves off, and so they took off. But there’s a deep connection between a species and their home planet, and the goal was always to return. To help them get there, humanity developed the sinister sounding era of Superior Domination, also known by the less sinister sounding acronym of S.D., in which children are born of a god-like computer, which places them in foster homes until they’re 14, and rigorously programs all aspects of their life.
Only the best and brightest are allowed to return to Terra.
This dystopian utopia future is not without strife; a result of the weird computer-lead breeding is the rise of Mu, a mutant race who have psychic abilities. Their powers are activated around the time they hit puberty, and they’ve been persecuted historically; by the time the story opens, they are eliminated from human society (Marvel readers have seen this all before…ad nauseum).
This first volume does quite a bit of world-building. Though the broad strokes are overly familiar, I’m pretty intrigued by where things are going. We open with Soldier Blue and Physis, members of a Mu revolutionary group hiding out from the humans and plotting their people’s destiny. Then we spend a lot of time with Jomy Marcus Shin, an unusual child who has the powers of the Mu but the rugged constitution of a human, who is reluctantly forced into the role of the leader of the Mu.
Then we flash forward some years to meet Keith Anywan, a young human on a track to become one of the Elite and return to Terra, who has a strange origin he’s not quite aware of, and a rebellious streak that worries some of his compatriots.
The scope of the book is pretty incredibly. These 350 pages all read like set-up, making for a first act in a navel-gazing space opera that is actually quite operatic. At only $13.95, it’s a hell of a page-per-dollar value, even if it’s not quite as mindblowing as Phoenix.
Yakitate!! Japan Vol. 3
TokyopopI know I’ve sung praises for Yakitate!! Japan before, and, for the most part, this third volume offers more of the same. That’s a good thing, in that Takashi Hashiguichi’s art is incredible, the characters are well designed, well-defined and well-realized, and that the concept is a lot of fun.
It’s also a bad thing in that in this volume, it becomes clear that the book is hitting the wall that all competition manga does, in which the stories become repetitive. At this point in the narrative, it’s clear that Kazuma is going to repeatedly find himself in baking battles of different varieties, seem to be up against impossible odds, and somehow cook his way out of them.
It’s the details, the little tweaks to these competitions, that can save the book, and Hashiguichi throws enough new characters into the mix here that the book still works for me, but I find myself less excited than I was when I first discovered it.
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