Here’s another example of how international the world of comics is – a nearly two-hundred page graphic novel by an Israeli writer/artist little-known here. It’s published on this continent by Drawn & Quarterly, a smaller publisher from Montreal that specializes in stories that don’t have people flying around in their underwear. Koby Franco is a…
We all want to get on the ground floor, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, we find ourselves walking into a movie two reels in, munching popcorn and whispering to each other “And who is that guy?” In honor of those confused moments in all of our lives, this week Manga Friday read Book Two…
The first thing I should mention is that, although this book is credited to Jeff Smith, it doesn’t seem to have been written by him. I think the text in it – aside from a stilted introduction by Lucy Shelton Caswell, curator of the Ohio State Cartoon Research Library – was actually written by the…
Mark Crilley has been influenced by Japan before: his best-known work, the long all-ages Akiko series, is about a Japanese girl who has various adventures on alien worlds, and various elements of Japanese culture found their way into that book. But Akiko was still clearly a Western comic by a Western creator. Miki Falls, on…
Ambition, all by itself, is neither good nor bad. The greatest artistic works wouldn’t exist without vast reservoirs of ambition, but ambition by itself doesn’t guarantee anything. Even ambition combined with proven ability isn’t necessarily successful. And just because one work by a particular creator (or creators) was transcendently wonderful, that doesn’t mean the next…
These two books were both published as graphic novels for younger readers, by very different publishing houses – Owly comes from the small, quirky comics-oriented press Top Shelf, while The Arrival is a rare graphic novel from the childrens’ publishing juggernaut Scholastic – and they have interestingly different reasons for being wordless. Owly is more…
The old Fawcett Captain Marvel (as opposed to all of the other Captains Marvel since him) is a character that pretty much all comics kibitzers agree should be handled with a light, semi-humorous touch, kept out of tight continuity, and allowed to be fun. But we’re usually left deploring the situation when he’s given yet…
Manga are just as full of fossilized genres as any other popular media, as I’m coming to discover. A case in point is this week’s haul: three series, all from the same publisher, all of which can be vaguely characterized as being about a wandering assassin. OK, I’m stretching the term too far with the…
There are only two books for Manga Friday this week; I promise to do better next time but the end of the week snuck up on me while I wasn’t looking. (And I didn’t really have a third book that fit so nicely with my theme, anyway.) There have been sex comedies since the days…
Yoe is really the editor of this volume, but he’s credited as the author. Admittedly, he did write all of the text (except for a foreword by R. Crumb), but the art is entirely by other hands. And the art, of course, is the whole point of this book. As you can guess from the…
Brand extensions can be tricky things. Sometimes you end up with Lucifer, but sometimes you get Witchblade Takeru Manga instead. Jack of Fables, from DC, was a clear attempt to extend the brand identity of the Fables series, written by Bill Willingham and mostly penciled by Mark Buckingham, with a companion series about one of…
Since last week was steeped in girlyness, I thought it was only right to go entirely the other way this week. So, in honor of the weekend American men spend eating and watching football on TV, here are three manga about racing cars, slaughter, mayhem, flying blood, secret fighting techniques, and other topics of interest…
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