Most of us, it’s safe to say, will never be told that our sin is our very being. (Unless we were brought up in the Deep South, in which case we’ve heard it twice a day and five times on Sunday.) We’re also not going to learn that the odd new girl in our high school is actually an android. Nor will we find that we’re trying to stop the extinction of mankind, along with our brother, with only our innate psychic powers to guide and aid us. That’s what manga is for – in a manga, those things are only to be expected, and it would be a bland story without something like that happening by page five.

Pandora Hearts, Vol. 1
By Jun Mochizuki
Yen Plus, December 2009, $10.99

Oz Vessalius, scion of one of the four great dukedoms, has arrived at the mansion that his family uses only for coming-of-age ceremonies to be officially proclaimed heir to his non-present father, along with a large semi-feudal entourage. (Though this book is set, as best I can tell from the floppy, ornate manga clothes and the background details, no earlier than the late Victorian.) It seems like an awfully big place to only use for a few days every generation, but I’ve learned not to let logic get in the way of my enjoyment of a manga story.)

However, all does not go smoothly – there are signs, portents, and other weird events that don’t make a whole lot of sense – and the ceremony is interrupted by a group of knife- and chain-wielding hooded figures, who seem to be about to kill Oz for the sin of existence. But he’s saved, sort-of, by a girl named Alice, who is also a giant black rabbit, and both of them are cast into the Abyss, a punishment dimension from which no one ever escapes.

Pandora Hearts skitters about like a bean on a griddle, so it doesn’t then do anything as predicable as settling down to tell the story of how Alice and Oz travel across the Abyss for a few dozen volumes and come to trust and confide in each other. No, they get out of the inescapable Abyss in time for afternoon tea – with Oz still very suspicious of Alice’s intentions and power (and rightfully so) to meet and confront the hooded folks, who are some manner of secret police.

This is a confusing book, with explanations shouted during battles and other confrontations that don’t actually explain much, and are often written in manga shorthand that substitutes Ominous Capitals for clarity. The Alice in Wonderland parallels so far seem limited to Alice’s name and other form, and there’s no particular significance here to Oz’s name, either. Pandora Hearts is messy and loud and disheveled, like a sorority girl at 3 AM on a Friday, but it – like that sorority girl – remains oddly attractive even then. It’s not a great story, but I have hopes that it will make sense, one day. (more…)

From the AP via Yahoo: Justice Dept. won’t support Jack Johnson pardon

The Justice Department is refusing to back a posthumous pardon for Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight boxing champion who was imprisoned nearly a century ago because of his romantic ties with a white woman.

In a letter obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, the department’s pardon attorney, Ronald L. Rodgers, told Rep. Peter King
that the Justice Department’s general policy is not to process
posthumous pardon requests. In cases like Johnson’s, given the time
that has passed and the historical record that would need to be
scoured, the department’s resources for pardon requests are best used
on behalf of people “who can truly benefit” from them, Rodgers wrote.
The letter was in response to one that King, R-N.Y., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had sent to President Barack Obama
in October urging a pardon. In that letter, the two lawmakers noted
that both houses of Congress has passed a resolution calling for a presidential pardon
and said they hoped the president would be eager to “right this wrong
and erase an act of racism that sent an American citizen to prison.”
Rodgers
wrote that notwithstanding the department policy, Obama still has the
authority to pardon whomever he wishes, “guided when he sees fit by the
advice of the pardon attorney.”
And he did cite two cases of posthumous pardons: President Bill Clinton’s
1999 pardon of Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the Army’s first black
commissioned officer, who was drummed out of the military in 1882 after
white officers accused him of embezzling $3,800 in commissary funds;
and President George W. Bush’s
2008 pardon of Charles Winters, who was convicted of violating the
Neutrality Act when he conspired in 1948 to export aircraft to a
foreign country in aid of Israel.
In Winters’ case, Rodgers said, the pardon request was not processed by Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, due to the department’s posthumous pardon policy.
King said in a telephone interview that he and McCain probably will continue to urge Obama to issue the pardon.
“What they’re doing here is bucking it back to President Obama,” King said. “So I would respectfully urge him to grant the pardon. This is the president’s call.”
The White House had no immediate comment on whether Obama would consider the request.

To read more on the life and times of Jack Johnson, read The Original Johnson by Trevor Von Eeden. The latest installment has just been posted today, or you can start from the beginning.

The first volume will be out in print before Christmas, and you can preorder the book now from Amazon.com, or request it from your local comic book store.

This may be one of the strangest stories in comics of the year– and potentially very sad.

Pennsylvania state police charged Frank Frazetta Jr. with theft, burglary and trespass after he and two other men used a backhoe to pull the door off the hinges of the Frank Frazetta Art Museum. Police said once inside, Frazetta stole about 90 paintings and was loading them into a truck when he was caught by police.

The elder Frazetta is known for his work on characters including Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan and Vampirella. He was in Florida at the time of the theft.

His son’s motive stems from a family feud over assets. Frank’s wife and Alfonso’s mother, Ellie, died earlier this year. According to Frank Jr.’s wife, Lori Frazetta, Frank Jr. and Ellie ran the family business until Ellie’s death, when the infighting over Frank Sr.’s paintings began. Frank Sr. is said to be suffering from dementia.

Frazetta Jr. was arraigned and sent to the Monroe County jail. Bail was set at $500,000. Officials didn’t know whether he had a lawyer yet.

A trooper who responded said Frazetta claimed he had been instructed by his father “to enter the museum by any means necessary to move all the paintings to a storage facility,” according a police affidavit.

The elder Frazetta told police that his son did not have permission to enter the museum or to remove any artwork. Frank Frazetta’s attorney, Gerard Geiger, said the stolen paintings were insured for $20 million, according to court documents.

Here’s the news story from WNEP:

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In deference to the Great Old
Ones, Tor.com has devoted this December to everyone’s favorite cosmic
tentacled thing-that-cannot-be-described from Vhoorl.

We celebrate by including this image we came across (but now can’t find the source of, sorry) which we hope will inspire an upcoming episode of The Brave and the Bold. It is our hope that this will please great Cthulhu so that he will eat us first.