Katherine Dacey

10 Must-Read Manhwa

April 11, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 26 Comments

After visiting “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” last weekend, I was struck by the homogeneity of titles on the exhibit’s suggested reading list. The list isn’t bad by any means, but it places heavy emphasis on recent, teen-oriented titles such as The Antique Gift Shop, Chocolat, Click, Moon Boy, and Snow Drop while overlooking some less popular choices such as Buja’s Diary. As a supplement to my write-up of the “Korean Comics” show, therefore, I’ve compiled my own list of must-read manhwa. Though my goal is to direct readers to works in a variety of styles and genres, I freely admit that this list reflects my own tastes and biases. I’d love to hear from you about what you think belongs on a must-read manhwa list and why. And if you’d like a copy of the SFPL’s Korean Comics bibliography, let me know — I’d be happy to mail one to you.

10. DEJA-VU: SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER

YOUN IN-WAN • TOKYOPOP • 1 VOLUME

Déjà vu is a manhwa smorgasbord, pairing writer Youn In-Wan with six artists with distinctly different styles. The first four stories follow the same basic template: two lovers find themselves drawn together by mysterious forces, only to be separated by a moment of terrible violence. The settings and circumstances range from the vaguely folkloric — a warrior and a fox demon fall in love after he frees her from a hunter’s snare — to the contemporary — a blind Korean-American girl and an up-and-coming pop singer meet cute on the streets of San Francisco. The best stories, “Spring” and “Winter,” deftly interlace the fates of the warrior and the fox with the survivors of a twenty-third century apocalypse, bringing to mind Sun, the final installment of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. Though the stories aren’t uniformly excellent, Deja-vu still makes a fine introduction to the contemporary Korean comics scene in general and the writing of Youn In-Wan in particular; look for his series March Story in October 2010. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 1/30/08.)

9. NARRATION OF LOVE AT 17

KYONGOK KANG • NETCOMICS • 4 VOLUMES

Seyoung, the heroine of Narration of Love at 17, is bright, but not exceptional; pretty, but not a head-turner; and talented, but not outstanding. For several years, Seyoung has been a member of the drama club, relegated to backstage roles while the beautiful Hyemi lands the plum parts. When Hyemi becomes involved with Hyunwoo, Seyoung’s friend and first crush, Seyoung faces a tough choice: will she wait for Hyunwoo to reciprocate her feelings, or will she move on? Backstage rivalries and first loves are standard manhwa fare, but Narration of Love at 17 proves deeper and more heartfelt than most coming-of-age stories in this vein, thanks to Kyongok Kang’s believable, appealing characters; their quicksilver moods, intense passions, deep insecurities, and ever-changing social allegiances make them seem like real teenagers and not an adult’s idea of what teenagers are like. Though the art is, at times, a little clumsy, Kang’s fondness for 1970s shojo is evident in her linework and character designs, and in her emotionally resilient protagonist. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 9/12/07. Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

8. PRIEST

MIN-WOO HYUNG • TOKYOPOP • 16 VOLUMES

This sprawling, religio-horror epic comes saddled with enough convoluted backstory for a J.R.R. Tolkein trilogy or a George Lucas franchise, yet proves surprisingly fast-paced and fun. Skipping between the present, the Crusades, and the American West — or, more accurately, a manhwa artist’s cinematically influenced notion of the West — Priest tells the story of Ivan Isaacs, a man of the cloth who renounces his faith after evil researchers use his sister as a human sacrifice. Over the span of sixteen volumes, Ivan battles fallen angels and zombies in an effort to avenge Gena’s death, restore order, and redeem his sinner’s soul. The artwork is bold and stark, with spiky lines and attitude to spare; if you adored the over-the-top action sequences and pistol-packing clergymen of Hellsing, Min-woo Hyung’s elaborate shoot-em-up will be your cup of tea. (Click here to read the first volume at Tokyopop.)

7. RUN, BONG-GU, RUN!

BYUN BYUNG-JUN • NBM/COMICS LIT • 1 VOLUME

Run, Bong-Gu, Run! tells a simple story: Bong-Gu and his mother leave their rural village to find Bong-Gu’s father, who has gone to Seoul in search of work. As they retrace his steps through the capital, a chance encounter with a beggar yields an important clue to the father’s whereabouts, offering hope that the family will be reunited. The author never explicitly states what prompted the father to leave, how long he’s been away, or why Bong-Gu’s mother waited so long to track him down. In leaving these characters’ personal histories mysterious, Byun Byung-Jun comes dangerously close to romanticizing them: Bongu-Gu’s parents and the old beggar often register as poor but dignified archetypes rather than flesh-and-blood people. But Byun’s spare, restrained artwork mitigates against the story’s sentimentality, offering readers a haunting cityscape that’s as much a character as Bong-Gu or his mother. Rendered in rough, energetic brushstrokes and muted watercolors, Byun’s street scenes are among the most beautiful images I’ve seen in any manhwa translated for English-speaking audiences. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 7/11/07. Click here to read a preview at NBM/Comics Lit.)

6. 10, 20, AND 30

MORIM KANG • NETCOMICS • 7 VOLUMES

The ten, twenty, and thirty of the title refer to Rok, a sixteen-year-old girl; Belle, her twenty-six-year old cousin; and Krumb, Rok’s mother, who at age thirty-two finds herself a widow. Through a series of interlocking vignettes, 10, 20, and 30 documents the trio’s fumbling efforts to find themselves — and Mr. Right. If the naive, cartoonish art is a take-it-or-leave-it affair, Kang’s heroines are winning, at once complex and sympathetic. They make mistakes; they overreact; they misjudge the men in their lives; they sometimes hurt loved ones with selfish behavior. To be sure, similar characters abound in Bridget Jones’ Diary and Sex and the City, but there’s a qualitative difference between Bridget and the ladies of 10, 20, and 30: Rok, Belle, and Krumb aren’t neurotic. Beneath their quirks and anxieties, all three women display genuine strength and self-determination, even if they don’t always make smart choices about the men in their lives. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 5/10/07. Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

5. GOONG: THE ROYAL PALACE

PARK SOO-HEE • ICE KUNION • 10+ VOLUMES (ongoing)

Goong: The Royal Palace focuses on commoner Chae-Kyung, a high school student who marries the next in line to the (fictional) Korean throne. Just as Diana Spence did in real life, Chae-Kyung discovers that being a princess isn’t glamorous, as her day-to-day life is filled with palace intrigue, onerous civic responsibilities, jealous classmates, and an indifferent husband who’s in love with someone else. Though the plot is an amalgam of familiar soap-opera conventions — romantic triangles! hot younger siblings! disapproving mother-in-laws! — the story has surprising depth, showing us the emotional toll that public life exacts on the young couple. Another plus is the artwork: it’s flat-out gorgeous, with considerable attention devoted to ancient ceremonial costumes and au-courant fashions. Pair those beautiful images with a compelling plot and boatloads of romantic tension, and you have a recipe for manhwa crack. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 8/29/08.)

4. FOREST OF GRAY CITY

JUNG-HYUN UHM • ICE KUNION/YEN PRESS • 2 VOLUMES

Struggling artist Yun-Ook and bartender Bum-Moo decide to room together after a series of drunken misunderstandings that wouldn’t be out of place in a Meg Ryan movie. Though Yun-Ook is horrified to discover their age difference — she’s in her twenties, he’s seventeen — Bum-Moo begins courting her in a confused, low-key fashion. The story would be pure Harlequin fodder if Jung-Hyun Uhm’s heroine wasn’t such a strong, appealing character. Yun-Ook is impetuous, insecure, and quick to take offense, but she’s also focused on her career, protective of Bum-Moo, and determined not to sacrifice her sense of self just to land a husband. There’s a level of emotional authenticity about her character that will resonate with female readers in their twenties and thirties, even if her story seems more firmly rooted in romance novel convention than reality. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 4/27/09.)

3. SHAMAN WARRIOR

PARK JOONG-KI • DARK HORSE • 9 VOLUMES

Shaman Warrior serves up generous portions of pow! splat! thmp! and gyaaaa! with heaping sides of political intrigue and supernatural hoo-ha. The story is, at heart, an inter-generational revenge fantasy about a young woman who spends her childhood preparing to confront her father’s assassin and lay bare the double-crosses and unsavory alliances that led to his demise — in short, it’s a grrrl power theme-and-variation on the Epigoni. What it lacks in complexity Shaman Warrior makes up in beauty and bravado: Park Joong-Ki is a superb draftsman, populating his story with an astonishing variety of faces and body-types. His fight scenes are artfully choreographed, if a little heavy on the speedlines, immersing readers in the action in the manner of a contemporary wuxia film. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 1/24/07. Click here to read a preview at Dark Horse.)

2. DOKEBI BRIDE

MARLEY • NETCOMICS • 6 VOLUMES (on hiatus in Korea)

After losing her mother to mental illness and her grandmother to old age, Sunbi’s long-absent father returns to claim her. Their reunion proves an awkward and unhappy one, however: his new wife and daughter resent Sunbi’s presence, while Sunbi’s classmates shun her for her “freakish” behavior, none of them realizing that her aloof, abrasive demeanor helps protect her from demons and spirits. Familiar as Dokebi Bride‘s “I see demons!” premise may be, Marley uses Sunbi’s affliction as a jumping-off point for exploring issues such as fitting in, blending families, and answering that most basic of questions, who am I? Sunbi is an all-too-rare character in comics, a smart, resourceful girl who’s palpably — and justifiably, I might add — angry. Long after you’ve forgotten the basic storyline, the memory of Marley’s fierce, real heroine will stay with you. N.B. Dokebi Bride has been on hiatus for over a year; NETCOMICS has released the six volumes that were published in Korea. No word on when — or if — Dokebi Bride will resume. (Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

1. BUJA’S DIARY

SEYOUNG O • NBM/COMICS LIT • 1 VOLUME

Among the manhwa featured in “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” was “The Picture Diary of Puja,” a short, poignant story about a rural family’s efforts to make a home in Seoul. “Puja’s Diary” (translated by NBM as “Buja’s Diary”) juxtaposes wordless scenes, illustrated in a naturalistic style, with a young girl’s description of the same events: a robbery, a shakedown, a child being injured at a construction site. The effect is simple yet devastating, a Dickensian critique of industrialization and poverty in modern-day Korea. As the other stories in Buja’s Diary attest, displacement, change, and encroaching urbanization are important themes in Seyoung O’s work, though he proves equally adept at humor (“Observe,” which tracks a vain gum-chewer through the streets of Seoul) and surrealism (“Escape,” which depicts one bored man’s nightmarish daydream about his office mates). The artwork varies according to the tone of the story; some of the more somber tales are rendered in charcoal wash and ink, while others employ more exaggerated linework reminiscent of Daumier. One of the most thought-provoking and beautiful manhwa available in English. (Click here to read a preview at NBM/Comics Lit.)

Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames

April 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Last weekend, I had an opportunity to visit the San Francisco Public Library, which is mounting a small but meticulously curated exhibit exploring the relationship between politics, censorship, and manhwa in post-war Korea. Called “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames,” the exhibit features twenty-one of Korea’s best-known cartoonists, from Kim Won Bin, creator of Fist Boss, to Hwang Mina, a sunjong (girls’) pioneer. For a Western reader whose primary knowledge of manhwa comes from titles such as Goong: The Royal Palace, the exhibit will be revelatory, as almost none of the series on display look like the Korean comics that have been licensed for the US market; if anything, the curators have gone out of their way to choose titles that challenge the commonly-held Western notion that manhwa is simply the “Korean form” of manga.^[1] Styles range from the cartoonish (Baby Dinosaur Tuli, Madame Vicious) to the naturalistic (The Picture Diary of Puja), while the story lines explore topics as varied as ancient Korean history (Kojudo: Three Kingdoms), homelessness in Seoul (We Saw a Pity Bird Who Lost Its Way), Korean involvement in the Vietnam War (Yellow Bullets), and sumo champion Rikidozan, who is credited with introducing Japanese and Korean audiences to modern professional wrestling.^[2]

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Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames

April 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Throughout the exhibit, curators have gone to great pains to illustrate the complex relationship between cartoonists and the Korean government, noting when a particular title elicited criticism from officials or earned praise for its depiction of Korean life. Visitors unfamiliar with recent Korean history may be surprised to discover the degree to which propaganda and censorship shaped the development of manhwa in South Korea. Hwang Mina’s We Saw a Pity Bird, for example, caused a stir when Seoul was preparing to host the 1986 Pan-Asian Games; the government attempted to ban the work for depicting poverty and homelessness in urban settings, fearing that Pity Bird would make South Korea look economically backwards. Other works, such as Kim Seong Hwan’s Koban, a long-running newspaper strip, ran afoul of Park Chung Hee’s censors for depicting student unrest and changing social mores in the 1960s.^[3]

fistboss

Not surprisingly, the exhibit’s most dramatic illustration of the relationship between comics and politics comes from North Korea. The Great General Mighty Wing debuted in 1994, shortly after Kim Jong Il succeeded his father. Like Soviet novels of the 1920s and 1930s, and Chinese model operas of the 1960s, The Great General Mighty Wing is intended both as entertainment and education, employing a popular medium to teach Communist values, assert the importance of the collective, and reassure readers of their leader’s benign, parental authority. Using the metaphors of the garden and the hive (both Communist staples), the story depicts a conflict between honeybees and wasps for control of two vital resources: water and flowers. The full-color artwork is a synthesis of mid-1950s Korean and Japanese styles (Fist Boss is cited as one important influence), while the script is pure agit-prop, with characters speaking in Communist slogans and heroic, selfless pronouncements.

One of the subtler affects of censorship — artistic isolation and stagnation — is addressed briefly but effectively in the few examples of sunjong manhwa on display. Korea experienced a brief shojo manga boom in the 1970s, when pirates flooded the Korean market with unauthorized versions of popular Japanese titles. The Magnificent 49ers’s style, in particular, had a profound influence on artists writing for the girls’ market. After the government cracked down on Japanese imports, however, Korean artists who had drawn inspiration from the 49ers no longer had access to current shojo manga; as a result, variations on the starry-eyed heroines and long-haired princes of The Rose of Versailles flourished in Korean manhwa long after they’d fallen out of fashion in Japan.^[4]

If I had one complaint about the exhibit, it’s that visitors whose entire knowledge of Korea is rooted in the present may not appreciate the degree to which the displayed comics reflect the social and political upheaval of the past eighty years. A small timeline of major events, or even a pamphlet providing a brief overview of Korean history from 1939 to the present, would have been a valuable asset to the exhibit. (A quick glance at the Wikipedia articles on Korea, North Korea, and South Korea are strongly suggested if you don’t know much about the region.) That said, “Korean Comics” is a thoughtful and thought-provoking show that will challenge readers’ notions of what manhwa is, offer them a window into Korean society during some of its most turbulent periods, and introduce them to twenty-one brilliant artists, all of whom deserve greater recognition outside their home country.

“Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” runs now through June 13, 2010 at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Admission is free. For hours and directions to the library, click here. The exhibit is a joint effort by the San Francisco Public Library and the Korea Society.

Notes

1.This disparity is reflected in the library’s suggested reading list, which features a number of contemporary works such as The Antique Gift Shop, Honey Mustard, Moon Boy, and Priest but none of the works feature in the show. The SFPL’s collection does include a few Korean-language titles, which are listed in the bibliography.

2. Rikidozan is mentioned in Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (2009; Drawn & Quarterly), in which Rikidozan is presented as a Japanese hero for defeating American wrestlers in the ring. See pages 261-63.

3. Kim Seong Hwan produced 14,319 Koban strips over its 50+ year run in Korean newspapers.

4. NETCOMICS, a Korean publisher which has been translating manhwa for the American market, has released a number of sunjong titles from the 1980s and early 1990s that suggest the continued influence of 1970s shojo styles on Korean artists. The early work of Kyungok Kang provides an instructive example. See In the Starlight and Narration of Love at 17 for two such examples; her later work, such as Two Will Come, has a distinctly different look.

Ode to Kirihito, Vols. 1-2

April 7, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

“When he heard his cry for help, it wasn’t human” — so went the tagline for Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), a bizarre fever-dream of Nietzchean philosophy, horror, and mystical hoo-ha in which a scientist’s experiments result in his spontaneous devolution. That same tagline would work equally well for Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (1970-71), a globe-trotting medical mystery about a doctor who takes a similar step down the evolutionary ladder from man to beast. In less capable hands, Kirihito would be pure, B-movie camp with delusions of grandeur — as Altered States is — but Tezuka synthesizes these disparate elements into a gripping story that explores meaty themes: the porous boundaries between man and animal, sanity and insanity, godliness and godlessness; the arrogance of scientists; and the corruption of the Japanese medical establishment.

At its most basic level, Ode to Kirihito is a beat-the-clock thriller in which a charismatic young doctor named Kirihito Osanai tries to discover the cause of Monmow, a mysterious condition that reduces its victims to hairy, misshapen creatures with dog-like snouts. Kirihito’s superior, the ambitious Dr. Tatsugaura, dispatches Kirihito to Doggodale, a remote mountain village where hundreds of residents have developed suggestive symptoms. Once in Doggodale, Kirihito contracts Monmow himself, thus beginning a hellish odyssey to escape the village, arrest the disease’s progress, and share his findings with the medical community.

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Ode to Kirihito, Vols. 1-2

April 7, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

kirihito2 At a deeper level, however, Ode to Kirihito is an extended meditation on what distinguishes man from animal. Kirihito’s physical transformation forces him to the very margins of society; he terrifies and fascinates the people he encounters, as they alternately shun him and exploit him for his dog-like appearance. (In one of the manga’s most engrossing subplots, an eccentric millionaire kidnaps Kirihito for display in a private freak show.) The discrimination that Kirihito faces — coupled with Monmow’s dramatic symptoms, such as irrational aggression and raw meat cravings — lead him to question whether he is, in fact, still human. Throughout the story, he wrestles with a strong desire to abandon reason and morality for instinct; only his medical training — and the ethics thus inculcated — prevent him from embracing the beast within.

Tezuka explores the boundaries between the rational and the instinctual in other ways as well. Running in tandem with Kirihito’s metamorphosis is another devolution of sorts: Kirihito’s colleague Dr. Urabe, who descends into madness after uncovering a sinister plot within the administration of M University Hospital. When we first meet Urabe, he’s a self-interested cad who lusts after Kirihito’s fiancee Izumi, views Kirihito as more rival than friend, and lacks the will to challenge Tatsugaura, even when data suggests Tatsugaura’s hypothesis about Monmow is flat-out wrong. The slow dawning of Urabe’s conscience, however, precipitates a dramatic change; his psyche splits in two, with one half striving after truth and the other succumbing to base impulse. Even as Urabe begins to redeem himself, collaborating with Izumi to reveal Tatsugaura’s dishonesty, he frequently lapses into savage, sexual aggression.

Other characters’ reactions to these transformations — especially characters in positions of authority or power — provide Tezuka with ample opportunity to engage in one of his favorite activities: exposing institutional hypocrisy. The scandal surrounding Tatsugaura’s Monmow hypothesis, for example, lays bare the corruption within the barely fictional Japanese Medical Association. In his relentless quest to become head of the organization, Tatsugaura seeks to establish an international reputation as an infectious disease expert, even going so far as to suppress evidence that contradicts his thesis. Yet the revelation of Tatsugaura’s deceit does little to jeopardize his position among his peers; only the young doctors find his behavior objectionable, yet they cannot dislodge him from his powerful position.

One of the key figures in revealing Tatsugaura’s treachery, Sister Helen, also provides Tezuka a chance to tear away the veil of hypocrisy from another institution — in this case, the Catholic Church. Midway through the first volume, a priest attempts to murder Sister Helen after she contracts Monmow disease. When confronted with his act, he acknowledges his intent but denies his purpose was evil; he insists on protecting the Church’s reputation at all costs, fearing that news of Helen’s condition would bring a scandal, as the received wisdom about Monmow disease held that Caucasians were immune to it.

sisterhelen

At the same time, however, Tezuka uses his characters’ metamorphoses to reveal the human capacity for selflessness and spirituality. Sister Helen provides the most obvious example; after entertaining thoughts of suicide, she has an epiphany — literally, as the cross imagery above suggests — and begins emulating Christ’s example, eventually finding her place ministering to the residents of an impoverished industrial town. Other characters demonstrate a similar capacity for selfless behavior: Urabe, for example, devotes himself to finding Kirihito, while Reika, a circus performer, helps Kirihito escape from captivity and reassert his humanity by practicing medicine.

One could certainly view Ode to Kirihito as heavy-handed allegory; there’s nothing subtle about its Christian imagery or Elephant Man storyline. Yet Tezuka’s fondness for Baroque subplots, over-the-top action sequences, and larger-than-life villains demands an equally bold approach for exploring the story’s greater themes. After all, Kirihito features dog men, sideshow freaks, an evil millionaire who hosts his own private circus, a German geneticist sporting a monocle, and an acrobat who risks life and limb to become human tempura; had Tezuka played things straight, or tried to state his man-vs-inner-beast conflict in less obvious terms, the story would seem preposterous and arty, a surreal experiment devoid of genuine human feeling.

As he would do in MW (1976-78), Tezuka pushes the boundaries of the comics medium in Ode to Kirihito, aiming for a cinematic style capable of immersing us not only in the action but in the characters’ own thought processes. Though Kirihito has its share of artfully staged chases, fights, and dramatic confrontations, the most visually arresting sequences depict Urabe’s fragile mental state:

urabe_breakdown2

The panel shapes alone are a brilliant stroke; not only do they suggest his fractured and chaotic thought process, they also have a hint of the insect about them, as if we’re viewing Urabe’s consciousness through a fly’s eye. The knife and blood imagery are cliche, to be sure, but the shattered glasses are a novel and unsettling gesture open to multiple interpretations. Even the more conventional sequence on the left, in which Urabe leaves a hospital in a murderous rage, employs its share of neat visual tricks: Tezuka dramatizes Urabe’s personality shift by rotating the character’s image until he appears to be walking through an upside-down hall of mirrors. Amplifying the effect is the ambiguous way in which Tezuka draws Urabe’s legs in the bottom panel; as Matthew Brady observed in his review of Ode to Kirihito, the image simultaneously evokes dripping blood and moving limbs.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Ode to Kirihito is to say that Tezuka achieves on paper what John Frankenheimer achieved on film with The Train, Seven Days in May, and The Manchurian Candidate, transforming the humble thriller into a vehicle for telling thought-provoking, challenging stories that enlighten as they entertain. Kirihito may not surpass the narrative sophistication or visual poetry of Phoenix, but it comes awfully close. A must-read for serious manga lovers.

Review copies provided by Vertical, Inc.

ODE TO KIRIHITO, VOLS. 1-2 • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Little Butterfly Omnibus

March 27, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

As a feminist, yaoi puts me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I love the idea of women creating erotica for other women, of creating a safe and fun space where female readers can explore their sexual fantasies. (I don’t know about you, but Ron Jeremy has never factored into any of mine.) On the other hand, I’m often uncomfortable by the way in which rape is conflated with extreme romantic desire in yaoi; it’s disappointing to see the “you’re so irresistible, I couldn’t help myself!” defense trotted out as a justification for sexual violation. To be sure, the rape-as-love trope abounds in romance novels and mainstream pornography as well, but as a feminist, it makes me just as uncomfortable to encounter it in yaoi as it does to encounter it in an episode of General Hospital. Then, too, there’s the issue of the characters’ homosexuality, which is sometimes trivialized (i.e., they’re not gay, they’re just so good-looking they couldn’t help themselves!), ignored, or “explained” by a character’s tragic past, as if sexual orientation were a simple, situational decision.

Still, I’d be remiss in my manga critic duties if I ignored such an important publishing category. With a little encouragement from readers, therefore, I decided to take a chance on Hinako Takanaga’s Little Butterfly (DMP), a title I’ve heard praised by folks whose interest in yaoi fell everywhere on the spectrum between Can’t Get Enough to Not My Cup of Tea. And you know what? I liked it. So much, in fact, that I would recommend Little Butterfly to just about any manga fan as a first-rate character study about two teens exploring the boundary between friendship and love.

Those teens are Kojima, a popular, cheerful student, and Nakahara, brooding loner with a troubled home life. (Dad is abusive; mom is mentally ill.) Kojima finds Nakahara intriguing and makes a concerted effort to befriend him — overtures that Nakahara ignores or rebuffs until circumstances (namely, a class field trip) throw them together. To his great surprise, Nakahara discovers that Kojima is kind and sympathetic, while Kojima discovers that Nakahara is intelligent and mature for his years, qualities that Kojima greatly admires. (In a genuinely funny and revealing scene, Nakahara names an NHK newscaster as his “favorite celebrity.”) As the teens spend time together, Nakahara develops an intense, romantic attachment to Kojima that leaves Kojima bewitched, bothered, and bewildered: is he falling for Nakahara? Is he gay? And is he ready for a sexual relationship?

What makes Little Butterfly work is Hinako Takanaga’s ability to capture the ebb and flow of close, same-sex friendships; anyone who’s ever felt a strong attachment to a high school friend will recognize the dynamic between Kojima and Nakahara as it vacillates between intense candor and intense self-consciousness. As their friendship shades into romance, Takanga shows us, through her characters’ awkward body language and behavior, how uncertain both boys are about what to do next. In one chapter, for example, Kojima frets that his lack of sexual experience will be a turn-off for Nakahara (who, in reality, isn’t much more experienced than Kojima is), nearly derailing their relationship in the process. That realism carries over to their actual encounters, which are clumsy, start-and-stop affairs, characterized by miscommunication and fumbling as each boy tries to figure out what he feels comfortable doing. These scenes feel real enough, in fact, that they aren’t sexy; anyone reading this book out of prurient interest will be sorely disappointed.

Though Takanaga handles the boys’ friendship with great sensitivity, Little Butterfly has some dramatically unpersuasive moments. In one unintentionally comic scene, for example, Kojima throws his arms around a friend to gauge his interest in other men, concluding that he only has eyes for Nakahara. (Presumably he didn’t get the memo that being gay doesn’t mean you’re attracted to every member of the same sex.) Takanaga also lays it on thick with Nakahara’s home life; not only is Nakahara’s father violent and emotionally distant, he’s also willing to use his wife and son as a bargaining chip for a loan, while Nakahara’s mother is such a perfectionist that she suffered a psychotic break after Nakahara failed to gain admission to an elite elementary school. I suppose these things happen — undoubtedly, New York Magazine has published a trend piece about Upper East Side moms afflicted with the same condition — but these touches register as melodramatic excess, as if having an abusive father and a crazy mother wasn’t quite enough to explain why Nakahara sought an emotional and physical connection with Kojima.

Still, it’s impossible not to read Little Butterfly without growing attached to the characters; their sincerity and awkwardness are genuinely endearing. I can’t say that Little Butterfly worked for me as yaoi, but I certainly enjoyed it as a coming-of-age story (no pun intended) that captured the difficulties and joys of teenage relationships in an engaging, emotionally honest manner. Recommended.

LITTLE BUTTERFLY: OMNIBUS • BY HINAKO TAKANAGA • DMP • RATING: MATURE (18+) • 560 pp.

Little Butterfly Omnibus

March 27, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

LITTLE BUTTERFLY: OMNIBUS • BY HINAKO TAKANAGA • DMP • RATING: MATURE (18+) • 560 pp.

Breaking Down Banana Fish, Vols. 1-2

March 20, 2010 by MJ, Katherine Dacey, Michelle Smith, Robin Brenner, Eva Volin, Khursten Santos and Connie C. 111 Comments

Any regular reader of this blog will know that one of my favorite manga series is Akimi Yoshida’s 1980s shojo epic, Banana Fish.

I’ve spent quite a bit of effort attempting to persuade readers to check it out, so just imagine my joy when a few of my favorite manga bloggers agreed to indulge me in an ongoing roundtable discussion of the series!

Joining me here are Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Connie (Slightly Biased Manga), Eva Volin (Good Comics For Kids), Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights), and Katherine Dacey (The Manga Critic). Each of these women writes about manga for multiple blogs and other online publications (despite the fact I’ve listed only one each here) and their combined knowledge and experience is, frankly, pretty intimidating if you let yourself ponder it for too long. …

Ristorante Paradiso

March 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

RistoranteParadiso Oh, Natsume Ono, I just can’t quit you! I was not wild about not simple, but try as I might, I couldn’t dismiss you as just another overrated indie artist. I couldn’t shake the memory of how I felt when I read the first few chapters of House of Five Leaves — that incredible sensation of discovering a new voice with something fresh to say, of having my love for manga validated all over again. So I picked up Ristorante Paradiso with high hopes. I’m happy to report I felt butterflies and excitement, just like the first time, and am firmly back on Team Ono.

Not that you didn’t test my patience — those first twenty pages were a slog, filled with the kind of amateurish moments that I might expect in a freshman effort. We learn that Casetta dell’Orso is popular because a character says it is; that the waiters are handsome because a character comments on how good-looking they are; that the loyal female clientele comes for the help not the food, again, because a character states it as a fact. In short, you have a bad case of telling instead of showing, of not trusting your artwork to demonstrate the restaurant’s popularity or the studliness of the wait staff. I nearly demanded the check.

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Ristorante Paradiso

March 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Oh, Natsume Ono, I just can’t quit you! I was not wild about not simple, but try as I might, I couldn’t dismiss you as just another overrated indie artist. I couldn’t shake the memory of how I felt when I read the first few chapters of House of Five Leaves — that incredible sensation of discovering a new voice with something fresh to say, of having my love for manga validated all over again. So I picked up Ristorante Paradiso with high hopes. I’m happy to report I felt butterflies and excitement, just like the first time, and am firmly back on Team Ono.

Then something wonderful happened: the characters began to interact with each other, and in their impassioned conversations, we began to appreciate who they were, what drew them into the restaurant’s orbit, and why they seem stuck in certain unhappy, unfulfilling roles. Olga, the heroine’s mother, provides an instructive example. In the first few pages of the book, we witness a tense exchange between Olga and Nicoletta, the daughter she abandoned. Nicoletta, now twenty-one, has shown up on her mother’s doorstep demanding to be acknowledged, something Olga refuses to do out of fear that her current husband will leave her. It seems like you were stacking the deck against Olga, Ms. Ono, as Olga initially comes off as a dreadful Mommie Dearest who’s so committed to protecting her own interests that she initiates an elaborate charade to conceal Nicoletta’s identity. But then you slowly reveal how other people see Olga, as a vibrant, intelligent, giving woman who radiates warmth and charm. You help us understand that Olga is both a lousy, selfish mother and a loving wife to her second husband, two roles she struggles to reconcile. That we finish the book feeling sympathy for daughter and mother is testament to your storytelling skills and your obvious affection for your characters.

Your artwork, like your grasp of character, is stronger and more assured in Ristorante Paradiso than it was in not simple. As we watch the waiters moving through Casetta dell’Orso, for example, it’s easy to see why the female clientele swoons: the male characters have strong, distinctive faces that leave a lasting impression. They’re not conventionally handsome, but those faces have a wonderful, lived-in look that’s inviting and alluring — think of Alan Rickman, William Powell, or Marcello Mastroianni, not the smoothly perfect bishonen we’re so accustomed to seeing in manga. When Olga explains her attraction to Lorenzo, her husband, the artwork supports what she says: he’s drawn not as a fantasy object, but as a rugged, bearlike man whose virility is obvious even though his body and face are beginning to soften in middle age.

Put simply, Ms. Ono, you won my heart back. I found Ristorante Paradiso an engaging story filled with complicated, true-to-life characters who I enjoyed getting to know. It was a welcome departure from the emotional torture-porn of not simple, and a promise of good things to come: Gente and House of Five Leaves.

MMF: Shirley

March 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

At first glance, Shirley looks like a practice run for Emma, a collection of pleasant, straightforward maid stories featuring prototype versions of William, Eleanor, and Emma. A closer examination, however, reveals that Shirley is, in fact, a series of detailed character sketches exploring the relationships between three maids and their respective employers. And while some of these sketches aren’t entirely successful — Kaoru Mori cheerfully describes one as “an extremely cheap story about a boy and an animal” — the five chapters focusing on thirteen-year-old Shirley Madison and her independent, headstrong employer are as good as any passage in Emma.

That employer is twenty-eight-year-old Bennett Cranley, a smart, resourceful beauty. Though Bennett comes from a proper Victorian family, she deflects talk of marriage, instead taking pleasure in single-handedly running her own tavern. Of course, finding time to clean house and cook meals is a challenge when you spend most of the day on the job, so Bennett does what many of us working gals wish we could do: she advertises for a maid. The sole applicant is Shirley Madison, a neat, quiet girl who has no family and no home, but does have experience dusting, sewing, and baking “tipsy cake” — the deciding factor for Bennett, who hires Shirley on the spot.

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Shirley

March 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

What follows are five vignettes depicting Shirley and Bennett’s day-to-day life. The best of these, “Little Marie,” begins with Bennett purchasing a porcelain doll for Shirley. At first, Bennett frets that the doll was “too childish” a gift, as Shirley’s muted reaction registers as indifference. Later that evening, however, Bennett stumbles across Shirley hard at work on a dress for her new doll. In Shirley’s violent embarrassment at being discovered, we see hints that she’s been ill-treated throughout her working life, denied the opportunity to indulge in childish pleasures, while in Bennett’s calm response, we see the gentle, motherly woman beneath her bold public persona; she refrains from criticizing Shirley, instead praising the girl for her “fashion sense” and sewing skills. The final panels of “Little Marie” are an effective coda to their exchange, showing us the degree to which Shirley idolizes her employer; a faint smile passes across the girl’s lips as she gazes at the doll, rehearsing Bennett’s words in her mind.

Not all of the stories collected in this volume are as effective as “Little Marie.” The two stand-alone chapters, “Me and Nellie One Afternoon” and “Mary Banks,” both feel unfinished, a point underscored by Mori’s own refreshingly candid postscript. She notes that a suitor introduced in the beginning of “Me and Nellie” vanishes just a few pages into the story, never to be seen again (“my brain couldn’t handle two plotlines at once,” she explains), while one of the main characters in “Mary Banks” was inspired by… The A-Team. No, really: Mori claims that Sir Burton, an ornery trickster who booby-traps his house, was modeled on “Sean Connery mixed with a little of the A-Team’s Hannibal. It’s very clear where I got the pranks from.” Clio is a peculiar muse indeed!

Like the storylines, the artwork in Shirley and Emma appears similar, right down to the character designs; in her glasses and tidy bun, Nellie is the spitting image of the bespectacled Emma. Comparing the two works side by side, however, it quickly becomes obvious just how much denser Emma‘s artwork is. Emma‘s layouts are richly detailed, conveying the Victorian passion for things — for overstuffed drawing rooms, heavily patterned drapes, and richly embroidered gowns — while Shirley‘s spare layouts draw more attention to the characters’ interior states than to the material trappings of their daily lives.

Mori certainly draws her share of parlors, libraries, and kitchens in Shirley, though she often jettisons the background details after establishing the setting, preferring instead to focus on her characters’ faces, hands, and posture. In one of the most effective sequences in the volume, for example, Shirley waits for her mistress to return from a night on the town. Though Mori depicts Shirley perching on a chair and peering out a window, most of the images focus tightly on Shirley’s face: first as she anticipates Bennett’s arrival, then as she joyfully greets her, and then as she shrinks away, uncertain of how to read Bennett’s stern demeanor. The two barely exchange a sentence, yet in Shirley’s crestfallen expression and slumped shoulders, we again see Bennett as Shirley does, as a powerful, glamorous figure whose approval she craves.

CMX obviously licensed Shirley with an eye towards pleasing Emma fans, yet Shirley also works on its own terms; if anything, folks reluctant to commit to a ten-volume series, or who roll their eyes at the prospect of a manga-fied Forsythe Saga, may find this lovely, understated collection more to their liking than the melodramatic saga of William and Emma’s forbidden romance. Highly recommended.

This essay is part of the Moveable Manga Feast, a virtual book club that examines a different manga each month. This month’s MMF is being hosted by Matt Blind of Rocket Bomber; click here to view the full list of contributions.

Osamu Tezuka’s MW

March 1, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

mw_cover Invoke Tezuka’s name, and most readers immediately think of Astro Boy, Buddha, and Princess Knight. But there’s a darker side to Tezuka’s oeuvre that dates back to 1953, the year in which he brought Dostoevsky’s tormented Raskolnikov to life in a manga-fied version of Crime and Punishment. It’s this side of Tezuka — the side that acknowledges the human capacity for violence, greed, and deception — that’s on display in MW, a twisty thriller about a sociopath and the priest who loves him.

The central event of MW is a military cover-up. “Nation X,” which maintains a base on Okinawa Mafune, has been stockpiling a top-secret chemical weapon known as MW.¹ An explosion releases a poisonous cloud, killing everyone on the island except for two visitors, Iwao Garai and Michio Yuki. Though Garai and Yuki are equally traumatized by this holocaust, their lives diverge wildly over the next fifteen years. Garai embraces the light, becoming a Roman Catholic priest, while Yuki embraces the darkness, embarking on a spree of kidnappings, murders, and extortion schemes meant to punish the politicians, businessmen, and military officials who profited from the subsequent cover-up.

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Osamu Tezuka’s MW

March 1, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Invoke Tezuka’s name, and most readers immediately think of Astro Boy, Buddha, and Princess Knight. But there’s a darker side to Tezuka’s oeuvre that dates back to 1953, the year in which he brought Dostoevsky’s tormented Raskolnikov to life in a manga-fied version of Crime and Punishment. It’s this side of Tezuka — the side that acknowledges the human capacity for violence, greed, and deception — that’s on display in MW, a twisty thriller about a sociopath and the priest who loves him.

Superficially, Yuki’s plans might be understood as an eye for an eye, but Yuki is no righteous avenger. He’s a serial killer who relishes torturing his victims, who exploits the secrecy of the confessional to torment Garai with details of his crimes, who uses his androgynous sex appeal to seduce both men and women, and who impersonates his female victims with the skill of a kabuki actor. (And just in case we haven’t yet grasped the true extent of Yuki’s depravity, Tezuka suggests that Yuki has a rather intimate bond with his dog Tomoe.) Even Yuki’s motivation for exposing the MW scandal is purely selfish: Yuki is dying from its lingering effects, and wishes to take millions of people with him to the grave. Though Father Garai hopes to redeem Yuki, he lacks Yuki’s certitude, instead violating his priestly vows — especially that pesky oath of celibacy — as he tries to prevent Yuki from harming anyone else.

MW can certainly be enjoyed as a potboiler. Tezuka spins an entertaining, slightly preposterous yarn, serving up more plot twists, car chases, and gender-bending costume changes than Dressed to Kill and The Manchurian Candidate combined. But it’s also very talky. Characters frequently describe their plans at length instead of just carrying them out; voice-overs interrupt the action to educate us on the history of chemical warfare; and thought balloons reveal little about the interior lives of the characters that couldn’t be inferred from their actions.

MW can be more profitably understood as a meditation on US-Japanese relations during the Vietnam War. The gas attack takes place around 1960, the year the Japanese Diet ratified the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security², while most of the action takes place in the 1970s, as left-wing student groups were taking to the streets to protest American military presence in Japan. Though MW does include a few demonstrations, Tezuka doesn’t try to dramatize the left wing’s activities so much as the spirit of the movement: “Debunk false democracy!” The politicians in MW are greedy, foolish, and entirely too cozy with “Nation X” military brass. Yet the student radicals don’t fare so well, either; Tezuka renders them as an ineffectual lot whose agenda is riddled with inconsistencies. Only in the ambivalent Father Garai, who desperately wishes to enlighten the public about MW, does Tezuka present a decent, sympathetic figure, someone struggling mightily against hypocrisy and deceit, even as he succumbs to his own sexual demons.

Of course, there’s another level on which MW can be appreciated as well: the artwork. MW is Tezuka at his most restrained; there are no doe-eyed critters, no slapstick, no characters breaking the fourth wall to crack wise about cartooning conventions. (To be sure, there are moments of playfulness: in one memorable sequence, reminiscent of the grand parade in Cleopatra, Yuki impersonates the great gorgons of Aubrey Beardsley’s work, from Salome to the Lady in the Peacock Skirt.) Most of the pages have a surprisingly direct, clean presentation, a neat and orderly progression of squares and rectangles that run in counterpoint to the orgies, bank robberies, high-speed boat chases, and fist-fights they contain. From time to time, however, Tezuka thinks outside the grid, with dramatic results. When Gari and Yuki find themselves on Okinawa Mafune, for example, Tezuka doesn’t depict the actual gas attack. Instead, Tezuka shows us only what Garai and Yuki see after the cloud has dissipated: a mosaic of faces, each contorted into a grotesque death-mask. It’s a potent, haunting moment that suggests both the survivors’ horror upon discovering the bodies and the victims’ excruciatingly painful deaths.

As with all of Tezuka’s works, MW is sprinkled with characters and scenes that may make contemporary readers uncomfortable. The women of MW, for example, are either passive victims — one is rendered an emotional and physical invalid after Yuki rapes her — or venal shrews, with only a brief appearance by a sane lesbian newspaper editor to balance the parade of unflattering female stereotypes. Tezuka’s depiction of homosexuality is similarly frustrating. On the one hand, the newspaper editor refuses to embarrass Garai by outing him in the press, telling him that “gay love is accepted outside Japan”; on the other hand, Garai’s relationship with Yuki has a strong whiff of pedophilia — at least in the opening pages — as Garai is an adult and Yuki a boy at the time of their first encounter. Similar issues dog Apollo’s Song and Swallowing the Earth, yet in MW, Tezuka’s decision to focus exclusively on the problems of Japanese society prevents the story from spinning out of control or sinking under the weight of a few ill-informed portrayals.

Fans of Apollo’s Song, Buddha, and Ode to Kirihito won’t be surprised to learn that Vertical has done a fine job of showcasing Tezuka’s work with a crisp translation, quality binding, and signature Chip Kidd dustjacket. MW won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if the thought of Tezuka channeling Brian DePalma and John Frankenheimer sounds appealing, you’ll want to add it to your library.

¹ MW is pronounced “moo.”
² The treaty reaffirmed the US military’s commitment to defending Japan against hostile forces, pledged to return captured territories, and extended the US occupation of Okinawa for an additional ten years.

This is a revised version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on October 29, 2007. Click here for the original text.

MW • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • 582 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

10 Great Global Manga

February 19, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 26 Comments

Among certain parts of manga fandom, global manga (or OEL manga) is viewed as the comic-book equivalent of New Coke: the packaging might be similar, but the taste is different and, as these fans would have it, not as good as the original. It’s a shame this attitude persists, because there’s a growing community of artists in Europe and the United States whose work isn’t just a slavish imitation of popular Japanese models, but a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western styles. Below, I’ve highlighted ten global manga that best embody this fusion, and throw in a few honorable mentions for good measure.

A few caveats about this list. First, I’ve focused primarily on American artists, as my readership is based in the United States. If there are Canadian, European, Australian, or South American artists who I’ve neglected, please feel free to educate me below. Second, my list does not include manhua or manhwa, as those traditions are more established, and draw on some of the same artistic and cultural traditions as manga. And third, my list does not include such YA franchises as Maximum Ride, Odd Thomas, or Warriors, as I wanted to focus on original works. Got some additional recommendations? Please share them in the comments!

10. THE DREAMING

QUEENIE CHAN • TOKYOPOP • 3 VOLUMES

Not long after identical twins Jeanie and Amber Malkin enroll at a boarding school in the Australian outback, one of their classmates disappears, triggering a series of eerie, unexplained events. Queenie Chan creates the perfect atmosphere for this Picnic at Hanging Rock meets The Orphanage ghost story; with its Gothic architecture and period furnishings, the school looks like something from a Hammer Studio film, filled with walled-off chambers, mysterious paintings, and apparitions in Victorian dress. The first two volumes are solid and smartly paced, but the third suffers from a bad case of compression; one wishes that Tokyopop had given Chan four volumes instead of three so that Chan could show more and tell less. Still, it’s impossible to deny this emerging artist’s considerable talent, and easy to see why Del Rey hired her to adapt Odd Thomas from novel to manga. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 12/6/06.)

9. OFF*BEAT

JEN LEE QUICK • TOKYOPOP • 2 VOLUMES (suspended)

Off*Beat, an ambitious mixture of science fiction, realism, and romance, focuses on Tory, a smart, lonely teen who lives with his mother in Queens. When a boy his own age moves in across the street, Tory becomes infatuated with Colin, observing and recording Colin’s behavior in a journal, and angling to become Colin’s math tutor. Midway through the story, Jen Lee Quick introduces a subplot that hints at Colin’s involvement with something called the Gaia Project — an organization that may be responsible for Colin’s mysterious blackouts. Unfortunately, Tokyopop pulled the plug on the third and final volume; we’ll never know if the Gaia conspiracy is real or a product of Tory’s vivid imagination. Either way, Off*Beat is an engrossing read that vividly evokes urban life and thoughtfully explores the boundaries between same-sex friendship and romance.

8. BLUE MONDAY

CHYNNA CLUGSTON • ONI PRESS • 4 VOLUMES

Though Chynna Clugston’s artwork suggests a strong manga influence, her take-no-guff female characters are a welcome departure from the plain Janes and trembling wallflowers found throughout shojo mangadom. Blue Monday charts the ups and downs of Bleu Finnegan, a California teen whose enthusiasms are all over the map: Adam Ant albums, Buster Keaton flicks, vintage mod fashions. Bleu spends most of her time hanging out with a small posse of friends that include Clover, an Irish ex-pat; Alan, a sex-addled player; Victor, a reformed Goth; Erin, a scheming frenemy; and Monkeyboy, an underclassman who hides behind a curtain of hair. At times, the stories feel a little frenetic, but Clugston does a fine job of capturing this co-ed group’s dynamic, from the endless your-mama jokes to the earnest pop culture analysis. Too bad no one from Minx thought to commission a book from Clugston, as Blue Monday‘s frank, free-wheeling humor and girl-positive message would have been a welcome addition to their line.

7. JAPAN AI: A TALL GIRL’S ADVENTURES IN JAPAN

AIMEE MAJOR STEINBERGER • GO! COMI • 1 VOLUME

In ten charmingly illustrated chapters, animator and avid cosplayer Aimee Major Steinberger documents her 2007 trip to Japan, where she visited otaku hotspots from the manga shops of Akihabara to the back door of the Takarazuka Revue. Steinberger’s simple but evocative art does a beautiful job conveying both the essential strangeness of being a tall American woman in Japan and the sheer joy of being a fangirl in the otaku motherland. The only drawback to Japan-Ai is the packaging: the sparkling pink cover and bubbly font — presumably derived from Steinberger’s handwriting — may deter male readers from purchasing a book that looks suspiciously like a SnoBall. That’s a pity, because Steinberger’s narrative is funny and informative, filled with the kind of interesting digressions on kogal fashions, Takarazuka fan culture, and onsen etiquette that any budding Japanophile would find enlightening. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 12/19/07.)

6. EMPOWERED

ADAM WARREN • DARK HORSE • 6+ VOLUMES (ongoing)

Empowered is a unique crossover, a manga-influenced comic that parodies tights-and-capes conventions with raunchy gusto. Its heroine, Elissa Megan Powers, a.k.a. Empowered, is a superhero who struggles with self-esteem issues and social anxiety — two problems compounded by her utterly unreliable super-suit, which is prone to ripping and exposing her at inopportune moments. In less skillful hands, Empowered would be pure cheesecake, but Adam Warren manages the difficult trick of drawing a heroine whose costume failures do more than just titillate (if you’ll pardon the expression), they shed light on the objectification of female superheroes in mainstream American comics. Warren also has a ball satirizing manga, as Empowered’s best friend is a reformed villainess imaginatively named Ninjette. Rude, silly fun.

5. 12 DAYS

JUNE KIM • TOKYOPOP • 1 VOLUME

When Jackie’s ex-girlfriend Noah dies in a car accident, Jackie decides that the best strategy for coping with her grief is to consume Noah’s ashes in the form of a daily smoothie. Over the course of twelve days, Jackie punishes herself with this gruesome ritual while confronting painful memories of Noah and sparring with Noah’s brother Nick. Though the smoothie conceit is self-consciously literary — Jackie’s ash-drinking ritual has an analog in classical antiquity — June Kim’s book remains true to life, filled with lovely, quiet observations about the way we grieve, define family, express desire, and remember moments of hurt and betrayal. Kim dares to fill up pages with nothing more than realistically drawn close-ups of faces and hands, allowing us to experience the characters’ emptiness for ourselves. Some poor design choices on Tokyopop’s part — namely, a hideous font — mar, but don’t ruin, Kim’s carefully composed layouts. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 12/6/06.)

4. KING CITY

BRANDON GRAHAM • IMAGE COMICS/TOKYOPOP • 1+ VOLUME (first volume was reissued by Image Comics in shorter installments; series is ongoing)

King City was one of several titles stuck in limbo when Tokyopop restructured its global manga initiative, eventually finding a new home and a new (floppy) format at Image Comics. The larger trim size suits the material, giving Brandon Graham’s detailed cityscapes and characters a little more room to breathe. The story is an agreeable mess, chronicling the adventures of Joe, a twenty-something dude with a talent for picking locks and getting mixed up in dangerous (read: illegal) activities. Aiding him is Earthling J. J. Catterworth the Third, a cat capable of transforming into whatever tool Joe needs — a weapon, a periscope — and Joe’s geeky sidekick Pete. Though the story sometimes has a forced zaniness to it, Graham is an imaginative cartoonist capable of drawing anything from super-sexy Gothic girls to dinosaurs. His affection for manga is evident throughout the series, most notably in his use of evocative but silly sound effects, and in his fondness for extreme camera angles… just because.

3. YOKAIDEN

NINA MATSUMOTO • DEL REY • 2 VOLUMES (suspended)

Nina Matsumoto made a splash back in 2007 with a manga-fied rendition of the entire Simpsons cast. What could have been a passing moment of Internet notoriety helped open doors for her, however, leading to an offer from Del Rey to pitch an original story. The result is Yokaiden, a supernatural adventure about a young boy whose knowledge of and trust in yokai is put to the test when a vengeful kappa steals his grandmother’s soul. Among the many pleasures of Matsumoto’s smartly paced series are the yokai themselves; her demons would be right at home in the Hokusai Manga or an eighteenth-century scroll painting. The script is a little tin-eared at times, but the humor and stylish artwork more than compensate for a few clunky passages.

2. NIGHTSCHOOL: THE WEIRN BOOKS

SVETLANA CHMAKOVA • YEN PRESS • 4 VOLUMES

At first glance, Nightschool looks the product of a teen focus group, a mash-up of Twilight, Harry Potter, and a dozen other fantasy series starring vampires and wizards. A closer look, however, reveals that Svetlana Chmakova has fashioned an engrossing supernatural mystery from elements of domestic drama, horror, and humor: an eye-of-newt solution comes with a “may contain peanuts” warning, a beleaguered headmaster finds an ingenious solution for including vampires in the high school yearbook. (They don’t show up on film.) Chmakova doesn’t skimp on the action, either, staging scenes of nocturnal combat with great aplomb. Perhaps most exciting thing about Nightschool is seeing the degree to which her storytelling has evolved since she burst on the scene in 2005; though Chmakova’s trademark style is immediately recognizable, the layouts are looser and more dynamic than Dramacon‘s, playing a more integral role in advancing the plot.

1. SCOTT PILGRIM

BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY • ONI PRESS • 6 VOLUMES

In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the deal with Scott Pilgrim: this goofy series documents the romantic misadventures of a twenty-three-year-old slacker who must defeat The League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends, a loose consortium of his new girlfriend’s previous lovers. Scott’s travails are an apt metaphor for the way most of us feel when we embark on a new relationship: we’d like to leave our baggage behind and make a fresh start of things, but it usually takes a whole lot of effort — and maybe some Mortal Kombat — to get there. Though the plot is fun and fast-paced, what really makes Scott Pilgrim work is the deft way Bryan Lee O’Malley pokes fun at hipster culture; everyone has something to knowingly laugh at, from classic video games to indie rock lyrics. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 11/14/07.)

HONORABLE MENTIONS

GOTHIC SPORTS (By Anike Hage • Tokyopop • 3 volumes, ongoing): This German import focuses on Anya, a transfer student desperate to join one of her new school’s top-ranked sports teams. Her efforts are frustrated both by her lack of skill and the school’s limited opportunities for female athletes. Anya refuses to be sidelined, however, and forms a co-ed soccer team notable for its inclusiveness and its stylin’ uniforms. The pacing is a little slow, and the backgrounds aren’t nearly as well rendered as the characters — or their elaborate outfits, for that matter — but Gothic Sports serves up a good mix of drama, humor, and game play. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 9/26/07.)

HOLLOW FIELDS (By Madeline Rosca • Seven Seas • 3 volumes): Nine-year-old Lucy Snow is bound for the genteel halls of Saint Galbat’s Academy for Young Ladies, but bad directions from a stranger lead her instead to Hollow Fields, a.k.a. Miss Weaver’s Academy for the Scientifically Gifted and Ethically Unfettered. Though Lucy’s gut instinct is to flee, she enrolls at Miss Weaver’s school—after all, the tuition is free and her private room has its own bath. What Lucy discovers is that Miss Weaver has been culling the student body, sending the slackers to a detention center from which no one has returned. Looking at Madeline Rosca’s crisp character designs and steampunk setting, it’s easy to see why Hollow Fields nabbed an International Manga Award in 2007: her art is the real deal. The story’s brisk pace and macabre sense of humor are pluses, too. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock, 7/12/07).

MANGA SHAKESPEARE: OTHELLO (By Ryuta Osada • Self-Made Hero • 1 volume): I’ll be honest: I’ve been unimpressed with many of Self-Made Hero’s Manga Shakespeare volumes, both for the unpolished artwork and for the editorial handling of the Bard’s best-known speeches. Ryuta Osada’s adaptation of Othello is a notable exception, with strong, arresting visuals, and an anthropomorphic approach to character design that puts a fresh spin on the material. Enjoyable whether you’re tackling Othello for sophomore English or revisiting it for the fifth time.

RE:PLAY (By C. Lijewski • Tokyopop • 3 volumes): Drawing on a variety of musical and manga influences — Linkin Park, Naked Ape, and Tite Kubo among them — Christy Lijewski tells the story of a struggling band whose fortunes change when they meet a stranger busking on the streets. The catch: mystery man Iszak may not be human. The supernatural element sometimes feels as if it’s been grafted onto a more conventional rock-n-roll drama, but the crisp dialogue and unique artwork more than offset a few moments of dramatic weakness. (Click here for my review of volume three at Good Comics for Kids; click here for my 2008 interview with Lijewski at PopCultureShock.)

SORCERERS & SECRETARIES (By Amy Kim Ganter • Tokyopop • 2 volumes) This two-volume romance explores the relationship between mousy Nicole Hayes, an aspiring fantasy writer, and flirtatious Josh Kim, an aspiring ladies’ man. Like many series in Tokyopop’s OEL line, Sorcerers & Secretaries feels pat, as the obstacles in the couple’s way — she wants to write, he wants to take her on a date — are really nothing more than speed bumps. Ganter pulls off the difficult balancing act between respecting her characters’ motivations and recognizing the youthful naivete of their beliefs, however, preventing this sweet, sincere story from becoming sappy. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 6/7/07.)

TALKING TO STRANGERS (Stories by Fehed Said, Art by Chloe Citrine, Sonia Leong, Nana Li, Win Yun Man, and Faye Yong • Sweatdrop Studios • 1 volume): This six-story collection runs the gamut, subject- and style-wise, from horror to comedy, making it a good introduction to the writers and artists of British manga publisher Sweatdrop Studios. (Click here for my review at The Manga Critic.)