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Manhwa Monday: Post-Con Blues

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday!

The past week was all about New York Comic Con for us here at Manhwa Bookshelf, and manhwa certainly made itself known at this year’s con.

Booth 2265 was the place to be for manhwa fans, where the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) set up shop, promoting manhwa in big, blue letters and offering up comics in both Korean and English for sale at 4-for-3 prices.

As I predicted last week, KOCCA’s English-translated manhwa was provided via NETCOMICS, whose Vice President, Soyoung Jung, was onsite throughout the con. Though I was only able to chat with her briefly, the state of the booth’s inventory by Sunday afternoon spoke for itself, indicating that first volumes (at least) of most series were snatched up early on.

My personal manhwa score included a few middle volumes of BL favorite Totally Captivated to round out my collection, and volume two of historical fantasy Kingdom of the Winds.

KOCCA’s booth was both recognizable and easily visible at a distance, making it one of the most effective of its kind at the con.

Though none of the convention’s attending publishers had new manhwa licenses to announce, the most promising news came from Yen Press, whose newly announced iPad app (launching at the end of this month) will include some of its Korean titles to be downloaded as complete volumes for roughly $8.99 apiece.

In other news, allkipop.com releases photos of actress Moon Geun Young’s transformation into her character, Wi Mae Ri, for the upcoming mini-series Mary Skipped the Curfew, based on a Korean webtoon. Based on what I’ve seen so far, this can be added to my list of “manhwa I wish were available in English.”

And in the manhwa blogosphere, Lori Henderson updates her list of Halloween manga to include two recent manhwa series, girls’ horror manhwa Reading Club from Udon Enterainment and ghost-story manhwa Time and Again from Yen Press.

That’s all for this week!

Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!

Bakuman。 2 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata: B+

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From the back cover:
Average student Moritaka Mashiro enjoys drawing for fun. When his classmate and aspiring writer Akito Takagi discovers his talent, he begs Moritaka to team up with him as a manga-creating duo. But what exactly does it take to make it in the manga-publishing world?

After Moritaka and Akito collaborate on a manga together, they venture to publishing house Shueisha in hopes of capturing an editor’s interest. As much potential as these two rookies have, will their story impress the pros and actually get printed?

Review:
The second volume of Bakuman。 picks up where the first left off, with artist Moritaka Mashiro and writer Akito Takagi taking the final draft of their one-shot manga to Jump headquarters for consideration. This kicks off a series of fascinating meetings (spanning from summer vacation to the start of the next school year the following spring) in which the boys receive feedback from their editor, Hattori, and try to create a story that will be popular enough to merit serialization.

I loved all the meetings with Hattori, especially how specific he was about story and art requirements for Jump and how, as the boys improved, he went over their storyboards panel-by-panel with useful suggestions. As befits shounen protagonists, Mashiro and Akito are both very talented, but they’re not instantly the best around and go through many ideas and an immense amount of work before they’re able to craft something that is worth publishing.

When they finally do manage to get a story published, it takes third place in the popularity poll for that issue. The winner is Eiji Nizuma, a fifteen-year-old mangaphile who has been drawing since the age of six and practically does nothing else. He’s an exceedingly weird kid, but he fulfills the Akira Toya role here of “genius rival of comparable age.” He’s the first obstacle our leads will have to overcome, and I think it’s pretty fun how this is shaping up to be a sort of tournament manga.

Unfortunately, I’m still bored and fairly annoyed by Mashiro’s relationship with classmate Miho Azuki. They’ve pledged to marry once their dreams come true, but in the meantime aren’t even going to date. To some extent I understand—it’s suggested that Miho’s in favor of this because she wants to be able to focus on her dream without being distracted by Mashiro—but they still hardly know each other. Thankfully, Miho’s friend, Miyoshi, finds this just as bizarre. Also, while the overt, spoken sexism is absent from this volume it’s not exactly absent from the characters’ behavior. At one point Mashiro informs Miho that they’re going to be together when he becomes a manga artist, whether she’s realized her dream (to be a voice actress) or not. Nice, kid.

Though Bakuman。 has some flaws, it’s still an utterly captivating look at the manga-creating experience. I can overlook a banal relationship plotline if it means getting a glimpse inside the editorial process at Jump!

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Wait for What Will Come by Barbara Michaels: B-

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Book description:
The last of an ancient Cornish clan, Carla Tregellas has inherited her historic ancestral home: a massive mansion looming high up on the jagged cliffs of Cornwall. From the moment Carla takes possession of the grand manor she feels right at home, warmly welcomed by everyone—except the strange and secretive housekeeper, Mrs. Pendennis, who warns the new owner of the tragic, inevitable fate that will surely befall her if she does not depart at once. But Carla cannot leave, for the unseen bonds of a dark family curse are beginning to tighten… and a demon lover waits.

Review:
I’m not sure what it is, but sometimes I just crave something by Barbara Michaels.

Like most of the books by Michaels that I have read, Wait for What Will Come features a plucky heroine and an old house. Carla Tregellas, a math teacher from Boston, is surprised to inherit a somewhat decrepit mansion from a distant relation in Cornwall. Her initial impulse is to sell the place, but once she sees a photo, she’s smitten and decides to at least pay a visit before putting it up on the market.

Upon practically the moment of her arrival, Carla is acquainted with the family legend, which says that every 200 years a young woman of the family is claimed by some sort of sea demon. The last occurrence was exactly 200 years ago and, wouldn’t you know it, Carla looks a great deal like her ancestor who went missing at that time. Carla’s an unimaginative and practical sort and discounts the myth, but strange things start happening—seaweed in her room, a distorted portrait—that soon have her on edge.

A bevy of attractive men happens to be handy, and most of them have the hots for Carla (the exception being the vicar, who probably has the vicarly equivalent). The fellows help her look into the origins of the legend and execute timely rescues, but most seem to want to get her out of town in a hurry. After the characters spend most of the book sightseeing, socializing, and/or engaging in lackadaisical research, all of a sudden they’re confessing to dastardly deeds and revealing unconvincing romantic inclinations, and it all seems to come out of nowhere.

In retrospect, the plot’s pretty thin, but I liked the setting and the characters enough that I enjoyed their interactions, until Michaels realized she’d better wrap things up and everything went a little crazy. Still, the final resolution is satisfying enough and I’m happy that a cat got to be a hero, in its way. This isn’t the best by Michaels that I’ve read, but it was sufficiently diverting.

The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography

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Reading The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography, I was irresistibly reminded of a quip attributed to Thomas Carlyle: “A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.” Though the Dalai Lama has lead one of the most exemplary lives in recent memory, demonstrating uncommon wisdom, patience, and pragmatism in his efforts to publicize Tibet’s plight, Tetsu Saiwai’s paint-by-numbers biography reduces the Dalai Lama from a worldly religious leader to a saintly cipher.

Saiwai’s work takes its inspiration from Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama’s 1991 autobiography, and Kundun, its subsequent adaptation by Martin Scorsese. Like Kundun, The 14th Dalai Lama focuses on the first twenty-odd years of Tenzin Gyatso’s life, from 1937, when he was pronounced the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama, to 1959, when he fled to Dharamsala, India, to escape escalating violence between Tibetan nationals and Chinese military forces. Many of the scenes in Saiwai’s book have analogues in Scorsese’s film: we see Tenzin Gyatso correctly identify objects that belonged to his predecessor, thus revealing himself to be the next Dalai Lama; we watch him spend time with Austrian mountaineer (and former SS officer) Heinrich Harrer, a relationship explored in the film Seven Years in Tibet; and we follow him to Beijing, where Chairman Mao exploits the Tibetan leader’s sincerity and youthful naivete for propaganda. Saiwai also offers numerous — if brief — scenes dramatizing the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, showing us both the internal disagreement within the Dalai Lama’s advisory circle and the growing unrest in the streets of Lhasa.

Readers familiar with Scorsese’s film will experience deja vu reading Saiwai’s work, as the manga feels like a shot-by-shot remake. It isn’t, of course, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that Saiwai relied too heavily on Scorsese’s movie for guidance on what events to include in the narrative.

The comparison between the film and the manga reveals another drawback to The 14th Dalai Lama: it lacks the visual drama of Kundun. One of the movie’s most arresting aspects was its cinematography; though Scorsese’s crew wasn’t allowed to film in Tibet (most of the movie was shot in Morocco), the art director collaborated with Tibetan cast members to meticulously recreate the costumes, religious ceremonies, and interiors of the Potala Palace. Almost every frame of the movie was saturated in rich color — azure skies, crimson robes, golden objects — an almost painterly affectation that suggested the radiance of a Titian canvas. Saiwai’s unadorned, grayscale artwork, by contrast, seems impoverished; there’s very little detail, even in his depictions of religious rituals, and his efforts to represent Tibet’s rugged terrain barely suggest how dry and unforgiving the landscape can be.

What Kundun and The 14th Dalai Lama share, however, is an uncritical, even devotional, attitude to their subject. In his 1997 review of the film, Roger Ebert contrasted Scorsese’s saintly portrayal of the Dalai Lama in Kundun with his all-too-human depiction of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ:

Kundun is like one of the popularized lives of the saints that Scorsese must have studied as a boy in Catholic grade school. I studied the same lives, which reduced the saints to a series of anecdotes. At the end of a typical episode, the saint says something wise, pointing out the lesson, and his listeners fall back in amazement and gratitude. The saint seems to stand above time, already knowing the answers and the outcome, consciously shaping his life as a series of parables.

In Kundun, there is rarely the sense that a living, breathing and (dare I say?) fallible human inhabits the body of the Dalai Lama. Unlike Scorsese’s portrait of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ, this is not a man striving for perfection, but perfection in the shape of a man.

The same could be said for Saiwai’s work: in almost every scene, the Dalai Lama displays preternatural wisdom, sagely counseling those around him. We never see the Dalai Lama in exile, when he faced new challenges to his regime’s authority — moments that might reveal him to be a more human, more canny individual than is suggested by the carefully selected episodes from his early life. I say this not to criticize the Dalai Lama, but to recognize him as a spiritual leader with uncommon insight into the modern condition, as someone who regularly engages members of the scientific community, who intelligently uses mass media to disseminate Buddhist teaching, and who views his faith not as a set of practices to be unquestionably preserved and transmitted to future generations, but as a religion capable of evolving; can you imagine the Pope speculating that his successor might be a woman?

Like his portrayal of the Dalai Lama, Saiwai’s characterization of Chinese-Tibetan relations is devoid of nuance. Saiwai characters’ explain in simple, stark terms what Chinese “modernization” efforts meant for Tibet: devastation of natural resources, and systematic efforts to erradicate the indigenous language, agricultural practices, and religion. (In the introduction to Essential Tibetan Buddhism, Robert Thurman notes that fewer than twenty of the country’s 6,267 monasteries remain open.) Yet nowhere does Saiwai address the long and fraught relationship between China and Tibet — a serious omission, as this history helps explain why China viewed Tibet as part of its territory, and why other nations were reluctant to acknowledge Tibetan sovereignty. These historical facts in no way justify Chinese occupation of Tibet, or diminish the horror of what the Tibetan people have endured; as Thurman observes, nearly 1.3 million have perished under Chinese rule, some while performing hard labor, others for opposing the regime. A story as sad and complex as Tibet’s, however, deserves a more thoughtful treatment than it’s given in Saiwai’s book.

Given the limitations of the text, the best audience for The 14th Dalai Lama are young readers. The book’s directness and sincerity make it an engaging read, while its note of moral outrage over Chinese atrocities may prompt teens to learn more about the 1950 invasion. Readers already familiar with the conflict won’t find much here to enrich their understanding of the man or the region, though they may come away from the manga with a renewed sense of the Dalai Lama’s resilience and courage.

Review copy provided by Penguin Books.

THE 14TH DALAI LAMA: A MANGA BIOGRAPHY • BY TETSU SAIWAI • PENGUIN BOOKS • 208 pp.

The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography

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Reading The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography, I was irresistibly reminded of a quip attributed to Thomas Carlyle: “A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.” Though the Dalai Lama has lead one of the most exemplary lives in recent memory, demonstrating uncommon wisdom, patience, and pragmatism in his efforts to publicize Tibet’s plight, Tetsu Saiwai’s paint-by-numbers biography reduces the Dalai Lama from a worldly religious leader to a saintly cipher.

Saiwai’s work takes its inspiration from Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama’s 1991 autobiography, and Kundun, its subsequent adaptation by Martin Scorsese. Like Kundun, The 14th Dalai Lama focuses on the first twenty-odd years of Tenzin Gyatso’s life, from 1937, when he was pronounced the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama, to 1959, when he fled to Dharamsala, India, to escape escalating violence between Tibetan nationals and Chinese military forces. Many of the scenes in Saiwai’s book have analogues in Scorsese’s film: we see Tenzin Gyatso correctly identify objects that belonged to his predecessor, thus revealing himself to be the next Dalai Lama; we watch him spend time with Austrian mountaineer (and former SS officer) Heinrich Harrer, a relationship explored in the film Seven Years in Tibet; and we follow him to Beijing, where Chairman Mao exploits the Tibetan leader’s sincerity and youthful naivete for propaganda. Saiwai also offers numerous — if brief — scenes dramatizing the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, showing us both the internal disagreement within the Dalai Lama’s advisory circle and the growing unrest in the streets of Lhasa.

Readers familiar with Scorsese’s film will experience deja vu reading Saiwai’s work, as the manga feels like a shot-by-shot remake. It isn’t, of course, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that Saiwai relied too heavily on Scorsese’s movie for guidance on what events to include in the narrative.

The comparison between the film and the manga reveals another drawback to The 14th Dalai Lama: it lacks the visual drama of Kundun. One of the movie’s most arresting aspects was its cinematography; though Scorsese’s crew wasn’t allowed to film in Tibet (most of the movie was shot in Morocco), the art director collaborated with Tibetan cast members to meticulously recreate the costumes, religious ceremonies, and interiors of the Potala Palace. Almost every frame of the movie was saturated in rich color — azure skies, crimson robes, golden objects — an almost painterly affectation that suggested the radiance of a Titian canvas. Saiwai’s unadorned, grayscale artwork, by contrast, seems impoverished; there’s very little detail, even in his depictions of religious rituals, and his efforts to represent Tibet’s rugged terrain barely suggest how dry and unforgiving the landscape can be.

What Kundun and The 14th Dalai Lama share, however, is an uncritical, even devotional, attitude to their subject. In his 1997 review of the film, Roger Ebert contrasted Scorsese’s saintly portrayal of the Dalai Lama in Kundun with his all-too-human depiction of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ:

Kundun is like one of the popularized lives of the saints that Scorsese must have studied as a boy in Catholic grade school. I studied the same lives, which reduced the saints to a series of anecdotes. At the end of a typical episode, the saint says something wise, pointing out the lesson, and his listeners fall back in amazement and gratitude. The saint seems to stand above time, already knowing the answers and the outcome, consciously shaping his life as a series of parables.

In Kundun, there is rarely the sense that a living, breathing and (dare I say?) fallible human inhabits the body of the Dalai Lama. Unlike Scorsese’s portrait of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ, this is not a man striving for perfection, but perfection in the shape of a man.

The same could be said for Saiwai’s work: in almost every scene, the Dalai Lama displays preternatural wisdom, sagely counseling those around him. We never see the Dalai Lama in exile, when he faced new challenges to his regime’s authority — moments that might reveal him to be a more human, more canny individual than is suggested by the carefully selected episodes from his early life. I say this not to criticize the Dalai Lama, but to recognize him as a spiritual leader with uncommon insight into the modern condition, as someone who regularly engages members of the scientific community, who intelligently uses mass media to disseminate Buddhist teaching, and who views his faith not as a set of practices to be unquestionably preserved and transmitted to future generations, but as a religion capable of evolving; can you imagine the Pope speculating that his successor might be a woman?

Like his portrayal of the Dalai Lama, Saiwai’s characterization of Chinese-Tibetan relations is devoid of nuance. Saiwai characters’ explain in simple, stark terms what Chinese “modernization” efforts meant for Tibet: devastation of natural resources, and systematic efforts to erradicate the indigenous language, agricultural practices, and religion. (In the introduction to Essential Tibetan Buddhism, Robert Thurman notes that fewer than twenty of the country’s 6,267 monasteries remain open.) Yet nowhere does Saiwai address the long and fraught relationship between China and Tibet — a serious omission, as this history helps explain why China viewed Tibet as part of its territory, and why other nations were reluctant to acknowledge Tibetan sovereignty. These historical facts in no way justify Chinese occupation of Tibet, or diminish the horror of what the Tibetan people have endured; as Thurman observes, nearly 1.3 million have perished under Chinese rule, some while performing hard labor, others for opposing the regime. A story as sad and complex as Tibet’s, however, deserves a more thoughtful treatment than it’s given in Saiwai’s book.

Given the limitations of the text, the best audience for The 14th Dalai Lama are young readers. The book’s directness and sincerity make it an engaging read, while its note of moral outrage over Chinese atrocities may prompt teens to learn more about the 1950 invasion. Readers already familiar with the conflict won’t find much here to enrich their understanding of the man or the region, though they may come away from the manga with a renewed sense of the Dalai Lama’s resilience and courage.

Review copy provided by Penguin Books.

THE 14TH DALAI LAMA: A MANGA BIOGRAPHY • BY TETSU SAIWAI • PENGUIN BOOKS • 208 pp.

Pick of the Week: Demon Sacred

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It’s tough pickings for me this week, even taking into account the last two weeks’ worth of new arrivals at Boston’s Comicopia. Dark Horse’s second Chobits omnibus is tempting, though I haven’t yet taken a look at their new (reportedly awesome) translation. The second volume of Seiho Boys High School! is an outside possibility, too (reviewed here in a recent installment of Off the Shelf).

Yet, after much indecision, I’m going with volumes one and two of Demon Sacred, just out from TOKYOPOP. I haven’t read either volume yet (they’ve just barely arrived on my doorstep!) but here’s a taste of what Manga Critic Kate Dacey has to say about them in her recent review:

Demon Sacred is shojo manga’s answer to the everything bagel, substituting hot scientists, dragons, pop idols, twins, secret government research facilities, and time-traveling aliens for garlic chips and sesame seeds … the opening pages of the series involve a stampede of unicorns emerging from the aurora borealis and trampling a group of tourists in the Finnish countryside. Even Madeline L’Engle didn’t have the guts to try that.

It’s hard to guess how Itsuki will resolve the myriad subplots introduced in the first two volumes, but the story unfolds in such a feverish, urgent fashion that it’s easy to forgive the occasional narrative shortcuts or capitulations to shojo convention. (See “hot young scientist” and “pop idols,” above.) Demon Sacred may not be the best new manga of 2010, but it’s a strong contender for most addictive.

Time traveling aliens? Dragons? Stampede of unicorns? SIGN ME UP.

Look for my take on this series before the month is out. In the meantime, buy these books.

Evolution of a website & other stories

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With this year’s New York Anime Festival (now combined with New York Comic Con to form one massive SUPER CON) just days away, I’m struck by what’s happened in the last year, and particularly the contrast between Where I Was Then and Where I Am Now in terms of web presence and mission.

Last year was only my second time attending NYAF, and my very first time as press. I was lucky enough then to be shepherded through the con by the likes of MangaBlog‘s Brigid Alverson and super-librarian/author Robin Brenner, who not only put up with my utter lack of know-how, but who also graciously introduced me around to publishers, editors, and other members of the press. I remember vividly Brigid’s restrained (but obvious) frustration as she attempted to explain to people who I was despite my pathetic lack of business cards or even a coherent website address. In those days, I called my blog “There it is, Plain as daylight” (a bit of song lyric borrowed from an obscure Frank Loesser musical) on a domain called eyeballman.com, originally created to promote a CD I released back in 2002. And not only was “manga” featured in neither the blog’s title or url, the main image spread across the top of the page was a photo of my dog.

The one thing I came away with from last year’s con (besides an overwhelming feeling of gratitude towards Brigid, Robin, and all the other kind folks I’d met in the press room at the Javits Center) was that my branding sucked, and my “professional” reputation along with it. A month or so later, I re-vamped my website, giving it a new, manga-centered design and a brand new domain, mangabookshelf.com. In December I had business cards printed with the new website name and logo, and I began the new year with the goal of establishing a coherent feel for the site with more weekly/monthly regular features and a distinguishable personality.

Whether I’ve achieved the latter is not something I can necessarily judge myself, but Manga Bookshelf is now home to several regular features, including Manhwa Monday (hosted at sister site, Manhwa Bookshelf), Pick of the Week, Off the Shelf and BL Bookrack (both with Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith), and the bi-monthly roundtable Breaking Down Banana Fish featuring a host of my favorite critics. Over the summer, I redesigned the site to better highlight its regular features (which have really become the heart of the blog), and just last night I finished a second redesign to refine that purpose (especially focusing on Pick of the Week) and to tweak the layout so that might have a more familiar feel for readers who are accustomed to a blog-style look. …

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Manhwa Monday: NYCC Edition

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday!

With the new, joint New York Comic Con/New York Anime Festival swiftly approaching, let’s take a look at this year’s most promising manhwa destinations at the con(s).

First, to the exhibit hall! Manhwa publisher NETCOMICS has implied via Twitter that they will have a presence at the show. Though they have no booth listed with the con (and a request for details has remained unanswered as of this posting), my guess is that we’ll find them in the vicinity of KOCCA, the Korea Creative Content Agency, at booth number 2265 (ETA: this is confirmed!). Similarly, manhwa-friendly Yen Press should be represented at the booth of parent company Hachette Book Group, booth 2315.

Other manhwa publishers in attendance include Dark Horse Comics (booth 2023), NBM (booth 2304), First Second (booth 2314), and Fanfare/Ponent Mon (booth 2426).

Moving on to events, get all the news from Yen Press at their panel on Saturday from 3:45-4:45 in the afternoon, and check in with Dark Horse on Friday evening from 5:45-6:45. Also of interest to manhwa fans, K-drama website DramaFever is hosting a panel on “Asian Entertainment Trends in American Pop Culture” on Friday evening from 8:30-9:30, moderated by DramaFever’s David Hou and featuring such panelists as San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jeff Yang and Dramabeans.com writers Javabeans and GirlFriday. Check out the full list of panelists at DramaFever.com.

I’ll be at the cons all weekend, so please look for me and be sure to say hello!

This week in reviews, Charles Montgomery at 10 Magazine takes a look at three titles, Forest of Gray City (Yen Press), Manhwa 100 (KOCCA), and Let Dai (NETCOMICS). In the latest Off the Shelf column at Manga Bookshelf I talk about an upcoming volume of 13th Boy (Yen Press). Connie checks out the second volume of Laon (Yen Press) at Slightly Biased Manga. And at Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson reviews volumes 1-3 of Pig Bride (Yen Press).

That’s all for this week!

Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!

News from Kodansha USA

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For those of us who have been wondering what’s going on with Del Rey Manga, this press release just sent from Kodansha USA provides some answers at long last. The upshot seems to be that Kodansha USA will be publishing titles on their own (with distribution and sales support from Random House) beginning in December, with current Del Rey titles being shifted to the Kodansha USA imprint on a per-title basis. Here’s the full press release:

Kodansha and Random House Transform and Expand Their U.S. Manga Publishing Relationship

New York, NY – October 4, 2010 – Kodansha Ltd. and Random House Inc. have announced their plans to change and expand their manga publishing relationship in North America. The companies are shifting from a licensing relationship to a sales and distribution arrangement as of December 1, 2010.

The current relationship between Kodansha and Random House began in 2003, with the first titles debuting in 2004 under the latter’s Del Rey Manga imprint. Since then, more 500 volumes have been published, including many bestselling manga series.

Under the new arrangement, Kodansha’s subsidiary, Kodansha USA Publishing, LLC, established in 2008 and led by Yoshio Irie, will be publishing Kodansha-originated manga themselves directly in the U.S. English-language market with strong support from Random House Publisher Services (RHPS), Random House’s third-party distribution division. Del Rey Manga associate publisher Dallas Middaugh will remain with the program, transferring to RHPS.

“We are very excited to extend our relationship with Random House,” said Yoshio Irie, president and CEO of Kodansha USA Publishing. “Both companies see opportunity in the American manga market, and we look forward to working together to further the distribution and exposure of manga in the United States.”

“We are thrilled to have a publisher as distinctive as Kodansha USA Publishing join the Random House Publisher Services portfolio,” said Jeff Abraham, the division’s president. “Kodansha is one of the great worldwide publishing brands for the manga category, and we will do everything to support their efforts with our many booksellers and distributors who love selling manga titles.”

Del Rey’s ongoing manga titles which were licensed by Kodansha will be gradually taken over by Kodansha USA Publishing on a per-title basis.

Tokyo-based Kodansha established Kodansha USA Inc. on the occasion of their company’s 100th anniversary. Kodansha USA Publishing began by publishing Akira and The Ghost in the Shell in 2009 under the Kodansha Comics imprint. They plan to expand their strong line-up of manga under this exciting new collaboration with Random House Publisher Services.

For those of us wondering about favorite titles like xxxHolic, Nodame Cantabile, and Shugo Chara!, we can now pin our hopes on Kodansha USA.

Cat-Eyed Boy, Vols. 1-2

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Kazuo Umezu’s writing defies easy categorization. His horror stories unfold in an almost haphazard fashion, seldom offering Western readers the kind of inevitable showdown between supernatural menace and righteous avenger that’s de rigeur in grindhouse flicks. In a less charitable mood, I might suggest that Umezu was simply making it up as he went along, adding whatever Grand Guignol flourishes tickled his fancy; in a more critically responsible frame of mind, I’d argue that Umezu uses non-sequitors, heightened realism, and Freudian imagery to create a hallucinatory atmosphere that thumbs its nose at logic or teleology.

In the afterword to Cat-Eyed Boy, artist Mizuho Hiroyama offers a more geneorus assessment of Umezu’s approach to storytelling:

But just what is this unforgettable bizarreness that lies at the core of Umezu’s world? Is it a child’s nightmare? I think that this probably the best way to describe it. It’s simply fear. The escalating fear and imagination of a child who is unable to fall asleep in a pitch-dark room late at night, thinking about the worst-case scenarios and wondering, “What would I do if this happened?”

I think Hiroyama is on to something here: as anyone who’s read The Drifting Classroom knows, that entire series reads like a child’s nightmare, filled with terrifying monsters, barren wastelands, and irresponsible, ineffectual adults whose inability to save the day forces the stranded students to rely on themselves.

These same motifs recur throughout Umezu’s oeuvre. The eleven stories that comprise Cat-Eyed Boy, for example, are chock-full of demons — some grotesque, some comic — vengeful spirits, dead parents, and spiteful adults. Cat-Eyed Boy, a child-like creature who’s half-human, half-demon, finds himself relegated to the margins of both worlds, making him especially vulnerable to predation, in spite of his obvious strength and cunning. Like Sho and his Drifting Classroom peers, Cat-Eyed Boy must frequently outsmart unscrupulous adults (and a few monsters) to save his own skin.

Cat-Eyed Boy’s role varies from story to story: in some, he’s an active participant, a trickster figure who cajoles or deceives, while in others, he’s an observer. The strongest entry of the collection, “The Tsunami Summoners,” is, not coincidentally, the one in which Umezu portrays his odd little hero as a truly grotesque figure, one whose liminal status arouses genuine pity in readers. On one level, “Summoners” is an origin story, explaining where Cat-Eyed Boy came from, how he was exiled from the demon world, and why humans greet him with such suspicion, despite his frequent efforts to intervene on their behalf. On another, it’s a superb example of Umezu-style comeuppance theater, as a small coastal village is punished not only for mistreating one of their own members but for ignoring an ancient warning about a sea-borne menace. Everything about the story works beautifully: the crack pacing, the unforeseen plot twists, and the genuine pathos of Cat-Eyed Boy’s situation as he tries to protect the same villagers who tormented his sole human friend. The summoners are a particularly effective menace, as their initial appearance is relatively benign – they look like brain-shaped rocks, perfect for building walls and houses – allowing them to insinuate themselves into every aspect of the villagers’ lives before anyone is aware of the danger they pose.

Other standouts include “The One-Legged Monster of Ondai,” a cautionary tale about the evils of lepidoptery; “The Thousand-Handed Demon,” a blood bath in which a evil spirit possesses a statue of the Buddhist deity Kwannon; and “The Stairs,” a story about a boy so eager to be see his late mother that he ignores all warnings about the perils of crossing between the lands of the living and the dead.

Several stories were simply too long or scattershot to leave much of an impression. The chief offender is “The Band of One Hundred Monsters,” a rambling tale in which a group of hideously deformed humans aspire to become demons. I thought it was going to be an extended riff on the creative process, as the story initially focuses on the interaction between the “monsters” and a manga-ka known for his bizarre horror tales. Instead, Umezu quickly dispatches the manga-ka and steers the narrative in a wholly unanticipated direction, with the Band of One Hundred murdering pretty yet soulless people. That narrative u-turn does little to bind the two halves of the story together, nor does it take the story in a particularly interesting direction; the notion that beauty is only skin-deep has been explored in countless horror stories to better effect, as Umezu’s earlier work “The Mirror” attests.

Viz presents Cat-Eyed Boy in two generously sized volumes, totaling almost 1,000 pages of story. Both are beautifully packaged, with French flaps, creamy paper stock, and color pages. I particularly liked the endpapers, which catalog the various demons found in both volumes. And what a rogue’s gallery it is — these monsters are considerably more grotesque than anything Umezu conjured for earlier series, sporting myriad eyes, warty skin, tentacles, and grossly misshapen bodies. Most of the stories aren’t terribly spooky or shocking by contemporary standards, but the sheer oddness of the character designs will get under your skin like images from a particularly vivid nightmare.

This is a revised version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on August 12, 2008.

CAT-EYED BOY, VOLS. 1 – 2 • BY KAZUO UMEZU • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)