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MMF: An Introduction to the Color Trilogy

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“I think that the process of a girl becoming a woman is one of the biggest mysteries and wonders of life.” – Kim Dong Hwa

Kim Dong Hwa’s Eisner-nominated “Color” trilogy, The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven (published in English by First Second), follows the life of Ehwa, a young girl in a rural Korean village, as she grows from childhood to adulthood. According to Kim, he began writing The Color of Earth after sitting with his sick mother and thinking about what she might have looked like over the years, tracing her life back to her youth. The series focuses heavily on Ehwa’s sexual awakening, from a child’s curiosity to the confusion of young adulthood, as well as her relationship with her widowed mother.

The books are filled with poetic language, particularly flower metaphors, as Ehwa’s mother tries to explain to her the nature of men and women. …

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Black Butler, Vols. 1-2

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Black Butler, Vols. 1-2
By Yana Tobaso
Published by Yen Press
Rated OT (Older Teen)

Sebastian Michaelis is the dashing, fantastically capable, devoted butler of the Phantomhive family, whose only son (junior high-aged Ciel) has commanded the estate and its businesses since the demise of his parents. Sebastian performs his duties with super-human strength and skill, able to create elaborate chocolate sculptures and fight off scores of assassins in a single breath. “I am the butler of the Phantomhive family. It goes without saying that I can manage something as trivial as this,” is the standard line (with variations).

The story begins as a comic romp, with Sebastian being forced to employ his outrageous skills in order to compensate for the incompetence of the rest of the estate’s bumbling staff–a group of characters so grating it’s incredibly difficult to find them funny. This circumstance is only made worse by the section following, in which Ciel’s overly exuberant young fiancée makes the irritating staff seem downright loveable. Fortunately, just as one might be tempted to toss the book across the room in a fit of frustration, things begin to look up.

As it turns out, Sebastian isn’t super-human. He’s not human at all, but rather a devil who has entered into a contract with Ciel. Though he’s bound to serve Ciel devotedly until the end of his life, Ciel’s soul will then be Sebastian’s for eternity, a shift into darkness that finally brings the series to life. Sebastian’s sinister nature not only makes him more compelling as a character, but it also humanizes Ciel, who suddenly becomes a complex victim instead of just a cold, soulless pre-teen. The series’ second volume improves on this further, thanks in no small part to the fact that its primary adventure takes place away from the Phantomhive estate and its maddeningly dim employees.

The story’s action is elegant and beautifully-drawn, and it is the action that provides most of the series’ highlights, at least in the first two volumes. Even Tobaso’s humor works best in these moments, lending genuine whimsy to Sebatian’s battles as he takes out hired gunmen with kitchen forks and knives. Unfortunately, some of the series’ other elements are less whimsical than disturbing.

Black Butler runs in Square Enix’s Monthly GFantasy, a magazine filled with quite a number of very pretty shonen manga drawn by women, such as Jun Mochizuki’s Pandora Hearts, Yuhki Kamatani’s Nabari no Ou, Peach Pit’s Zombie-Loan, Naked Ape’s Switch, and Yun Kouga’s Gestalt. That these series are intended to appeal to female readers seems plain, with their bishonen character designs, elaborate costuming, and frequent BL overtones.

Unfortunately, Black Butler‘s specialty is not just BL but shota, which makes Sebastian even creepier and not at all in a good way. Though there may be nothing essentially inappropriate about Sebastian associating Ciel’s sleeping face with the soft pads of a cat’s paw, there’s an authorial wink to the audience that feels somewhat less than pure.

That said, though Black Butler gets off to a very slow and fairly vapid start, there is a sense that a deeper story lies within. With Tobaso’s pretty artwork as pleasant accompaniment, it may be worth sticking around just to see.

Review copies provided by the publisher. This review is a part of Shonen Sundays, a collaborative project with Michelle Smith.

Countdown to Manhwa Moveable Feast!

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With Monday quickly approaching, here’s a quick reminder to all that the Manhwa Moveable Feast is nearly upon us!

Let’s review the basics: This month’s series is Kim Dong Hwa’s Eisner-nominated trilogy, The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven, published in English by First Second.

The Manga Moveable Feast is open to participation by anyone. No blog? No problem! Just email me your submission anytime between Monday, June 21st and Wednesday, June 30th, and I’ll post it on your behalf! Join the new MMF Google Group for updates. Also, feel free to leave any questions here in comments.

I’ll make an introductory post to the series on Monday, June 21st and let things go from there. Don’t forget to email or direct message me a link to your post! …

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Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Vols. 1-3

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The Count of Monte Cristo, arguably Alexander Dumas’ best novel, is a big, sprawling beast, stuffed to the gills with characters, subplots, secret identities, suicides, and dramatic confrontations; small wonder that GONZO felt it would provide a solid foundation for a twenty-four episode anime. The series debuted to critical acclaim in 2004, thanks largely to its arresting visuals (designer Anna Sui had a hand in creating the characters’ elaborate costumes) and its dramatic soundtrack, which employed key musical themes from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (the gold standard for operatic madness scenes) and Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony (a piece of program music inspired by Byron’s poem of the same name).

The three-volume manga offers a darker, more focused presentation of the anime’s main plot while taking greater liberties with the source material. Like the anime, the manga follows the basic contours of Dumas’ novel: Edmond Dantes, an honest, hardworking sailor, is falsely imprisoned for treason, serving nearly fourteen years at the remote Chateau d’If before escaping and reinventing himself as the Count of Monte Cristo, a dashing aristocrat who uses his social standing, good looks, and vast fortune to exact revenge on the three friends who betrayed him. Though Dumas tells the story in a chronological fashion, Mahiro Maeda begins Gankutsuou at the novel’s midpoint, relating the circumstances of Dantes’ trial and punishment in several extensive flashbacks. Maeda adds a few ruffles and flourishes of his own, moving the action to the year 5053, transforming the Count into a space vampire — hard time will do that to a man, I’m told — and adding a faintly homoerotic element to the relationship between the Count and Albert de Morcerf, the son of Edmond’s former fiancee Mercedes.

As anime-to-manga adaptations go, Gankutsuou is better than average. Maeda wins points for employing a visual style that evokes the look of the anime without slavishly copying it, and for wisely limiting the scope of the story to the Count’s take-down of Gerard de Villefort, the ambitious prosecutor responsible for framing him. Volume one follows the anime closely, depicting the first meeting between the Count and Albert, and documenting how the Count insinuates himself into Parisian society. From there, however, the manga follows a somewhat different track, revealing both the full extent of Villefort’s duplicity and the true nature of Gankutsuou, the demon who possessed Edmon Dantes’ body while he was still imprisoned at the Chateau d’If (here played by a remote, unmanned space station).

The flashbacks to Dantes’ imprisonment are rendered in sensual, swirling lines suggestive of a Van Gogh painting; many panels verge on the abstract, taking the story out of the realm of the literal into a feverish dream world that effectively dramatizes Dantes’ emotional anguish without resorting to cliche imagery. Though these scenes are an inspired addition to the story (nothing like them appears in the anime), the manga’s big denouement is not. Maeda greatly simplifies the Count’s elaborate revenge on Villefort, trimming several key players from the drama and contriving a ludicrous love scene between Villefort’s second wife and his daughter Valentine that has as much to do with real Sapphic desire as a Budweiser commercial starring blond twins. It’s a shame that Maeda diverged so greatly from the original, as the Count’s revenge on Villefort is one of the novel’s most gripping subplots, filled with double-crosses, estrangements, murders (by poison, no less), and a secret love child who plays an instrumental role in destroying the trust between Villefort and Danglars, another key player in the original conspiracy against Dantes.

Folks who haven’t seen the anime or read The Count of Monte Cristo are probably the best audience for this series, as they won’t be encumbered with expectations about how events should unfold. Anyone with a strong investment in the anime or the novel, however, is likely to find this chamber piece an unsatisfying effort to represent the full complexity and drama of Dumas’ seminal work.

GANKUTSUOU, VOLS. 1-3 • BY MAHIRO MAEDA AND YURI ARIWARA • DEL REY • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Off the Shelf: Episode three

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Welcome to the third edition of Off the Shelf with MJand Michelle!

Joining me as always is Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith. This week, we chat about titles from Yen Press, Viz Media, and Tokyopop.

MICHELLE: Well, what do you know? It’s Wednesday again. I feel quite confident that you have been reading things since last time! Do tell!

MJ: It’s true! First off, I finally picked up Ristorante Paradiso.

MICHELLE: Ooh! What did you think? Did you appreciate Claudio’s sexy kindness?

MJ: You bet I did. Also, I really appreciated this manga for its …

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Manhwa Monday: Quick Links

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! It’s a busy, busy week here at Manga Bookshelf, with most of my manhwa-centric energy going into preparation for next week’s Manhwa Moveable Feast.

Meanwhile, here are a few quick links to satisfy your manhwa cravings! First, from S. L. Gallant, Manhwa- Korea gets biz-ay, a thoughtful look at two series from Dark Horse (and the artists who drew them), Kim Young-Oh‘s Banya the Explosive Delivery Man and Park Joong-Ki‘s Shaman Warrior.

“What impresses me most about them is the sense of motion they bring to the art. There’s an energy in the action, that I think comes from the combination of more realistic figures and motion blurs added directly into the art by hand, and not thru some trick of Photoshop …In these books, despite the insane action, there’s a level of realism maintained where we can still feel it’s actors performing, and not some computer animated figures …

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The Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross 11 by Arina Tanemura: C+

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When this series was wrapping up in Japan, I heard rumors about how it ended. Word was fans were peeved because, in the end, the heroine does not make a decision between the twin brothers for whom she has feelings. It turns out that this isn’t true, though author’s notes from Tanemura indicate that her original intention was for Haine to marry both boys and not just one. And yes, this is the kind of shojo that ends with a wedding.

As the conclusion approaches, all kinds of things happen that are probably supposed to be dramatic but just make me laugh. Haine confronts the twins’ grandfather about an archaic family tradition that establishes one as the heir and the other as mere stand-in, demonstrating her anger by ripping up a chair cushion. She then proceeds to talk down a gun-wielding friend by diagnosing his angst within three pages, gets shot anyway, narrates insipid dialogue like “Even if I’m mistaken… if what I make my mind up to do will lead to happiness then I can do it,” convinces gramps to acknowledge both twins, relays the good news to the boys, and then promptly collapses from her wound.

It’s all extremely silly, but there’s at least some enjoyment to be derived from watching all the clichés at play. Also, it seems that the art—though extravagantly toned as per usual—is a bit prettier in this volume. Perhaps Tanemura stepped it up a notch for the big finale.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Manhwa Monday: Quick Links

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! It’s a busy, busy week here at Manga Bookshelf, with most of my manhwa-centric energy going into preparation for next week’s Manhwa Moveable Feast.

Meanwhile, here are a few quick links to satisfy your manhwa cravings! First, from S. L. Gallant, Manhwa- Korea gets biz-ay, a thoughtful look at two series from Dark Horse (and the artists who drew them), Kim Young-Oh‘s Banya the Explosive Delivery Man and Park Joong-Ki‘s Shaman Warrior.

“What impresses me most about them is the sense of motion they bring to the art. There’s an energy in the action, that I think comes from the combination of more realistic figures and motion blurs added directly into the art by hand, and not thru some trick of Photoshop …In these books, despite the insane action, there’s a level of realism maintained where we can still feel it’s actors performing, and not some computer animated figures …

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9th Sleep

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9th Sleep
By Makoto Tateno
Digital Manga Publishing, 200 pp.
Rating: 16+

Luke is the child of a “Maria possession,” meaning that his mother was still a virgin when he was born. What he soon finds out is that he is also a god-prince fallen to Earth, as well as the reincarnation of the “King’s Soul,” which he received upon the death of his father. Unwilling to wed the bride chosen for him, Luke carried that soul with him when he committed suicide sixteen years previous and placed it in the womb of the earth-woman he loved.

Now that sixteen years have passed, he must fight his “brother” Malchus for possession of their father’s soul and kingdom.

If that summary seems convoluted, that’s no mistake. The premise of this manga is extraordinarily opaque, despite the fact that the mangaka attempts to explain it repeatedly, mainly by playing out the original scenario two more times over the course of the volume. In each incarnation, Luke avoids his final standoff with Malchus by killing himself, thus impregnating another unsuspecting young woman on the earth below.

While boys’ love plotlines are rarely required to be coherent (or even to exist at all) in order to attract a major portion of their fanbase, in this case there is also no boys’ love to speak of, leaving very little for fans of the genre to latch on to. Though the mangaka does offer up very pretty drawings of her two warring brothers, even standard fan service is in short supply.

Despite some attractive artwork, a confusing, vapid plot and lack of boys’ love action leave this one-shot manga without a clear audience.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

Two by Inoue: Slam Dunk & Real

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Slam Dunk, Vols. 1-2
By Takehiko Inoue
Published by Viz Media

Red-haired tough guy Hanamichi Sakuragi just can’t get a girl. After a string of rejections in junior high, he finally meets pretty Haruko on his first day of high school. Trouble is, Haruko already has a huge crush on a junior high basketball star who has also enrolled at their school! Determined to win Haruko’s heart, Hanamichi decides to join the basketball team. He’s a huge, strong guy with a lot of natural ability. Unfortunately, he’s also brash, self-involved, and utterly lacking in maturity or emotional boundaries. Can Hanamichi ever learn to be a team player?

On one hand, Slam Dunk is an extreme example of a typical shonen sports manga, with its overblown characters, outrageous rivalries, and intense focus on winning. On the other, it is a fresh, lighthearted look at a guy who just can’t seem to catch a break, despite a level of optimism previously unknown to mankind.

It’s not that Hanamichi never wins, of course. The guy can’t lose in a fight, and he even manages to win (sort of) against Haruko’s brother Akagi (who also happens to be the captain of the basketball team) in an epic game of one-on-one. What he can’t win, no matter how he tries, is the girl, and it’s somehow refreshing to meet a shonen sports hero whose real focus is far, far from the game. Also, while Hanamichi’s myopic pig-headedness makes him generally insufferable, it’s also the key to his charm.

There’s a scene in the second volume, for instance, in which the captain of the school’s judo team attempts to lure Hanamichi away from basketball by offering him some photographs of Haruko in exchange. After a series of conversations consisting basically of, “So, will you join the team?” “No.” “But don’t you want the photos?” “I do!” it finally becomes clear that Hanamichi intends to refuse the captain’s offer and simply take the photos by force. Though the scene does nothing to improve Hanamichi’s image as a hopeless brute, it is surprisingly satisfying to see the judo captain’s tired scheme dismissed so easily.

Another strength of the series is its supporting characters. Though Hanamichi’s strong and silent love rival, Rukawa, is barely seen in these early volumes, basketball captain Akagi is already a powerful character. Mature enough to separate his personal dislike of Hanamichi from his responsibilities as captain, he displays the beginnings of the kind of depth and nuance found in Inoue’s later seinen series, Real. Also notable is the basketball team’s manager, Ayako, who is very much welcome as a confident, athletic, female presence on the testosterone-heavy court.

Inoue’s art is similarly refreshing, with a clean, easy-to-follow quality too rare in shonen manga. The artwork is quite expressive as well, revealing a real investment in the characters and a genuine love of the game.

Though the real action gets a slow start in favor of important characterization (and some less impressive class hi-jinx), Slam Dunk shows its potential right from the beginning. Just two volumes in, it’s not difficult to see why it’s a popular series on both sides of the Pacific. Recommended.

This review is a part of Shonen Sundays, a collaborative project with Michelle Smith.

*****

Real, Vols. 1-8
By Takehiko Inoue
Published by Viz Media

Tomomi Nomiya is a high school dropout, consumed by guilt over his involvement in a motorcycle accident that leaves a young woman without the use of her legs. Kiyoharu Togawa is a former junior high runner whose struggle with bone cancer costs him his right leg below the knee. Hisanobu Takahashi is a high school basketball hotshot who becomes paralyzed from the chest down after colliding with a truck while riding a stolen bicycle. What these three teens all have in common is a passion for basketball.

It’s not quite fair to compare this series to Takehiko Inoue’s earlier basketball series, Slam Dunk. After all, Slam Dunk is written for young boys, and Real for adults. Still, with both series being released concurrently in English, its difficult to resist. Though Slam Dunk contains the seeds of a great basketball manga, it is through Real that Inoue is able to express not only his real love of the game, but his real insight into the human condition.

The main action of the series revolves around the Tigers, a wheelchair basketball team with which Togawa maintains a fairly tormented relationship over the course of the series’ early volumes. It’s this team that brings Togawa and Nomiya together to begin with (in a sort of roundabout way). And though Takahashi has (as of volume eight) still just barely begun rehabilitation that might make it possible for him to one day participate in wheelchair basketball, it feels inevitable that he’ll end up there at some point. The basketball scenes in this series are intense, in a very different way from the super-fueled play in Slam Dunk, and entirely gripping even for non-fans of the game.

What’s most impressive about this series, however, is Inoue’s ability to get inside his characters’ heads and transform their thoughts and feelings into compelling narrative. Enormous chunks of the later volumes, for instance, involve Takahashi’s bitterness over his father leaving him as a child, torment over his current condition, and his inability to adjust to his new body.

Inoue not only brings Takahashi’s memories to life with a series of powerful flashbacks, he also focuses heavily on Takahashi’s grueling rehabilitation process, with a level of realism that kicks your average training montage squarely in the behind. Yet, through all this, Inoue deftly steers clear of allowing his story become mired in its own weight. Even the series’ heaviest sequences are a true pleasure to read.

Something that seems important to note, and possibly why Real is able to avoid becoming intolerably dark, is that it’s clear from the beginning that Inoue genuinely likes people. Despite the fact that each of his characters has endured terrible heartbreak, pain, and various levels of personal misery (not to mention that most of them have also been responsible for causing significant pain to others), Real is far from cynical. There is no overarching disappointment in humanity here, no deep bitterness, no long-winded speeches about the unavoidable fallibility of the species. Even his characters’ most bitter reflections are directed toward individuals rather than humanity as a whole.

Inoue’s artwork in this series is impressively mature. Without the attractive sheen of Slam Dunk‘s shonen sensibility, the world of Real is unpolished and gritty. Inoue’s early expressiveness is even more pronounced in this series, and much more detailed. Also, despite some great dialogue, Inoue lets his artwork do the bulk of the storytelling. Important moments are played out visually, panel-to-panel, without the need for any narration or extraneous dialogue to pick up the slack.

Both heart-wrenching and down-to-earth, this series makes the most of its human drama, both on and off the court, without ever sinking into melodrama. Simply put, Real is real. Highly recommended.

Review copies of vols. 5-8 provided by the publisher.

Hey, Sensei?

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Creator: Yaya Sakuragi
U.S. publisher: Digital Manga
ISBN: 9781569700471
Released: April 2009
Original run: 2007

It is almost entirely the fault of Yaya Sakuragi’s Hey, Sensei? that I am now gladly suffering from an addiction to yaoi. Before Hey, Sensei?, I had never read yaoi. I had a basic understanding of the genre, but for whatever reason I had never tried it. (It actually really surprises me how long it took me to get around to reading any.) So, when I came across a review on Graphic Novel Reporter praising Hey, Sensei?, especially for not falling into some of the traps of the genre, I figured “Hey, why not? I gotta start somewhere.” I tracked down a copy with a little bit of difficulty and when it finally arrived I only allowed myself one chapter a day to make it last. Since then I’ve read plenty more yaoi and continue to do so but Hey, Sensei? remains one of my favorites—not just because it was my first yaoi manga, but because it is really quite good.

Hey, Sensei? actually contains two stories: the main story “Hey, Sensei?” which is four acts and an epilogue, and “Unbreakable Bones,” which is a one-shot. In “Hey, Sensei?”, high school math teacher Isa is taken aback when his ex-girlfriend’s younger brother, now one of his students, makes a pass at him during a review lesson. Isa can hardly take the situation seriously—what could Homura possibly see in a guy ten years older than him? The age difference will cause some difficulties, and they communicate terribly, but the two men have fallen hard for each other. In “Unbreakable Bones” two childhood friends are unexpectedly reunited after fourteen years. After growing apart, Yuji became a juvenile delinquent although he’s turned his life around and is now working in a ramen shop, while Manabu has become the small town’s local policeman. Yuji hates the idealized memories Manabu has of him, only to realize that he’s the one stuck in the past.

I really enjoy Sakuragi’s art style. Her men are distinctive and handsome and are unmistakably male. Her figures are elongated and angular, particularly noticeable in the hands and fingers and in the long, lanky legs when standing. These slightly odd proportions may bother some people, but I quite like the effect and love her character designs. Sakuragi also does a fantastic job with facial expressions, especially with the eyes; the characters don’t always come out and say what they’re feeling but it’s pretty apparent just by looking at them. She is also skilled in showing the same character at different ages and make the changes look natural while still being identifiable. One issue that I did have with the art was that the genitals were blurred out or erased. However, I’m not sure if this is the case in the original Japanese version or if the art has been censored for the United States which does happen. Either way, I found it distracting and feel that it calls more attention to itself that way.

While the stories in Hey, Sensei? may not be particularly original, Sakuragi makes up for it with the depth of her characters and their feelings for one another. Homura is immature, hot-tempered and brash but ultimately very sincere while Isa is inexperienced, sensitive and reserved but very capable of being stern when necessary; Yuji and Manabu’s relationship is also very sweet. The translation has an occasional awkward moment but overall is very good. In addition to Hey, Sensei? becoming a favorite, I have also become a huge fan of Yaya Sakuragi—I’ve also read and loved her Tea for Two series—and will pick up anything that she has worked on. However, Hey, Sensei? will always hold a special place for me. It’s one manga, yaoi or not, that I come back to again and again.

Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers: A-

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Book description:
Lord Peter Wimsey’s last three baffling cases all demonstrate his unique detection skills at their most spectacular. The enigma of a house numbered thirteen in a street of even numbers. An indignant child accused of theft. A dream about a game of chess that uncovers the true story behind a violent death. Each of the stories introduces a different side of the twentieth century’s most ingenious detective hero.

Review:
Short as it is, Striding Folly is still, by far, my very favorite of the Lord Peter short story collections.

Of the three stories collected herein, the title story is of the least consequence. It’s chiefly about a country gentleman who is suspected of killing a neighbor who planned to sell his land to developers. Lord Peter comes in at the end and prevents a miscarriage of justice. The title, incidentally, refers to the more tangible sort of folly, that is “a whimsical or extravagant structure built to serve as a conversation piece [or] lend interest to a view.” This one happens to be located on a property known as Striding. I had always thought it referred to a bit of foolishness engaged in while ambling about.

In “The Haunted Policeman” we get our first glimpse of Lord Peter since the events of Busman’s Honeymoon. It’s just over a year since his marriage to Harriet, and Peter has just passed a sleepless night while his wife gives birth to their first son. Once all is declared well, his spirits are high and he desires some conversation, even though it’s three in the morning. A passing policeman fits the bill and tells Peter the story of how he came to be accused of drunkenness by his sergeant. The tale involves a murdered man inside a house numbered thirteen on a street with only even-numbered residences. Again, Lord Peter serves as a force of vindication. Though the solution to the mystery is fairly ridiculous, the depiction of Peter is really excellent. I love the notion that, when fretting especially about Harriet, he takes solace in the company of the servants, who allow him to polish the silver.

The second charmer in the collection is “Talboys.” A further six years have passed since the previous story and Peter and Harriet’s family has grown to contain three sons. The eldest, Bredon, confesses at the outset to having stolen two peaches from a neighbor. Peter punishes him and the matter is considered closed until the following morning, when all of the peaches are discovered missing. A visiting houseguest—friend to Peter’s notoriously censorious sister-in-law—persists in suspecting Bredon while Peter rather easily proves his innocence. Again, the mystery is not really the point here. Instead we get a truly wonderful portrait of Peter as father—always willing to have a roll with the dog, let his children clamber all over him, and participate in mischief. I might wish for more emphasis on Harriet in this situation, but her happiness is never in doubt.

Of all the Lord Peter stories, only these last two have ever tempted me to come back and read them again. I had wondered how any short story could provide a sense of closure to the Wimsey series, but in fact it works perfectly, since little time and effort need be expended upon a mystery which is only of secondary importance. I will probably end up reading Thrones, Dominations in the near future but I certainly see the rationale behind stopping here, too.

Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs: B

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From the back cover:
In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Tempe detects an alarming pattern—and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her—her best friend and her own daughter—in mortal danger…

Note: There are many, many different covers available for this series. I picked the attractive British version.

Review:
For those who aren’t aware, this is the first volume in the series of mysteries upon which the TV series Bones is based. But if you’re looking for a story with banter/sexual tension between two attractive leads and a supporting cast of quirky scientists, then you’re going to be disappointed. The only real similarities are that the main character is named Temperance Brennan and that she is a forensic anthropologist.

The story is set in June 1994 in Montreal. Dr. Temperance (Tempe) Brennan is working for the Province of Quebec, examining skeletal remains of various types discovered around the city. When she notices some similarities between dismembered murder victims, she becomes convinced there’s a serial killer at work and must convince the detectives—one highly skeptical (Claudel) and one more receptive (Ryan)—of her theory. There’s a lot of emphasis on forensic technique and quite a bit of detail on Tempe’s findings; though the squeamish might find the latter too abundant, they are at least never relished. Meanwhile, the killer is annoyed by Tempe’s interference and begins leaving grisly presents in her yard and targeting her friends and family.

Déjà Dead is at its best when slathering on the suspense. Probably my favorite scene in the book is a wonderfully spooky one in which Tempe hears a weird noise at night and must investigate its origins. And there are some genuine surprises, too. I didn’t expect that any real harm would come to anyone Tempe cared about, and I liked that the culprit was not easily predicted. The characters are memorable and I really like her kitty, Birdie. My favorite line in the book relates to his grooming process: “Birdie focused on inter-toe spaces.”

At its worst, Déjà Dead puts its heroine into situations where I am supposed to be concerned for her peril but am instead annoyed. Why, oh why, do you go investigate a possible burial site on a dark and stormy night? Why go loiter in the seedy part of town in the wee hours to tail a creepy perv? I guess this is supposed to show how brave and determined she is and that my disapproval shows what a stodgy prig I am. Also, having Claudel’s resistance to the serial killer theory persist for so long in the face of overwhelming evidence doesn’t make much sense. He’s not a stupid man.

Despite my few complaints, I did enjoy Déjà Dead overall. By the end, Tempe is getting along especially well with Ryan and it seems possible that she and the intriguing Claudel might interact more compatibly in the future. Both of these developments are welcome, and compel me to seek out the second installment.

Silent Möbius, Vol. 1

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I like science fiction, I really do, but I have limited tolerance for certain tropes: futures in which all the women dress like strippers — or worse, fascist strippers — futures in which giant bugs menace Earth, and futures in which magic and technology freely commingle. Small wonder, then, that Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius has never been on my short list of must-read manga — it’s a festival of cheesecake, gooey monsters, and pistol-packing soldiers who, in a pinch, must decide whether to cast a spell or fire a rocket launcher at the enemy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered just how entertaining Silent Möbius turned out to be, gratuitous panty shots, bugs, and all.

When shorn of its mystical mumbo-jumbo and elaborate character histories, Silent Möbius is, at heart, a classic “They came from outer space!” tale. The story begins in 2026, when the Earth is under siege from interdimensional beings known as Lucifer Hawks, fierce, shape-shifting beasties that can assume a variety of forms: dragons, humans, oversize millipedes. Only a small team of elite agents — the so-called Attacked Mystification Police Force (AMP) — are capable of killing the Hawks with a mixture of up-to-the-minute technology and good old-fashioned sorcery. Where the Hawks are coming from and why remains mysterious — at least in the very early stages of the story — though we learn that one agent’s father may be responsible for opening the floodgate between Earth and the Hawks’ home world.

If the plot is pedestrian, Asamiya’s towering cityscapes and appealing character designs aren’t. To be sure, there are plenty of other sci-fi manga from the 1980s and 1990s peddling similar visions of a dysfunctional future paved in concrete and lit by neon, but Asamiya and his helpers pull off even the busiest compositions, bringing the urban scenes to energetic life; I dare you not to compare Silent Möbius with Blade Runner. (Someone else must have thought so, too, as Asamiya was tapped to do the manga adaptation of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, yet another work that pilfered visuals from Scott’s ground-breaking film.) Then there are the character designs: each member of the AMP seems to be taking her grooming cues from the golden age of MTV, when video vixens came in two flavors: those with enormous feathered hair, and those with short, heavily lacquered locks. Better still, their uniforms consist of jackets with epaulets, neckties, and stirrup leggings. Who knew that 2026 would look suspiciously like 1986?

The other thing that won me over was the characters. I wouldn’t construe Asamiya’s decision to make the AMP a strictly female force as a nod to feminism; there are enough costume failures and half-clad characters to suggest Asamiya was as interested in satisfying the male gaze as he was in promoting the idea that women can kick ass just as well as men. At the same time, however, the ladies of AMP are tough and decisive, and don’t take guff from their male peers; in one of the series’ few nods to realism, the largely male police force resents the AMP for their ability to assume control of any investigation, grumbling about jurisdiction and occasionally baiting the women into fights.

Not that Silent Möbius doesn’t have moments of eyeball-rolling stupidity. Asamiya saddled his characters with borderline stripper names, for example: who but an adult entertainer would choose a name like “Rally Cheyenne” or “Katsumi Liqueur”? (Worse still: Katsumi’s father was Gilgelf Liqueuer, a name best suited for a drunken Hobbit.) Then, too, the series’ rather complicated mythology isn’t well explained; it’s the kind of universe where some characters kill aliens by drawing pentagrams on the ground while others use bazookas. And the cheesecake… sigh. I often had the sinking feeling that Asamiya was secretly auditioning to do a Pirelli Tire calendar with his frequent images of semi-naked women in provocative poses.

Costume failures and panty shots aside, I enjoyed the first volume of Silent Möbius well enough to continue with the series. It’s a fun, escapist romp that occasionally takes itself a little too seriously, but never bogs down in its own ridiculous mythology.

SILENT MÖBIUS: COMPLETE EDITION, VOL. 1 • BY KIA ASAMIYA • UDON ENTERTAINMENT • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Off the Shelf: Second Edition

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Welcome to our second edition of Off the Shelf with MJand Michelle!

Joining me again is Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith. This week, we cover a pretty varied range of titles, from Tokyopop, Yen Press, CMX, and Viz Media. I’ve got all shonen on the brain, thanks to this month’s Shonen Sundays, while Michelle takes a more well-rounded approach.

MJ: So, Michelle, thanks for joining me here again! What’s your first item for tonight’s discussion?

MICHELLE: How about a trip to bishie land with Alice in the Country of Hearts? Actually, I feel somewhat guilty referring to the series as “bishie land” because, while that’s technically an apt description, there’s really a lot more going on here than I ever would have expected. I read the third volume this week and enjoyed it quite a bit. …

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