Comic Picks By The Glick

What I originally started writing here has snowballed into something larger that I’ll want to get off my chest at some point. For now, reviews:

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Prepare yourself for twenty minutes of me gushing over how great this series is… because it’s true.

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So the big news of last week was the announcement of Fantagraphics’ new manga line, edited by Matt Thorn. While Fantagraphics is most well known for publishing some of the most innovative and challenging graphic novels of the past few decades, Thorn’s presence means that the line is in good hands. Not only is he a professor at Kyoto Seika University, he was a manga editor and translator at Viz, where he worked on “Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind,” and spearheaded the drive to bring classic shoujo manga to our shores in the form of the “Four Shoujo Stories” and Moto Hagio’s “A, Aʹ.” That the line will be starting off with a “sampler” of other Hagio stories titled “A Drunken Dream and Other Stories,” is telling of his involvement and a very good thing for manga fans. Thorn was instrumental in getting an interview with Hagio for The Comics’ Journal’s “Shoujos Manga Issue” and based on what I’ve read of her work, I find it easy to believe that she’s second only to Osamu Tezuka in terms of significant manga creators in Japan. That we’re getting more of her is only a good thing.

The other manga that was announced, Takako Shimura’s “Wandering Son,” doesn’t really grab me in the same way. Aside from the fact that it’s about youths with gender identity issues (and that it’ll be getting an anime adaptation later this year) the most significant thing about it is that Fantagraphics is choosing it as one of the initial titles for its manga line. I don’t think it’ll be bad, but I’ll be waiting for the word-of-mouth reaction before I think about picking it up. Speaking of specialty manga lines from other publishers…

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I celebrate 50 podcasts by embracing sobriety and talking about another great comic adapted into an okay TV show.

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Marvel revealed their solicitations for May a few weeks ago and there was one bit of news there that I found particularly interesting. I doubt that it would surprise most people that they’re going to start adapting the rest of Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” novels, and while Robin Furth (plot) and Peter David (script) will be back writing it, Sean Phillips will be stepping in to replace Jae Lee on art. While I’ve really enjoyed Lee’s art on the series, Phillips has always been a personal favorite of mine since he has this uncanny knack for illustrating comics that I want to read and his run on “Hellblazer” showed that he can handle fantastic horror as well as superheroes and noir. The downside of this is that this will likely mean that he’ll be drawing less of “Incognito” and “Criminal” while he’s working on this, and that’s a shame. At least I have the collected edition of “Criminal: The Sinners” to look forward to in the near future. And on that note…

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