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posted December 17, 2007
 

By David P. Welsh

In the spirit of Shaenon K. Garrity's wonderful Overlooked Manga Festival, I wanted to devote a column to some books that might not be getting the attention they deserve. In the interest of variety, I pestered others for their picks.

Here's part one:

Katherine Dacey-Tsuei is manga editor for PopCultureShock, overseeing the invaluable Manga Recon weblog and exploring less manga-centric topics in Kate no Komento:

Duck Prince (Ai Morinaga, Central Park Media): Ai Morinaga excels at a certain kind of bawdy comedy in which her male and female characters swap traditional gender roles (and sometimes bodies, too), learning more about the opposite sex in the process. In Duck Prince, she takes a standard shojo premise -- geeky girl gets a makeover to impress the guy of her dreams -- and turns it on its head: its hero, Reichii Swan, is a short, helmet-haired nerd who, through a combination of magic and cosmetic surgery, becomes a smokin' hottie.

Duck Prince isn't as polished as Your and My Secret, but it scores big points for its brisk pace, winning cast of characters, and tartly funny message of self-acceptance.


Forest of Gray City (Jung-Hyun Uhm, ICE Kunion/Yen Press): If you've exhausted Tokyopop's josei line, you can stave off withdrawal by reading this quirky Korean romance. The story explores similar terrain as Suppli and Tramps Like Us, documenting an ambitious young woman's attempt to find a place for herself in a marriage-minded culture. The twist: the heroine's love interest is a self-sufficient seventeen-year-old with a killer sense of style. (Hey listen, it wouldn't be josei without a fantasy element, right?) Funny, honest, and sharply illustrated, Forest of Gray City deserves a bigger audience when it returns from hiatus in 2008."

MangaCast's manly-man-manga-loving Master of Ceremonies Ed Chavez to go full-on seinen with his recommendations, but the Otaku USA columnist and Publishers Weekly Comics Week contributor has a softer side:

High School Girls (Oshima Towa, DrMaster/Futabasha) -- Easily the funniest manga in English, Oshima's HSG started off as a biographical manga of sorts detailing the mangaka's humorous (often raunchy) experiences in an all-girls school. While the gags are often visual and play off moe/bishojo schisms, Oshima's writing is deeply rooted in josei -- filled with jokes about the menstral cycle, nipple creme and body hair. How this manga isn't 18+ I am not sure, but I am grateful that everything DrMaster is firmly under the radar.

Gunslinger Girl (Aida Yu, ADV Manga/Media Works) -- In a similar way to how the word otaku has a negative connotation in Japan, but is almost embraced in America. Moe has been frowned upon by American otaku while it is clearly the foundation of everything otaku in Japan. Gunslinger Girl fulfills three different unique passions/fetishes:

1. A passion for anything Italian. After the Korean wave came a huge Italy boom, partially supported by Bambino (an Italian cooking manga), the handful of wine manga that are all over the international press, and Salto Finito -- the original Italian suit manga.

2. A Sonoda Kenichi-style obsession with guns. Where building and firing guns take on an almost sexual feel.

3. And the need to raise soulless emotionally damaged bishojo that so many otaku have.

Gunslinger Girl... Well drawn primer to pop-culture perversion. $9.99 and 16+..."

Brigid Alverson's MangaBlog is one of the must-stop manga resources on the web, and like Chavez, she's been burning up the PWCW pages with manga news and interviews. Here are her homonymous picks:

There are two manga that I don't hear enough people talking about, and they have almost the same name.

The first is Del Rey's ES: Eternal Sabbath, by Fuyimi Soriyo, which has a pretty good story and amazingly expressive art. In the story, the hero goes inside of people's heads and sees their thoughts, and I love the way the artist makes emotions visual.

The other book that I wish got more love is Broccoli's E'S, by Satol Yuiga. It's one of those psychic-teenagers-save-the-world books, but it breaks out of the genre ghetto with memorable characters and stylish art."

Kevin Melrose is a veteran comics commentator and a mainstay at Newsarama's house weblog, Blog@Newsarama. He looked to two of the quirkier American independent publishers for his picks:

The Last Call (Vasilis Lolos, Oni Press): I fell for Vasilis Lolos' art in the oh-so-late Image miniseries The Pirates of Coney Island, but with The Last Call he impresses me with his writing by merging the mundane with the fantastic: Two teens on a late-night joyride end up on the Miyazaki-esque transdimensional Ghost Train. Yes, "Miyazaki-esque."

Zombies Calling (Faith Erin Hicks, SLG Publishing): To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the zombie stories, with all the running and the lumbering and the brainsss. However, Faith Erin Hicks' wry, metafictional Zombies Calling has me re-evaluating my opinion of the subgenre. If more heroines battled the walking dead with a spork and a quip, I could become a genuine devotee."

Matthew (not that one) Brady has been bringing the comics love for about a year now at his delightful weblog, Warren Peace Sings the Blues:

Super Spy, by Matt Kindt (Top Shelf) -- I don't know if this is underrated, per se, since I've seen it on a few "best of 2007" lists, but while I was reading it I was certain that it was definitely one of the best books of the year, and I just haven't seen too many reviews of the book at all, whether they agree with me on that or not. It's an expansive, multifaceted look at World War II espionage, with emphasis on the human, emotional cost of the spy trade.

PX! A Girl and Her Panda, by Eric A. Anderson and Manny Trembley (Image Comics) -- I think I've seen one review (other than my own) of this web-to-print comic from the creators of Sam Noir: Samurai Detective; it really deserves more attention, with it's fun plot, goofy characters, and beautiful artwork."

Next week: More of the same, from different people!

*****

(Originally published Monday, Dec. 17, 2007, at Comic World News.)