Review: Twin Spica vol. 1

Twin Spica vol. 1, by Kou Yaginuma, 2010, Vertical, 192 pages, $10.95

This sci-fi manga is about a young girl named Asumi who leaves home to attend the Tokyo Space School to become an astronaut.  If you only look at the cover and flip through the first few pages where Asumi interacts with a guy with a lion head, you might think this is some manga that would only interest tween girls and Matthew Brady.  (The cutesy-sounding title doesn't help, either.)  But it's actually pretty great.

It starts getting cool fairly quickly, as all the kids who want to go to space school are locked into rooms for several days straight and asked to line up thousands of dominoes as a sort of entrance exam.  Most of the story takes place with Asumi and two other girls stuck in their room, trying to overcome this test of smarts and willpower.  It reminded me of Ender's Game, a fantastic book about genius kids in space making tactical decisions in a zero-gravity battle simulator.  (Ender's Game was written by Orson Scott Bigot, in case you want to find it in your library.)

Twin Spica also has got some solid heart-wrenching going on:  Asumi has a tragic past and has had to deal with a lot even though she is so young.  Her new roommates also appear to have some issues, which helps to keep the drama cauldron bubbling.  I'm interested to see their relationships develop as they face new tests and hardships.  One can only hope that this reaches the same emotional highs that we experienced when Leaf "Joaquin" Phoenix became "friends for-ev-er" with the robot named Jinx.  Ah, Space Camp.

(Space Camp is a fine movie.  Yes, that's Lea Thompson and Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds floating in a space shuttle. Not pictured: Tom Skerritt.)

About the only downside is Yaginuma's odd penchant for occasionally only drawing one eye of a character, even though the character is standing at an angle where you should see both eyes.  Instead, Yaginuma leaves a blank spot.  I assume it is some kind of manga quirk that I haven't seen before, but it didn't seem to add anything and just distracted me. Other than that, the art is solid and there are some pretty lovely images in there.

In sum, at first I was a little worried, but I quickly came around and I really enjoyed reading this.  But don't just take my word for it -- tastemakers both real and fictional approve of this book! Retailer Christopher Butcher recently tweeted:

I'm handselling the hell out of Twin Spica! ... The covers make it a bit of a tough sale. :-/ But I persevere.

And fictional retailer Lydia from The Rack recommended volume two:

Uh. It's science fiction manga that's good.  Like, it's Planetes good.  That's really good.

I'm with Lydia on this one.  Give it a shot.

READ MORE: Vertical's website has an excerpt.

BUY IT: From Amazon here: Twin Spica vol. 1

RELATED: Vertical also publishes Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack, and I reviewed volumes 1 and 2 and volume 3.

Review: Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, by Fumiyo Kouno, 2007, Last Gasp, 103 pages, $9.99

This short collection of three linked stories about young people living in Hiroshima hides some real power behind its appearance as light romance.

The first story is set in 1955, the second in 1987, and the third in 2004. The characters in all three stories are dealing with the aftereffects of the atomic bomb; the smoky tendrils of the mushroom cloud may have long since departed, but the radiation poisoning and emotional damage still linger, tinging every interaction and darkening the horizon of everyone's future.

(click to enlarge; read right-to-left)

This still does not feel like a heavy, difficult book. For the most part it's enjoyable to read, full of sweet moments and lovely characters. But merely knowing where it is taking place is enough to place a shroud over what should be the happy lives of these people. Moreover, every so often the bomb's effects come to the forefront and the book takes your breath away. It's quite amazing how the book successfully walks that line.

Kouno, in her afterword, discusses how for most of her life she felt disconnected from the bomb and its effects on the survivors. With this book, she confronted the issue and it is clear that this story became something that she simply needed to tell. The book never feels preachy, but it certainly forces the reader to focus on this issue and raises his or her level of understanding about what the people of Hiroshima have endured.

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BUY IT: From Last Gasp here or from Amazon here: Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

Buy This Comic: Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, Vol. 1

Buy This Comic is an ongoing feature in which I recommend one comic book -- and one book only -- arriving on shelves that Wednesday.

This week's pick is:


Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, Vol. 1, by Fumi Yoshinaga, Viz, 216 pages, $12.99

Here is Viz's description of the book:

In Edo period Japan, a strange new disease called the Redface Pox has begun to prey on the country's men. Within eighty years of the first outbreak, the male population has fallen by seventy-five percent. Women have taken on all the roles traditionally granted to men, even that of the shogun. The men, precious providers of life, are carefully protected. And the most beautiful of the men are sent to serve in the shogun's Inner Chamber...

Sounds pretty cool to me. Alternate history political intrigue? Sign me up.

Plus, the series won the 2009 Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize. Author Fumi Yoshinaga was nominated for the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist for Flower of Life and The Moon and Sandals, and she also wrote and drew Antique Bakery.

The book will be on shelves this Wednesday, August 19, 2009. You can also buy it here: Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 1

Volume 2 comes out in December.

Review: Mijeong

Mijeong, by Byun Byung-Jun, 2009, NBM, 240 pages, $19.95

This manhwa, or Korean comic book, is a collection of eight sad short stories set in gloomy cities about gloomy people. It's not a ton of fun, but it certainly is an interesting book.

Most of the stories involve young people stricken by violence of some kind, including suicide, murder, and sexual abuse. Several seem to blend together because they all evoke a similar mood, a kind of oppressive unhappiness. One story involves a group of children coldly plotting how to dispose of a body, for instance. Another brings some levity to the proceedings by including a jealous cat:

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The black-and-white art is mostly scratchy, thin lines, although one story has some nice soft coloring. Byun Byung-Jun makes some interesting stylistic choices: his cityscapes appear detailed and yet indistinct at the same time, and many of the women depicted in the book have exaggerated, almost alien features (beyond the typical manga-style, I think):

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Interestingly, the book includes a review at the back that is not entirely glowing. At one point the reviewer notes that the stories contain "a lack of plot twists that might captivate the reader . . . ." But the reviewer ends by stating that it "will be interesting to see in which direction the next work by Byun Byung Jun evolves . . . ."

I'd agree with that last statement. It's clear that Byun Byung-Jun is an artist with potential, he just needs to find something to say. I'll certainly be on the lookout for his next book.

READ MORE: Here is a seven-page preview and a fourteen-page preview.

BUY IT: From NBM here or from Amazon here: Mijeong

RELATED: My reviews of other comic books published by NBM:

• David B.'s Nocturnal Conspiracies
• Marc-Antoine Mathieu's The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert
  

Disclaimer: This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.

Short Reviews: Pluto vol. 1, Hellboy vol. 4, Benny and Penny: The Big No-No

Here are some short reviews of what I've been reading over the past week:

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka vol. 1, by Naoki Urasawa, Osamu Tezuka, and Takashi Nagasaki, 2009, Viz Media, 200 pages, $12.99

For the first time in a long time, I absolutely cannot wait to read the next volume of a serialized comic book. Pluto, Urasawa's re-imagining of the classic 1964 Tezuka Astro Boy story "The Greatest Robot on Earth," is a sci-fi murder mystery about a robot detective trying to discover who is targeting the seven great robots of the world. IT IS FANTASTIC.

Just to single out a few things: first, the detective's encounter with Brau 1589, a robot who violated the robot laws by killing a human being, is chilling. And the three chapters about the relationship between the former army-bot North No. 2 and his new master, an aging musical maestro, are stunning in their drama and emotional complexity.

I cannot recommend this enough, and I hope the rest of the series maintains this level of quality. If you have not read this, go out immediately and get it.

You can buy it from Amazon here: Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka vol. 1


Hellboy vol. 4: The Right Hand of Doom, by Mike Mignola, 2004, Dark Horse, 144 pages, $17.95

Way back when, I mentioned that Mike Mignola's horror-adventure series Hellboy was on my list of "Things that I wish I was reading." I've since set out to remedy that, and this past week I grabbed The Right Hand of Doom from the library. This collects a number of one-shots and short stories that originally were published in 1998 and 1998. It's good spooky fun, just like I wanted.

The first story, a two-pager called "Pancakes," is just damn funny. Most of the rest of the stories weave in creatures from world folklore, such as an enormous Romanian vampire called the Vârcolac and a bunch of Japanese floating demon heads. The final story, "Box Full of Evil," focuses more on the central mystery of Hellboy himself: what is he, why is he here, and what's up with that big stone hand.

Mignola's art and Dave Stewart's colors are terrific, as always. It's a nice collection.

See a preview here. You can buy it from the publisher here or from Amazon here: Hellboy vol. 4: The Right Hand of Doom


Benny and Penny: The Big No-No, Geoffrey Hayes, 2009, Toon Books, 32 pages, $12.95

My children enjoy this book about two mice who sneak into their neighbor's yard and get into a mud-slinging battle with the new kid living there. It's a short, simple story, and it kept my kids' attention. My only criticism would be that there is some name-calling involved (the term "cry-baby" gets used twice, and Benny calls Penny and the new kid "dumb girls"), which I don't think is all that great for young kids to read. But other than that, it's a perfectly good children's comic book.

See a preview here. You can buy it from Amazon here: Benny and Penny: The Big No-No

A Drifting Preview

Many people reading this blog probably saw the New York Times review of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's memoir A Drifting Life, but might have missed that the Times also has a fourteen-page preview of the book.

Review: Black Jack Vol. 3

Black Jack volume 3 (of 18), by Osamu Tezuka, 2009, Vertical, 318 pages, $16.95

I reviewed volumes 1 and 2 of this series here. Since I've already explained the premise of the series and stated some general thoughts about the writing and art, I'm going to delve into my favorite story in this volume and talk about why I think it is simultaneously endearing and completely bonkers, just like all of the others.

(SPOILERS) The story, called "The Boy Who Came from the Sky," opens with the dramatic landing of a harrier-type military jet outside of Dr. Black Jack's cliffside residence. The pilot and his wife have defected from their country to seek the doctor's help in saving the life of their son, who has Eisenmenger's Syndrome, a heart defect that can destroy the blood vessels of the lungs. Black Jack explains how, if only he had been able to operate on the boy a year earlier, he might have been able to save him, but now the condition is incurable. Distressed, Black Jack spends the night racking his brain until he hits upon the idea of surgically connecting the boy to his mother so that the blood from her lungs will flow into his heart. The mother will carry her son on her back until they can obtain a healthy set of lungs for the boy. The surgery is successful, but Black Jack rejects the father's money because he knows that the family will need it to survive as fugitives, offering instead to take the expensive jet as payment. The father tells Black Jack that he must account for his actions as an officer, asks Black Jack to say "farewell" to his wife and son for him, and blows up the plane (and himself with it). The mother and child sleep peacefully as the wreckage burns.

By the way, that happens in eighteen pages. Like all of the stories in the book, Tezuka packs a ton into it, zig-zagging between Black Jack's melodramatic outbursts of frustration, technical cutaway diagrams of the boy's heart condition, and tender images of the parents cuddling their dying son. When I called these stories bonkers, it's partly because of the fantastical problems and cures that Tezuka conjures up, and partly because they careen between emotional highs and lows within the space of a few panels. I don't think many creators could successfully pull off these feats of storytelling, but Tezuka does it so effortlessly that the reader runs right along through the story without a second thought.

And I can only consider Tezuka's storytelling mastery in hindsight, because while reading I am completely enthralled by the drama and excitement, and the compelling character of Black Jack, a man who professes to care only about money but who is deeply concerned for the well-being of his patients.

The art, of course, always helps to get the blood flowing with its dynamism and power, but my favorite images from this particular story are relatively quiet:

(click to enlarge -- read right to left)

I thought that those two panels of the mother and her son bonded together are breathtaking. They capture everything that a parent will do for her child and the love between them. Every so often Tezuka creates panels like these, ones that are simple, beautiful, and profound.

I hope I've gotten you interested in the book with my description of this one story -- there are fourteen others in the volume, by the way, and each one terrific -- but here's one more page. This is from "Two Dark Doctors," in which Black Jack faces off against his nemesis:

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Need more? You can see a preview of this book here and buy it from Amazon here: Black Jack, Volume 3

Disclaimer: This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.

Review: Black Jack Vol. 1 and 2

Vertical is publishing Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack manga series ($16.95 for about 300 black & white pages per volume) at a steady clip of one volume every other month until finishing up with volume eighteen; after reading the first two volumes I'd say it's a worthy endeavor. Reading this series is a blast.

The series follows the adventures of Black Jack, a man who is the greatest surgeon in the world, able to perform marvelous feats of scalpelry while at the same time teaching a good lesson to all those who act out of greed, hate, or ignorance. But he's also got a somewhat dark side -- he's unlicensed and works illegally -- which adds a little dash of danger to his actions. Each volume contains multiple episodes that range in length from twenty to forty pages. Typically, an episode runs like this: some kind of crazy accident occurs, Black Jack is called in to work his magic, but there is an unexpected twist problem, but Black Jack overcomes it, and the tale ends with a poignant moment that lays out the moral of the story. If that sounds boring or simple, trust me, these stories are anything but: the plots are almost manic, energy bounces off of every page, and you can never guess what lies around the next corner.

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It's not all fun and games and necrotic fingers -- there is some serious drama packed into these books. In one episode, Black Jack heals a killer whale that shows up on the beach every day with new gashes and bruises. Our hero gains the trust of the animal and they become friends. But then the good doctor learns that the whale might be involved in attacks on people, and he must decide whether to continue treating the animal or let it die. It might sound sappy, but I'm not kidding: the ending really, really got to me, people. This is just one story of many -- and they're all good.

The art is a big part of the book's success. Tezuka is a master of pacing, and the art zips along, suspense building with every panel. Moreover, he's a fantastic cartoonist. One of my favorite aspects of these books is the way that he spends time to make every person unique and interesting. I'm not just talking about major characters, or even the characters with dialogue -- I mean everybody in there, down to every "extra" that only appears in one panel, is lovingly drawn. This page below is the first time we meet Black Jack. It's a great entrance for the guy, but I also want you to look at the other people coming off the plane.

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We never see them again, but each one looks like he or she could be the star in his or her own series. I've never seen another comic book that gives such detail and care to the extras, and Tezuka keeps it up through every single panel. It all helps to add to the fun.

Each book roars by like a finely-tuned Ferrari. To quote Ferris Bueller, they are "so choice." If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Go here to see free previews of the first three volumes in the series. You can buy the books here: Black Jack, Volume 1 and Black Jack, Volume 2

Disclaimer: This review is based on complimentary copies provided by the publisher.