Comment from M. Blind
Time: October 16, 2006, 11:47 am

You should have asked; I could have mailed you my copy.

Not only is this a great *comic* book, it’s also a pretty good hard-scifi book. This is one of my standing recommendations, to show folks that manga is more than what they’ve assumed it is.

Comment from Bob
Time: October 17, 2006, 7:25 pm

Any more standing recommendations? I can’t say that I’m hooked on manga yet, but I’m at least intrigued.

Comment from M. Blind
Time: October 17, 2006, 11:24 pm

Sadly, I haven’t found anything quite as good as Planetes (in the ways that Planetes is good). And good sci-fi is hard to track down, comics or no.

But, here are some quick descriptions of a few titles. reviews in bulk to follow. (not quickly, but I’m working on it)

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The meta-game: comics about fans of comics.

Comic Party
a guy gets involved in the production of his own fan comic (& later, original works) after a friend of his drags him to Comic Party, a sales event run by and for manga fans. There’s a dumb story arc in vols. 2-3 about a [cough] terrorist [sic] who threatens to blow up the con, and while that’s a decent excuse for some action sequences– mostly its character and personality driven. And humor– our MC gets slugged with a nail-studded bat on page 2.
5 volumes (complete)

Genshiken
this one is about an anime and manga fan club. Geeks like us. The first story arc involves a ‘normal’ girl who falls for one of the group members (the cute-but-clueless-and-almost-normal video game ace) — a convenient plot device to bring both exposition and POV into what might otherwise be alien territory. She’s willing to do almost anything to pry her new boyfriend away from the geek squad. It’s a matter of taste, and in-jokes abound; you’ll either key into the concept and characters right away, or this one will leave you scratching your head.
6+ volumes (on-going).

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Air Gear
First act: Punk ass kid gets his punk ass handed to him by a rival gang. Second act: with some trick skates and some skate tricks, and the help of a near-legendary group of girl skaters, he finds redemption in the mangled near-corpses of his enemies. Third act: now turned on to a whole new (underground) world of blood, skates, and flying leaps… etc. etc. the author is setting up the rest of the series. In future volumes I foresee a training-with-the-master arc, falling-out-with-but-later-reconciling-with-the-chicks arc, battle-of-the-week-lather-rinse-repeat… Still, there is enough new here that I’ll be buying these as they come out. That, and the guy can *draw*.
1 volume out now, #2 drops Oct. 31 (on-going)

The author of Air Gear previously did Tenjho Tenge. I’ve seen the anime, which was a bit disjointed (they drop the main cast about halfway in to go whole hog into a flashback storyline) but its about a high school with a student body heavily into martial arts, and where even the teachers are giving lectures on ass kicking. Volume one of TenTen is in the queue, sitting on nightstand right now

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Negima
Rated “ages 16+”. For good reasons.

This requires one to seriously consider where one might stand on a number of touchy issues. #1: the main male character, Negi Springfield, is only 10 years old. #2: He interacts daily with a gaggle of 13-16 year old girls, middle school students. #3: it’s Japanese. I don’t mean to propogate stereotypes but… it’s *Japanese*.
Still with me?

Negi Springfield just graduated the top of his class from a magic academy in the UK. He’s bright, motivated, has a degree in English from Oxford, and learned Japanese in only 3 weeks.
He had to. After graduation, his first assignment as a wizard is to teach English at a Japanese girls’ school.

He takes over as homeroom teacher for class 2-A at Mahora Academy. He has 31 young, attractive students– some think he’s cute in a kid-brother way, there are some with crushes, a couple hate his guts. This isn’t a normal school, though, and these aren’t normal students: on top of the usual parade of school stereotypes, we’ve got a ghost, a vampire, a robot, a ninja… and more. much, much more. (remember, add 15-year-old- as a modifier to all of these: mad scientist? 15-year-old-girl-mad-scientist, check.)
Still with me?
Did I mention the title was rated 16+?

Magic, Mayhem, Violence, “Fan Service” (a shop term for gratuitous near-nudity), and touching storylines involving the many characters follow from this seriously wacked out premise. They take like 600 pages to cover a 3 day field trip. (well, there was the evil cabal that summoned an 80m tall demon-god…)

I was hooked by volume 2. There is some uneven translation/scripting work in the early volumes, but it doesn’t detract and the US licensing co. seemed to hit its stride around vol. 5 or so.
11+ volumes (on-going)

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Chick Lit.
Sick of spandex superheroes?

Someday’s Dreamers.
Also an anime– while the anime plods along at an almost boring rate of speed, the comic is a quick read. Our hero is a young girl from the sticks, coming to Tokyo for the summer to study magic for the summer. Magicians are a regulated, accepted, ordinary part of life in this title, though, as opposed to Negima. Cute, light, sweet– This is the one I can recommend to customers of all ages (again, as opposed to Negima)
2 volumes (complete; though a spin-off starts this Dec.)

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and one more. Chick lit., but also a comic-about-comics.

DramaCon.
An English-language original, this reads left-to-right (and makes sense) but is done in the manga art style. It’s firmly aimed at teenage girls, but perhaps because it was written in English, the characters are believable and easily accessable, and the story seems a lot like something that could really happen. No robots, no explosions, it’s not the end of the world. The humor (and sight gags) are a major plus. Once I started reading it, I didn’t put it down until the sucker was done, and I re-read the damn thing twice that same weekend.

so what’s it about? A young writer (she writes the comics) goes to her first convention with her insane roommates (they’re manga/anime fans) and her boyfriend (he draws the comics) to sell their fan-produced comic, while also geeking out like geeks will do at this kind of geekfest.

Her boyfriend is an ass. (I’m not giving away major plot points; it’s on page 4.) She meets someone else, and its a crush-at-first-sight. She also meets her idol, a published comic book author… and other stuff happens. Highly recommended, if not for yourself then for your comics-hating-girlfriends. (this is the title that will convert them)
2 volumes, w/ a 3rd one coming but likely not due out for another year or so.

I’ve got some more on my shopping list, where I’ve heard or read good things but can’t say anything from personal experience, so I won’t.

Pingback from comicsnob.com » 5by8, #2: Watching Anime, Reading Manga
Time: December 18, 2006, 1:58 pm

[…] One day at work, I opened up a box, and there to hand was Vol. 1 of Planetes. I didn’t buy it right away. (in fact, I didn’t buy it for two years) But my thought, that day three years ago, was “Cool. Manga.” […]