Arata The Legend: Kugura's Palace

I read Arata: The Legend 5 / Name Your Link

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin (which has free comics).

"One Piece" Art Book Due in Early January 2012

JOIN THE STRAW HAT PIRATES AND DIVE INTO THE ARTWORK OF EIICHIRO ODA IN THE NEW ONE PIECE COLOR WALK VOL. 2 FROM VIZ MEDIA

New Full Color Art Book Features Illustrations From The Bestselling Manga Series Of All Time And Includes Works Never Seen Before Outside Japan

VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), the largest distributor and licensor of anime and manga in North America, has announced the release of a new collection of manga (graphic novel) creator Eiichiro Oda’s artwork from the bestselling pirate adventure, ONE PIECE, with the publication of the ONE PIECE COLOR WALK Vol. 2 on January 3, 2011. The new art book is rated ‘T’ for Teens and will carry an MSRP of $19.99 U.S. / $22.99 CAN.

Color images and special illustrations from one of the world’s most popular manga are offered in this vivid new art collection. The book features behind-the-scenes info on how certain characters were designed and also includes an interview with Eiichiro Oda where he discusses his history and evolution as a manga artist. The book also includes a bonus postcard and in-bound full-color poster!

In the ONE PIECE manga series (rated ‘T’ for Teens), Monkey D. Luffy is inspired as a child to become a pirate by listening to the tales of the buccaneer "Red-Haired" Shanks. But Luffy's life changes forever when he accidentally eats the cursed Gum-Gum fruit, and gains the power to stretch like rubber – but at the cost of never being able to swim again! Years later, still vowing to become the king of the pirates, Luffy sets out on an epic adventure... One guy alone in a rowboat, in search of the legendary "One Piece," said to be the greatest treasure in the world.

“ONE PIECE is the most popular manga series in Japan and continues to be the bestselling manga series of all time with more than 240 million volumes sold to-date,” says Alexis Kirsch, Editor. “This new edition of ONE PIECE COLOR WALK Art Book features a big selection of Eiichiro Oda’s artwork rendered in vivid full color. Oda’s illustrations are imaginative, playful, and often dramatic, and most have never been seen before outside Japan. We invite fans to savor all the character and cover art contained in this wonderful new edition!”

Eiichiro Oda began his manga career at the age of 17, when his one-shot cowboy manga Wanted! won second place in the coveted Tezuka manga awards. Oda went on to work as an assistant to some of the biggest manga artists in the industry, including Nobuhiro Watsuki (RUROUNI KENSHIN), before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists. His pirate adventure ONE PIECE, which debuted in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1997, quickly became one of the most popular manga series in Japan and also enjoys a major worldwide following.

More information on the ONE PIECE manga series is available at http://onepiece.viz.com/. The ONE PIECE manga series may also be read digitally through the VIZ Manga App for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, or through VIZManga.com for desktop/laptop computers or any internet-enabled device.

House of Five Leaves: Maple

I read House of Five Leaves 5 / Name Your Link

I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin (which has free comics).

Leroy Douresseaux Reviews ANY EMPIRE (OGN)

ANY EMPIRE
TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

CARTOONIST: Nate Powell
ISBN: 978-1-60309-077-3; hardcover
304pp, B&W, $19.95 U.S.

Rating: Mature readers (13+)

Nate Powell is the Arkansas-born, now Bloomington, Indiana-based illustrator and graphic novelist known for his self-publishing and DIY musical efforts. His 2008 original hardcover graphic novel, Swallow Me Whole, won an Eisner Award in 2009 in the category of “Best Original Graphic Novel.” 2011 saw the release of a new hardcover original graphic novel, Any Empire, which according to the publisher, Top Shelf Productions, “examines war and violence, and their trickle-down effects on middle America.”

Any Empire’s lead character is Lee Powell, a small-town, middle school kid. Lee is often lost in violent fantasy scenarios – most of which involve characters from G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Sullen and withdrawn, Lee can also be inquisitive and friendly, which causes his parents (including his father who is an officer in the United States Air Force) some concern.

Lee’s friend is Donnie Purdy, who simply goes by “Purdy,” a boy who is even more sullen than Lee. In fact, Purdy’s attachment to violent scenarios is downright visceral compared to Lee’s musings of consequence-free violence. Purdy is attached to twin brothers, Matt and Mark, little bullies with a penchant for animal abuse. When a series of turtle mutilations comes to light, a local girl named Sarah plays Nancy Drew to catch the culprits. Eventually, Lee, Purdy, and Sarah separate, but their dark histories of violence collide and reunite them in adulthood.

Nate Powell doesn’t necessarily dig deeply into the characters of Any Empire. What he does is delve into the role of violence in their lives, and violence is the dominant theme. Woven into the fabric of Any Empire is violence between children, violence against animals, the depiction of violent and dark emotions that people feel towards others, the insidious nature of violent entertainment aimed at children, and the all-obliterating violence of war between nations and states.

One thing that a reader can get from this graphic novel is that characters don’t just resort to violence; it’s also the tool of choice in their work box. This narrative, however, is not without a ray of hope. There is a scene late in the story that runs for two pages and part of a third page, in which Lee and his father grapple with war and violence. Papa Powell says something that is not said often enough – at least not in a meaningful way (as he does) – in my (fake) humble opinion.

I remain impressed by the way Powell’s compositional technique creates black and white art that shimmers on the page the way black and white Film Noir glistens on the screen. His quicksilver graphical storytelling dances across the pages and reaffirms that the simplicity of black and white art combined with lettering and word balloons can be as transfixing as any color comic book created with software. With Any Empire, Nate Powell assures his place as a great American graphic novelist.

A-

http://www.seemybrotherdance.org/
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/

Review: SWALLOW ME WHOLE (OGN)

SWALLOW ME WHOLE
TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

CARTOONIST: Nate Powell
ISBN: 978-1-60309-033-9; hardcover
216pp, B&W, $19.95 U.S.

Rating: Mature readers (16+)

Swallow Me Whole is a 2008 graphic novel from cartoonist Nate Powell. Previous work by the musician and graphic novelist include Please Release (Top Shelf Productions, 2007) and Sounds of Your Name (Microcosm Publishing, 2006). Swallow Me Whole is the story of step-siblings and their struggles with mental illness. The book received the 2009 Eisner Award in the category of “Best Original Graphic Novel.”

I received a black and white, photocopied galley of Swallow Me Whole from Top Shelf. I struggled to finish the book. My struggles had nothing to do with Swallow Me Whole being a bore. Powell offers dense visual narratives that can be not only complex, but also difficult to decipher.

Along with a handful of young and gradually rising cartoonists like Jordan Crane and Carla Speed-McNeil (who has actually toiled in near obscurity for years), Nate Powell takes an approach to the graphic novel that recalls Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez, Chester Brown, and Daniel Clowes, in which the reader must not only read the text in the word balloons, but must also absorb and interpret the actual comic book art. The art isn’t just drawings; it’s both a narrative and a carrier of ideas, philosophies, commentaries, etc. Through the art the reader is also expected to feel what the characters are feeling, which can be troubling when one is trying to feel a troubled characters.

Powell’s work reminds me of Charles Burns (Black Hole) comix in that everything drawn onto the page, including the lettering, is part of this communication of story and ideas. Because of this, I would say that Swallow Me Whole reminds me of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, in which everything placed on the pages (and covers): drawings, colors, and lettering transmitted stories, ideas, and messages, as well as it evoked sensations and feelings in the reader. Watchmen was meant to fire up the old noodle and get the reader thinking and engaged.

Swallow Me Whole is a sensory reading experience, although I wouldn’t necessarily call it the Watchmen of alternative comics, but could it be… Swallow Me Whole focuses on step-siblings Ruth and Perry – primarily Ruth. They are children of a blended family living in Wormwood, Arkansas, and their high school years are a journey into the dark corners of adolescence. Powell, however, isn’t dealing with such formulaic teenage melodrama as rebellion, sexual awakening, conformity, gangs, or the prom.

Swallow Me Whole is less about the external matters of being an adolescent and more about the madness of boredom and the discombobulating of the interior life. Ruth suffers from apophenia, a mental condition in which she sees patterns and connections in random, meaningless, and unrelated data, data which, to her, obviously doesn’t seem unconnected. Perry also hallucinates, seeing and hearing a small wizard connected to his drawing pencil, a wizard that demands Perry prepare for an important quest. While Perry struggles to extricate himself from the wizard, Ruth isn’t so sure that she should medicate her condition just to fit in with everyone.

Powell composes his art with a quirky line (that recalls Bill Loeb in Journey) and inks in fluid, smooth brushstrokes that seem to pour like batter from a large clay jar. Beyond surface appearances, Powell saturates the art in blacks and shadows that trickle, flow, drench, flood, and finally submerge the drawings. He dots the art with a steady spell of word balloons that combines to tell this story. As I said before, everything on the pages communicates.

There is a two-page sequence featuring Ruth sitting in the passenger seat of a car in which Powell alters the way he composes and inks this page and the manner in which he creates a varying degree of difficulty in reading the word balloons. Powell arranges this sequence in such a way to characterize and shape Ruth for the reader – to suggest her shifting mental state within the space of this one sequence. Powell not only wants the reader to know that Ruth and Perry have mental issues; he’s also determined to take the reader share them. He wants us to feel like them, to think like them, and ultimately to experience a sense of Ruth’s unraveling and Perry’s struggles.

Swallow Me Whole is not escapism because Powell is offering more than a story. He wants the reader to live through Ruth and Perry, and though Swallow Me Whole may come across as too complex and the story so elusive, he is not content with merely acting for you. Swallow Me Whole is about feeling the textures and sensations of the mental struggle. It’s amazing that someone can do this with drawings on a page.

Websites of note:
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/
http://www.harlanrecords.org/
http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/

20th Century Boys: Everybody's Song

I read 20th Century Boys Volume 8 / Name Your Link


I posted a review at the Comic Book Bin (which has free comics).

DC Comics from Diamond Distributors for December 14 2011

DC COMICS

JAN110419 ABSOLUTE PROMETHEA HC VOL 03 $99.99

OCT110269 ALL NEW BATMAN THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #14 $2.99

SEP110217 AMERICAN VAMPIRE #21 (MR) $2.99

OCT110198 BATGIRL #4 $2.99

OCT110192 BATMAN AND ROBIN #4 $2.99

OCT110310 BATMAN ARKHAM CITY SER 1 BATMAN AF PI

OCT110309 BATMAN ARKHAM CITY SER 1 HARLEY QUIN AF PI

OCT110311 BATMAN ARKHAM CITY SER 1 ROBIN AF PI

OCT110197 BATWOMAN #4 $2.99

OCT110239 DC COMICS PRESENTS BATMAN THE SECRET CITY #1 $7.99

AUG110243 DC COMICS THE NEW 52 HC $150.00

JAN110454 DC DYNAMICS JOKER STATUE $195.00

OCT110173 DC UNIVERSE ONLINE LEGENDS #19 $2.99

OCT110220 DEATHSTROKE #4 $2.99

OCT110216 DEMON KNIGHTS #4 $2.99

SEP110221 FABLES TP VOL 16 SUPER TEAM (MR) $14.99

OCT110213 FRANKENSTEIN AGENT OF SHADE #4 $2.99

OCT110202 GREEN LANTERN #4 $2.99

MAY110315 GREEN LANTERN SER 5 BROTHER WARTH ACTION FIGURE PI

MAY110316 GREEN LANTERN SER 5 GUY GARDNER ACTION FIGURE PI

MAY110317 GREEN LANTERN SER 5 SINESTRO ACTION FIGURE PI

MAY110314 GREEN LANTERN SER 5 SORANIK NATU ACTION FIGURE PI

OCT110219 GRIFTER #4 $2.99

SEP110183 HITMAN TP VOL 05 TOMMYS HEROES (RES) $29.99

OCT110232 LEGION LOST #4 $2.99

OCT110275 MAD MAGAZINE #513 $5.99

OCT110176 MISTER TERRIFIC #4 $2.99

OCT110177 MY GREATEST ADVENTURE #3 (OF 6) $3.99

OCT110227 RAY #1 (OF 4) $2.99

OCT110215 RESURRECTION MAN #4 $2.99

OCT110208 SHADE #3 (OF 12) $2.99

AUG110253 SHOWCASE PRESENTS BATMAN TP VOL 05 $19.99

SEP110192 SHOWCASE PRESENTS WONDER WOMAN TP VOL 04 $19.99

OCT110222 SUICIDE SQUAD #4 $2.99

OCT110182 SUPERBOY #4 $2.99

AUG110254 TALES OF THE BATMAN DON NEWTON HC VOL 01 $39.99

OCT110299 UNWRITTEN #32 (MR) $2.99

OCT110289 VERTIGO FIRST BLOOD #1 (MR) $7.99

MAY110308 WHITE LANTERN 1/4 SCALE POWER BATTERY & RING PROP $35.00