I've noted repeatedly that I enjoyed the series Bakuman. I was initially intrigued by the concept because I was eager to see a little more of the production process involved in creating manga and, as the main story focuses on two kids who are trying to break into the business, this seemed like a great way to get a sense of how everything worked. It turned out to be really engaging story, but it's also revealed a lot more about how manga is created than I had even hoped!

One of the aspects that's touched on is how the life of a mangaka is largely one in the studio. That is, the ongoing and perpetual deadlines necessitate working extremely long and hard hours. They repeatedly show the artists eating and sleeping at their studios. As I'm thinking about, I don't think we've seen Mashiro's actual home since volume one, and he has expressly noted that his life as a mangaka precludes a lot of 'normal' life experiences, like just hanging out with some friends.

Now, I had chalked at least some of this up to artistic license. But I started learning more about Osamu Tezuka.

Some years back, I picked up The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. I got about half-way through the book before I opted to pop in the included DVD, which contains a previously unseen documentary about Tezuka.

I didn't see any dates on the documentary itself, but it appears to have been shot around 1987 or 1988. Tezuka was 60 years old. The documentary itself wasn't very good in and of itself; there's little in the way of context or a broader sense of Tezuka's own work, much less how he fits into the broader picture of manga. (It should be noted, though, that the book itself is EXCELLENT and covers this territory extremely well.) The documentary is more of a week-in-the-life look at Tezuka.

And while there's little context there, the footage itself is extremely useful for someone who does have at least a general understanding of how manga works. Like, say, if you've been reading Bakuman. Tezuka himself had a relentless work ethic, working any- and everywhere he needs to in order to hit his deadlines. Tezuka's assistants, too, would find themselves working long hours, often sleeping at the studio and ordering bad take-out because there's not enough time to actually make even something simple in the attached kitchenette. Tezuka's editors were (to this Westerner's eyes) surprisingly unsympathetic to Tezuka as the legend he was even then, much less as a mangaka in general.

Tezuka is shown falling asleep at his drawing table, eating a riceball while working because he can't afford to stop penciling long enough to eat something with two hands, and he even pulls out a massage mallet that he smacks against his shoulders with one hand while he continues drawing with the other! Even though he has a very nice and luxurious house, he only stops in to see his wife there two days a week. The rest of his time is spent at the studio working.

It doesn't look like Bakuman was exaggerating much, if at all.

Towards the end of the documentary, Tezuka finishes his work on the one-shot he was working on. (Though he still had two ongoing series to keep up with.) He did take a moment to relax and enjoy the weight lifted off his shoulders by completing the job. And, while I'm sure there was some bit of deliberate editing at play here, there was a visible tinge of weariness on his face. He seemed almost to realize just how hard he'd been pushing himself and that maybe that wasn't a good way to live.

I'm sitting here in the United States with a decent job in middle management, working from home, and clocking out pretty much at 5:00 every day. I might not have the creative outlet that Tezuka (or for that matter any freelance comic creator) has in how he made his comics but it's a life I enjoy. I expect you could catch a moment of wistfulness if you had a camera on me 24/7, but between what I've from Tezuka and in Bakuman, creating manga sounds like a HELL of a lot more work than in creating comics anywhere else in the world!

Back in 2020, I reviewed the first volume of the manga adpation of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. It follows Cath during her first year at college, and dealing with all the differences that separate that experience from high school. Cath's challenges also include, though, that she's pretty quiet and introverted, very much unlike her twin sister Wren. Furthermore, Levi -- the guy that Cath is interested in -- spent most of his high school career dating Cath's new roommate, Reagan. All this is against the backdrop of an in-world series called Simon Snow (which is kind of cross between Harry Potter and Twilight) of which Cath is one of the more predominent online fanfic authors.

Volume 3 picks up pretty much right where volume 2 left off, with Cath leaving a party upset because she saw Levi kissing another girl there. Cath tries avoiding Levi for the next few weeks and, to complicate matters, Cath's father has a breakdown just as final exams are getting underway. While she's ultimately able to do make-up exams and postpone her major projects to help take care of her father, she winds up getting into a massive argument with Wren about their long-absent mother. The twins stop talking to each other and, just as Cath is able to settle into a new normal as the next term starts, she gets a phone call from the mother she hasn't had any contact with for a decade...

Cue dramatic music as the "to be continued" message shows up!

As I said in reviewing volume 1, I have not read Rowell's prose novel this is based on so I can't compare it directly against that. I would presume this particular volume adheres more closely to the original because Rowell herself wrote this adapation, compared to Sam Maggs who worked on the first two volumes. But I don't know, maybe Rowell wound up changing more because she saw this as an opportunity to improve on what she didn't like about the original. This latest installment doesn't seem to flow any differently or have any appreciably different rhythms than the first two, but I can't tell if that's the result of the original story or that Gabi Nam has done the artwork on everything so far. Regardless, if you liked how volumes 1 and 2 worked, I'm sure you'll like this one as well.

Interestingly, for as much as I noted back in 2020 how much I connected with Cath despite our specific circumstances being wildly different, this didn't hit quite the same way. Not that I don't still connect with Cath, but three years ago when I first read this, it brough back a flood of early college memories I hadn't given any thought to in decades. And while we are a little over a year since the previous installment came out, those memories are still fresher now than they were three years ago when I first read it, so they don't, they can't land the same. But I'm still reminded of several early experiences from my college days, and I can still connect with Cath on many of them. If I were to lodge any complaints against this volume, I would say that

1. I don't think we get enough of Reagan here. That's mostly a selfish complaint on my part becase I really like the character; I half-wonder if I wouldn't like a Reagan-centered series more than a Cath-centered one.
2. The narrative periodically switches to depicting various Simon Snow stories, sometimes the canon work, sometimes Cath's fanfic. Not surprisingly, the scenes depicted generally server to underscore the main narrative at that point in the story. But there were two instances where I had trouble following along. Not because it requires some unknown Simon Snow lore or something, but just the storytelling doesn't quite work. I can't tell if that's more an issue with the art or the story itself or some combination, but I definitely had a couple "Wait, what just happened?" moments with them. Both seemed to be more action-oriented scenes, so I suspect it has something to do with that type of illustrative choreography.

Overall, it's an enjoyable series, and I'm looking forward to the next (and, I believe, final) book. I'm not seeing any suggested publication dates for that anywhere, but I presume we'd be looking at maybe late summer/early fall 2024, based on the previous releases. Volume 3, at least, came out yesterday and should be available through your favorite bookstore. It is published by Viz Media and retails for $16.99 US.

Shuesha -- the publisher behind shonen magazines like Weekly Shōnen Jump, Jump SQ, and V Jump -- just announced they'll be launching Jump TOON, their own dedicated webtoon platform, to compete with the likes of Naver's LINE Webtoon. This isn't terribly surprising in that Naver has had a fair amount of success and the rise of manhwa more broadly has had manga publishers concerned about the competition, so naturally they want (argueably even need) to compete with them in this space in order to not lose their audience.

But I wonder about their approach here. While there's not a ton of details available -- and even fewer that aren't in Japanese, which I can't read and am relying on translation bots -- it sounds like Shuesha is developing this internally. Which is almost the wrong choice.

Shuesha is a publisher. They know books and magazines, storytelling, printing processes, delivery systems, and everything related to print publication. They certainly have an IT department, as this is the 21st century, to handle their infrastructure and website development and all that; but the ground-up development of a webtoon application -- whether that is a dedicated app or just a browser-based implementation -- is an entirely new/different type of project that requires a different skillset than what they would normally have on hand. There's certainly some overlap with their current IT staff, but it's different enough that you're going to want to have a different group of people working on it. A group that's got experience with developing these kinds of tools and can better anticipate potential issues that don't seem immediately obvious an can mitigate them before they require some retroactive kludge to fix them.

I'm not saying that they'll do so badly that Jump TOON will be an unmitigated failure but it's enough outside their wheelhouse that it's not going to work as smoothly as they'd like. They don't have the innate level of understanding of the user experience. I've seen this time and time again in a wide variety of industries. Probably the most comparable example I can think of is DC Comics.

Digital comics were starting to gain enough attention that they wanted in on the action. So in 2007 they launched Zuda Comics, which they had developed internally. The comics that were presented there were all good, but the platform itself had a variety of issues. Not major ones that prevented things from working, but just enough to make the user experience inelegant and uncomfortable. It was Comixology - also launched in 2007 -- that succeeded in digital comics space because they came to the table with a digital experience background, compared to DC's storytelling background. Comixology had a better understanding of the way users could/would navigate the platform, and were able to build their platform with that in mind. (Obviously, Amazon's purchase of Comixology changed the UX considerably for the worse and it no longer works as well as it once did, but in 2007, their platform was very much best-in-class when it came to digital comics.)

I don't know Shuesha's financial situation very well, nor how committed their C-suite executives to this initiative, but I don't think it will last more than a few years. There's definitely room for a manga webtoon platform, but I don't think Shuesha is the company to win that race. They might have the market cornered on manga storytelling, but I sincerely doubt they have the programming and UI expertise to build a successful webtoon platform from scratch.

I took my first real foray into manga in 2007. Before that, I'd read the First Comics highly Americanized versions of Lone Wolf and Cub and seen a handful of (again, largely Americanized) anime movies and shows, but that was pretty much it. A decade-plus on now and I still know far, far less about manga than I'd like. More than I did back in 2007, certainly, but I still have a lot to learn.

I've also been trying to get more knowledgeable about European comics. I'd read a number of them as a teenager, but generally without the knowledge that they were in fact created on the other side of an ocean. Still lots to learn.

Same with Canadian comics. And Australian ones. And Indian ones. And...

One of the reasons I first looked at those Lone Wolf issues back in the day was because the covers were by Frank Miller. (Bear in mind that this was 1987, shortly after his Dark Knight Returns blew everyone's socks off.) I recall reading somewhere that Miller was happy to do the covers because he had seen some of those stories before and they were very influential on his Daredevil run.

And I think that's an interesting notion. That Miller's work on Daredevil and Dark Knight looked revolutionary to American audiences because it had a Japanese influence that most people in the States hadn't seen in any capacity at that time. When you distill that idea down even further, that's basically what creativity is: putting together two or more ideas that no one has before. Miller took elements of Japanese manga and merged them into an American superhero story.

I don't say that to diminish Miller's achievements on those works. He understood the power of Goseki Kojima's art style/storytelling, and figured out how to adapt some of those elements to what was essentially the Jack Kirby method of storytelling. Not an easy task, certainly a creative one, and Miller was able to execute on that very well.

And that's why I try to see what's going on (and has gone on) in comics beyond those created in the U.S. You never know when/where something really cool and useful will come up, or in what capacity. Different cultures approach problems (like storytelling) in different ways, and they could well have ideas and methods unique to their culture. And those might be perfectly valid and usable in my own work. Even though I don't actually write comics themselves.

The more you know, the more you're able to make those connections no one else is making.

Marusu works in sales at a design agency. However, a last minute project needs to be finished up and all the actual designers are gone, so Marusu is roped in to do the work since she once said she can draw a bit. Seemingly in response to her confusion/frustration/building panic, Helvetica steps up to introduce himself. He then proceeds to take her to the Typeface Research Society. After giving her a crash course in some basic type-related definitions, he hands her off to Futura and Marusu then goes through the campus meeting a couple dozen different typefaces, learning a bit about them and their respective histories. She gets returned to the agency where her work on My Neighbor Helvetica is highly celebrated.

The central conceit of What the Font?! is that each typeface is personified, based on the central themes, ideas, and concepts behind each of the actual type designs. Helvetica is the most popular on campus, Arial feels like an insecure imposter next to Helvetica, Impact is a bit obnoxious and in-your-face, Zapfino is a dancer, Comic Sans is an otaku, etc. Each character only gets maybe 4-6 pages before Marusu is passed along to the next, so there's not a whole lot of depth to each of the characters, but mangaka Kuniichi Ashiya does an excellent job of mixing up things up. Despite each "chapter" basically containing an introduction and history of a different tyepface, he mixes things up so there's zero sense of repitition or redundancy. Each take feels fresh, like Marusu (and, by extension, the reader) really is on a whirlwind touring meeting all these characters in a short amoung of time.

The book itself has an incredible amount of structure to it. Each page after the five-page prologue consists of exactly four identical, vertically stacked panels. While the overall story flows from page to page, any individual page is virtually its own scene, and can almost stand independently. (For those unfamiliar, this is not an uncommon format in manga.) In the left margin of each page, there's an additional couple of sentences providing some details and/or trivia about the typeface seen on that page. And then at the end of each "chapter" there's a reference page with some basic info (who created it, when, etc.) as well as a two paragraph summary and a few notes about what well-known logos use that font as their basis. Then there's one page presenting the entire alphabet in that font, before we jump back into the story with the introduction of the next character.

With as many faces that are covered here, and trying to wrap that in a story format, it should come as no surprise that they don't get into a lot of the history or into any deep analysis of the designs themselves. That's not meant as a criticism by any means. This is very much presented as essentially a typography primer, and I don't think anyone going into this would expect anything beyond a broad overview. To that end, it does an excellent job. Particularly for people who perhaps aren't overly familiar with typefaces in the first place, but find themselves having to make font choices that they'd never really given any consideration before. They don't necessarily need to know tons of details about each of these faces; they just need to know what might be a better choice than Comic Sans for their resume.

I studied graphic design back in my undergrad days, and took more than a couple typography courses. This is by far the most entertaining book I've ever read about typefaces. I mean, I found myself chuckling through most of the chapter on Gill Sans because Marusu kept using the traditional "-san" honorific with him, thus calling him Gill Sans-san. You simply don't get that in most books about fonts.

The book came out from Seven Seas Entertainment late last year, and should be available wherever you get your manga these days. It retails for $13.99 US and is a worthy additional to your bookshelf whether you like manga or font design.

Taiyō Matsumoto's manga Ping Pong was released as two-volumes in English last year. It was pretty highly touted since it was originally serialized in Japan back in 1996, which were then collected later that year. And then made into a live-action movie in 2002. And then re-released in a new format in 2012. And then made into an eleven-episode anime in 2014, which saw Blu-ray and DVD releases in 2015. I believe last year's manga release from Viz consituted the first time the original has seen print in English (at least officially here in the US) so with nearly a quarter century of proven Japanese popularity behind it -- not to mention some of Matsumoto's prior works earned him a variety of awards, including an Eisner in 2007 for Tekkonkinkreet -- Ping Pong not surprisingly was much anticipated.

The story is follows two teenage friends, Peco and Smile, who have become quite skilled at Ping Pong. Peco had a very natural talent for the game and he was the one who originally taught Smile. Smile also has fairly natural talent for table tennis, but it's not nearly as tied to his seense of self as it is for Peco. They find themselves at some tournaments and, amid the games themselves, have to both com to terms with who they are as individuals and in particular in their relationship to ping pong.

When I first heard of the sports manga genre, I was largely disinterested. I'm not much of a sports guy in the first place, and I didn't see much appeal in reading a story about it. I did check out a few some years back just to see how the stories were handled and quickly saw that the sports are often just a narrative hook for a character facing (generally internal) adversity. You could swap out many of the sports asthetics for other hobbies and professions, and the overall narrative wouldn't change all that much. Racing for a writing deadline instead of watching the shot clock, or improving their swordsmanship to defeat the local thugs instead of improving their batting abilities to defeat the team across town. It's more about seeing the characters face challenges and grow as individuals, not the actual games themselves.

That said, Matsumoto did seem to do his homework for this. I'm no table tennis expert, by any means, but I'm familiar enough with the game to know he was drawing and talking about solid game mechanics. You certainly don't need to know much of anything about ping pong to follow the story (again, it's more about the characters than the game) but the details are there if you're into that.

In fact, much of what is shown for the games doesn't really convey the actual games themselves anyway. What Matsumoto frequently does here is show impressions of the games through a variety of what you might call mood shots. A close-up of the player's eyes. A sneaker skidding to halt on the floor. Re-positioning their grip on a paddle. A super close-up of the ball itself. A bead of sweat rolling down their arm. A shot of the crowd in tense anticipation. The reader doesn't see the games so much as get a sense of them. For the most part, the individual strikes and how the ball is returned are irrelevant. You just need to know if the players are evenly matched, how intense they might be playing, that kind of thing.

From a technical perspective, I thought there was a lot Ping Pong had to offer. The way Matsumoto handles the page- and panel-level narration is excellent, and he uses a variety of illustration techniques that do a great job emphasizing the action (or lack thereof) in a given panel. I did have a little trouble differentiating individual members of one of the opposing teams because they were all similarly-built guys who shaved their heads, but they only show up for tournaments (which include announcers) and that didn't cause any real problems with understanding the story.

However, I just didn't find myself getting into the story at all. I found the depictions of the games technically well-executed, but they got tedious for me really quickly. They were individually unique but thematically identical, and that repitition got stale for me. I also could not find myself connecting much with either Peco or Smile; they were well-rounded enough, I suppose, but I didn't see anything in either character I could really relate to. Maybe it's because I knew of too much hype before reading it, and my expectations were too high; maybe it was my pandemic-distracted brain that kept me from focusing on the characters enough; maybe I'm just not a sports manga person at all. I didn't really find anything I disliked about it per se -- like I said, the technical execution was very good by and large -- but I didn't find anything I especially liked about it either. It hasn't put me off Matsumoto's work, but I'm not exactly eager to track down more.

On page one, while eating ramen by herself in a diner, Shiino learns from a news broadcast that her best friend Mariko just committed suicide. The story then follows Shiino for the next couple of days as she steals Mariko's ashes from her father and goes to Marigaoka Cape to scatter them. While that does adequately explain the basic plot of Waka Hirako's My Broken Mariko, it doesn't come close to explaining why it's an amazing story.

We learn more about Mariko and her relationship with Shiino through a series of vignettes as Shiino's memories overwhelm her. We learn about how she was beaten and raped by her own father, how she was beaten by her boyfriends, how she had attempted suicide previously... It's a powerful look at abuse and depression, particularly as it's pretty much never discussed explicitly. I mean, yes, there is dialogue that expressly states that Mariko was raped by her father, so there's no question about the basic facts of the issue, but it's never discussed. Which means Shiino is now left having to wrestle with all her feelings about their relationship that they were never able to really resolve. And I don't mean that in sexual way; their relationship is almost closer to that of a mother/daughter one than of best friends.

And while Shiino is ostensibly the stable one, the one who's working and living on her own, we see through her actions that she's argueably more "broken" than Mariko. Shiino even notes multiple times that she's not thinking straight. She's prone to wild outbursts and recklessness. I was genuinely surprised that she managed to get home in one piece. By comparison, Mariko seems much more together, despite having to endure a great deal more trauma.

But that's the beauty of this story. It highlights that those labels of "broken" or "traumatized" or whatever are just labels, and don't come close to capturing the full breadth of the experiences behind the person. Only by seeing through all of the elements, in the aggregate, that we get the sense that Mariko was really broken. And Shinno was really doing the right thing, despite how bat-shit crazy she seemed at times.

It's a deeply emotional and emotive story. I read a preview of the entire first chapter (availble online here) and was immediately hooked. Honestly, that preview is super powerful and is probably the best thing Yen Press could've done to help sell the book. If you read that and like it, you will be absolutely captivated by the rest of the story. If you read it and don't like, then it's probably not a book for you.

The single volume for this story came out last week so it should available in any bookstore now. It retails for $18 US for the hardcover and $8.99 US for a digital version.

Here in the US, comic book sales are a bit murky. We do talk about sales rankings from Diamond and we try to look at Book Scan numbers, but there are a number of problems with both of those that make actual sales numbers something of a guess. An educated guess, but a guess nonetheless. Between that lack of good information and the US's tendency towards egocentrism, we almost never talk about comic sales about manga. But last week, Magazine Pocket published an interview with Tatsuya Morimoto and Rika Kato from Kodansha's International Rights Division that sheds some light on at least that publisher's sales and I wanted to make some callouts here. (The article is, not surprisingly, written in Japanese. I'm largely working from Chrome's translate functionality.)

First, it should come as no surprise that manga sales are higher in Japan than elsewhere. The market in Japan is over $4 billion and the rest of the world combined is bit less than one quarter of that. And the US market is only one quarter of that, with France just shy of another quarter. That's in terms of raw sales figures, though. What Morimoto did not highlight is that the overall US population about 327 million compared to 67 million in France, so on a per capita basis, France is VASTLY outspending the US in terms of manga sales. That said, US sales have increased 707% since 2012, while Europe has only increased 262%. This would suggest that the US will continue to dominate manga sales outside Japan in terms of dollar amounts, although it would take a seismic shift to get per capita numbers similar to France.

Morimoto believes that the increase of manga sales is directly tied to the availability of anime via services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. People can discover and sample a variety of stories for free, and then shift over to manga for titles they really enjoy.

Interestingly, they seem to see digital distribution of manga as having the same potential, but piracy is a hurdle they're still wrestling with. While Morimoto seems to only touch lightly on their challenge -- getting translations out faster than pirates -- their solution currently seems to be primarily providing additional content that would only be available to them as a publisher: behind-the-scenes production items, coordination and formal approvals from authors (particularly with regard to idioms that don't translate into other languages easily), etc. They like the idea of having a Netflix-like solution -- a kind of reading subscription like comiXology Unlimited -- but there are few outlets in that vein. Even internationally.

Additionally, they face competition from Korean webtoons. In part because few readers seemingly make little distinction between digital comics and webcomics, the greater ease of accessing webtoons (which just requires a browser of any sort and are often designed to fit on a phone, compared to digital manga which require a reader app of some sort and aren't generally configured for smaller screens) poses a threat to manga publishers. They don't seem to have nailed down a solid strategy for addressing this yet, but they do at least recognize the issue and aren't relying on the quality of their material; Kato flatly says exactly that.

One challenge they face -- and one that isn't discussed much here in the US -- is that trying to expand worldwide is not a simple matter of distribution. Beyond just making sure translations get made to different languages, each country's market is going to respond to material differently. Morimoto notes that “The Seven Deadly Sins” has done very well in Mexico, while "Fairy Tail" does very well in France and "The Kindaichi Case Files" sells better in Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand. This means that it's not simply a matter of getting their current catalog to other markets, but pushing particular titles to particular markets. Morimoto notes that there's a human resources element at play, suggesting that part of their issue in expanding is just having people in local markets to better ascertain which books will do better in different countries.

All of this, to reiterate, is specifically coming from one publisher; the issues other publishers are facing and how they're able to sell internationally might be significantly different. But it's still worth taking some time to see how the global economy looks to a publisher that is not based in the US. How they tackle worldwide distribution might or might not be useful in addressing similar issues publishers from other countries are trying to solve, but not paying attention to them at all is a recipe for getting blind-sided later.

File this one under: Things that I run across in a craft store that scare me.

I took my first real foray into manga in 2007. Before that, I'd read the First Comics highly Americanized versions of Lone Wolf and Cub and seen a handful of (again, largely Americanized) anime movies and shows, but that was pretty much it. Several years on now and I still know far, far less about manga than I'd like. More than I did back in 2007, certainly, but I still have a lot to learn.

I've also been trying to get more knowledgeable about European comics. I'd read a number of them as a teenager, but generally without the knowledge that they were in fact created on the other side of an ocean. Still lots to learn.

Same with Canadian comics. And Australian ones. And Indian ones. And...

One of the reasons I first looked at those Lone Wolf issues back in the day was because the covers were by Frank Miller. (Bear in mind that this was 1987, shortly after his Dark Knight Returns blew everyone's socks off.) I recall reading somewhere that Miller was happy to do the covers because he had seen some of those stories before and they were very influential on his Daredevil run.

And I think that's an interesting notion. That Miller's work on Daredevil and Dark Knight looked revolutionary to American audiences because it had a Japanese influence that most people in the States hadn't seen in any capacity. When you distill that idea down even further, that's basically what creativity is: putting together two or more ideas that no one has before. Miller took elements of Japanese manga and merged them into an American superhero story.

I don't say that to diminish Miller's achievements on those works. He understood the power of Goseki Kojima's art style/storytelling, and figured out how to adapt some of those elements to what was essentially the Jack Kirby method of storytelling. Not an easy task, certainly a creative one, and Miller was able to execute on that very well.

And that's why I try to see what's going on (and has gone on) in comics beyond those created in the U.S. You never know when/where something really cool and useful will come up, or in what capacity. Different cultures approach problems (like storytelling) in different ways, and they could well have ideas and methods unique to their culture. And those might be perfectly valid and usable in my own work. Even though I don't actually write comics themselves.

The more you know, the more you're able to make those connections no one else is making.

I mentioned Bakuman last week how the character Mashiro from Bakuman spends a lot of time at his studio. Let's take a quick look at what I was referring to. Here are three shots from the anime based on the book...

You can see that it's clearly designated as a fairly clean, uncluttered workspace. All of Mashirio's drafting tools are at his table. There are two assistant tables off to one side, and a sitting area with a coffee table that they regularly use for editorial meetings. There's a photocopier/fax machine on one wall. Oh, and loads of manga. It's a little unclear in the first shot, but that doorway on the left goes to the stacks of shelving you see in the third picture.

Now, these two kids basically inherited this studio from Mashiro's uncle, who was also a mangaka. So they had a big leg up when they were just getting started. But it's proven exceptionally useful on multiple occasions, as they get stuck and use the library of books there to research what's worked (or hasn't) in the past.

The basic idea is hardly new. Academics frequently keep the books and journals they're referencing nearby while they're working on their own research. But, typically, space considerations tend to force those collections to be limited primarily to material that is of primary and immediate use. That's one of the big reasons I'm excited to put my library together. I've been writing and researching and blogging for over a decade now where my research materials aren't always in the same place I've been doing the actual writing. I've had to sort through a pile of comics or books, pick out which ones I think are relevant, and then pile them rather unceremoniously on my desk for the next few weeks while I work on whatever project it is. Of course, I inevitably miss something or find a secondary reference to look, and I found myself heading back down to the basement (or wherever) to sort through my collection again.

While I've no intention of drawing comics like Mashiro there, the idea of having ALL of my reference material within a few steps of my physical workspace is immensely appealing. Even though much more material is available digitally and/or online in various capacities, there's still a large collection of work that I've accumulated that is NOT available outside the print version I have. Part of what makes for good research, I think, is having that material available so that I can quickly and easily find it and not have to go rooting around in another room (or an entirely different building!) just to get the resources I need.

My library, once it's complete, certainly won't have everything that I'll need, resource-wise. But I'm sure it will cut down on the back-tracking and extended physical searching that I've had to do in the past, despite my collection being fairly well-organized. But I know, from past experience, that keeping it all in one place is a boon by itself and having ready access to it like Mashiro does can't help but making things easier!

I've noted repeatedly that I've been enjoying the series Bakuman. I was initially intrigued by the concept because I was eager to see a little more of the production process involved in creating manga and, as the main story focuses on two kids who are trying to break into the business, this seemed like a great way to get a sense of how everything worked. It turned out to be really engaging story, but it's also revealed a lot more about how manga is created than I had even hoped!

One of the aspects that's touched on is how the life of a mangaka is largely one in the studio. That is, the ongoing and perpetual deadlines necessitate working extremely long and hard hours. They repeatedly show the artists eating and sleeping at their studios. As I'm thinking about, I don't think we've seen Mashiro's actual home since volume one, and he has expressly noted that his life as a mangaka precludes a lot of 'normal' life experiences, like just hanging out with some friends.

Now, I had chalked at least some of this up to artistic license. But I started learning more about Osamu Tezuka.

Amazon had a sale recently on The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. (The price varied a bit over the course of the day, but it was largely floating BELOW three dollars! It's back up to $26 now.) I got about half-way through before I opted to pop in the included DVD, which contains a previously unseen documentary about Tezuka.

I didn't see any dates on the documentary itself, but it appears to have been shot around 1987 or 1988. Tezuka was 60 years old. The documentary itself wasn't very good in and of itself; there's little in the way of context or a broader sense of Tezuka's own work, much less how he fits into the broader picture of manga. (It should be noted, though, that the book itself is EXCELLENT and covers this territory extremely well.) The documentary is more of a week-in-the-life look at Tezuka.

And while there's little context there, the footage itself is extremely useful for someone who does have at least a general understanding of how manga works. Like, say, if you've been reading Bakuman. Tezuka himself has a relentless work ethic, working any- and everywhere he needs to in order to hit his deadlines. Tezuka's assistants, too, find themselves working long hours, often sleeping at the studio and ordering bad take-out because there's not enough time to actually make even something simple in the attached kitchenette. Tezuka's editors are (to this Westerner's eyes) surprisingly unsympathetic to Tezuka as the legend he was even then, much less as a mangaka in general.

Tezuka is shown falling asleep at his drawing table, eating a riceball while working because he can't afford to stop penciling long enough to eat something with two hands, and he even pulls out a massage mallet that he smacks against his shoulders with one hand while he continues drawing with the other! Even though he has a very nice and luxurious house, he only stops in to see his wife there two days a week. The rest of his time is spent at the studio working.

It doesn't look like Bakuman was exaggerating much, if at all.

Towards the end of the documentary, Tezuka finishes his work on the one-shot he was working on. (Though he still had two ongoing series to keep up with.) He did take a moment to relax and enjoy the weight lifted off his shoulders by completing the job. And, while I'm sure there was some bit of deliberate editing at play here, there was a visible tinge of weariness on his face. He seemed almost to realize just how hard he'd been pushing himself and that maybe that wasn't a good way to live.

I'm sitting here in the United States with a decent job as a cube-jockey, where I can go home at the end of the day, every day, and be done with work. I might not have the creative outlet that Tezuka (or for that matter any freelance comic creator) has in how he made his comics but it's a life I enjoy. I expect you could catch a moment of wistfulness if you had a camera on me 24/7, but between what I've from Tezuka and in Bakuman, creating manga sounds like a HELL of a lot more work than in creating comics anywhere else in the world!

I just read volume one of Real by Takehiko Inoue. I picked it up because I saw someone (can't recall who) reference it as possibly the best sports manga ever. Now, while that was only one opinion, and probably subject to a bit of hyperbole and/or bias, I figured I'd give it a shot because I've never read any sports manga before. In fact, I've deliberately strayed away from sports manga because I'm not much of a sports fan in the first place, so why would I want to read about it?

That said, I was curious to see what exactly a "sports manga" is, since it's a whole genre that we really don't have here in the States at all. And since the reviewer did say that it focused on basketball, the sport that I'm most familiar with, I thought this might be as good of a shot as I'd have at figuring out what the deal is.

The story starts with a high school student returning to school to get his things after being expelled. Turns out he was a star basketball player, but also kind of a dick and a bit of a bully. On his way off the property, he removes his clothes and takes a dump on the front step. Oh, and we learn that he recently caused a motorcycle accident with some random girl he picked up one night, and she's now hospitalized, paralyzed from the waist down. Not an auspicious beginning for someone who seems to be the protagonist.

He eventually runs into a wheelchair-bound student who's also really good at basketball. But he left the local wheelchair basketball group because he felt they weren't taking the game seriously, and what's the point of playing if you're not out to win. The two strike up an uneasy partnership to hustle rich kids at a neighborhood court. So that's two protagonists who aren't terribly likeable.

Then there's the new captain of the high school team. He's definitely a bully and demeans most everyone he meets. He then steals a bicycle from in front of a store and, when he's seen and starts being chased, he pushes his girlfriend off and races away. Another unlikeable character, but at least he's hit by a bus in his escape attempt.

Now here's where it's a bit weird. We've got several main characters who are, to put it bluntly, assholes. We've got several characters who are wheelchair-bound. We've got this basketball theme that returns repeatedly, along with occasional references to current NBA players that I know next to nothing about. By almost any perfunctory examination, I should not care about this one iota. I can relate to nothing any of these characters are going through.

Except...

The one broad idea that seems to keep coming up is an unwillingness to give up. These characters are all facing tough challenges and they flatly deny the possibility that anything can stand in their way. It's something that you see in a lot of fiction, of course, but tying it to a sports story does connect with me in a way that I wouldn't have expected. Namely, that I find myself mentally yelling "Don't give up! Don't give in! Keep going!" when I'm running or working out.

It's an attitude that I think a lot of people like conceptually, but I wonder how many practice it? I mean, obviously, there are physical limits everyone has. (No matter how strong you are, your bones can only support so much weight before they break.) But the idea of continuing to push yourself physically is one that is really difficult to fully embrace and, I suspect, is one of the reasons why so many people are so overweight these days; they don't have to push themselves, so why bother?

I'm debating about picking up Real volume 2. It was certainly well-executed, and I think I can see where they might be going in making the characters likeable. I even didn't mind the sports part all that much. But it was just a little too far removed from what I can directly relate to really get into it as much as I'd like. By the same token, there's a lot to be said for a well-executed story that presents a point of view you're unfamiliar with. I've certainly touted that idea elsewhere recently, so it might not hurt to follow along for at least a couple more volumes here.

I set aside some time today to finally visit the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. It's been practically in my backyard for years, but I never made the trek to stop by. Boy, am I pissed at myself for waiting this long!

I've known about it (under it's various names) for years, but honestly it's really been Caitlin McGurk's deliberate outreach efforts in the past year or so she's been there that have really put it more in the forefront of my radar. So I contacted her last week, asking about a tour, and she was happy to oblige.

The BICLM itself is a little unassuming at first. It's tucked away a bit and, except for the life-sized Garfield sitting on a bench out front, it looks like just a nice reading room. In fact, there's a larger, similar-looking reading room across the hall. There's a handful of bookshelves half-filled with comic-related books and a couple dozen pieces of original art on the walls (currently all sporting a "dancing" theme), and a desk for some student workers.

But at the risk of using an absurdly corny metaphor, that is just the Clark Kent to the Superman that is the BICLM.

McGurk took myself and a visiting professor (who's name escapes me at the moment) from James Madison University through a set of doors labeled "Staff Only" to the heart of the Library. Behind the doors was easily the most impressive single collection of comics and comic-related material I have ever seen. The Library was packed to the rafters with collection after collection after collection.

The initial library shelves were filled with comics and graphic novels. I believe she cited 30,000 individual pamphlet comics, and that's with them not even trying to focus on collecting them. That also includes the Jay Kennedy collection of underground comix, dating back to the 1950s! They also have the largest collection of Japanese-language manga outside of Japan.

They also have in their possession now the Bill Blackbeard collection. Which is basically every newspaper strip ever, individually clipped and sorted. She pulled a box down at random -- five years of Blondie from the 1950s. I asked to see the March 1949 strips of Li'l Abner -- Boom! Here's all of 1949 in order; March is about 1/4 of the way down. It took six filled semi-trucks to deliver all of these clipped newspaper strips!

And then we got back to the original art. She started by showing us the Milton Caniff stuff that helped start the Library back in the 1970s. Gorgeous work. And huge! Those old Terry and the Pirates Sunday strips took up an entire newspaper page and Caniff did his originals oversized! And he saved everything, so they have all of it. Not just completed strips, but random panels that he drew, inked, decided he didn't like and cast aside -- BUT STILL SAVED!

From there, it kind of became a whirlwind of originals. "Did you guys want to see anything in particular?" "Do you have any Herriman?" "Yeah, here's some dailies here. Wait; I think the Sundays are in... this drawer." "McCay?" "Well, most of the Little Nemos are on loan for a show in Florida, but we do have these hand-colored originals of Tales of the Jungle Imps."

We pretty much went through the list of every cartoonist you could think to name: Charles Schulz, Mort Walker, Gahan Wilson, Steve Bissett, Will Eisner, Hal Foster, Wendy Pini, Burne Hogarth... Amazing originals, just one after another.

"Did one of you ask earlier about Pogo?" "No, but we're not about to turn down the opportunity to see them!"

They are way over-crowded in there, and we had to move stuff out of the way a few times to get to some of the drawers. But they're actually opening a new, much larger facility next Fall, which will include much more exhibit space. As part of that process, they were pulling out and framing a number of choice pieces to exhibit. Those were set aside separately, and she was going through those with us. I had to laugh as she just flipped right past an original Sunday Peanuts because, you know, it's just Schulz and we'd already looked at a drawer-full of him. What's one more?

We spent so much time looking at other pieces, she almost forgot to mention until the very end that they're holding ALL of Bill Watterson's work (dating back to his high school material, they have literally everything except for one or two pieces!) and all the originals for Jeff Smith's Bone. Technically, the Watterson and Smith pieces aren't formally part of the Library yet, but they're still there.

We also briefly met curator Jenny Robb, and I saw the founder and initial curator Lucy Caswell doing some work as well. McGurk also introduced us to Jared Gardner, who's an English professor there and happened to stop by doing some research of his own.

What an awesome resource this place is! But that's not what really thrilled me. I mean, yes, I totally was geeking out over an original Preventative Maintenance cover by Eisner and drooled over Walt Kelly's lettering, but that wasn't the best part.

The best part were the people there. Everyone there was totally willing to help with whatever research you wanted to do. I noted in one of my emails to McGurk that I was doing research on Walter Gibson and Jack Kirby, and when I got there, she had several books about Gibson pulled out and set aside... as well as all of their original Kirby pages -- two of which I don't think have ever been published before! Those were all sitting in their reading room with my name tagged to them. "You need photocopies of anything? Let us know. You need hi-res scans for print? Those cost a little bit but we can totally do that for you." Everybody there wanted to make the work -- all of it -- as available as they could. I've never been to a Library before where everyone there was not only able/willing to help, but really eager and enthused to help people! There was definitely a sense of actively advocating comics research.

Just from the small amount that I saw -- they also have another warehouse filled with material that hasn't even been catelogued yet -- it's almost overwhelming how much can still be researched and just hasn't been for whatever reason. I think that's the real genius of the BICLM -- not just that it's got literally tons and tons of great material in one place, but that the people there are trying to go out of their way to get more people interested in studying it in, thereby further advancing our collective understanding of comics.

I am not at all doing this place justice in my summary here! But if you have the ability, I highly suggest taking some time to visit. The work they've done there, both in curating and advocating comics, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. And, hey, if you're thinking about getting into comics research in either an academic or commerical venue, and want to make sure your subject matter isn't one that's been covered to death already, absolutely take a tour of this place! Not that I wasn't exactly hurting for ideas before, but after today's tour, I've gotten so many new ideas, I'm wondering how I could ever possibly get to all of them in my lifetime!

I've been so enjoying Bakuman that I went back to pick up the creative team's previous well-received effort: Death Note. It's only twelve volumes, so it seemed like an easy investment -- not too much of a cash outlay, plus a pretty strong creative team if their later work is any guide.

The basic story surrounds a brilliant teen-ager named Light Yagami. He one day discovers a notebook entitled "Death Note" with several rules written on the inside. In short, it says that writing someone's name down in the notebook will kill them. Yagami, skeptical but curious, tries it out when he catches a news broadcast about a terrorist who's taken several people hostage. Proving that it works, he decides that he is going to make the world a better place by killing all the really evil people of the world. Police and governments don't take kindly to someone setting themselves up as judge, jury and executioner (as Yagami makes no effort to conceal that it's all the work of a single individual) and a number of task forces are set up to apprehend this unseen killer that's been dubbed "Kira" by the media.

Much of the story then revolves around Yagami continuing his efforts while hiding his identity, and the world task force headed up by the mysterious genius known only as "L." Yagami and L are both pretty evenly matched intellectually, and there's an ongoing game of out-guessing each other. Yagami eventually wins, even managing to take the title of L for himself, but L's true successors (both geniuses themselves) then come out to try to catch the still-enigmatic Kira. Now Yagami/L/Kira must outwit two opponents, who are themselves in a race to see who can catch Kira first.

(For those of you who have read it: yes, I know I'm leaving out an awful lot, but we're talking about almost 2,500 pages of story here! Plus, I don't want to spoil some of the particularly clever twists that occur throughout the series.)

As in Bakuman, artist Takeshi Obata does a fantastic job throughout the series. Though the story is largely cerebral, he continues to find ways to make people thinking look engaging and dramatic. He also, as in Bakuman, defines a decently sized supporting cast in a definitive manner, making distinct individuals out of what could be seen as broad descriptions. By that I mean that there are several "30-ish year old male with dark hair and a medium build" characters that could be confused with one another, but Obata's illustration style ensures that no confusion ever takes place.

Regarding the story itself, there are few things that strike me. First is that Yagami is almost always shown to be several steps ahead of everyone. While that would be seemingly easy to do from a writer's perspective -- Tsugumi Ohba could just make Yagami 'predict' the logic other characters use -- the way this unfolds in the story is frequently very cleverly relayed. There are several instances, even early on, when Yagami is shown performing seemingly random acts while talking with other characters, but readers then only learn the significance of those acts several chapters later. It would be easy to show Yagami think of something and then act on it immediately, but that Ohba himself thought to plant story seeds quite significantly in advance shows him to be a very thoughtful and deliberate storyteller.

Another thing that I find striking is that, especially towards the end of the story, several characters are shown thinking and plotting based on what they think others will do and say. They're almost re-acting to actions that actually reactions to other actions, none of which have actually happened yet. This could have quickly devolved into something akin to "Well, I knew that you knew that I knew that you knew..." And while it does skate close to that on a couple of occasions with quite a few exercises in logic, Ohba never takes to it quite so pedantic a level. And the only times it really gets close, it helps to showcase Yagami's own mental state and he becomes increasingly desperate to remain anonymous and continue his role as Kira.

The series, as a whole, poses some interesting thematic questions about justice. And despite providing a pretty clear story resolution in terms of who holds the moral high ground during the climax, the denouement brings the question back into an area of ambiguity. Overall, I found it to be an incredibly well-written and highly engaging series. I understand Bakuman has recently wrapped up in Japan, and I'm eager to see what he comes up with next. (While I continue reading the English translations of that series as they're still coming out here in the States, of course!)

I happened to read the "Black Edition" version of Death Note, but you can of course purchase the shorter, individual volumes if you prefer a smaller initial sample. I strongly recommend the series as a whole, though, and the box set edition will provide you with the entire story for the cheapest price. Whichever version you might prefer, it's a fantastic series and I can easily understand why it was made into an anime and a series of feature-length movies.

It's been a while since I've given a Bakuman volume a proper review. I picked up Volume 15 today. Amazon and Books-a-Million list it as coming out next week; not sure why it was on the Books-a-Million shelves this evening, but I ain't complaining! (Although they didn't have Drama, so I was a little irked at that.)

Anyway, to catch you up on the story, Mashiro and Takagi have been managed to do fairly well for themselves as mangaka. Their current series, PCP is consistently ranked in the top three, and the two creators are very well respected. Takagi's gotten married, but is still finishing up college. Mashiro still has his romance-through-separation with Azuki, and she's started making a decent living as a voice actress.

Volume 15 wraps up the story arc with Tohru Nanamine, who had been using a cadre of internet folks to develop story ideas for him. His plot is discovered and winds up blowing up in his face, but his freshman editor seems to finally smack him into shape. But this also leads to the dismissal of his assistant, Takuro Nakai, who drunkenly goes to confront Ko Aoki, who he blames for his life's failures. Kazuya Hirammaru tries to come to her rescue, gets a serious smackdown of his own and winds up befriending Nakai. Mashiro and Takagi witness the end of this and can do little more than stare on in amazement at what happened.

Mashiro attends a class reunion and is forced to compare his relatively busy yet solitary life as a mangaka against the seemingly more fun and enjoyable lives of his old classmates. He ultimately realizes that he's enjoying what he's doing, even if it's not "normal." But the news soon brings concern as someone has begun committing acts in real life based on what they read in PCP. Though he agreed with Mashiro's take on being a mangaka, Takagi is mortified, and begins questioning himself, going into a deep depression. And just as he starts coming out of it, the copycat pulls another stunt lifted right out of the pages of PCP...

Well, let me say first that I have really been enjoying this series since the start, and has easily cemented itself as my favorite ongoing comic right now. I have found myself laughing out loud at least once with each new volume just from the sheer joy of seeing where each issue takes me, this one included. It is, by far, the best long-form serial I've read in probably 25 years.

That said, this was probably the weakest volume to date. The art and storytelling were top-notch; Takeshi Obata knocks it out of the park, as always. Where I felt things lacked a little was in the wrap-up to the Nanamine story and the follow-up on Nakai. That Nanamine's plot would fail was never in question, and how it failed made sense. But the character became rather unhinged towards the end in a way that didn't seem to fit how he had been previously established. There were a couple shots that definitely had a bat-shit-crazy-Joker vibe to them, which seemed a little over-the-top for the story/character. Though he eventually calms down and seems to be on the track to become legitimate competition for the protagonists, that his editor had to slug him -- twice! -- seemed a little off for the series.

The follow-up story about Nakai had a strange ending to it as well. How he became unemployed and went to see Ko made sense, but then it seemed to become a battle manga suddenly that ended just as abruptly. It had something of a comedic ending that also didn't quite fit the tone of the series and, on reflection, seemed like just a quick way to ensure the character didn't get dropped out the series for an extended period like had happened before.

Plus, in both of those stories, Mashiro and Takagi were largely bit players. C-3PO and R2-D2 watching the action happen around them. Fortunately, the volume ends on an up stroke with the last several chapters focusing on them again, and dealing with the real pressures and concerns of mangaka. It was in these last chapters that I found myself laughing again at the brilliance in execution and the interesting turns the story takes.

Despite this volume having, as I said, some of the weakest stories in the series, that was primarily due to a shift in focus and tone. Considering that it has a 'main' cast of over 20 characters, it's hardly surprising that trying to juggle everyone's storylines is going to result in some seeming mismatches. Particularly when so many of the characters have very different styles and attitudes. While this makes for interesting interplay with the most central figures, it also makes for a very different story when the focus is on them.

But ending back on Mashiro and Takagi and some very significant -- and realistically tackled -- issues for them makes the volume end well, and encourages me to come back just as enthusiastically as before. Considering that even this weak volume is still better than so many other comics out there, I continue to highly recommend this series. This volume may not be the best to start reading with, but I can heartily assure you that, at over half-way through the series (there's 176 chapters in total; this volume brings the English translations up to 133), this story is well worth picking up!

I was in Target today and ran across this endcap...

This Art 101 series of packages on how to use various media -- oils, pastels, watercolors, etc. Nothing very complex, obviously, judging by the size of the boxes and the fact that they're being sold in a Target endcap. But they are clearly labeled as "Art 101" and thus they're implied to be pretty introductory lessons. But that first one on the shelf, "Manga Cartooning", seems distinctly out of place with the others. Even checking against the cross-sell promotions on the back of the boxes, it was the only one teaching a very specific style within a broader medium, compared to teaching a medium in and of itself.

I'm left wondering what exactly they were thinking. Cashing in popularity seems a little bit of stretch because if you were doing that, why bother with all of those formats? And how would manga be that different from the course on drawing?

Things that make you go hmmm.

I recently was given access to some previews of the first two volumes of JR Comics' Monkey King series. I discovered the character of the Monkey King 6-8 years ago -- oddly enough, after blindly stumbling across an eBay auction of a small statuette of him. He's a character of Chinese legend and has shown up in all manner of media over the years; I think most recently a version of the character has even been incorporated into the Marvel continuum. I certainly haven't studied all there is to know about the character, and the various permutations of his stories, but I think it's safe to say I have more than a passing familiarity with the character.

So I was really pleased to see this new series from JR Comics. Their website has almost no information at all, but the introductory text in my preview copy suggests that these were published in China last year, and were conferred with some kind of official government seal of cultural approval. (For all I know it's the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal, but it kind of strikes me more as a government's blessing that the stories provide a positive cultural representation of China.)

Now here's where I start getting confused. The previews I got showed Volume 1 would come out in early September and Volume 2 would be a week later. A cross-sell page in the back shows 20 volumes in all. The website shows the same 20 volumes, but provides no release dates at all. No news of any kind, for that matter. Meanwhile, the Amazon lists say all 20 books have been in stock since January 1 and an interview I read with the publisher says they've been available since last November. So I have no idea if they're actually available or not right now.

Confusion point 2. Here's a two page spread from Volume 2...What is up with those fonts? Let's assume for a moment that the translation work is not being done in the U.S. JR Comics is actually a Korean company, so I can see that maybe they might not be completely versed in Western fonts and they might not know the full breadth of options available for fonts that look somewhat hand-drawn. I mean, judging from their marketing and whatnot, it frankly looks like a small company looking to make a fairly quick buck on what they see as easy translation work. Fine. But they clearly recognized there was a basic need for something like that as they've chosen Comic Sans for the captions. But then they use a bold san serif for all the dialogue? What's more, there was clearly a deliberate font selection there. I know I'm a bit rusty, but I can still tell it's definitely not Helvetica, Arial, Univers, Gill Sans, Verdana, Futura, or any of the other somewhat standard san serifs available. So they made a deliberate choice on that, but... why? I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of worse fonts they could've gone with, but it does not make for a comfortable read over these 150+ page books.

Confusion point 3. Their website. Seriously, why bother with one at all if you're not going to put a single piece of information (not even a link!) about how/where a reader might buy these books? There's also no mention at all of any of their other titles: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber. Add in zero navigation back to the site once you're in any of the previews, and this just makes no sense.

Now, that said, I am still interested in these books. Primarily for the character. The first two volumes do read well (despite the fonts) but they are very admittedly written for a Chinese audience. I think someone unfamiliar with Chinese story style and structure might be put off a bit by this. It's definitely not Japanese or Korean, so it might not click for fans of manga or manhwa either. But if you did see Sun Wukong pop up in Iron Man recently and wonder what the hell he's all about, this story will definitely provide you with that background.

I've only seen the first two volumes, as I said, but it appears the series will recount all of the Monkey King's tales from Journey to the West. The storytelling does strike me as very reminiscent of the legends as I've heard them, and I would like to pick these all up to see the full story illustrated.

Wei Dong Chen and Chao Peng do a great job writing and drawing the story; I just wish the publisher left me scratching my head over its publication.

I don't normally post news-ish type items because that's not my forte, but I can see this sliding under many folks' radar as they're heading out to San Diego.

Earlier this evening, the Tokyopop manga Twitter feed posted the following...

Just came back from a brief meeting with Stu where we talked about our next step as a publisher.

So the question is: if we published more OEL in the very near future, what would you want to see and how quickly would you want to see it?

Would you like to see us release new volumes of our old OEL titles ASAP or would you prefer we stagger it over the course of a few months?

Just for clarification, we say OEL because that's what we can easily do next as a publisher, whereas manga will take more time to negotiate.

Tokyopop, for those who don't remember, decided to quit publishing manga in the United States a little over a year ago. Creators and agents began shopping their properties, many of which Tokyopop had published only partially, to other publishers. Some were picked up, some weren't. They continued publishing in Europe, I believe, but Tokyopop's presence in the US was substantially curtailed. Then, last month, Tokyopop CEO Stu Levy announced that they would continue publication of Hidekaz Himaruya's Hetalia, details to be forthcoming.

Now, it looks like they're trying to jump back into the manga market quickly, perhaps to make up for the past year in which they almost literally threw away all of their manga licenses. I'm not entirely surprised, given that Levy has something of a history of changing directions at the drop of a hat, but it still seems unusual to make such a drastic change to try to return from such a drastic change only a year ago. If other folks do manage to pick up this story amid all the Comic-Con business, I can almost guarantee someone will use the term "whiplash."

I think Levy and Tokyopop do deserve a lot of credit for helping to make manga popular here in the States. I doubt there are many people who would deny that. But with radical upsets like this, I can't help but wonder how much MORE they could have done for manga if they could keep the company focused. Levy's got a definite love of the medium and plenty of energy to market it, but damn if he doesn't seem to always be distracted by the nearest shiny object.

In the early part of the 20th century, the challenges in mountain climbing got many people interested in the activity. It bred heroes in the same vein as Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart were in aviation. George Mallory was one such mountaineering hero, having gone on the first three British expeditions up Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth. He was the one who famously responded, "Because it's there," when asked why he was trying to climb Everest.

In 1924, on his third expedition, he and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine vanished and were never heard from again. If they managed to reach the summit before disappearing, they would be the first humans to ever reach the peak, a honor that is officially held by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, nearly three decades later! But because Mallory and Irvine were lost before they could speak to anyone about their attempt, their success has been a matter of speculation in the mountaineering community for the past three quarters of a century!

Mallory's body was eventually found in 1999. It was at a little over 8,100 feet above sea level, 600-some feet from the summit. Irvine's body has never been found, but his ice axe was discovered more than 8,400 feet up. The markings on Mallory's frozen body suggest that he and Irvine were still tethered together; presumably, one of them slipped, pulling the other with him. Mallory had gouge in his forehead that was about the size of his axe, which has led to the popular theory that, as the two men were falling down the slope, Mallory jammed his axe into the ice and snow to slow their fall; the axe caught a rock and bounced out, smacking Mallory in the head and killing him.

But that doesn't answer the question of whether or not they reached the summit. Were they still on their way up when they slipped, or on their way back down? Since it was 30 years before the next group was able to reach the peak, any evidence Mallory and Irvine may have left there would certainly have been blown away or destroyed by the elements. The only real hope of answering the question with any finality would be if someone found the camera Mallory and Irvine had with them, and were able to develop the film. But the camera, not surprisingly, has never been found.

Most of what I've explained so far is not in The Summit of the Gods. It's background information I looked up. Not because I needed to in order to understand the story, but because the story was so compelling that I wanted to know more.

The premise of Summit is that a young man finds what he believes to be Mallory's camera in a pawn shop in Kathmandu. It's stolen before he can do anything with it, and he's driven on an adventure to unravel the mystery. But that mystery is leads to another... and another. The classic "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

The manga is actually based on a prose story by Baku Yumemakura, which was written before Mallory's body was found. But Jiro Taniguchi's storytelling makes the story, to me at least, incredibly engaging. Especially considering that all the mountaineering history makes sense, despite so very little of it actually making its way into the story. The artwork is gorgeous throughout and one really gets a sense of the bleakness people feel when they run into problems on a climb. That Ponent Mon publishes this on good quality paper with crisp ink makes it that much more an attractive package.

There will be five books in total. I have no idea where the story is going, but I've thoroughly enjoyed all three books so far. Certainly enough to spend a lot of additional time reading about Mallory and Everest, above and beyond what's presented in Summit. And I think that speaks to the story's quality moreso than any simple recommendation I could make.