• Recently uncovered: unpublished Osamu Tezuka comics from when he was a teenager in the 1940s! While certainly not as powerful as his later Astro Boy, these help to show Tezuka's progress as a creator. I just wish they showed more images from this newly found collection.
  
• PLB Comics will be presenting a "Creating Comics" seminar for teens this Saturday at Wicomico Public Library, Centre Branch, Salisbury. I've seen a number of "how to" sessions like this before, but I think this is the first I've heard of that was geared specifically towards teenagers.
• Katherine Dacey is closing down The Manga Critic. We're sorry to see that resource go, but Kate's still in the game, as she'll be starting up a column for Manga Bookshelf.
  

Hey, all you U.S. citizens! I don't care who you vote for today, but go out and vote! (Well, I do care in the broader sense of who gets elected, but I'm not going to hold it against you personally if you vote for the "wrong" candidate.)

You know, it occurs to me that my "What I'm Reading" portion of the sidebar on my blog site is a tad out of date. It almost always is, frankly, since I'm continually adding new titles to my reading list, or webcomics stop updating, or whatever. I could keep updating it periodically, as I've tried to do in the past, but I'd like to ask my reader(s) if it's worth keeping that list at all? Do people find any value in it? It takes up a good chunk of real estate, and I half-wonder if there's something else I might put in its place that would be of more interest/use to readers.

Thoughts, opinions and comments are welcome.

Please blow up your Parliaments responsibly.

One of those travelling book fairs was at work this week, and I stumbled across a new (to me) set of graphic novels collectively called "Recon Academy." They were only asking $2.50 for each 60-ish page book, so I bought all four.

Conceptually, they're about four 13-15 year olds who form a team of secret agents, and they find themselves frequently at odds with a group known as Shadow Cell, who are behind various nefarious plots around the city. Each of the four books focuses on one character in particular, though they always work as group, with each kid contributing a special skillset. These are all decidedly in the Young Adult category, so it should come as no surprise that Shadow Cell gets their collective butt kicked each and every time.

The books were all written by Chris Everheart and drawn by Arcana Studio. They were published by Stone Arch, whom some of you may remember when I talked about their graphic fiction series a couple years ago. The stories and art were okay. Not great, but okay. And that's setting aside some of the basic concept holes like, why are these kids secret agents? Who are they actually reporting to -- they seem to be acting totally independent of any government group? Why is Shadow Cell's actual agenda -- they seem to be break the law for the sake of breaking the law?

Although I was intitially a little turned off by the fact that, of the four kids, you have four distinctly differnt races represented. It seemed a little forced but, to be fair, though, race is never brought up at any point; they're just four kids who happen to be Caucasian, Asian, Black and (I think) Latina. And most of the standard stereotypes are eschewed as well -- it's the Latina who's the martial arts expert, while the Asian kid is an expert in chemistry and forensics. Although it was the Caucasian who led the team, which I think was a bit trite.

I get the impression that this line was created so that Stone Arch had it's own (licensable) line of original comics. But it also seems like, as a publisher, they just farmed all the work out to whoever they might have in their address book. That's not meant as a disservice to the creators, but it seems to me like Stone Arch just wanted comics to have comics and didn't really know how to go about becoming a comics publisher in any sort of organic way. The whole thing seems just a little too forced and mechanical to me.

With their earlier takes on classic works of fiction, I could at least see using them to introduce kids to great authors like Jonathan Swift, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne. With these, while they're not bad by any means, I don't see a compelling reason to get them. Maybe it's just that I'm too used to reading YA comics by talents like Raina Telgemeier, Jeff Smith, Doug TenNapel and Jimmy Gownley. For $2.50 a pop, some of the Recon Academy books might make for a neat surprise to spring on your child if you stumble across them at a book fair, but I wouldn't expect them to fall in love with these in the same way they might with something like Drama.

For the longest time, I thought Steve Ditko's head was engulfed in flames.

My plan this evening was to casually read The Secret of the Stone Frog while eating dinner, then go write out my next column for MTV Geek. But, after reading Stone Frog, I was too excited about it to not start writing a review immediately! (Don't worry, Val -- I'll still get my column to you in plenty of time. It will be just a tad later than usual!)

The story is about Leah and her younger brother Alan, who wake up one night in the middle of the a forest. They naturally start looking for a way home, and a stone frog points them on the path. The kids spend the remainder of the book trying to get back home, encountering various strange creatures. They periodically come across other stone frogs, who continue providing them with directions. But the "bee lady", the anthropamorphic anglerfish, the coachman and the talking police station are decidedly less friendly. As their surroundings get more and more chaotic, the kids find the final stone frog who points them to the door to their bedroom. They arrive just as the sun is coming and, despite the excitement that hasn't worn off yet, they quickly fall asleep.

I don't recall where I heard about David Nytra's new book, but I vaguely remember there being a positive comparison to Windsor McCay. The character designs of Leah and Alan, and the lush, detailed backgrounds are probably the biggest evidence for that. But I also detect a strong influence of Lewis Carroll through the basic plot and story structure, and some of the creature designs seem reminiscent of Carroll-collaborator and Punch cartoonist John Tenniel. What's fantastic about this, though, is while these were pretty clearly influences for Nytra, he's not simply regurgitating their work. Nytra is still working within the same basic type of dreamscape that those other creators worked in, but providing his own world for readers to view.

In Carroll's works, the author primarily worked in the realm of nonsense. The character of Alice was a very logically-minded young girl, but much of her challenge was trying to navigate a world in which logic does not necessarily apply. In McCay's works, his protagonists were frequently just observers to the action going on around them. Little Nemo's biggest challenge was simply to not wake up, so he could see what happened next. Leah and Alan, by contrast, are active participants in the world in which they find themselves and, although it is certainly strange and different, it follows the basic rules of cause and effect. This makes for an interesting and entertaining blend of approaches, resulting in a work that is not derivative of either of its primary influences and charming in its own unique way.

One of the tricks with working in dream worlds is that it can be seen as not really counting. "And then he woke up" makes for something of a lousy ending because readers can feel that all the great adventures they just read about didn't even matter within the fictional context in which they were presented. I think one of the keys is making sure that they dreams are still very well grounded in the characters' reality. Think of the ending to The Wizard of Oz movie where Judy Garland recognizes the farm hands as her companions on the Yellow Brick Road. (I feel obliged to point out, though, that the dream aspect was developed specifically for the movie. The original L. Frank Baum books made Oz a very real place to which Dorothy, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry eventually moved.) In Stone Frog, Nytra not only makes Leah and Alan's adventures potentially real -- as opposed to specifically dreamt -- but almost poetically alludes to the basis in their normal world for the imagery they saw.

All in all, I found the Stone Frog to be absolutely brilliant on all fronts. I'll fully admit bias in that I'm already a big fan of both McCay and Carroll, so this was right up my alley from the get-go, but the execution on this was exceptional and I can't wait to see if Nytra does anything else in this same vein!