What Are You Reading?

[Avaitor]

Looks good!

[gunswordfist]

The new Deadpool issue coming out next week contains work from the following writers: Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn, Fabian Nicieza, Mark Waid, Joe Kelly, Christopher Priest, Jimmy Palmiotti, Frank Tieri, Gail Simone, Daniel Way, and Victor Gischler.

And here's the cover art: http://www.comicbookresources.com/imgsrv/preview/0/0/1/Deadpool-27-Cover-64c29.jpg

MY BONER

[LumRanmaYasha]

I managed to get a lot of stuff at used bookstore I frequent for only $20 bucks this week! Probably my best haul there this whole year in terms of price and quantity! 

[Dr. Insomniac]

Aw yeah, Zot and Watamote.

[Avaitor]

I remember having a subscription to Cartoon Cartoons. They weren't anything special, but I enjoyed the books anyway. Not to mention that I believe that some of the artists and writers from the shows worked on some of the books here and there.

Danny wrote the first EEnEstory in the book, and Gennedy used to help with the Dexter book. Not to mention that the PPG episode with the Powerpuff squirrel was an adaptation from a story in its comics.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Re-reading Astro Boy has really made me appreciate just hold daring and political it is. For a so-called  "kids" series, it's completely ahead of it's time, and honestly, the themes and messages it explores are still much better executed than most of modern shonen manga, and it's content is shockingly brutal.

I mean, what other series has the main character die after protecting a random Vietnamese village, that has a pregnant woman who is about to go into labor, from being obliterated by hydrogren bombs by U.S. soliders in the Vietnam War....only for that sacrifice to be in vein when the village is bombed again the next day, and everybody he sacrificed his life to protect dies. Including the newborn baby.

Say Astro Boy isn't dark, I dare you.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Tiger Mask (chapters 1-8):

This is all that has been translated so far, and it looks like this series was dropped, so that's a shame, but I did really enjoy what I read. Unlike Ashita no Joe, this one is clearly meant more for the kids (despite some explicit violence by our standards), but that certainly doesn't take away from its charm. In fact, the simplicity of it all pretty much IS its charm, IMO. It has that Speed Racer type vibe where the characters and plots are shallow, yet the story is clearly self-aware of that and just tries to have as much fun with itself as possible. It's like how in Speed Racer they always had those "Hmmm....Who could Racer X be?" moments, when it's so obvious to the audience. It's the same as how Naoto's childhood friend makes the connection that Naoto appeared back in Japan the same time that Tiger Mask did, but then Naoto puts on a show to make himself look like a weakling when attempting to fight some thugs, and then she thinks that she must have just been too paranoid. For some people that's too old-fashioned and cheesy, but for some reason I just love that shit. And this is Takamori's writing, so he makes it all in good fun, and I was genuinely interested in continuing with the story. It's a shame that the rest of this will probably never be translated. I'd really love to read the rest of it.

I'd also love to read Star of the Giants, as well. I've heard that it's an absolute classic, possibly comparable to Ashita no Joe, but I suppose I'll never know for sure unless I learn Japanese.



REAL (chapters 40-44):

I absolutely LOVE the characters in this series. Kiyoharu can kind of be a dick at times, but the guy is still genuinely likable in his ambition to be the best, and despite him yelling at his teammates all of the time for their mistakes, he has proven his loyalty to the team as he would never abandon them, even when the coach of a much better team, the Dreamers, offered to bring him on board, which would be much better for his future career, but he refused. Of course, then he got too hot-headed and accepted a deal to join the team IF the Tigers were defeated by the Dreamers, and what do you know, they did lose. Of course, in this case, it was because one of their key members got injured, and they had no replacement for him, so the rest of the game was played on a handicap. Because of that, even though the Dreamers won, the Coach was pretty nice about not going through with the deal since he said that he shouldn't feel proud that his team won with a handicap, so he made the deal with Kiyoharu to follow through the deal next year if the Dreamers won again.

As for Nomiya, he's like a much more mature version of Sakuragi from Slam Dunk. He's easily my 2nd favorite delinquent character ever, right now, as a close second to Eikichi Onizuka. You just gotta love this guy. He's got more heart to him than any other character in this series, and I love his determination to willingly improve himself as a human being. I love how in one scene he gets really agitated at Hisanobu after he makes a snide comment about him, and is about to snap at him, but then he calms himself down and helps Hisanobu readjust himself in his hospital bed. The guy has quickly escalated from the lovable goof-ball type character to one of the most likable guys that I've ever seen in a manga or anime series, period.

And Hisanobu, man is his character arc great. I've seen the jerk-wad who ends up turning his life around shtick done plenty of times before, but this is one of the best examples of it. Granted, that, he's still at a relatively low point in his life, but I can tell where his character arc is going. He starts out as one of the most popular kids in school, and often thinks little of other people, until the fateful accident which completely cripples him for good. His depression is probably as close to realistic as I've seen any manga series get. But once you learn of his back-story and his struggle to come into acceptance with his disability and go on living his life, he instantly becomes arguably the most compelling character in the story, in terms of which character you become the most invested in reading about.

Man, I'm impressed by Inoue Takehiko's talent as a writer. Slam Dunk was a fun shounen series, and it's still one of my favorites. But REAL? Man, I tell you, this is Urasawa level character writing in terms of how good it is, and I don't think I'm exaggerating things when I say that. I'm really excited to read more of this series.

[Daxdiv]

Dragon Ball Minus was published in Weekly Shonen Jump this week. A neat little story if you like to ignore what the anime has been feeding you. Turns out, Goku was 3 when he was sent out, Bardock didn't have a crew like the special did, his wife is cute, and I kind of wonder if Toriyama forgot about Zarbon and Dodoria since they weren't there in the special. Then I remember it's Toriyama and he barely remembers minor characters like them and the fact that the end of Jaco The Galactic Patrolman kind of gave it's own lore to what Goku was like when he first landed on Earth.

[gunswordfist]

Dragon Ball Minus was published in Weekly Shonen Jump this week. A neat little story if you like to ignore what the anime has been feeding you. Turns out, Goku was 3 when he was sent out, Bardock didn't have a crew like the special did, his wife is cute, and I kind of wonder if Toriyama forgot about Zarbon and Dodoria since they weren't there in the special. Then I remember it's Toriyama and he barely remembers minor characters like them and the fact that the end of Jaco The Galactic Patrolman kind of gave it's own lore to what Goku was like when he first landed on Earth.

And Akira just spawned 5,000 more DBZ arguments.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Looks like my re-read of Astro Boy has hit a snag. The college library only has up to volume 9, and there are only a few scattered volumes I can read available at the public library. Darn. But the "Astro Boy Stories" arc was amazing, a full analysis of discrimination, humanity, the advance of robotics and it's ramifications, what constitutes a human life, all this and more under a story that takes Astro Boy back to the past, forcing him to confront tragedy after tragedy, and ultimately, back to his own birth, and rise to being the hero he became. A fascinating story arc on so many levels and certainly one of my most favorites in manga now (though, admittedly, I found the ending a bit weak, but it was still good). Man, I can't believe I read this series as a kid and didn't see just how amazing it really is before now. I'm looking forward to the omnibus re-releases coming this fall.

[LumRanmaYasha]

With my Astro Boy re-read is in a temporary halt, I'm just going to plow through all of Phoenix, which my library has the entirety of, and I've never read, despite it being considered Tezuka's most ambitious and best work and all. Should be fun. 

Outside of the Tezuka manga I'm going through, I read what's translated of Tiger Mask last week, and I found it alright. It's definitely a more standard, basic kind of series in terms of plot and characters than Ashita no Joe, but it was interesting enough for what I saw. The fights did kinda get boring, though, since after a while seeing Tiger Mask beat up his opponents with fouls and in cruel ways became kinda tiring, which is why I liked how in the last fight of what's translated he actually showed he could beat an opponent in an honorable way, to teach a good lesson to a little boy from the orphanage in actions rather than mere words. That was a good moment. I would like to read more of it, if more ever gets translated, since while it seems like a rather formulaic series, it's also fun for it's simplicity, and it's only 14 volumes, anyway. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To be fair, you can't really judge a Takamori series based on just the first few chapters. Had I done that for Joe, it would've come off as a fun gag manga, but without the depth or nuance that came with later story arcs. Also, Tiger Mask came out earlier in Takamori's career, so its only fair to assume that he improved with experience.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Both Tiger Mask and Ashita no Joe came out in 1968, actually. 

Of course, you can never judge any manga as a whole just based on the initial chapters, and after just looking up some info on what sort of stuff happens in the series later on, it does seem like it develops more nuances in it's story and characters later on. Until I can read the whole manga, though, I won't really know the extent of it's potential and quality, so I'll have to wait on more translations or learn japanese one day and find out.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Both Tiger Mask and Ashita no Joe came out in 1968, actually. 

I've seen sources say that it came out in 1966, 2 years before AnJ.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Hmm. I can't find any sources that say the manga came out in 1966, myself. Wikipedia says 1968, and every other article I've read on it just says it came out in the "1960's." Can you link the ones you found that say it came out in 1966?