Girls Don't Read Comics

Soo excited for the Batwoman hardcover. Much less excited about new Wonder Woman costume

Attention and Hear Ye!

OtakuCon 2010

I will be a guest at OtakuCon this July! I am very excited and honored that the organizers take me seriously. I know that I don’t.
So you should all come to see me if you can. I will be captaining a vendor table the first day, selling used manga from my back stock at the store. My uncirculated stock. Fresh old stuff, if you will. I will also have Japanese import candy and soda, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
The second day, I’m told I will have a panel at 11ish. I will bring a notebook if you bring your reading recommendations. Just keep in mind that if I’m going to review anything for the podcast, then it must be currently in print and available. I love to read new things, but I don’t want to be recommending things that are only available on scan sites.

As a run up to the con, I am reading and reviewing more manga than is strictly normal  for me.  I’m having fun, reading some things that I would not normally have time for.

Afterschool Charisma Art and Story by Kumiko Suekane
I was going through my shipment a couple of Wednesdays ago and I was struck by how much I liked the artwork.  I flipped through the volume, eyeing the clean lines and graceful fluidity of the action panels.  Then I read the synoposis.  A highschool full of the clones of famous people?  Scientists, musicians, politicians and mad despots?  Sci-fi intrigue with just a hint of adolescent angst? I thought to myself “I am so on board”,  and I was not disappointed.  The story told is a really basic fish-out-of-water, coming of age story starring Shiro Kamiya, son (biologically and everything) of the school’s head scientist.  All of the other students at the school are clones, like Marie Curie, Sigmund Freud, Napoleon Bonaparte, and well, Adolf Hitler.  All of the clones are being trained to live up to the lives of their originals, and Shiro is thrown into the mix as an outsider.  Most of the students are nice enough to him, but treat him with a certain distance.  When armed guards are seen patrolling the halls, it definitely feels as though things are not as they seem.

This book is a solid first volume and I really enjoyed reading it.  There are some moments of dark foreshadowing, and a surprising amount of booby for a teen book, but I had a great time and I look forward to volume 2.
Kingyo Used Books Art and Story by Seimu Yoshizaki

Next I read the Kingyo Used Books.  This one hit close to my heart, because at its center it’s a story about how important books and stories are to us, and how they shape us and our relationships.  It collects a handful of short stories that all take place in and around the Kingyo Used Book shop.  Friendships are reaffirmed, childhood’s remembered, and inner peace found (through archery in the stacks, but still).  This volume is melancholy and sweet, and served well to remind me why I am so happy selling comic books.

Emotion aside though, Kingyo is also a guide book to Japanese manga, including detailed footnotes on books mentioned within the story.  I am sad that the footnotes are all for the Japanese versions of the stories, as a lot of the series mentioned are either out of print in the US, or have not seen print here yet.  I really like the idea though, that if the sweet story of the bored housewife and her shojo make you want to read more, then the information is right there.

In non-manga news, Matt has made me promise to read Scott Pilgrim.  I have been avoiding it because it is so stereotypically  a “girl comic”, but with the movie coming soon I’ll give it a shot.  He is loaning me the first one right now, so fingers crossed.

Don’t forget to come see me at Otakucon.  You can still preregister online at the OtakuCon Website, or you can by early tickets at Uncles Games in the Valley Mall.

Subscribe to my podcast to get the full reviews.

Or click here to listen to it now.

What a month!

I love my job

Free Comic Book Day was on Sat May 1st. I know it has been awhile, but it was so much fun, I feel that I have to mention it.  Very big thanks go to Mark and Carly, both of whom helped me a lot by manning (or womanning, in Carly’s case) the counter so I didn’t have to worry about it.  We actually almost ran out of comics twice, and Craig had to do emergency runs from Division with more.  And when it came time for the 501st guys, the area around my store became a sea of people. Next year I will have to implement some kind of crowd control scheme, because it was insane.  It was so much fun though.  I always love these social events, which is so weird.  Usually I’m a complete hermit, but Free Comic Book Day and the local Comicon are just about my favorite days of the year.

Yeah, I have a lot of Wonder Woman shirts. Image via Sasquad Comic Book Club

Speaking of which, we also went to Spokane Comicon and had a table.  Craig and I sold a ton of shirts and a sadly much smaller number of DVDs.  I got to see a lot of people that I don’t usually get to, and I had the best time.  I even got to talk to the very nice John Layman and have my copy of Chew #1 (2nd printing) signed.  I got into a conversation with him and Rotten creator Mark Rahnor about retail marketing.  It was kind of surreal, because these guys are well-respected creative types, and they were listening intently and taking me seriously.  I will have to do a special on retail and marketing for self published creators.  It seems like after all these years in retail there is a lot of stuff that seems like common sense to me, but that the actual people that make the books don’t think about.  Small things like book dimensions can make the difference between stores carrying your book and letting it go.  If your book isn’t in the store, it can’t sell.  We’ll have to revisit this.

Manny in mid-story. image via Sasquad Comic Book Club

Ooh, one more picture from Comicon.  Both of these images are via the Sasquad Comic Book Club.  A lot of the Sasquad folks are regulars of mine and they are all great.  One of them managed to get a picture of Eric (my husband) and his creative partner Manny at their table.  This year they were selling their books and their brand new poster prints.  Look how cute they are.  I’m going to get in trouble for this.

Finally I am reviewing a book in this week’s podcast.  I had the pleasure to read Library Wars Vol 01 with art and story by Kiiro Yumi, taken from an original story by Hiro Arikawa.  This was a pretty big step away from what I normally read, manga-wise, but it was so very enjoyable.  Library Wars tells the story of Iku Kasahara and her Library Task Force training.  The LTF exists to protect books and peoples right to read them from the forces of a fascist-sliding future Japanese government.  The government forces have been going into bookstores and pulling “objectionable” titles off the shelves and then burning them.

Library Wars Vol 01

It’s sort an prequel to Farenheit 451, only with angsty romance. Iku is a tough, smart girl who was inspired by the kind bravery of a mysterious LTF agent.  When she was young, a government official tried to take away her book, and this heroic agent saved it for her.  But who was he?  And why is her drill sergeant so hard on her? I love everything about this, and I will be pre-ordering the 2nd one.

Yay! so much good stuff. Now I have to run away. I have 2 friends with babies on the way, and I’m running out of time to knit.

Subscribe to my podcast to get the full reviews.

Or click here to listen to it now.

Posting pictures of one’s pull pile seems to be the thing the cool kids are doing. So here is this week’s pull. The one on the left next to the JLA hardcover is The Last Unicorn. It’s very pretty.