Tokyo Comic Book Report: Japanese girls love Deadpool!

Majority of patrons that Saturday were women.

Well, to turn a generalization into something more accurate... at least one does.  When I visited Blister in Hamacho, one young woman was flipping through a Deadpool comic, cracking up and excitedly sharing various panels with her friend.  Before I left, she had in her hands a huge stack of American comics, at least one of which featured Deadpool.  So someone in Japan likes Deadpool, Marvel.  Take my infallible advice and start a huge marketing push centered on Deadpool over here and I'm sure it'll pay dividends!  Thank me with money.  You're welcome.

I'm not sure how I got the idea Blister was so difficult to reach, like a comic book Shangri-la.  It turns out it's pretty darned easy if you're staying in Hatagaya.  The subway train that takes you to Shinjuku will deliver you to Hamacho Station and from there it's about a five minute walk.  The first time I visited Blister I believe I went to a different platform in Shinjuku Station, but that was several lifetimes ago.  I've cheated death so many times since then, they all tend to blur together.

Blister's running on limited hours these days, but on Saturdays, they're open from 11am to 5pm, which gives you plenty of time to get in and browse.  The store is very cramped, and on this particular day there were six or seven other customers.  It felt crowded.  The store is heavily invested in Marvel and DC, mainstream stuff.  The going price for a brand new American comic magazine in Japan these days is 540 yen.  That's about 6.85 USD to you and me, Russ.  Blister does feature some bargain 100 yen comics in longboxes to your right as you enter.  The selection is hodgepodge and I long ago bought them out of every single Cassandra Cain Batgirl back issue they had.  None are to be had these days, but you can still buy issues of the Stephanie Brown series.

The Avengers were hanging out in Shibuya.

Speaking of Cass, I bought the very last copy of Batgirl: Fists of Fury found in the wild here in Japan, so don't look for that, either.  It cost 1800 yen (22.83 USD, quite a mark-up from the 14.95 US SRP), but it was worth it to reaffirm my position as her #1 fan in Japan.  It seems the other Cass trades like Silent Running and Death Wish are slipping out of print and going for mega-yen on Amazon.jp.  While Fists seems to be hanging in there and I could have paid 500 yen less for it online, the trouble I've had getting things like Showcase Presents Batman and the Outsiders 1 and New Mutants Classic Volume 1 means snap it up if you see it.

Besides the Cass book, I also bought Astonishing X-Men #52 (because it has a neat Xi'an Coy Manh cover), Conan #32 (a random choice because it was 100 yen and I still enjoy Kurt Busiek's run on that title), Conan the Barbarian #2 and 3 (more Dark Horse, love Becky Cloonan's art), Minutemen #1 and 2 (the pull of Darwyn Cooke proved too strong to resist), New Mutants #46 (more Xi'an, but this time with Dani Moonstar, also irresistable) and Walking Dead #100 (Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard-- this is the second time you've scarred me with a single horrific image!  I nearly barfed!).  No Dark Horse Presents, so no new Nexus.

Blister is stocked deep with Before Watchmen titles.  I only wanted a sample, so I didn't catalog everything they had, but I think I could have bought the entire run up to current if I'd been so inclined.  Good runs of the New 52, if you're into that.  Heavy on the Marvel mutant stuff.  They also have a lot of trades and collections, plus just about every Avengers movie action figure you could want, along with The Dark Knight Rises stuff.  The guy working the cash register was friendly enough, but we didn't chat due to the language barrier.  I think he recognized me from my last visit there, way back in 2010.  Now that I know an easier way to get there I could see myself patronizing Blister a bit more if I lived in Tokyo.  Maybe they could order more Fantagraphics and Dark Horse stuff for me, too.

Probably jet-lag, but Hulk really wanted to punch Thor.

My other comics-related activities included visits to Tower Records in Shibuya and Kinokuniya in Shinjuku.  Tower Records was having a major sale in their English-language book department so I snapped up a few bargains.  Now, Tower Records stocks a lot of Fantagraphics titles, but they seemed kind of depleted.  Coupled with the close-out type prices on other books, I'm wondering if they're overhauling things or getting out of the business.  That would truly be tragic because Tower Records has been a Tokyo destination if you want groovy things by Los Bros Hernandez, Peter Bagge and the like.

At Tower Records, I bought Lone Wolf and Cub volumes 4 (783 yen, marked down from 1565, or 9.93/19.85 USD), 19, 20, 22, 23, 25 and 26 (290 yen each, 3.68 USD).  I was tempted to go back and clean them out entirely.  I also found and bought a shelf-worn copy of Showcase Presents Batman and the Outsiders 1 (2573/32.64).  See what I mean about snap it up?

Kinokuniya has a very small section for Western comics, but it was there I managed to find and buy the elusive Perla La Loca (receipt lost, price unknown, a pearl of great value to me) to complete my Locas collection.  I'd ordered it months ago from Amazon.jp, but kept getting messages that it was delayed.  This was the only Love and Rockets book they had in stock, so apparently it was meant for me.  And now we are together at last and all is right in the comic book world.

Red Robin #25 and Walking Dead #86: Comics reviews

Red Robin #25
Publisher: DC Comics
Script: Fabian Nicieza
Pencils: Marcus To
Inks: Guy Major

Just the other day I complained in this blog about having aged out of DC's target demographic. Yet it seems for this single issue of Red Robin, I'm the intended audience. Of course I don't really believe that for a second, but something happens early in this book I've often joked about.

As for the rest of the book-- have you ever wondered what a story about Dr. Watson's brother-in-law, with the Great Detective and the Hound of Baskervilles as ancillary elements would be like? Neither have I, but it would probably resemble Red Robin #25. Nicieza and To fill the story with all character beats, action and explosions you could possibly want. Unfortunately, they face the nearly impossible task of generating interest in a generic lead. Peter Parker has girl trouble, Dick Grayson has a tragic past, Bruce Wayne is brilliant and rich. What is Tim Drake but a pastiche of these familiar elements? It doesn't help that a good deal of his narration at the start consists of telling us how awesome his co-star is, thereby reinforcing his own status as a non-entity.

And thanks to Nicieza and To, Cass is indeed awesome again. We know this because she rescues the hero then involves herself in a little comedic background business while Red Robin and an unseen supervillain (why are these guys so gregarious and yet cryptic about their plans?) engage each other in yawn-worthy plot-twaddle. It's funny, effective and much more entertaining than this tired stuff about assassinations, evil geniuses and nebulous and nefarious schemes. Cass has about six lines of dialogue and she could scarcely need more. I love how Nicieza takes away some of her English fluency without turning her into a caricature; she eschews subject nouns like Rorshach from Watchmen without the psychosis. Mostly she expresses herself through physicality and in her wicked black outfit exudes enough charisma to outclass Red Robin in his own book. To's use of splashes and large panels in the action sequences ably display Cass's martial prowess. It's clean-lined and sharply rendered stuff and goes a long way towards soothing the savage Cass-fan that dwells inside.

Because it's so ensconced in the familiar-- one plot element is cribbed from the film The Dark Knight-- the story lacks a sense of danger or urgency. Even the potentially life-altering situation Red Robin finds himself in at the get-go is treated mostly as a joke, dismissed as "'A Very Special Episode' kind of attacked" and "a fate not-quite-worse than death." The taciturn Cass even has a quip of her own for the occasion. This gives the proceedings a detached quality, a kind of ironic distance in which nothing much matters and nothing much is at stake. Later in the book, there's a one page sequence set in Hong Kong that leaves Red Robin battered and bruised. With its bizarre villain-- shades of the killer kid from Kick Ass, the new Damian Wayne Robin and Cass herself-- it might have made for a more compelling or unusual adventure starring Cass with Red Robin as her guest-star.

Instead, it acts as an awkwardly inserted digression that reinforces my feeling DC has an ace creative team in place, but they're hamstrung because they're telling the wrong character's story; when Cass drops out of the narrative, so will I. If Nicieza suddenly finds himself assigned to a Black Bat monthly DC and I might find ourselves meeting somewhere in the middle again.

Walking Dead #86
Publisher: Image Comics
Script: Robert Kirkman
Art: Charlie Adlard

And to contrast Red Robin, here's a title which seems aimed at me almost every single issue. First and foremost, as an art geek I can't get enough of Charlie Adlard's gritty line work. I much prefer stylists-- impressionistic or expressionistic, loose and sketchy or clean-lined-- to the photorealists in comic book art. Photorealists excel at the mechanical aspects of their rendering, but they all too often detour through the uncanny valley-- Greg Land's gallery of lovingly detailed pro wrestlers and porn stars in the midst of orgasm come to mind. Adlard's pages ultimately have more believability because his characters aren't copied (or traced) from some easily-recognized celebrity. They inhabit a world of shadows where bodies have weight and presence. Adlard is also an exceptional storyteller who knows how to break up and pace a page, how to pose his figures and direct action sequences for clarity and maximum impact.

Kirkman's script for this issue is heavy on dialogue. Well, to be honest, most of his scripts for The Walking Dead are, but #86 falls between the end of one major storyline and the beginning of another so there's quite a bit of back-and-forth between characters in the form of casually handled exposition. Rick, the deadly Michonne, crackshot Andrea and the rest have found a refuge within a walled suburb, and they've just come through a massed zombie attack that resulted in lots of gruesome deaths and a shocking injury to Carl, Rick's son, depicted by Adlard in a drawing so gruesome it actually disturbed me. I plan never to look at that page again!

Now the cast is just kind of hanging out, working through their emotions. Yes, there are some shambling zombies to dispatch, but it's in the service of showing us where the castmembers are now while they describe to each other where they've been. After so many issues, it's a good point for new readers to jump in and start reading. I can't help but feel Rick's new-found optimism is yet another sign the poor guy's lost his mind, though.

What's most fascinating about this particular issue isn't the story; it's the letter page. The Walking Dead has the best letter page in the business, bar none. Editor Sina Grace and Kirkman himself mix it up with readers, cracking jokes and dealing with the largely endearing weirdness of the rabid fanbase this book has garnered over the years. Lately, they've run some blistering letters from readers upset about what Kirkman did to Carl.

I admire Kirkman's audacity and don't think he has anything to apologize for. This moment elevated the story's climax from a mere "third act action movie fight" to something approaching an operatic emotional intensity. It's also wickedly ironic considering some of the philosophies Kirkman has Rick espouse, a chillingly reductive viewpoint of us versus them, them being not the walking dead but the living families in his adopted community.

Essentially, Kirkman upset these readers by making his fiction do what fiction is supposed to do. A story should be about how and why the protagonist and, in a thickly populated book like this, the secondary characters transform from their initial state to something different. These changes are not always positive ones. A mainstream superhero comic is typically about how they stay the same for years and years and years until financially necessity dictates a new costume, a publicity stunt death-then-resurrection or a forced "new direction."

I'm not sure if Kirkman has an ending in mind for the overall narrative or if it's sustainable at great length without repeating itself-- already one of the book's weaknesses-- but he's not afraid to bring the hammer down on any particular individual character, all the while altering them in drastic ways because of story events. Rick has developed from competent good-guy lawman, husband and father to strong leader to crackpot capable of letting other people's children die to save his own... and now to someone with a potentially deranged evangelical fervor about making his new community work. Or maybe he's just become charged with positive energy and he's on his way to a happy ending. Whatever it is, Kirkman's written this organically rather than arbitrarily, and that's a major reason I've stuck with this book for 80-odd issues.

It is kind of odd, though, to find a line some readers aren't willing to cross in a story that features walking corpses who've devoured almost the entire population of North America, splattering gore, limbs chopped off, rapes and near-rapes and people constantly losing their loved ones. In fact, in the story they're upset about, Rick uses a hatchet to chop off a woman's hand-- just to add some charm, he's been sleeping with her and has convinced her to follow him in a desperate escape attempt that will surely doom any number of other people to horrific deaths-- and allows zombies to devour her and her child. That Rick has his reasons and that a zombie story demands sacrifice perhaps excuse him to a certain extent, but why stick at Kirkman's treatment of Carl in the midst of all these other tragedies?

Expanding on this idea, in order for the entire series to take place these zombies implicitly have to have eaten millions of children, including helpless little babies. Apparently readers can consign all those people to death in the interest of good clean fun. For audiences at large, aliens can disintegrate all of Los Angeles in a genocide of CGI fire in a movie or the entire world can fall apart killing billions because of some nonsensical prophecy in a stone calendar, but make sure there's a scene where a dog leaps to safety or else we're outraged. Outraged, I tells ya! Let Kirkman maim Carl, a character we've suffered along with for years, and it's "HOW DARE YOU, YOU INHUMAN MONSTER?!"

I've come to trust Kirkman, and find I can enjoy The Walking Dead without worrying he'll eventually have to ret-con things to keep his story going for the sake of protecting trademarks and cashing in on merchandise sales ad infinitum. So when he wounds my heart with a development like this, I have to give him his due as an author of substance. Kirkman must be thrilled to know his work impacts people this way, even if a lot of them are calling him names and vowing never to read The Walking Dead again. People care, and that's the mark of a great book.

Happy Free Comic Book Day!

Today was my third time participating in Free Comic Book Day. The first two times were during my long stay in Japan (Hi, Japan! Do you miss me? I miss you!), where it conveniently fell during my annual Golden Week trip to Tokyo (Hi, Tokyo! All my love!). So this was my big initiation into FCBD, American Style. My comic shop of record is currently JJ's Comics & Cards, a store where I'm always treated as though I'm a very special person.

And I am. And so are you!

JJ's Comics & Cards put out a snack spread, offered a lot of discounts-- 10% on new comics, 25% on graphic novels (I should've bought that New Mutants Vol. 1: The Return of Legion trade, but I was trying to keep my purchases down around 20 bucks thanks to a downturn in my personal economy), 50% on action figures-- and had Georgia-based manga pro Adam Arnold on hand to sign copies of his Vampire Cheerleaders/Paranormal Mystery Squad volume 1 book from Seven Seas Entertainment. Which I missed. The signing, not the book. Oops! But more on that in a second or two.

I did buy Arnold's book. It's sexy manga fan service type stuff of the kind I usually ignore. Not that I'm a prude. What I am is pretentious. I wanted to support a local creator, though. Because I've been totally oblivious to this Adam Arnold guy, when I first heard the title Vampire Cheerleaders and the local connection, I expected something self-published and amateurish. I've seen way too much crappy manga online and in print. In fact any crappy manga is way too much. Writers farting out nonsensically random stories, art with the big eyes but awkward figures made of sritchy-scratchy line quality betraying an unsure hand. Heaps of story and visual cliches badly presented in cheap packaging.

While the subject matter may not be my thing, I was pleasantly surprised to find Vampire Cheerleaders to be a slick little book by an actual writer and artists and in no way cheap looking, with very solid manga-style artwork of its type. Well-constructed figures, nice gray tone work. I used to see tons of this stuff at konbini (convenience stores) and magazine shops when I lived in Japan. Not your spectacular Takahashi Rumiko or Yazawa Ai level stuff, but appealing nevertheless. Just from a casual perusal, I'd say if you're into sexayyy manga and vampire vixenry, this book is probably worth your time. Now I'm stoked to give it a real reading and post a review of it later this week.

And now I'm also sorry I missed the author. It would've been fun to hear his point of view and to learn a little bit about how he got started writing and editing manga, plus a little about how these "original English language" manga come about. The pro ones, as opposed to those... others.

I know, I know. "Get to the free comics, you pseudo-intellectual jackass!" you're all screaming at me. "We're dying to know which comics you chose and we really have to pee and it's getting to the point where we can't hold it anymore so if you don't get this over with and end our suspense, we're going to damage our kidneys or burst our bladders or at the very least wet our pants and it'll be all your fault!"

We can't have that! I'd never be able to live with myself! For the love of corn, go pee and by the time you get back feeling lighter and refreshed, I'll finally be telling you yes, I did choose some free comics from the store's once well-stocked but increasingly picked over FCBD display. Here's what I selected:

1. Michael Moorcock's Elric: The Balance Lost by Chris Roberson, Francesco Biagini and Stephen Downer
2. Bongo Comics Free-For-All 2011 (my traditional choice)
3. Baltimore by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden and Ben Stenbeck
4. Super Dinosaur Super Special! by Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard

That last one? Well, I had an issue of Walking Dead in my hand and one of the store employees pointed out Super Dinosaur is also by Robert Kirkman, so I took it just to be polite. I love Kirkman's Walking Dead, but I'm not a Kirkman fan to the point where I need to have everything the gentleman writes. This looks like a comic book adaptation of the kind of Cartoon Network show I never watch, or a toy line tie-in. Those aren't necessarily bad things, but they also don't serve to attract me as a reader. But once again, I need to read it before I pass too harsh a judgment.

Also arriving at my palatial Roman villa-style estate (heavily guarded by my personal army, so don't get any funny ideas about breaking in here and stealing my fortune in diamonds and rubies and sapphires which I keep lying about like so much bric-a-brac... perhaps I should sell some and give myself an economic stimulus, huh?) via the good people at the post office today: Creepy Volume Two from the delicious Dark Horse Archives series and the surprisingly in-color Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago... Volume 1, which collects the first twenty-seven issues of the old Marvel Comics Star Wars series, including their adaptation of the first movie by Archie Goodwin, Howard Chaykin and Marie Severin (among others).

I am loaded down with comics to read!