News and reviews for the discerning manga fan
To judge from all the shonen manga I’ve read, the fate of the world rests in teenage boys’ hands: not only do they have the power to kill demons and thwart alien invasions, they’re also blessed with the kind of superior intelligence that makes them natural partners with law enforcement. Bloody Monday is a textbook [...]
In public, Souji Kushiki leads a charmed life: he’s wealthy and handsome, popular with girls, smarter than his classmates, and faster than anyone on the track team. In private, Souji lives under a dark cloud: his older brother disappeared, a possible victim of foul play, while his sisters paw and flirt with him like Aphrodite [...]
Black Jack practices a different kind of medicine than the earnest physicians on Grey’s Anatomy or ER, taking cases that push the boundary between science and science fiction. In the first two volumes of Black Jack alone, the good doctor tests his surgical mettle by: Performing a brain transplant Separating conjoined twins Operating on a [...]
First published in 1956, Black Blizzard is a juicy pulp thriller that will irresistibly remind Western readers of The 39 Steps, The Defiant Ones, and The Fugitive. The hero is twenty-five-year-old Susumu Yamaji, a down-on-his-luck pianist who stands accused of murdering the ringmaster of a traveling circus. The circumstantial evidence against him is so compelling [...]
To mark the official beginning of summer, I’m dedicating this week’s Short Takes column to three series with serious beach-reading potential: the first volume of sci-fi conspiracy thriller Afterschool Charisma (VIZ), the fifth volume of sports comedy Bamboo Blade (Yen Press), and the first volume of Higurashi When They Cry: Time Killing Arc (Yen Press). [...]
For your consideration: the eleventh volume of Osamu Tezuka’s classic medical drama Black Jack (Vertical, Inc.), the first two volumes of YoungBin Kim and Hyun You’s supernatural horror story Laon (Yen Press), and the latest volumes of Naoki Urasawa’s twisty sci-fi thriller 20th Century Boys (VIZ). I must admit that reviewing Black Jack and 20th [...]
“When he heard his cry for help, it wasn’t human” — so went the tagline for Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), a bizarre fever-dream of Nietzchean philosophy, horror, and mystical hoo-ha in which a scientist’s experiments result in his spontaneous devolution. That same tagline would work equally well for Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (1970-71), [...]
One of the things I love about the DMP catalog is the sheer variety of titles: where else can you find Bambi and Her Pink Gun, Taimashin: The Red Spider Exorcist, and Selfish Mr. Mermaid peacefully co-habiting? This week, I thought I’d explore some of DMP’s latest offerings, focusing on the bishier end of the [...]
Invoke Tezuka’s name, and most readers immediately think of Astro Boy, Buddha, and Princess Knight. But there’s a darker side to Tezuka’s oeuvre that dates back to 1953, the year in which he brought Dostoevsky’s tormented Raskolnikov to life in a manga-fied version of Crime and Punishment. It’s this side of Tezuka — the side [...]
Do you remember those first, glorious seasons of Heroes and Lost? Both shows promised to reinvigorate the sci-fi thriller with complex, flawed characters and plots that moved freely between past, present, and future. By the middle of their second seasons, however, it was clear that neither shows’ writers knew how to successfully resolve the conflicts [...]
When I lived in New York City, I went on my share of awesome first … [Read More...]
GTO: 14 Days in Shonan is loud and silly, the kind of manga in which … [Read More...]
Among the many books I read and loved as a child, few left as … [Read More...]
Below is a list of helpful English-language web resources about manga and manhwa. I update this page … [Read More...]
Since joining the Good Comics for Kids team in 2008, I've reviewed a variety of comics, graphic … [Read More...]
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