The King’s Man

I was in the mood for a rip-roaring period adventure, particularly one starring Ralph Fiennes, so I accepted the offer of a free digital copy of The King’s Man. Unfortunately, the movie wound up being deadly dull. (I’d seen the first Kingsman in a sneak preview, when theaters did that, or I knew how...

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Announcing SherlockComics.Com

To celebrate today, 2/21 in US dating, I am announcing the debut of SherlockComics.com, a site cataloging appearances of Sherlock Holmes and related characters in comics, graphic novels, and manga. Books are described in five categories: Classic Stories — comic adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories...

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Clash by Kayla Miller (A Click Graphic Novel)

Olive is back and struggling with friendship in Kayla Miller’s Clash. The young woman, first seen in Click, normally makes friends with everyone. That’s why she’s happy to volunteer to show new student Nat around. Unfortunately, Nat may not have the best motives in return. She’s quick to join up with...

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Seven Seas Licenses Long-Anticipated Manga Series

Long ago (2009), I wrote about Yokohama Shopping Trip (Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou). It was a scanted manga series where “sometime in the future, the world (or maybe just Japan) flooded. Fewer people live in smaller villages as a result, leading to a return to the simple life. The story follows Alpha, a...

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Perfect World Volume 1

Perfect World volume 1 by Rie Aruga is the story of how Tsugumi learns to love a man in a wheelchair, and how she learns, as a result, what life is like for someone who has a spinal cord injury. Tsugumi had a crush on Itsuki when they were in school together, but she had lost touch with him. A work...

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Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku Volume 5

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku. It’s not a manga series that inspires a lot of “must read now” emotion in me, but it’s probably the one that I can most relate to, as it’s about a small group of adult friends being geeky and fannish. Hirotaka and Narumi began...

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Interview With Maia Kobabe, Author of Gender Queer: A Memoir

Gender Queer: A Memoir began as Maia Kobabe’s attempt to explain to eir family what being nonbinary and asexual meant. (Maia uses e/em/eir pronouns.) The autobiography touches on gender identity, coming out, and a personal transformative journey. Maia answered a few questions about the book over email;...

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Saving Sweets for After-Hours Volume 1

Saving Sweets for After-Hours has an intriguing premise that tries to pack in too much and retreats to the conventional. It’s by Kanae Sato and released digital-only by Kodansha. Reika looks like a model and runs a department at a company that makes desserts. She is feared by her staff because of her...

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Catwoman: Hunted

The pitch for Catwoman: Hunted is that it’s anime-influenced, which apparently means a very adult body styled with an 8-year-old face, and minimal plot. There are four lengthy action sequences plus a seduction scene with implied nudity. That qualifies for a PG-13 rating for “violence, bloody images,...

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The Legion of Super-Heroes in Reprint Form

With today’s publication of Legion of Super-Heroes: Before the Darkness Volume 2, I thought it was a good time to check and see how much of the LSH’s storied history is now easily available in reprint form. (If you’d like a more content-based history, I put together a slideshow four years ago about...

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A Bride’s Story Volume 12

With a new installment due out next month, it seemed an excellent time to catch up on the volumes out since I last talked about how much I like this series. (The last book I covered was volume 9 in 2018.) This most recent is A Bride’s Story volume 12, which came out in September 2020. As anthropologist...

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Where’s the TCAF Website?

I was excited to see that the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) will be returning in person this year (June 17-19, 2022). It’s one of my favorite comic shows, and I am eager to make plans. However, that’s been difficult. At four months out, the show has recently put out calls for exhibitor registration...

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Cat Massage Therapy Volume 1

These days, the only kinds of manga I want to read are soft and fluffy ones. (The state of the world has left me feeling fragile.) Thankfully, there are plenty. One odd little sub-genre that works very well for me is not just cat manga, but cats doing jobs. After I Am a Cat Barista, the next one I enjoyed...

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The Secrets of Chocolate

Subtitled A Gourmand’s Trip Through a Top Chef’s Atelier, The Secrets of Chocolate is a delicious book. The author, Franckie Alarcon, spent a year back in 2013 working with and observing chocolate chef Jacques Genin’s creations. (The chef clearly establishes early on that he is not a chocolatier, as...

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America’s Greatest Otaku Found

Some amazing person has uploaded the episodes of America’s Greatest Otaku to the Internet Archive. This reality show was what Stu Levy did as an attempt to pivot Tokyopop from print to a “manga-lifestyle entertainment” company. It was filmed in 2010, aired in 2011, shortly before Levy, company founder,...

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Action Lab Entertainment Sued to Nullify Contracts

Last year, a lot of scuttlebutt was going around about Action Lab Entertainment treating creators badly, delaying payments, and abusing contract terms. (A lengthy summary can be found at Women Write About Comics.) Now it has been reported that “Nearly 40 content creators have signed on to a proposed...

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