Bookshelf #45

This week's bookshelf—my last bookshelf!—is another one devoted to DC Comics. It contains some of the earliest comics I ever bought, certainly some of the oldest collections, some of which were purchased long before the publishers regularly collected their serially published comics.

The organization of this particular shelf makes perfect sense...at least to me. I suppose anyone else would be hard-pressed to find a particular book on this particular shelf.

First, there are the oversized books: JLA: Heaven's Ladder (the only JLA story that the post-Morrison/Porter team of Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch collaborated on; fill-in artists were needed for all of Hitch's arcs on the monthly series), the various Paul Dini/Alex Ross specials (Batman: War on Crime, Shazam: Power of Hope, Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth, JLA: Secret Origins, JLA: Liberty and Justice...I guess I never bought the Superman one, although I know I've read it) and that How To Draw DC Comis Super Heroes book that I mentioned on Bluesky a while back. 

Next are the hardcovers: The Complete Frank Miller Batman (complete as of 1989, anyway), The Joker: Stacked Deck, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Kia Asamiya's Batman: Child of Dreams, Batman: Broken City, Batman: Ego and Other Tails (Darwyn Cooke!), Catwoman: Selina's Big Score (More Darwyn Cooke!), JLA: Earth 2, JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice, Bizarro Comics and Bizarro World (A lot of Batman, as you can see). 

From there we move on to the trade paperbacks, and the rest of shelf is organized by hero, in the order of what I consider their importance. 

So first there's Batman: Batman In The Forties, Batman In the Eighties, Batman: A Death in the Family, The Many Deaths of The Batman, Batman: Hush Vol. 1 (Not sure why I have this or where it came from, as I also have those issues in singles), Batman & Dracula: Red Rain, Batman: Crimson Mist, Batman: Bloodstorm, The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1-3 (these could probably have gone in a long box, actually, but they had spines, so I guess they ended up here, I guess; you'll see a few other series of "prestige format" books on this shelf), Robin: A Hero Reborn and Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale.

Next up? Superman, of whom the only trades I have featuring him here are Superman: Panic in the Sky, Superman: The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen and the Elseworlds book Superman: Secret Identity. 

Then there's Wonder Woman, of whom I only have two books here: Wonder Woman Vol. 2: Challenge of the Gods and Wonder Woman Vol. 3: Beauty and the Beasts.

And then some Batman and Superman team-ups, which I suppose should have come before the Wonder Woman books, Batman & Superman: World's Finest and the ridiculous Superman and Batman Vs. Vampires and Werewolves, and then a Batman/Supeman/Wonder Woman team-up, Matt Wagner's Trinity.

Then we get into heroes who I have relatively few collections of. There's the four issues of Jeff Smith's Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil, Plastic Man: On the Lam (I have these issues in singles too, but I bought the trade because I liked the design so much; Kyle Baker draws the cover so as to suggest that Plastic Man himself has disguised himself as this trade and is hiding on your bookshelf), Green Lantern: A New Dawn, Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, two volumes of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams' classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics, Tim Truman and company's Hawkworld, Jack Kirby's New Gods, Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle, all of Starman (which I missed in singles, but went back and read in trade due to the critical acclaim), a Hitman collection (Which I bought because it included Tommy Monaghan's first appearance in The Demon Annual #2, which I had not read at that point...also, that's a pretty great cover, isn't it...?) and three volumes of Marc Andreyko's Manhunter (but not, curiously, volume 2).

Finally, there are team books (Justice League of America Hereby Elects... and Challengers of the Unknown Must Die!), crossovers (Cosmic Odyssey, Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, Villains United, Rann-Thanagar War, Day of Vengeance) and Elseworlds (DC's Greatest Imaginary Stories, The Golden Age and Justice League of America: The Nail).

Oh, and then a couple of random books, only a few of which take place in the DCU: Doctor 13: Architecture & Morality, DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore, Space Ghost and Icon: A Hero's Welcome (I would like to read the rest of Icon, but I'm not sure if it was collected in an accessible format like this first chunk of the series was).

Later, I came back and stacked more books atop those on the shelf, and these are all mainly random ones, although all DC...except for The Immortal Iron Fist: The Last Iron Fist Story. Not sure how that one got in there...

Bookshelf #44

This week's shelf—the second-to-last shelf!—is my Vertigo shelf. And it was exclusively Vertigo books for many years, although I recently stacked a few piles of non-Vertigo DC books atop it, as you can see. 

There are two basic organizing principles at play here. The first is size and the second is writer. The former are organized biggest to smallest (with some exceptions at the very end there), and the latter are organized by what I considered their relative importance to the Vertigo line.

So, on the far left we have the biggest book, the original graphic novel Mr. Punch by writer Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean. And I guess I should just say right here that there's rather a lot of Neil Gaiman comics on this shelf. But the fact that I bought a lot of his work in the late '90s and early '00s should not be misconstrued as an endorsement of him as a human being or that I am at all okay with the very terrible, gut-churning actions he is accused of taking against several different women. To my knowledge, he hasn't yet been convicted of anything in a court of law, and the American justice system has a tradition of individuals being innocent until proven guilty, but the allegations made against Gaiman are serious, credible, damning and nauseating. 

Yes, Gaiman has had an enormous impact on the publishing industry's embrace of the graphic novel/trade paperback format and on mainstream comics in general, and yes, his work has proven something of a cornerstone of the post-Crisis DC Universe, and no, I don't think one can argue that Gaiman isn't a skilled, imaginative and influential writer. It doesn't matter. One should not buy his work, and DC (and Marvel, and any other publishers who have works by him in their catalogues) should stop selling it.

I've struggled with whether or not to keep the work of his that I've bought or not. For other, similar comics writers, it has been easy enough to rid their work from my bookshelves. Like, for example, I didn't have much Warren Ellis on my shelf to begin with (I read Transmetropolitan, Planetary and The Authority via library-borrowed trades, and thus never had them on my shelves), and what little I did have didn't seem "important" in anyway...that is, not stuff I might ever conceivably need to look to as reference in anything I planned writing on in the future (Although I still end up discovering books with his name on them here and there; you can't see it in this photo, for example, but one of those DC 100-Page Spectacular mini-trades is of Jack Cross, which he wrote. I forgot it even existed until I was taking this picture). 

Gaiman's a little different, though. I found myself referring back to "Season of Mists" earlier this year when discussing the post-Crisis fate of the Justice Society of America, for example, and, even more recently, the Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame prestige format book he wrote when mentioning Superman's previous visits to Hell in regards to Justice League Unlimited: DC KO (in this column). 

I do expect to have to refer back to Sandman and probably Books of Magic in the future, in a book I hope to start writing in the next few years.

Anyway, back to the bookshelf. 

Mr. Punch is followed by the great Kyle Baker's album-sized Cowboy Wally Show and King David and thean a pair of hardcovers: Hans Rodioff, Enrique Brecca and Keith Giffen's Lovecraft and Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Henrichon's Pride of Baghdad.

That ends the bigger-than-usual books, and leads into the books collected by writer. 

These are:

•Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Saga of the/Swamp Thing, both of which DC published before Vertigo actually existed, but were later collected under the Vertigo banner; which makes sense, as Hellblazer was a spin-off of Moore's Swamp Thing, and Sandman had a bit of connective tissue via Matt Cable)

•Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Sandman: Endless Nights, Black Orchid, Books of Magic)

•Grant Morrison (Doom Patrol, Animal Man, The Invisibles: Bloody Hell in America, We3, Vimanarama)

•Peter Milligan (Shade, The Changing Man: The American Scream...DC actually just collected this whole series in a pair of omnibuses, which I really wanted to buy but, well, comics are expensive, and I wasn't as interested in reading the series in full as I was in so many other comics competing for my dollars...)

•Garth Ennis (John Constantine: Hellblazer: Fear and Loathing and Dangerous Habits, Preacher, Unknown Soldier and War Stories Vol. 1)

These are all pretty great comics, and, I think one could argue, among the better superhero comics ever published...even if some of these characters seem to push the boundaries of what might be considered a superhero, although many of them started with a character from previous superhero comics, or, in the case of Preacher, stars a character with super-powers.

I quite fondly remember reading all of these, particularly Preacher. These I read in my first house in Columbus. I would pick a volume up on a Wednesday and, when I got to the end, want to return immediately to The Laughing Ogre to get the next volume. On more than one occasion, I would end up going back to the shop that very afternoon for the next installment. 

The rest of the shelf of Vertigo comics includes some pretty well-known works from well-known creators, but more one series apiece rather than a series of series. 

These are Bill Willingham, Marck Buckingham and company's Fables Vols. 1-7 (I don't recall how many volumes the series ran, but I lost interest once the disappointing identity of The Adversary was finally revealed), Vaughan, Pia Guerra and company's Y: The Last Man Vols. 1-8, Andy Diggle and Jock's The Losers: Ante Up (Speaking of Diggle, his Swamp Thing: Bad Seed with artist Breccia is stuck at the end of Moore's Swamp Things), Paul Pope's 100%, Peter Milligan and Javier Pulido's Human Target: Strike Zones, an advanced reader copy of Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen's It's a Bird... (Which was then, and perhaps still is, the only Superman Vertigo book), Dave Gibbons' The Originals, Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel's The Quitter and, finally, Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque's American Vampire Vol. 1. 

The stacks set atop these books? Well, on the left is what I believe is a complete collection of Gotham Central, but, because they were collected variously at different times, my collection includes Vol. 1, Vol. 2, another Vol. 2, Vol. 3 and Vol. 4. 

On the right are a couple of random trades—Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul's Superboy: The Boy of Steel, Keith Giffen and company's Booster Gold: Past Imperfect, John Ostrander, Luke McDonnel and company's Suicide Squad Vol. 1: Trial by Fire, Batman: Joker's Asylum Vol. 2—and then a whole bunch of DC's 100-Page Spectaculars.

These are a series of weird, slim books that seem to be a hybrid between a traditional comic book and a trade paperback. They had spines, but they also had ads and they sold for $7.99. They tended to collect or republish specials or story arcs that just weren't long enough to fill a traditional trade collection, but might otherwise seem worthy of one.

It looks like I've got 11 of them here, and they are all cover-dated 2010 or 2011. They are, in alphabetical order Batman: Dark Knight, Dark City (by Peter Milligan, Kieron Dwyer, Tom Mandrake and Dennis Janke), Batman: Gotham Noir (by Ed Brubaker* and Sean Phillips), Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham (by Doug Moench and Jim Balent), Green Lantern: Fear Itself (by Ron Marz and Brad Parker), Green Lantern: Willworld (by J.M. DeMatteis and Seth Fisher), JLA: The Age of Wonder (by Adisaki Tantimede, Galen Showman and  P. Craig Russel), Metal Men (by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire), Night Force (by Marv Wolfrman, Gene Colan and Bob Smith), Shazam (By Jerry Orrdway, Peter Krause and Dick Giordano) and Son of Superman (by Howard Chaykin, David Tischman, J.H. WIlliams III and Mick Grray). Plus the aforementioned Jack Cross by Ellis and Gary Erskine.

As you can see, it's pretty much a who's who of creators who have worked for DC before, and a lot of comics that might have fallen through the cracks for one reason or another. Of these, Dark Knight, Dark City is probably the most consequential, a story in which The Riddler dabbles with the occult, although he is actually a pawn of sorts to a literal demon that dwells beneath Gotham City, and has been influencing its development over the centuries (I believe both Morrison and Snyder's runs either alluded directly to it...or at least played with similar ideas).

Oh, and if you've never seen the art of the great Seth Fisher, and extremely promsing artist with a very distinct style who tragically passed away way too soon, well, you'll want to read Willworld...or any other work of his you might be able to find. (He also drew Vertigo Pop! Tokyo, Fantastic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan and a Legends of the Dark Knight arc collected as Batman: Snow.)

The ones I'm most tempted to reread though are probably the Catwoman one, an Elseworlds positing a heroic Catwoman protecting Gotham from an evil Batman, and Green Lantern: Fear Itself, which features Kyle Rayner and Alan Scott. Revisiting that Metal Men looks well worthwhile, too. 

*Another comics writer who has been accused of being a horrible person. 

Bookshelf #43

This week's bookshelf is another mostly manga one, thanks in large part to the size of the shelf, and how easily the standard tankobon-style manga volume slip into it. 

At a glance, you will notice that Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 accounts for the majority of the shelf. Ranma was the very first manga I ever bought and read (this would have been somewhere in the mid-to-late '90s, before I graduated college), and you can see that I had started reading it before Viz had standardized the design for the series. 

I kind of like the older design, where each volume was a different color. I just checked, and not only are the older ones printed right to left, but so too are volumes 22 to 31. The series actually ran 38 volumes, which means I stopped buying new ones seven volumes before the series ended with, what I assume, is the marriage of Ranma and Akane. 

I'm not entirely sure why I never finished it, but I've done something similar with television shows I like...it means that it's still out there to be consumed and enjoyed at a later date. Of course, it has now been so long since I've read Ranma that I fear I would have to start over and re-read everything before I get to those last seven volumes, even tough, from what I recall, the story is pretty simple and repetitive, as Ranma and Akane fight various rivals who have a crush on one of them or the other, many of whom transform when they get wet. 

I am curious how Ranma holds up in 2026, given that it is about a boy that turns into a girl on occasion. I'd definitely be curious to read a trans writer's take on it. (Perhaps less interestingly, it also revolves around an arranged marriage, so I wonder if that element marks it as old-fashioned today or not). I know that there was rather recently a new anime released, so chances are there is a whole new generation of Ranma discourse out there and I just haven't gone looking for it yet...

Just to the left of all the Ranma volumes are a couple of other Takahashi books: The first chunk of Urusei Yatsura (which I've attempted a few times but never made it all the way through), a volume titled The Return of Lum Urusei Yatsura  which I haven't yet read either and the final volume of Maison Ikkoku (I read that series via volumes borrowed from the Columbus Metropolitan Library up until the last volume, which I bought from The Laughing Ogre. I remember liking that series an awful lot, but it has now been so long since I've read it that I would have to re-read it to have a decent conversation about it). 

After Takahashi's work, we get to the comics adaptation of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, of which I have eight volumes. This is based on the same novel that Ang Lee's beautiful 2000 film was...and probably owes its existence, or at least its translation and importation into the U.S., to the popularity of the film. It launched in 2002 and was published by ComicsOne Corp. 

The design and packaging are great, and the book is filled with gorgeous full color art. Another interesting book to revisit, I imagine. I wonder if I got the whole series or not, though; a note at the end of the eighth volume says they are working on volume 9, so I would guess not...

What else does this shelf hold...?

•Kuro Gane Vols. 1-2 In feudal Japan, a young samurai on a mission of vengeance is killed...but a "master inventor" rebuilds him with a new steel body and gives him a talking sword, allowing him to carrry on. 

•Minima Vol. 1 Schoolgirl Ame's favorite toy comes to life. This volume ends with an incredible cliffhanger, I see just by flipping through, so much so that I'm kind of surprised I didn't get the next volume just to see how it is resolved.

•Gacha Gacha Vols. 1-3 Protagonist Kouhei has a crush on his lifelong best friend...who has been acting weird lately. Why? Because she apparently has multiple personalities, and Kouhei is bewildered by the changes from one to the other. Probably not politically correct, huh? There's a lot of fan service in this one, which is rated "OT" for "Older Teen", 16 and up...

•Blank Vol. 1 This is one of Tokyopop's "amerimanga", I believe, which introduced me (and, I imagine, the comics industry) to a lot of talented creators, at least one of whom is among my favorite artists working today. This one is a secret agent action comedy by Pop Mhan, who is one of those artists who moved on from Tokyopop to draw all kinds of super-comics for various publishers and with various writers. My personal favorite of his comics was probably Spyboy with Peter David; he also drew some Batgirl, but from near the end of the original series, when it had gotten pretty badly written...

•Et Cetera Vols. 1-3 I liked this one quite a lot. Another manga Western (like Gun Blaze West, covered last week), it stars cute, pig-tailed Minchao who possesses a really cool and very weird gun, which has a big spherical chamber. It's called "the Eto Gun" and it is, according to the back cover, "a mysterious weapon that uses the spirits of the Zodiac animals to fire unstoppable bullets." So, in the first volume, for example, she shoots a guy in the face with a smiling cartoon rabbit.

•Fruits Basket Vols. 1-2 This one is obviously a very popular manga, but, having given Natsuki Takaya two volumes, I just couldn't really get into it. It's about an orphaned girl who meets a family possessed by the spirits of the (Chinese) zodiac. 

•East Coast Rising. Another Tokyopop book from a familiar name, this is a pirate comic by Becky Cloonan. You all know Becky Cloonan at this point, right?

•Fairy Tale Vol. 1 The art in this is great, and the character designs are strong, but it didn't hook me. It obviously went on to become quite popular though. (Flipping through it again as I write this post, I am reminded that I found that weird little snowman-like character somewhat off-putting. I kind of want to re-read this now if only to see what that guy's all about, and how he might compare and contrast with Frozen's Olaf...)

•DearS Vol. 1 This is the black spine you see. It was apparently an advance copy sent out for review. There's a girl with very long hair and big boobs and, um, that's all I remember about it. Even flipping through it isn't managing to jog my memory at all, and, because it's not the final version of the book, there's no back cover copy. It is the work of "Peach-Pit", which is the name shared by two female manga artists, although when I hear the word, all I can think of is Jason Priestly behind the counter on 90210.

•Magic Knight Rayearth Vol. 1 Another CLAMP book, this one is an epic fantasy featuring magical girl-like heroes with swords and amazing powers. I know I read more of this than I see on my shelves, so I assume I did so via the library. 

•No Need For Tenchi: Unreal Genius Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block introduced me to Tenchi around 2000 or 2001, and I have to assume I found this at Half Price Books, on sale at a convention or on the shelf of a particular Columbus comic shop near campus that I am blanking on the name of, given that it's from 1996. There's a "5" on the cover and spine, but I remember reading it and not having any problem doing so; maybe because, at the time, I was well-versed in the characters and universe from the cartoon...? 

•The Japanese Drawing Room: Victorian Travellers in Japan This slim non-fiction graphic "novel" is by Sakura Mizuki, Shaun Garner and Sean Michael Wilson was published by The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in 2006. The credits page says it is "based on the journal Westward from the Golden Gate by Annie Russell-Cotes. I am assuming it got to me because someone wanted me to write about it. 

Bookshelf #42

The end is in sight. This week, we start with the top shelf of my very last set of bookshelves in this tour of my personal comics library. This particular set of bookshelves is the very oldest, one so old that I can't remember where it came from, but I have been putting books on it since at least junior high (Although the books have mostly changed, as, back in junior high, I didn't actually have any graphic novels or trade paperback collections of comics yet...and they weren't exactly common at the time).

This top shelf is mostly devoted to manga, as its small size is only able to accommodate the small digest/tankobon style collections manga usually comes in. Most of these are old enough that I don't remember them terribly clearly and have had to pull them off the shelf to jog my memory. As there aren't actually too many, I'll just name them all, left to right. 

•Spy Vs. Spy First, we have the only non-manga books on this shelf, which I stuck there because they were published in that format and thus fit pretty perfectly. These are a trio of 2009 collections of Antonio Prohias' Spy Vs. Spy cartoons, published by a Watson-Guptill Publications. I'm a fan. These strips were always my favorite part of Mad magazines when I was a little kid (and thus in the prime Mad demographic). In addition to being weird, clever and violent, they also didn't require the amount of reading or pop culture fluency that other Mad features did. It was a great pleasure to be able to read scores of the strips back-to-back-to-back-to-back (etc.) like this. 

•Kill Me, Kiss Me Lee Young Yuu's manhwa series is a romantic comedy in which a pair of opposite sex identical cousins (is that a thing?) decide to swap identities and schools, so that the female cousin poses as a boy in order to get close to her crush, and the male cousin poses as a girl in order to be around a bunch of girls. Amusing complications abound. It looks like this actually ran five volumes; I'm not sure why I didn't get the fifth, as I remember really enjoying this series. Do note how faded the Tokyopop logo at the top of the spines are. There's significant sun damage to a few random volumes on this shelf, presumably because the sunlight filters through the blinds in the otherwise always dark room to hit certain books just so.

•Gun Blaze West Even all these years later, this still seems like something of a rarity to me: A manga western. This was from Shonen Jump and was the work of Rurouni Kenshin creator Nobuhiro Watsuki. Not sure why I only have one volume. Flipping through it now, the character designs look appealing. I guess this volume just didn't hook me.

•Iron Wok Jan The title chaacter is a chef who thinks of cooking as a battle, and manga-ka Shinji Saijyo fills the book with over-the-top imagery of Jan's intense cooking, in which he often looks like a maniac. As with Kill Me, Kiss Me, I apparently have all the volumes save for the very last one.

•Sgt. Frog Mine Yoshizaki's manga takes up the most space on this shelf...and is probably the best known (well, given what is right next to it, maybe second best known) of any of the manga on the shelf. It follows a hapless little alien invader who looks just like a humanoid frog; he was meant to conquer Earth but he ends up being defeated and semi-captured by the kids in a human family, who then force him to do chores instead. Though he occasionally bridles at his fate, he seems genuinely happy, as he would prefer to build Gundam models and laze around the house than engage in the hard work of world-conquering. Gradually, others from his home world arrive to help him...each of these is a different color and has a very different personality, but, even altogether, they are generally useless when it comes to conquering Earth. There was an anime. It looks like it ran 21 volumes; I seem to have read the first 13 and, at some later point, bought volumes 16 and 19 somewhere, assuming I would eventually catch up. I never did.

•Kingdom Hearts I have four volumes of Kingdom Hearts and one volume of a Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memory, all by Shiro Amano. I am not a video game player, but the concept of this game series—Mickey, Donald, Goofy and some anime-looking human kid journey into the settings of various Disney movies—intrigued me. I knew I wasn't going to ever play the games, but I could read the comics. I don't recall liking them very much, as the original elements of the story were kind of dull and melodramatic. Semi-related is the very slim, sun-damaged volume to the right of Chain of Memories. This is Disney's Kilala Princess, and it's about a schoolgirl who goes on an adventure in which she meets various Disney Princesses (The copyright is 2000, and the "newest" princess featured seems to be Jasmine from Aladdin).

•Sokora Refugees The work of a writer named "Segamu" and artist Melissa DeJesus, this was an "amerimanga" about a schoolgirl from the real world being transported to a fantasy setting for an adventure. There's lots of "fan service" in the art. I remember liking it at the time, but I can't recall much about the plot beyond that at this point. There are only two volumes of it, and I think it was left unfinished, rather than completed in that time. Apparently, there was some controversies involving it, The writer seems to be pseudonymous (according to Wikipedia, anyway) and, like former Marvel Editor-in-Chief C. B. Cebuslkis writing under the penname Akira Yoshida, was a white guy, or, at the least, a guy with a Western-sounding name who seemingly posing as a person of Asian descent. There also seems like there might have been something hinky with the sales data regarding the book as well. 

•Legends From Darkwood Another "amerimanga" in the fantasy genre. I remember liking it at the time too, but don't remember anything about it now. 

•Marmalade Boy Wataru Yoshizumi's manga features really great shojo-style art. The story is about a girl dealing with a new and unusual family arrangement...including a cute jerk of a new stepbrother. I obviously didn't stick with this one, which I guess ran eight volumes.

•xxxHOLiC/Tsubasa Next, we have a pair of CLAMP books from what I believe was the then-new publisher Kodansha. xxxHOLiC, as it's stylized on the back cover, is about a young man who takes a job working for a witch in a magic shop, while Tsubasa is sweeping fantasy series featuring magic and a spirit wolf made of fire. I recall being quite impressed with Kodansha's presentation and design, and both series were fine, but I didn't make it too far with either. A result, I suspect, of there just being too damn many comics to read. 

•Red River I was quite fond of Chie Shinohara's shojo series about a modern Japanese young woman who is magically transported back to the ancient Middle East. I fell behind before Viz had even published the first half-dozen (Why don't I have volume 5...? I do not know). I had always planned on catching back up, something I thought about doing again when I saw 3-in-1volumes being published much more recently. Not that I ever did, of course; it ended up running for 28 volumes. This is a good example of the sun damage random books suffered; note how faded the first two volumes are versus the later one.

•Duck Prince Ai Morinaga's manga from CPM has a fun premise, inspired by the story of the ugly duckling, from which it takes its name. Reiichi is, according to the back cover copy, "short, fat and ugly." When he is struck by a car, he wishes to come back beautiful in his next life...and gets his wish. His face was so badly damaged in the accident, that got massive facial reconstruction surgery that, at his family's demands, made him beautiful, rather than restoring his old looks. He also hit a growth spurt while in a coma and is now tall and slim. Even the texture of his hair has somehow changed...! I obviously didn't follow this, but it certainly seems to have potential. 

•Beauty Pop So, I have volume two of Kiyoko Arai's Beauty Pop, but not volume one. Why? Who can say. The copyright is 2006, which is pretty far back, in terms of my memory for comics I may or may not have even read once. I assume I did not read this one, though. It's about high school makeover artists. I suppose I should probably sell it the next time I visit a used bookstore...

•Faeries' Landing Young Hyun's series is a kinda sorta fantasy harem comedy, in which the young, male protagonist becomes the guardian of a magical faerie...and learns he is destined for 108 doomed romances. I liked it enough to read the fist three volumes.

•By The Sword This looks like a story set in feudal Japan? Despite the cover, which makes a scantily clad young woman with a sword the selling point, I didn't notice any such fan service within it's pages just now. Honestly, at this point, your guess is as good as mine regarding this book. 

•Tokyo Mew Mew This is about an 11-year-old girl whose DNA is merged with that of an endangered wildcat...and four other girls whose DNA is merged with four other endangered animals. Why was their DNA manipulated? Well, it's part of an experiment to engineer superheroes of sorts to defend the world from alien invaders. It's vaguely Sailor Moon-ish, but wasn't my cup of tea. 

•Instant Teen Like Duck Prince, this has an interesting but probably problematic premise. Here the star is "a homely fifth grader" who eats a mysterious package of pink nuts and is transformed into a beautiful woman! There's an element of 13 Going On 30 to it—and some of the attendant ickiness that comes with a story imagining a little girl's mind in the body of a grown woman—at least in terms of the basic concept, if not the execution. 

•Dramacon This was, if I recall correctly, the print debut of web-comic creator Svetlana Chmakova, and I had bought it explicitly because I had heard such rave reviews about it online. It's about an amateur writer attending her first anime convention with her artist boyfriend...and then meeting "a mysterious cosplayer." Drama, as promised, ensues. This is copyright 2005; 21 years later, Chmakova has established a solid body of work to her name, including a series of books set at a fictional middle school with one-word titles, like Awkward, Crush, Brave and so on.

Another bookshelf interlude

Just to the right of the last set of bookshelves we discussed is a stack of books that I probably would have put on one of its shelves, if only there was room to do so. So instead, they are just kind of piled up alongside it, waiting for a day when I might actually get enough shelves to accommodate all my books and go about organizing the in a less haphazard fashion.

Given the size of the stack, which is almost enough to fill a shelf, I figured I would feature that this week.

As with last week's shelf, this one is quite a hodgepodge, with publishers Archaia and NBM well represented...as well as other smaller and/or literature-focused publishers, like Fantagraphics, Top Shelf and AdHouse (Although I just now noticed there are a pair of Vertigo books in there, Mat Johnson and Simon Gane's Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story and third volume of an Unknown Soldier reboot, plus a WildDtorm book, John Arcudi and Peter Snejberg's A God Somewhere; these are pretty out of place, as I have shelves for Vertigo and WildStorm books that still have plenty of room on them).

There's some quite notable work from a lot of great artists here, including Kathryn and Stuart Immonen's Moving Pictures, Matt Howarth's The Downsized, Johnny Ryan's Prison Pit, Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca's Afrodisiac, George Chieffet and Stephen DeStefano's Lucky in Love, Rick Geary's The Axe-Man of New Orleans and Rick Veitch's Brat Pack, the last of which is one of those relatively rare books that should probably be on everyone's shelves. 

I also just now noticed there's a Gerard Jones book in there, and I sort of involuntarily flinched when I saw it, as I wasn't expecting to see his name on a spine in this particular stack of comics. I have no memory at all of this book—which, to be fair, is common with a lot of the books on these shelves, given how long ago I read many of them—but I was surprised to see it because it's not a DC superhero book, like the other Jones books I have in my possession. This one is called Networked: Carabella on The Run, it was drawn by the great Mark Badger and it was published by NBM in 2010.

There is but one more set of bookshelves in my house, which means there will be only four more installments of this series. The end is now in sight...! And then I guess I'll just go back to updating my blog two times a week rather than three...

Bookshelf #41

This week's bookshelf is an awful lot like last week's, in that it is a) mostly small press and b) a real mess, with no real logic as to what is on it. One thing that seems apparent is that I seem to have stuck a whole bunch of very thin books on this shelf, books that are more "prestige format" (that is, regular comics with spines) than trade paperbacks, collections or graphic novels. The sorts of comics that I could just as easily bag, board and stick in a long box as put on a shelf like this.

Considering the spines now, it seems that Archaia and NBM are probably the best represented publishers here. From the former, we have three volumes of David Petersen's Mouse Guard, zombie comic The Awakening Vol. 1, Alex Sheikman's "steampunk samurai" comic Robotika and mpMann and A. David Lewis' Some New Kind of Slaughter, which was wider than it was tall, and is thus turned sideways on the shelf so you can't see its spine. From the latter, there's the first seven volumes of The Smurfs (and another one laying across the top of the other books on the shelf).

There's also a half dozen The Best of Twisted Toy Fare collections and a half dozen or so books from Radical Comics, whom I believe used to send me review copies, which is probably why I have so many of them here. 

Of special interest? 

Well, there's Wonderland, a comics sequel of sorts to Disney's Alice in Wonderland movie by Tommy Kovac and Sonny Liew (from the unlikely publishing team of Disney and Slave Labor Graphics); a Gumby collection, featuring Bob Burden and Rick Geary's take on the character; an I Dream of Jeannie comic (I wasn't a fan of the show, but the highly cartoony interior art was nice; checking the credits, I see that two of the four stories within were written by Franco Aureliani, one story was dawn by Art Baltazar—though you wouldn't recognize it as his, given how different the style is from his more recent work—and another story is penciled by Dan DeCarlo!); Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother: Wild About Harry; Mike Migonla and Troy Nixey's Jenny Finn comics, which began as an Oni Comics mini-series around the turn of the century and are here published by Atomeka and Boom; Rafael Grampa's Mesmo Delivery, my first introduction to the artist who would go on to produce Batman: Gargoyle of Gotham , the collection of which is set for release next month; Walt Disney's Donald Duck: The Case of the Missing Mummy, which I'm pretty sure is the only Gemstone-published Disney comic I own, and The Bomb by Steve Mannion, an artist whose work I adore (and whom I can't believe isn't more popular than he is at this point; here, check out his Instagram page, if you're not familiar with him). 

Oh, and I also found this weird-ass Presidential Material Flipbook that I completely forgot existed. One side had a biography comic about Barack Obama, and, if you turned it over and flipped it upside down, you would find a biography comic of John McCain (scripted, oddly enough, by Andy Helfer). There were two covers, both drawn by J. Scott Campbell. The comics themselves look pretty dreadful, with good-enough realistic art and lots of text, but I confess it's fun to see Campbell's Obaman and McCain and, at the very least, it's an interesting artifact of its time. 

Bookshelf #40

This week's bookshelf is a real hodgepodge, with, as far as I can now discern, no real orgainizing principle. These books seem to be almost all small press and/or self-published (with a few prominent exceptions), and to be of such a size that they fit better on this shelf than they might have on other shelves. A few seem to be pretty out-of-place though, like the couple of manga volumes. 

The publisher's represented include AdHouse, Drawn & Quarterly, NBM, Pantheon, Sparkplug, Tokyopop, Viper Comics, Viz. 

Creators include Lamar Abrams, Chynna Clugston, Josh Howard, K. Thor Jensen, Hope Larson, Junko Mizuno, Scott Morse, Paul Pope and Joey Weiser. 

The most recognizable books here though are a trio from the late Marjane Satrapi (the two volumes of Persepolis, although now I think you're more likely to find them as a single volume, and Chicken with Plums) and the two volumes of Art Spiegelman's Maus (Which I would guess is also more commonly published as a single volume at this point).  Note the sun damage to the two volumes of the latter, how the red of the spines is faded at the top. 

There's a lot of interesting books in here—the collected edition of Bone colorist Steve Hamaker's fun Fish N Chips buddy cop comic, L.Neil Smith and company's alternate history/libertarian fantasy Roswell, Texas, manga guide to sex The Manga Sutra, those must-read AdHouse Project... anthologies full of some of your favorite cartoonists—and if I were independently wealthy (that is, I didn't have to go to work ever) I would reread and write my way through this shelf, posting a review a day on the blog like I was able to do in the good old days.

Alas, I need health insurance, food and shelter...

Bookshelf #39

This week's bookshelf is a manga shelf, and it's dominated by two creators, one of whom is among the most influential Japanese artists to ever put pen to paper. 

That is, of course, the late Akira Toriyama. On the far left we have four volumes of his Dragon Ball, volumes 13-16. Why does my collection start with the 13th volume...? Good question! If I had to guess without a more thorough investigation, I would guess that I had read the earlier parts of the series via single issues, when Viz was still publishing some manga series in floppy, stapled comic book format on a monthly basis (Note how much lighter volumes 15 and 16 are compared to volumes 13 and 14; I fear that the sun must shine through the blinds in that room in just such a way to land directly on those two volumes). 

After that, we have ten tankobon volumes of Dragon Ball imported from Japan, which I bought at my first Mid-Ohio Comic Con in 2000. I of course could not read them at all, but I thought they looked neat...and I especially liked the connecting images on the spines. I believe the comics within had yet to be published in English at that point, and while it was a long time ago, I want to say that part of the series had yet to arrive in the U.S. in anime form yet either. So, they were fascinating to look at, and I still appreciate them as objects. I assume they were relatively cheap since I bought so many of them. 

Then we have a few collections of Toriyama's Dr. Slump, his breakout work that preceded Dragon Ball, and Cowa!, a super-fun one-volume comic about some monster kids. 

Moving along the shelf, we then get to the work of Kiyohiko Azuma. First, there's his Azumanga Daioh, a slice-of-life comedy series about a half-dozen or so schoolgirls, the stories presented in the four-panel comic strip format. And then we have his later and better-known work, Yotsuba&!, a book I can't speak highly enough of. Here I've shelved the first nine volumes, while the later volumes are on another shelf we've already looked at in a different room on a different floor of my house. Here you can see how the design of the spines changed when the book changed hands from ADV to Yen Press. 

Finally, there's a trio of books from neither Toriyama nor Azuma. First is the CLAMP collective's Shirahime Syo, short stories set in the snow and featuring the legendary Snow Princess, and two volumes of Jae Sung Park and Sung Jae Park's romantic comedy Couple...which is actually Korean rather than Japanese, so is technically manhwa rather than manga. It looks like it only ran four volumes, so I guess I read the first half of the series before losing track of it. 

Bookshelf #38

This week's bookshelf is my original First Second shelf, and, indeed, most of the books here are from the publisher. 

On the furthest left are the bigger format books, like Aaron Renier's The Unsinkable Walker Bean, a couple of George O'Connor's Olympian books, a couple of Lewis Trondheim and Fabrice Parme's Tiny Tyrant books and, turned sideways to better fit the shelf but thus hiding their spines, the first of James Sturm and company's Adventures in Cartooning books and Gene Luen Yang's Prime Baby. 

Then comes more standard-sized First Second books, including Richard Sala's Cat Burglar Black, Trondheim's Vampire Loves, Dong Hwa Kim's The Color of... trilogy and more. 

There's no real rhyme or reason to the other, non-First Second books on the shelf; I seem to have just stuck the wherever they fit.

So, laying across the top of the First Seconds are Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock's two-book adventure series Compass South and Knife's Edge and a couple of Papercutz's Smurfs collections. 

And stacked up on the right, we have the second and third volumes of Sekihiko Inui's superhero manga Ratman (Is volume 1 around here somewhere? Or did I borrow it from the library, and then decide to buy the second and third volumes for some reason?), the final five volumes of Hiromu Arakawa's Full Metal Alchemist (In this case, I do remember that I had read all the volumes of the series that my local library had somewhere around 2010 or so, and then, too impatient to wait once I was caught up, I started buying the new volumes as they were released) and my copies of Scott Pilgrim, which I guess I decided neither to shelve with my Oni books nor on one of the manga shelves, where these tankobon-style graphic novels would fit perfectly. 

At the very top and the very bottom of that stack are two books so thin you won't be able to read their spines. On the top is the collection of the "What if Henry Rollins and Gleen Danzig were a couple?"  cartoons from Igloo Tornado entitled Henry & Glenn Forever and an Oh, Comics! anthology built around the theme of food (and labeled Vol. 1 No. 16). 

If you're not from Columbus, you may not be familiar with Oh, Comics!, but it was (Is? I am no longer in Columbus!) an annual anthology series published by cartoonist Bob Corby, who runs SPACE (The Small Press And Alternative Comics Expo, which is where I first became aware of the work of Jeffrey Brown, Tom Scioli, Ed Piskor, Paul Hornschemeier and, in 2000 or 2001, bought a self-published comic called Street Angel from Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca). Flipping through it now, I see lots of names and art I recognize—Max Ink, Matt Dembicki, Craig Bogart, Mike Carrol, Pam Bliss.

Bookshelf #37

This week's bookshelf is another small one (in fact, so small that hte picture of it looks pretty wonky here) and is also part of the repurposed entertainment center that last week's shelf was. 

You'll probably notice that it is also not all comics. 

There are three stacks of books there: One stack that's not-comics, one stack that consists of a not-comic book and a not-comic book about a comics creator and then a stack of comics collections.

The first includes a pair of Norton literature anthologies, both purchased for college courses, and never disposed of because hey, I paid a lot of money for them and, unlike some textbooks, it wouldn't hurt to have collections of great literature on one's bookshelf, right? You never know when you might need to consult them (Note: I have never once consulted them since graduating, although I have now moved them from one apartment to another some dozen times). Atop those is a collection of Kenneth Patchen poems; I mentioned him a previous installment of this series, but he is one of my favorite poets, and I first became enamored with his work when I saw a collection of his "picture poems", which married imagery and a line or two of words (That's right, some of his work involved combining pictures and words, just like comics).

In the middle, we have Beautiful Poems of Jesus, which, based on the spine label with a Dewey decimal number, I must have purchased from a library book sale somewhere (and, um, have yet to get around to reading) and Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, a 2004 from publisher Abiogenesis that collected tributes to comics best (?) writer on the occasion of his 50th anniversary. These are mostly prose, but there are a few pin-ups and comics in there, and the contributors include the likes of Stephen Bissette, Will Eisner, Dave Gibbons, Terry Gilliam, Sam Kieth, James Kochalka, Jim Lee, Michael Moorcock, Jeff Smith, Bryan Talbot, Rick Veitch, Len Wein and many, many more. I know I reviewed this for the Columbus altweekly I was writing for at the time, but almost everything I wrote for them has disappeared into the ether by now.

The final stack is the one with all the comics in it. These seem to be comics published by DC that are outside of the DC Universe setting, and so we have a real grab bag of creators and genres: Wendy and Richard Pini's Elfquest: The Searcher and the Sword, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Will Eisner's The Best of The Spirit ("The Citizen Kane of Comics", according to a front cover blurb attributed to USA Today), Frank Miller's Ronin, 9-11Volume 1 (This one is actually published by Dark Horse, Image and Chaos, not DC), 9-11: The World's Finest Comics Book Writers & Artists Tell Stories To Remember (At some point, I think it might be interesting to revisit the half dozen or so such anthologies and tributes released back then and see how they hold up), Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Sleeper Vols. 1-3, Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco's Arrowsmith: So Smart in Their Fine Uniforms, Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris' Ex Machina Vols. 1-2 and Peter Tomasi and peter Snejbjerg's Light Brigade. 

Bookshelf #36

This week's bookshelf is a small one, and thus a relatively simple one. Here we move to a new wall, and start a new shelving unit, this one being one I found in my mom's house and turned into a place to hold books; I'm pretty sure it was another old entertainment center (The top two shelves have glass doors that close over them, and there's a huge, spacious shelf below, which I assume was meant to hold a television set, but now hold some art books). 

This top shelf belongs almost exclusively to the work of manga-ka Ken Akamatsu. Let's start in the middle, with the series which introduced me to his work: Love Hina. I believe this is what is known as a "harem comedy."

Aspiring college student Keitaro is trying to get into Tokyo University, mostly in order to fulfil a childhood promise made to a little girl on a playground...whose name he has forgotten. Nevertheless, he endeavors to make it into the prestigious school, in the hopes of meeting her there.

With his parents no longer willing to support him, he plans to move into an apartment building owned by his grandmother, but there's a couple of catches. First, it has since become a female-only building. Second, he is the new manager.

Among the young women who live there—at the outset, five of them, in a variety of shapes, sizes, ages, styles and personalities—is Naru, who is also trying to get into Tokyo University, and eventually agrees to help our hero. Could she be the little girl Keitaro had once made his promise to? And, regardless, could she be the love of his life, the woman he is meant to be with?

The answer will seem clearer to readers than to the characters, of course, despite plenty of complications. Much of the humor, as I recall, revolved around various misunderstandings, with Keitaro often accused of being a pervert and one of the women or another reacting with over-the-top slapstick violence, like Naru punching Keitaro so hard that he flies up into orbit and becomes a star. Despite this, he and all of the young women eventually become good friends, even something of a family, and most of them, at one point or another, seem to develop feelings for him. 

I liked it well enough that I read the whole series and sought out Akamatu's other work. (There was also a Love Hina anime. I never watched it. Just the opening on YouTube; the theme song is pretty upbeat and catchy though and gives you an idea of the various characters, as well as the physical punishment Keitaro takes.)

Prior to Love Hina, and thus shelved to the left of it here, Akamatsu had created a manga called A.I. ga Tomaranai!, which Tokypop imported as A.I. Love You, which was a pretty solid title in 2003 ("A.I.", obviously, stands for artificial intelligence, while "ai" also means love in Japanese). In 2026, not so much, as the term "A.I." no longer evokes a far-off, fantastical future, but is no associated with making Internet searches less reliable, making phone calls to customer service more unbearable than ever and the production of shitty art.

According to the Internet, A.I. Love You was collected into nine volumes, and Tokyopop published eight...although, as you can see, I only got the first four. It was about a high school programmer whose computer program comes to life in a freak lightning streak. The program is, obviously, a beautiful young woman, and high jinks ensue. I barely remember it and obviously didn't like it as much as Love Hina, as I dropped it midway through. 

After Love Hina, and thus to the right of it here, Akamatsu created Negima! Magister Negi Magi, which featured more girls than Love Hina by a factor of ten or twenty, and many of them more colorful than those in that series (I remember a vampire and a robot, for example). This beautifully drawn series had a rather weird-ass premise, basically What if Harry Potter was a teacher at a Japanese all-girls school? 

Here are the first eight volumes of the series, which I had kept up with for a while. I later found a bunch of future volumes for sale at a Half Price Books and bought those, assuming I would catch up with the series at one point, but those are currently in the piles we looked at in a previous installment of this series. 

Akamatsu seems like a pretty interesting guy. After his obviously quite successful career in manga, he became a successful politician. His Wikipedia page is a pretty good read. 

I honestly don't remember when, where or why I acquired those volumes of Jin Kobayashi's School Rumble. Given that I have volumes 6, 12 and 13, plus a three-volume collection numbered 14-16, I am guessing that I had read the series via the library, and that these are ones I acquired at a sale somewhere...? At least, a cursory look around my "library" didn't reveal any more volumes of it anywhere. I guess we'll see as I continue to explore my bookshelves.

Anyway, this one is a fun, somewhat silly high school romance involving a love triangle of sorts. Recovering juvenile delinquent Kenji Harima (who has a goatee, longer hair and always wears sunglasses) has a crush on Tenma Tsukamoto, his cute, petite classmate, but Tenma has a crush on Oji Karasuma, a weird, listless boy who has a crush on...well, he doesn't seem to have a crush on anyone, but he does love curry, which seems to be his main personality trait. 

I can't remember how far I made it into this series now, but as I don't remember the resolution, I am assuming it wasn't very far. I suppose I should try rereading it while I wait for new installments of the ongoing manga I'm currently reading——Zom 100, Skip and Loafer, Now That We Draw—to come out...

Finally, see that small object atop of this entertainment center-turned-bookshelf....? What do you think that is...? Certainly, it can't be anything comics related, can it...? 

Sure it is!

It's a tiny little bottle labeled "Super Spy Mint Flavored Cyanide Capsules", with a drawing by Matt Kindt. This must have come with a review copy of Kindt's 2007 Super Spy from Top Shelf. Jiggling it, it seemed to still be full, and lightly trying the cap, I don't think I opened it when I received it, um, 19 years ago now.

I assume that it actually contains real mints, rather than mint-flavored cyanide capsules, but I wasn't so sure that I ever tried one...

Bookshelf #35

This week's bookshelf is my Marvel shelf...or, at least, it was my original Marvel shelf, when I started reading Marvel in 2000, although I have since come to fill a few other shelves with various Marvel books, like those Essential volumes discussed last week, and the digests from a few weeks back.

It's not just Marvel though, and there are some books stuck on this particular shelf either because of their size and shape, or because there was some empty space in which to shove some comics. 

Let's take a brief-ish look, going left to right. 

We start with the last of my Essential volumes, Essential Marvel Horror Vol. 1, containing stories featuring Son of Satan and Satanna. As I mentioned last week, I was particularly drawn to the publisher's 1970s horror/monster hero hybrids, and, of these two, I was fonder of Daimon Hellstrom. I liked him best at this point in his fictional career, when the Satanism and the batshit crazy nature of the character were the selling points (I feel like he's been more-or-less watered down ever since, and I haven't enjoyed later portrayals where he was given a trenchcoat and turned into Marvel's answer to John Constantine). 

Next to that are Cerebus Vol. 2: High Society and From Hell, both there because they are basically the same size and shape as the Essential volumes. And if you're wondering why I have the second volume of Cerebus, and only the second volume of Cerebus, well, the late Gib Bickel at the Laughing Ogre told me that Cerebus didn't really become Cerebus until volume two and suggested I start there. At the time, I was going to do a phone interview with Dave Sim for the paper I was working at, and the only Cerebus I had ever  read was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8. I did plan to read the rest of the series, but, as it was such a big undertaking, I kept putting it off, and I soon realized Sim was getting to be one of those artists you have to separate from the art and, well, 25 years later, I still haven't read all of Cerebus. One day, I hope...

From there, we get into the Marvels. There are some classics, stuff I think most people would say belong in the Marvel "canon", like Roger Stern, "Michael" Mignola and Mark Badger's 1989 Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment, and later collections of Mark Gruenwald, Bob Hall and John Beatty's 1985 Squadron Supreme maxiseries (which I had heard referred to as "Marvel's Watchmen"), Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' 1994 Marvels and Alan Moore and Alan Davis' Captain Britain. 

There are the first two Marvel collections I had ever bought, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's original Marvel Knights Punisher series, collected as The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank and Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones' Marvel Boy (The reason I started buying Marvel comics in the first place in 2000 was that they started hiring writers I knew and liked from their DC work, like Ennis and Morrison, and then started their Ultimate line, specifically geared toward new Marvel readers like me.)

The rest is more or less a hodgepodge, books I waited to read in trade, like the Dwayne McDuffie-written Beyond! and the small-scale crossover Doomwar, some attempts to try and read some acclaimed runs I had missed the first time around in singles, some random stuff found in sales. Plus, some more Ennis Punisher, from when I stopped reading it in singles and switched to trades for a while. 

Looking them over now, I see two others worth noting, as I highly recommend them: Hulk: WWH—The Incredible Herc (collecting Greg Pak and company's earliest stories pairing Hercules and Amadeus Cho, which eventually lead into the various "Incredible Hercules" books by Pak, Fred Van Lente and company that offered a comedic take on the mythological hero turned Marvel superhero) and two collections of Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee's short-lived 2010 series Thor: The Mighty Avenger (Which was, and probably still is, one of the better superhero comics I've ever read). The best way to engage the former now is probably The Incredible Hercules: The Complete Collection Vols. 1 and 2, and Thor: The Mighty Avengers—The Complete Collection, provided you can still find them. 

I also notice that I have six volumes collecting Marvel's original G.I. Joe series from the '80s; I must have bought those and shelved them without ever getting around to reading them though, as when I recently started in on the Image-published Compendium collection, I had no recollection of any of the stories (save the one that introduced Kwinn, which I remembered from having bought a reprint of it off a drugstore rack in the '80s). 

Finally, there's a handful of non-Marvel comics. There are four volumes of Roger Landgride's Muppets books for Boom Studios (which are all great although, if you don't already have an appreciation for the Muppets, I'm not sure how appealing they may be), two volumes of Sophie Campbell's predictably excellent Shadoweyes from Slave Labor Graphics and Yuichi Yokoyama's extremely weird Garden from PictureBox. 

Bookshelf #34

This week's bookshelf is pretty straightforward, like last week's, and for the same reason. To the left, you have the rest of my Showcase Presents volumes. To the right, most of my Essential volumes. I loved both series for the same reasons and, now that they have been discontinued, I wish I would have bought more of them when they were still available (Of DC's Showcase Presents, I kind of wish I had bought almost all of them; with Marvel's Essentials, I wish I would have at least stuck with Defenders and the various 1970s horror hero series, which, as you can see here, appealed to me).

From DC, we have some superhero team books in Teen Titans Vol. 1, Doom Patrol Vol. 1, Batman and the Outsiders Vol. 1, and then DC's great Hollow Earth barbarian hero comic, Warlord (Like All-Star Squadron, I do wish DC would have published more volumes of this series, as I would have happily snapped them up). 

Those are followed by DC's war comics, and these volumes represented my first real exposure to that once robust genre of comics; prior to these volumes, the only real war comics I had probably ever read were the handful of Garth Ennis-written ones. What I liked about these ones in particular is just how...colorful they were. Like, each had a high concept of one sort or another. Enemy Ace starred a brilliant, brooding and noble faux Red Baron. The War That Time Forgot put G.I.'s on an island populated with dinosaurs, giant monsters and occasionally even weirder stuff. The Haunted Tank followed the adventures of a World War II tank crew, which was often slyly aided by the ghost of a Civil War general...or was it? The Unknown Soldier literalized the term, and presented a mysterious agent whose face was completely wrapped in bandages who was a master of disguise.

And then there's House of Mystery, which was of course fine, but I don't think I took as great delight in it as I did Warlord, the war comics or the super-team books on the shelf. 

As for the Essentials, I guess you can guess which decade of Marvel comics most appealed to me, and that I was a little less interested in the publisher' superheroes than their attempts to Marvel-ize other genres. So here we have The Savage She-Hulk Vol. 1 (Especially interesting as, at the start, She-Hulk was very much a distaff Hulk, and hadn't yet transitioned into the comedic character she would later become), Supervillain Team-Up Vol. 1 (purchased because it had Namor on the cover), Defenders Vol. 1 (They actually published seven volumes of this, and I sorely regret not keeping up with it; Kurt Busiek and Erik Larsen's short-lived 2001 revival initially interested me in the team, and I was quite enamored of the book's apparent original conception as a misfit, B-list answer to The Avengers*) and then we get into the monsters and horror books.

The crown jewel here is, of course, the complete collection of Marvel's Godzilla series, a very weird comic that plopped a redesigned King of the Monsters into the Marvel Universe, and which, due to licensing agreements, wasn't available in trade until this book came out in 2006 (It's much more recently been re-released as the Godzilla: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus, in full color, although, as I mentioned last week, I actually prefer the black-and-white presentation of these old comics). 

Then we have both volumes of Man-Thing, Tomb of Dracula Vol. 2 (No, I don't have volume 1, nor volumes 3 and 4; I believe I bought volume 2 during a sale, and assumed I would pick up the rest of them at some later point and then read them, but, alas...) and, finally, Werewolf By Night.  

Perusing this list of Essential volumes, the ones I most regret missing out on were the future Defenders volumes, Howard the Duck, Ghost Rider (the first volume of which I found from the library and then wrote about relatively recently), Marvel Horror Vol. 2 (I'm particularly interested in The Scarecrow character, which I believe Marvel has since renamed The Straw Man, so as not to confuse him with their other Scarecrow), Monster of Frankenstein and the rest of Tomb of Dracula. I suppose copies of those books are probably out there somewhere though, so I suppose I'll be able to find them at some point...

*You know what? Given that we've already had a JLA/Avengers crossover, and it was very much the ultimate such book, and un-toppable epic, if DC and Marvel continue producing crossovers, maybe they should forego another JLA/Avengers team-up and instead do a Justice League/Defenders one...

Bookshelf #33

This week's bookshelf doesn't lend itself to much in the way in discussion (nor will next week's), given the fact that it consists entirely of volumes of a particular series from a particular publisher. And, as big as those volumes are, there isn't room for anything else on the shelf. 

They are, obviously, all volumes of DC's Showcase Presents series, which seemed devoted to collecting various Silver and Bronze Age books into massive, phone book-like 500-page black-and-white books for the relatively cheap price of $16.99. They were basically DC's answer to Marvel's Essentials line. 

I loved these books. Not just because they collected comics that I otherwise wouldn't have had access to—although some of this material, like the Brave and the Bold and the Justice League of America comics, has been made available in other formats since, like omnibuses and DC Finest collection. They were also an unbeatable value, and the main drawbacks, that they weren't in color, and had a pulpier paper stock, actually seemed like virtues to me. Given the coloring technology of the time, I actually preferred the black and white versions, which allowed one to better appreciate the line art. 

Now, I could easily have bought and enjoyed pretty much every volume in the series—and now that they are no longer available, I regret not buying them all*, even if I didn't have time to read them all as they came out—and here you see some of DC's bigger heroes mixed with the B- or C-listers. 

Obviously, I was most interested in these old Justice League of America comics, Grant Morrison and company's JLA having made me a fan of the Justice League in general (I have the sixth volume elsewhere in my house, in a to-be-read pile), the Brave and the Bold team-ups were also of great interest, and that Superman Family book, collecting Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, was a blast. 

I also particularly enjoyed the Elongated Man collection and the Metamorpho collection. The former contained 1960s back-ups from The Flash and Detective Comics in which Ralph Dibny and his wife Sue went around solving mysteries. These featured my favorite of his costumes, a light tone, and gorgeous artwork from Carmine Infantino. The latter featured one of DC's wilder, weirder characters, created by Boy Haney and Romana Fradon, and while, like Elongated Man, he has been around in various team books and events ever since, none of his later appearances were ever as great at these original ones. 

The one downside of the Showcase Presents collections? (Aside from how fast DC released them?) Because of the thickness of the books, they were all but impossible to scan images from, which often made blogging about them difficult.  

*Well, reviewing the list of what was published in the series, I'm not interested in the Green Lantern or Legion of Super-Heroes material, although the latter is probably the LOSH comics I would be most interested in reading....

A bookshelf interlude

Let's take a break in our tour of my bookshelves to address something I alluded to in the pevious post of the series. That is, this big pile of un-shelved comics. Yes, although most of the available wall space in my house seems to have a bookshelf filling it, I still don't have quite enough bookshelves, and this pile here are all the books that need shelved yet. (There's a similar series of piles across that same room that will also need shelved someday, although those particular piles are my To Be Read piles, so I'll need to read those before I shelve them). 

The majority of the books in these little stacks are manga, so let me just list those that aren't manga first. 

First, there's Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis The Menace 1953-1954, the second volume in Fantagraphics' typically handsomely designed series...and the last which I bought.

There's a pair of Marvel books, the collections of Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers Unleashed, the 2010 series by Chris Eliopoulos and Ig Guara, and Marvel Zombies 5, the 2010 Fred Van Lente and Kano entry into the franchise, this one featuring Howard the Duck and Machine Man travel to various Marvel alternate realities to retrieve samples of the zombie virus.

And there's a whole stack of DC Showcase Presents volumes: All-Star Squadron Vol. 1, Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld,  Batgirl Vol.1, Hawkman Vol. 1, Justice League of America Vol. 6, The Phantom Stranger Vol. 1 and Superman Family Vols. 2-3. (I sure would like to see the rest of All-Star Squadron collected, in any format. I loved this particular format, but DC has obviously ceased making them.)

The rest are all manga, from a bunch of different publishers...some of which I don't think are around anymore. I'm just going to list all of the titles below, and only offer some thoughts on a handful. You will probably notice that the numbers I have are...weird. 

There are a lot of first volumes, which is usually because I would try a series out and then stop at the first volume, because I either didn't like it, or else I got distracted and lost track of it immediately, or because it was a review copy from the publisher (When DC's short-lived manga imprint CMX launched, for example, they sent me the first volumes of their first wave of offerings). 

And sometimes I'll have later volumes in a series but not the first ones; that is generally because I started reading the series from the library, and then decided I would like it enough to own it, and started buying new ones as they came out...or that I got caught up on it via volumes from the library and then started buying new ones as they came out. 

I should also note that while I've read all of these, looking at their covers as I sifted through the piles for this post, I realized there were an awful lot of them that I have virtually no memory of at all.

Anyway, here's all the manga in those piles...

•Abenobashi: Magical Sohpping Arcade Vol. 1-2

•Animal Land Vols. 5-11 (Here's one where I read the first few volumes and was then enamored enough to start buying new volumes as they came out...and then I lost track of it. Looking it up now, I guess it only had 14 volumes, so I gave up just as it was nearing its climax, I guess. )

•Astro Boy Vols. 1-6 (These were from Dark Horse and were smaller and slimmer than the standard manga digest. I feel like everyone should read at least one volume of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, if only for, like educational purposes)

•Battle Vixens Vol. 1-5

•Cage of Eden Vols. 1-6, 11-21 (This one was recent enough that I know I've talked about it on the blog before. A comic about Japanese high schoolers fighting extinct prehistoric megafauna with rather horny art, it is one of those relatively rare works that seems like it was created just for me. There's a Lost like element, as it involves a plane crash on a remote island with an overarching mystery that unfolds clue by clure, and while the resolution left me cold, I liked the whole series up until the resolution was revealed. I started buying new copies with volume 11 and read the rest of the series. Then realized it was probably going to go out of print, so I went back and bought the first six volumes, and then I think I had trouble finding 7-10. Are you a comic shop that has them? Let me know and I'll buy 'em!)

•Elfen Lied Omnibus Vol. 1

•Flowers of Evil Vols. 3-11 (Fun fact: Volume 9 blurbs something I wrote here, and credits it to "Every Day Is Like Wednesday." My reviews have been blurbed a few times here and there, but almost always by the place the review ran, rather than by my name. Like, my Good Comics for Kids reviews get blurbed here and there, but the publishers always credit the blurb to School Library Journal, which is obviously more authoritative sounding than "J. Caleb Mozzocco", and is fewer words than "J. Caleb Mozzocco of School Library Journal's Good Comics for Kids.I think this instance was the only time EDILW was blurbed, though.)

•From Eroica With Love Vol. 1

•Full Metal Panic! Vol. 1

•Fushigi Yugi Vols. 1-4, 6-7 (Volume 5 was, randomly, on the previous bookshelf on the tour. I guess the series ran 18 volumes total, so I got less than halfway there.)

•Gals! Vol. 1

•Gothic Sports Vol. 1 (Still love that title.)

•Hetalia: Axis Powers Vols. 1-2 (Probably the weirdest manga in this post, and the hardest comic to explain to someone else.)

•High School of the Dead  Vols. 1-7 (Daisuke Sato and Shouji Sato's zombie apocalypse series, featuring a handful of Japanese high school students trying to survive the familiar scenario and distinguished by its extremely horny art. The series ended prematurely with the death of the writer. It must have been fairly popular, as there was an anime adaptation.)

•Hitomi-chan is Shy With Strangers Vol. 1

•Jim Henson's Return to Labyrinth Vol. 1

•Kare Kano Vols. 1-2

•Kimi Ni Todoke: From Me To You Vol. 1

•Land of the Blindfolded Vol. 1

•Leave it to PET! Vols. 1-3 (Volume 4, the final one in the series, was also atop the last bookshelf discussed. I liked this series a lot.)

•Lost World (A 2003 Dark Horse release of Osamu Tezuka's 1948 sci-fi riff on Arthur Conan Doyle's story, in which a rogue planet filled with dinosaurs and monsters approaches Earth and is visited by a group of explorers. Another seemingly made-for-Caleb book.)

•Madara Vol. 1

•Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (A CLAMP anthology, the first chapter is a loose riff on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.)

•Monster Collection Vol. 1

•Musashi #9 Vol. 1

•Negima! Vols. 10-11, 13, 15, 17-20, 23, 26 (This one has a pretty labored premise, following a 10-year-old boy wizard sent to Japan to teach English at an all-girls school where he's supposed to keep his magical powers a secret, but the weird student body, including a vampire and a robot, continually lure him into using them. There are elements of a harem comedy to it, but it's also a rather shonen-like fight comic, from what I remember...? Anyway, it's from Ken Akamatsu, who was responsible for the previous Love Hina, which I enjoyed. I started reading the series and, at one point, I found all of these available for half off at a used book store, so I snapped them all up. Unfortunately, I never made it through the first nine volumes, sooooo these are all still unread. I guess there were 38 volumes total. At this point, I can't imagine I will ever assemble them all and read them...) 

•Neon Genesis Evangelion Vols. 1-3 (Later printings of original manga adaptation of the anime. I originally read the manga in volumes borrowed from the library, hoping they would provide some clarity to the mysteries of the anime, particularly regarding the ending. They did not.)

•Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project Omnibus Book 1 (A manga based on a video game based on the anime; I never played the video game, and I don't think I knew there was a video game when I first read this. It features the same characters from the manga, but the tone is much lighter and more fun. I should probably reread this and then see if I can still find the rest of the series.)

•Phoenix Vol. 2: A Tale of the Future (More Tezuka; was there a volume 1? Do I own it? If I were texting you this, I would insert a shrugging emoji here.)

•President Dad Vol. 1

•Primitive Boyfriend Vol. 3

•Saving Life Vol. 1

•Soul Eater Vols. 4-6

•The Stellar Six of Gingacho Vol. 1

•Summoner Girl Vol. 1

•Swan Vol. 1

•Sweet & Sensitive Vol. 1

•Sword of the Dark Ones Vol. 1

•Triage X Vol. 1 (I checked this out as it was from the artist of Highschool of the Dead. It's about sexy, scantily clad nurses with guns fighting crime or something. I didn't care for it.)

•Tuxedo Gin Vols. 1-8 (Teenage boxer Ginji is on his way to a date with his dream girl when he's killed in a motorcycle accident. An angel tells him that, if he lives out the natural life span of an animal, then he can come back to life in his own body. He chooses his would-be girlfriend's favorite animal, an Adelie penguin, and spends his new penguin life with her, although she's unaware that he's really Ginji in penguin form. I liked this crazy-ass premise enough to stick with the series for eight volumes before losing track of it. I've always meant to return to and finish it though; it looks like it ran for a total of 15 volumes.)

•Who Says Warriors Can't Be Babes? Vols. 1-2

•Yakitate!! Japan Vol. 3 (This is a manga series about bread baking, and it's very good. One of the most magical things about manga, at least looking at it from the Western perspective, wherein most comics fall into one of a half-dozen or so genres, is that manga can seemingly be about anything and, no matter how off-beat the subject matter might be, it can still be incredibly engaging. Manga like this one are eloquent arguments that subject and genre don't matter nearly as much in the production of a good comic as the talent that goes into it.)