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Saturday, April 01, 2006 ( 4/01/2006 03:12:00 PM ) Bill S. SIXTY MINUTE MANGA – Today's Episode: In which our manga explorer feels a mite claustrophobic. . . First read about Minetaro Mochizuki's Dragon Head (Tokyopop) in Heidi MacDonald’s blog, The Beat, in an entry Heidi entitled "Manga for the Rest of Us." Though the post's title assumes a certain ambivalence about manga that I obviously don't share, it managed to spark my interest in Mochizuki's work. Went scouring for it on the manga racks – a lotta books with "Dragon" in the title, doncha know – and recently was able to pick up the premiere volume.  The cover pretty much lays out what you get in the book: a hemmed-in close-up of the book's hero, Teru Aoki, looking desperate as sweat drips all over his face. The sweat turns out to be more than just a manga visual convention. The teen-aged schoolboy is one of three survivors of a railroad disaster that's occurred inside an overheated mountain tunnel. For reasons that aren't yet clear (earthquake? That flash of light that Teru noted just before the train entered the tunnel?), the tunnel has collapsed on both sides of the train, derailing it and killing most of its passengers, trapping our threesome under what appears to be tons of earth.We learn about this slowly, as Teru does, first waking to discover himself in a dark and tilted rail car full of dead bodies, then carefully exploring his surroundings as he searches for some light. An ordinary teen, Teru possesses no special knowledge or abilities to handle the seemingly hopeless crisis that he's suddenly been thrust into – it takes him more than half the book to realize that the alcohol in the club car will make a good hand-held torch, for instance – and Mochizuki convincingly communicates the kid's initial shock at being plunged into this seemingly hopeless situation. On the basis of the first volume, Dragon Head appears to be a realistic work of survival horror, though there are hints that the ten-volume story'll be headed into more fantastic areas. The work is rated "OT" for ages 16+, presumably for the gore, some in-character profanity and a story ref to the heroine's period. (Is that what constitutes "manga for the rest of us"?) Teru's fellow survivors turn out to be an unstable Columbine-y kid named Nobuo, who immediately steals Teru's flashlight and refuses to give it back, and a young girl named Seto, who spends much of the first volume unconscious. While our hero struggles to hold it together (even as we see him occasionally retreating into dreams and fantasies of being back with his family), Nobuo quickly and distressingly heads into a more ominous place. Once a victim in school, he relishes the deaths of his former classmates and returns from a trek down the tunnel with his body all covered in blood. Though we haven't seen him doing it, the impression we get is that he's just spent time battering the body of a former tormenter. Mochizuki keeps a strong visual hold on his clammy situation throughout – dark and shadow is forever threatening to impinge on our protagonists – though he perhaps repeats his core images (the disabled train, the caved-in tunnel) more than necessary. (Reflecting the story's original serial appearance, perhaps?) While believably bloody, much of Dragon's omnipresent death imagery is presented in shadow and fragments, though the story doesn't shy away from the specifics of a train filled with dead teens – at one point, for instance, the threesome moves out of the rail cars to get away from the accelerated decay that the hyper-hot tunnel has set off. Mochizuki’s art makes plenty good use of sweat-drenched close-ups and anxious expressions, but he also catches every angle of that derailed train with obsessive attention to detail. The net feel is oppressively atmospheric. I kept mentally revisiting images from this work long after I finished reading it. Manga for the Rest of Us? Let's just call it a moody and suspenseful graphic entertainment that deserves to find as many readers as possible – and leave it at that, okay? Labels: sixty-minute manga # |Friday, March 31, 2006 ( 3/31/2006 09:08:00 AM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC – With all the puppy pics that've been posted here lately, the rest of the OakHaus Zoo has doubtless been feeling quite neglected. To remedy that situation, here's a shot of Piglet the Ferret as she contemplates escaping her play pen . . .  NOTE: For a full array of companion animal pics, check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | ( 3/31/2006 07:39:00 AM ) Bill S.  THE WARMTH OF THE SUN – On the road a lot lately, so I've been spending time pulling out older CDs and getting to know 'em again. Yesterday, I brought a disc with me that I hadn’t paid much attention to before: a country anthology of Beach Boys songs entitled Stars and Stripes, Volume 1. Bought this baby several years ago for five bucks at a Big Lots; the 1996 release was not a big seller when it came out and pretty much a critical flop, too, if I remember correctly. Perhaps the most ominous aspect of this collection: it's Executive Produced by Mike Love, seen by many Beach Boys fans (myself included) as the group's reactionary, the man who did more to push our favorite group of California Boys into an irrelevant oldies act than any number of Brian Wilson meltdowns.To my ears, though, the CD isn't half bad. There are few awkward moments (though the first comes with Lorrie Morgan's album opener, "Don't Worry Baby," which attempts to negotiate a change in first person gender but doesn't quite make it). But even the journey-singer covers (Sawyer Brown's "I Get Around," Toby Keith's apt-but-unsurprising "Be True to Your School," and so on) carry enough left-over good vibrations to get by. And the set has several tracks that do more than just make you think good thoughts about the original BBoys catalog: Junior Brown's cover of "409" slips his characteristic slithery guitar work into the mix; Willie Nelson's remake of "Warmth of the Sun" turns out to be beautifully suited to his more introspective crooning style, while Doug Supernaw's version of "Long Tall Texan" (a non-original that the Boys themselves covered on their first In Concert album) is just plain fun. I also enjoyed Kathy Troccoli's "I Can Hear Music," in large part because I think the 20/20 track is one of the band's underappreciated cuts. The surviving Boys (Brian & Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine & relief hitter Bruce Johnston) appear on most of the album's tracks doing their trademark harmonies, but really the focus remains on the lead country singers. That shift in focus may be part of the reason that the album didn't do better: for all their internecine squabbles, the Beach Boys sound was a group sound, the work of a bunch of buddies getting together, not some singer with backup. There never was a Stars and Stripes, Volume 2, though, and it's probably a good thing. I have to admit I had a good time singing along to Vol. One in the car, though . . . NOTE: Looking to see if there ever was a Volume Two that I’d somehow missed, I came upon this spiffy (if out-of-date) critical overview of Beach Boys albums by Wilson & Alroy. # | Thursday, March 30, 2006 ( 3/30/2006 07:04:00 AM ) Bill S. OR FOR THAT MATTER, NEWSPAPERS . . . – Following my post on our local paper's Sunday funnies shrinkage, I was interested to note Tom Spurgeon's piece this week on the Sacramento Bee's recent decision to slash its Sunday comics section. Ten years from now, does anybody expect to see the funnies as a regular Sunday feature? # | Wednesday, March 29, 2006 ( 3/29/2006 05:37:00 PM ) Bill S.  "LIKE BEACH . . . LIKE EAT . . ." – Is Zombie Tales: The Dead the concluding volume in Boom! Studios' entertaining anthology series? Probably not, but it still feels like it – in part because two of its serial stories (Giffen/Lim's "Dead/Deader/Deadest Meat" and Cosby/Moon's "I, Zombie") read like they've reached their respective conclusions. In the first, the zombie narrator's brain cells have so deteriorated that by chapter's end he can no longer recount his own story, while the second gives us a happy ending of sorts as our title hero finds his own small version of a nuclear family. Nuthin' like a little brain-dead romance to make a zombie apocalypse endurable . . .Watching the book's talent continue to wring fresh stories out of zombiedom provides its own small pleasures, though. I'm especially enamored with Michael Alan Nelson & Lee Moder's dark take on Catholic religio conspiracies (timely, wot?), "The Miracle of Bethany," while the central joke in John Rogers & Ed Tadim's "Four Out of Five" elicited one of those Why didn't I think of that? chuckles for the way it takes a basic part of the zombie death-style and plays with it. Less successful, though admirably genre-bending, were Johanna Stokes & Cynthia Martin's attempt at an animal zombie story (a decent idea that isn't as believably realized as, say, Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson's wonderful "Stray") and Jim Pascoe, Don Simpson & Chris Moreno's "A Game Called Zombie," which attempts to blend zombie and ghost stories but doesn't quite give us enough to accept the full mash-up. Both stories arguably chomp off more than they can chew, though you've gotta admire the effort. From the ads in the back of the book, it looks like most of Zombie's talents are switching their allegiances to Lovecraftian horrors with the upcoming Cthulhu Tales. Lovecraft is trickier to translate effectively into comics than a plain ol' visceral undead flesh-eater, but it can be done. (Just ask Mike Mignola.) I'm looking forward to seeing what the usual suspects conjure up . . . # | ( 3/29/2006 09:21:00 AM ) Bill S. "IT'S WHAT WE DO!" – With The Sopranos in the first two-thirds of what promises to be its final season, critic Mark Zoller Seitz, has been doing weekly blogging on the series' eps. Some pretty smart stuff going on over at The House Next Door, including in the Comments section. Definitely worth a read for Sopranos or teevee criticism buffs . . . # | Tuesday, March 28, 2006 ( 3/28/2006 03:24:00 PM ) Bill S. "BLOOD'S THICKER THAN MUD" – I should go back and read the Comments more consistently: just learned that my brother, under the name Larry "Buzz" Buchanan, has begun his own personal web log, the appealingly named Stripe the Gremlin. Above all, don't get him wet! # | ( 3/28/2006 11:57:00 AM ) Bill S. "AS LONG AS THERE ARE STARS ABOVE YOU" – Still tryin' to wrap my head around HBO's Big Love, but the show's definitely got me in its thrall. The story of hard-working Salt Lake City polygamist Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) and his ultra-extended family is a tricky blend of the comic and disturbing – with the latter achieving prominence in the person of seedy ol' Harry Dean Stanton's Roman, patriarch of an isolated Utah compound and father to Bill's second wife Nicollette (Chloe Sevigny, playing ultra-needy). Watching Stanton wrap his tonsils around "Big Rock Candy Mountain" at his grandson's birthday party was creepy in more ways than I can count. And though Paxton's more mainstreamed polygamist papa is depicted as the less shady of two family heads, as this week's ep made clear, he's also not averse to playing the threatening patriarchal card. Not the most endearing Teevee Hubby around – three entries in and my wife has already announced that she's giving up on the show – but I'm curious as to where creators Mark V. Olsen & Will Scheffer plan to take this assertively off-kilter series . . . # | Monday, March 27, 2006 ( 3/27/2006 05:55:00 AM ) Bill S. READING HABITS OF A MOB WIFE – Looks like Carmela Soprano is making her way through Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone books. Wonder if she's attacking the female shamus series alphabetically? # | ( 3/27/2006 05:35:00 AM ) Bill S. "NOT A PEOPLE PERSON" – So that was not Atrios on last night's The West Wing? I feel vaguely cheated – if they can give us the real-life Jon Bon Jovi, why not the real Eschaton? Still, watching the members of the Vinick team bemusedly deal with the presence of the poli-blogosphere was amusing: lest we forget, it was Josh who once squandered valuable office time tilting against a gossipy web log. Fun to see these seasoned politicos warily attempting to work with this wild-&-wooly medium. The show's finish is on the horizon. Wife Becky is promising to get teary-eyed when they wrap up John Spencer's plotline . . . # | Sunday, March 26, 2006 ( 3/26/2006 11:41:00 AM ) Bill S. SHRINKAGE – Recently, our local paper, the Bloomington-Normal Daily Pantagraph, did a major job on the Sunday comics, cutting the six-page weekly section down to a four-page supplement – with one of the pages devoted entirely to a local kids' feature called "The Flying Horse." The change left three broadsheet pages for a total of nineteen color strips, resulting in panels about the size of what you'd see in a manga digest. The act of miniaturization arguably doesn’t do too much damage to strips like "Dilbert" or "BC," but it's sure messed up more fully rendered series. For one thing, the smaller size makes it harder for color to be properly aligned, which subsequently blurs the imagery. This week's "For Better of Worse," for instance, featured an extended wordless sequence at the dentist. The misapplied color totally muddied up artist Lynn Johnston's deft visual storytelling. Remember when "Calvin And Hobbes" creator Bill Watterson got publicly self-righteous over the diminution of the Sunday funnies, demanding that his strip received a half-page because the smaller size stripped his cartoon dinosaurs of their grandeur? Not sure even Bill knew how bad things were gonna get for ye Sunday funnies . . . # | |
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