Category: Comics

Ongoing Investigations: Case #214

2 Comments

narutaki I started reading the new Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin comic The Private Eye (issues 1-2). The distribution of this comic is worth talking about. It is released digitally as a download of either PDF, CBR or CBZ. And it is a pay-what-you-want pricing model.

I love that the art takes into account that screens are vertical and not horizontal like a book. So when you look at a page at maximum size it literally fills the entire screen.

The setting of Private Eye caught my attention, it is a post-internet future but not a post-apocalyptic dealie. Technology has advanced in different areas while the internet has died out after “the cloud” spewed out every bit of everyone’s information into the world for all to see 60 years prior. The aesthetic is futuristic such as changing your appearance with the push of a button but mixed with things like rotary phones. The world is such that identity can be very malleable.

P.I. is hired to dig into his client’s past to see if he can unearth all the dirt she tried to bury, but before he can even start she gets murdered. Her sister, a former client, ropes him into finding her killer. A simple mystery setup with all the peripherals make it engaging.

sep-manga

I’m going to pretend that we have a huge dedicated audience that constantly asks us to do things because they love us so much. (As opposed to a small audience that only occasionally asks us to do things as horrible jokes.)  I’m then going to pretend that this fictitious vocal fan base asks for my Ongoing Investigations entries to have a consistent theme to all the items I talk about. And since I’m making this up whole cloth they have also asked for a week were I talk about nothing but non pornographic Type-Moon doujinshi.

Since everyone asked for it (no one) here it is.

If anyone has been around in Type-Moon fandom long enough they know there is one simple phrase that can spark such fierce arguments that it has reached divine meme status. That phrase is “Shiki Can Kill Servants.” The comic that has inspired this phrase more than anything else is the ongoing doujinshi series T-Moon Complex X. I finally sat down and read the current seven books that have been released as it seemed like something I should do.

T-Moon Complex X is the classic Japanese Vs. formula. You take two series and mix them together, have the heroes meet and clash, then introduce a big bad guy they both fight so they have to put aside their differences. In that respect it follows the formula to the tee. Team Shiki clashes with Team Shiro but they have to stop their bickering when they discover that a certain dead apostle has tapped into to a resurrected Holy Grail.

And that also means it goes into full on fan fiction mode. Who would win in a fight between Shiki and Shiro? What if crazy powerful magic circuited Ciel were a Master? Could Saber defeat Nrvnqsr Chaos? What sort of food would kid Gilgamesh buy everyone for dinner? Would Bazett instantly fall in love with Shiki if they ever met?

I did notice that team Fate/Stay Night sort of gets the short end of the stick as opposed to the powerhouses that are Team Tsukihime. Shiki kills Berserker like Hercules was a jobber in professional wrestling. And most of the important villains are Tsukihime characters who slap around Fate characters for the most part. Hell a bunch of Fate/Zero characters mostly show up so they can die a few pages later. But so is the preference of the author. At least everyone get a little chance to shine on both sides.

The major question with this series is do you consider an evening of browsing fanfiction.net a fun diversion or a prison sentence for a minor vandalism charge. Because this is what it reads like. It is a good piece of fan fiction but it reads like fan fiction none the less. It is sort of wish-fulfillment with a plot to hold it all together. If you can handle that then it is all fun.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

Continue reading →

Free Comic Book Day NYC 2013: Day Tripper

1 Comment

hisuicon Only the naive, the jaded, and the unethical can easily say, “I’m going to get into comics and not spend a lot of money.” Therefore any chance to save money or help narrow down what you want to follow is extremely valuable. Free Comic Book Day is the next best way to find what to read outside of a generous friend with a sizable and eclectic collection. Every year it is a great chance for new fans to dip their toes in the water and see what they like as well a prime opportunity for fans who have been out of the game for a while to see what has changed since they left.

If your lucky enough to have multiple comics stores in your area you can hit them all up and get a nice selection of titles to read. Living in NYC let us make a long day trip of our journey but even having one store in your neighborhood that participates will let you get a handful of titles to peruse for nothing at all. (Good and generous souls will also pick up some items at any store they visit to make the day worth it to any owners participating in the event.) Either way it lets you expedience some comics you may not have read otherwise and broaden your horizons.

narutaki FCBD in NYC ends up being a special all-day event if you want it to be. Hint: we want it to be.

Any event that encourages spending all day getting, reading, and talking about comic books is alright by me. This year we went all out making a pilgrimage to many of the fine stores in Manhattan. The stack of comics by the end of it was neigh ridiculous.
Ya know, next year maybe I’ll try to do this with Brooklyn stores, too!

hisuiconI think the most interesting thing for me with FCBD with the wide variety of titles you can sample. There was your standard titles from the Big Two and some other smaller superhero comics of course. That is always what you think of when American comics come up. But there was a wide variety of titles that came along with any standard pack for FCBD as well and some unique titles that individual stores gave out. I read everything from classic comics like Prince Valiant and Buck Rogers to more offbeat titles like Marble Season, Old Soldiers, and The Steam Engines of Oz. It is interesting to see what people show you when they put their best foot forward (theoretically at least.)

I was fascinated to see how differently all the titles read in relation to each other. Prince Valiant and Buck Rogers were COMPLETELY unlike anything else in the lineup. They were clearly from eras of storytelling that just don’t exist anymore. The panel layout and narrative pacing exemplify the period that each of them was pulled from. As Narutaki said, “These are compressed stories in ways even beyond modern comics.” At the same tim, a story like Marble Season has a stream of consciousness storytelling that reads more like someone telling you a story in real life as opposed to reading a novel or watching a movie. At the same time Old Soldiers and The Steam Engines of Oz read like standard American comics but have content that was wildly divergent and don’t contain Capes.

Also all the free comics made me realize one thing. Judge Dredd can be a REALLY goofy series. Like you have to do a double take goofy. I’m sure he is a Batman like character that is very dependent on who is writing him and when they are writing him but that does not erase the fact that he was like clown shoes in the version I read.

narutaki FCBD should be when you drag your friends along and pull them into reading comics for the rest of their lives (or for one day). I’m sure few people take part in the event if they don’t have friends already in the hobby, but maybe I’m wrong. And I also wonder how often it sticks for new readers. However, there is one group of people this seems ideal for comic readers who also have kids.

When possible, it is encouraged to spend a little at the places you get free comics. As little as buying a floppy issue is enough to show support and, hey, a lot of places have a sale on FCBD making it even easier to do so.

Continue reading →

Ongoing Investigations: Case #211

Leave a comment

I did not realize until recently that Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn episode 6 came out. The bloom has really fallen of that rose. When the first few volumes of Gundam Unicorn came out everyone was talking about it for a few days leading up to its release. It was an event. Now I see more talk about the latest episode of Oreimo. I guess the gap between episodes has really killed the enthusiasm. I think episode four did not help the matter.

Two Worlds, Two Tomorrows continues the feeling that this is the most accurate Tomino style fan fiction you will ever get without it actually be written by the Bald Wizard himself. It starts with a big battle as part of an unusual alliance, then moves into people switching sides and betraying each other, main characters go around making philosophical speeches sometimes to an audience and other times to people at gunpoint, and it ends with a race to the final location of Laplace’s Box with a familiar interrupting cow appearing at the end. At the same time all the old people in power plan to do whatever it takes to keep the status quo, all the radicals are going to do whatever it takes to realize their mad dreams, and everyone else is stuck in the middle trying to find something that does not get everyone killed. Classic Tomino.

This is a solid penultimate episode. It begins to lay down all the elements that will be resolved in the final episode. They still have not revealed what exactly Laplace’s Box is or the actual identity of Full Frontal. Those are the two big mysteries everyone watching wants to know. My other question is how much Newtype Voodoo magic is going to win the day and how much will piloting be the deciding factor. If this is a true Tomino tribute then some mystical magical psychoframe sorcery is going to be on display.

I’m really just waiting for someone to kill Angelo already. He is clearly the Jerid Messa of Unicorn so he could at least have the common curtsey to die early on in the next episode so we can get to the real fights. Marida Cruz is the only member of Team Banagher that I am seriously concerned about. Will they kill the last of the Elpeo Ple clones or will they let this one-off the hook? (Unless you consider Gundam Evolve 10 canon.)

By the way here is an article of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere if you want a better understanding of what the writers were making allusions to in this episode.

Audrey Burne is still the best character. She does not pilot a mobile suit or beat people down with her fists. She just has an immense presence which is a striking as those of the other main characters. When she talks people listen. But she is not someone who just barks orders at people. She takes in what everyone is saying and often can be silent. But when she is needed to step into a conversation she has a royal presence that is undeniable. If anything makes her a non-Tomino character it is she is such a clearheaded woman even when everyone else is losing their minds. If you are going to break the Tomino mold that is the best way to do it. With one of the strongest women in the UC timeline.

Oh well. It is going to be awhile until we get the final volume of Unicorn even if it is released without a single delay. So it will be a year before we can get Somewhere Over the Rainbow and see the end of the series. I wonder if the release of the last episode will bring back some of that initial enthusiasm or if the lag between episodes has just proven to be too great in this era where you get episodes near instantly.

sep-manga

 I picked up the first volume of sci-fi mecha manga Knights of Sidonia. The aliens they are fighting have quite a horror, grotesque bent to them. The entire setting has a weird, off-kilter feeling; a pretty strange place where the food supply only allows for people to eat once a week. Everyone looks human but they all act very oddly.

The main character is purposely socially awkward for sure, and boy is he. The rest of the cast aren’t awkward per se but are written in an awkward manner. It felt so stilted that it was difficult to connect with any of the cast; they feel so artificial but that may be the point the more I mull it over.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

Continue reading →