The 2000s have been thought of as a “manga boom” in the US. Well, that’s true in comparison to the ’90s, but North American manga sales have never come close to the numbers in Japan. Sales of manga — and books in general — have dropped the past few years, but there are signs that the market has stabilized.
Deb Aoki, who writes about manga for About.com, joins us again this week to discuss the reasons why publishers hesitate to put out new manga titles, why Jmanga died and Manga Reborn’s business model is imperfect, and what bright spots there are for the future.
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Yet again, Kumar and Dana go all nationalistic to discuss another Canadian icon: the best there is at what he does, th’ ol’ Canucklehead, Wolverine, bub. First on the chopping block is Wolverine (1982) by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, a comic which tries to not be paint-by-numbers, but ends up being little else. And, Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, which was apparently spawned from a universe in which neither paint nor numbers exist.
You’ve probably heard of Helen Keller, one of the first (but not the first!) blind & deaf Americans to become educated. If so, then you probably also know the name Annie Sullivan – Helen’s teacher. Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller, by Joseph Lambert, is a graphic novel biography more of Annie than Helen, taking advantage of the comics medium to show symmetry in the lives and situations of the two women. It’s also pretty awesome.
Occasionally our friend Dale Wilson in L.A. sends Mulele some comics he’s come across, and we like to talk about them on the show. This episode’s batch tends to lean violent…including two involuntary arm removals. Mulele and Tim comment on:
In Chris Reynolds’ “Mauretania” comics, characters bake interesting pies, delight in eerie shops, join trendy police forces, and report on events they will never remember. Stories drift from point to point like dreams. School starts and a kid on summer vacation somehow doesn’t notice. How can this be real? Real it may be, but it takes intuition, not rational thought, to take anything away from these books. Tim and Kumar ponder 
, The Dial and Other Stories, and the graphic novel 
.
When you think of ’80s comics, Berke Breathed’s Bloom County is one that belongs in the pantheon with Watchmen and Dark Knight. It pushed many boundaries on the ever-conservative funnies page, from modern dating to issue advocacy, balancing cumudgeonliness with exuberance and hope. But how much of a hurdle are the pop culture references for modern readers? Is it still worth reading? Tim and Patrik dust off their memories and try to look at this classic strip with new eyes.