I swear I didn’t read A Thousand Crows’ review of Supermarket, before writing my own. I especially didn’t read the comments below the post, where somebody named AngelVision wishes that the series had been six or eight chapters. Honest. Anyway, here’s an excerpt, with which I’m in complete agreement:

The story itself has a anti-consumerism tilt to it, but it’s mostly violence, action, and humor. I really loved the world that everything was set in, with all it’s towering buildings and beautiful toxic sunsets, and I could look at Kristian Donaldson’s depictions of it forever. What didn’t feel as strong to me were the characters inhabiting that world: they didn’t make a huge impression on me. That’s not to say that Supermarket isn’t entertaining - it’s awesome - but there are better examples of Brian Wood’s writing. …more

Chris Arrant, on the other hand, liked the book a lot — enough to place it at number six in his top graphic novels of 2006 list.

Like me, Ian Brill was taken with the book right up until the very end, and has particularly interesting things to say about Wood’s ability to build a character, and then to build a story and a thematic structure around that character’s, um, characteristics:

There’s a scene early on in Supermarket that defines the book’s star, Pella Suzuki, and the book itself. Coming downstairs for breakfast the teenager lectures her mother about the plight of farmers who never see any real money from the billion-dollar coffee industry. After taking that first sip in the morning Pella’s sermon is interrupted so she can ask her mother “Is this Sumatran? S’good.” That uneasy co-existence of two contradictory notions, enjoying the spoils of the industrial world while still knowing the injustices behind those spoils, is at the heart of both Pella’s character and the book. Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson have created a comic that stars a would-be revolutionary who decries her urban surroundings while reveling in the almost sci-fi aesthetic of today’s cities and their cultures.
…more

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This is a follow-up to my feature review of Planetes Book 1 by Makoto Yukimura

On SF Site, Susan Dunman had this to say:

As author and illustrator, Makoto Yukimura creates a believable near-future that’s filled with the excitement of discovery on both personal and planetary levels. It doesn’t shrink from the many dangers faced by those exploring space, yet the overall tone is upbeat and positive, assuring those with big dreams that the adventure is worth the risks. In true manga style, the book reads from back to front, right to left. Because it’s so easy to get involved with this story, you may forget you’re reading the book backwards. That’s a very good sign. …more

And from the late, lamented Ninth Art comics review blog:

One of the most engaging aspects of PLANETES is how much emphasis is placed on the danger of living and working in space. Between showing how the lower gravity can alter your muscles and bone structure, to the radiation levels that cause cancer, to the just unbearable fear of the vastness of space, Yukimura presents space as a hostile and dangerous place in a way that most science fiction makes a point of avoiding. …more

Khaled Abou Alfa loves the book, but isn’t a fan of its American publisher, TokyoPop, better known, perhaps, for flooding the market with less literate works:

I have no idea how this little gem of a comic got through the Viz and Dark Horse net to be honest, because it is easily one of the best manga series I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of manga series. …more

The Village Idiot Savant picked up the book on the cheap. Lucky:

You never quite know what you’ll find in the bookstore bargain bin. Most times, it’s really marked down overruns that nobody wants; and on that rare occasion, you get a little gem whose value outshines its full price counterparts. …more

Otaku Champloo finds the book to be deep, indeed:

I may sound like a lunatic to say this, but reading Planetes is like reading Descartes and Marcel. It talks about man’s journey: from his self-centered beginnings, to one that is truly historical. Before this leaps into a philosophical paper (which I myself am evading as my head still hurts from last semester’s reflections), maybe we could place ourself further into the manga by looking at the importance of space. …more

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A while back, I loaned my fifteen-year-old niece a copy of Demo: The Collected Edition by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, and she loved it. She loved it, loved it, loved it (as did I). Or, at least, she said she loved it. Who can know? Maybe she was just humoring me. I had been trying to foist Western comics on her for several years, with no success. In her natural habitat, undisturbed by unclish enthusiasms, she’s a fan of xxxHOLiC and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, etc. Now I’m wondering if I’ll give her my copy of Supermarket, by Wood and Kristian Donaldson (who is sort of a latter-day Cloonan, drawing the same slouching, sneering, manga-influenced-by-way-of-Paul-Pope, too-cool-to-be-hip cigarette smokers with consciences, utilizing the same fat, confident linework that Cloonan and Pope made famous, all elegant and choppy, realistic and design-y, Vertigo and Kodansha, at the very same time).

I think I probably won’t.

It’s not that the thing doesn’t have its moments and its qualities. The first chapter, in fact, rocks. In it, we meet our protagonist, Pella, a self-righteous, cynical, but unselfaware teenaged girl from the richest side of a scary future metropolis, the “Supermarket” of the title, rendered by Kristian in gorgeous neon noir, a place and a time exactly halfway between right now and Blade Runner. By the end of that chapter, Pella finds herself homeless and in hiding from the most dangerous criminal gangs in the city, cut off from her fundage and her family, and required, simply, to stay alive. On the last page of that chapter, she’s rolling into the worst parts of town on a dark, crowded bus, with the drunks and the punks and the other anonymous losers who populate all “less than Platinum” levels of this socioeconomically segregated city, trying to figure out what has happened to her, and what she should do next. We have been given a glimpse at just enough of her spoiled self-righteousness to want to watch her suffer and learn. We have been given a glimpse at just enough of her intelligence and conscientiousness to want to watch her thrive.

“Oh boy,” I said to myself. “This is going to be good.”

And for a while, it is.

From a certain point forward, though, you find yourself watching a third-rate Quentin Tarantino film on paper, this agonizingly choreographed action sequence after that agonizingly choreographed action sequence, and then another and another, each ratcheting up the artificial “Oh My Fucking God” factor one mechanical notch at a time. There’s a lot of raw material here — the kind of High Concept Hollywood pitch fodder that works well when described in the most nugatory way, but only then. The Yazuka with a Samurai sword who poses, and says, calmly, “Submit to me,” before he charges, not waiting for a response. The bloodthirsty underworld gang comprised of Swedish porn models. Etc. Blah. High Concept can’t always carry the day. High Concept can’t ever carry the day. Just ask the guys who made Snakes on a Plane. It’s always about the execution.

Don’t get me wrong: on a moment-by-moment basis, every page, every panel, is eye-poppingly well-crafted, even the most violent ones (maybe especially those). The fatal flaw here is hardly a lack of what we call, in the technical parlance, chops. Wood and Kristian have both, assuredly, got chops, and chops to spare. On the strength of his other projects, Brian Wood is one of my favorite writers. Kristian Donaldson, whom I’d never heard of before this, knocked me out. That’s an artist I’ll be watching in the future, for sure. If the last chapter or two of Supermarket had been stretched out into, say, three or four more, allowing for better character development and more thoroughly extrapolated stakes-raising, if the slam-bang action sequences had been less archly imagineered, if the ending hadn’t been entirely too easy and abrupt after all that rigamarole, etc., then I’d probably have been able to recommend this book to you with enthusiasm.

It’s not, I should mention, a complete load of crap, like so many contemporary action-adventure comics. There was almost something very special here, it just wasn’t given the space it needed to come together at the very end.

(The image on this page is a detail from Supermarket, copyright (c) 2006 Brian Wood, Kristian Donaldson, and Idea and Design Works LLC)

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I read, but couldn’t think of anything much to say about, Jason’s The Living and the Dead (note: this does not mean that I did not enjoy the book). Fortunately, other writers on the web, as usual, are on the job, with thoughts to spare.

It took me a while to pick an excerpt from One of the Jones Boys’ excellent discursive review, which delves into the history and anthropological implications of the zombie genre, as well as its recent resurgence in comics of all kinds, before getting down to the specific book in hand, but I finally settled on this one:

[…] Jason’s characters are uniquely well-placed to survive the apocalypse. The devil himself could appear on the page, rape a thousand schoolchildren and destroy the universe. At most, Jason’s characters might show a few flying sweat beads in alarm; the final panel would matter-of-factly show the earth exploding, seen from outer space. Dealing with a horde of zombies out for their flesh? Child’s play. …more

Jones writes the kind of criticism I’d like to be able to provide, here, at GNR — connecting the contextual dots around the endeavor in an unpretentious, meaningful way, while, at the same time, doing the simpler work of a thumbs-up thumbs-down analysis, too. He is, in other words, one of the best critics on the scene, making my own efforts look weak and drab by comparison. I must unpleasantly destroy this man at some point, if man he truly be.

Over at the Daily Cross Hatch, Brian Heater complains a bit about how quickly the book can be read, at a flimsy fifty mostly-wordless pages, though his final judgment falls onto the “positive” side of the scale:

Prostitutes, shitty jobs, blood thirsty zombies—by the end, all of the pieces fit neatly in place, an achievement that has as much to do with Jason’s skill as a storyteller, as it does with the ultimate dose of earnest humanity that he is able to bestow upon his undead subjects. …more

On the other hand, Dylan Kurlansky, writing for the collaborative pop culture review site Undress Me Robot, enjoys the silence:

It is a nearly silent book (there are only seven lines of dialogue total), which in and of itself can be dangerous. However, Jason’s minimalist artwork shoulders the burden and soars. …more

And, in what is becoming an “Elsewhere on the Web” tradition, the indefatigable Tom Spurgeon has posted an insightful but brief interview with everybody’s favorite deadpan Norwegian cartoonist, which includes several full-page scans from the book.

SPURGEON: What effect did you hope to achieve through the silent movie-style panels of dialog, as opposed to, say, going with an all-silent approach? Why is that effect dropped after a certain point?

JASON: I’ve already done completely wordless strips, like “Shhh!”, so that was no longer a challenge. I wanted some dialog in the beginning, mostly to say something about the characters. After that introduction though that was no longer necessary. When the zombies show up it’s pretty much all action, one big chase sequence, that worked better with no words. …more

I said I couldn’t think of much to say about the book. I did think of one thing. I love the casual, distracted way the zombies eat human flesh — like they’re munching on popcorn while staring at a movie screen. I think you’ll agree that that’s not enough to hang a review on. But that’s all I got! Woe!

(The image in this post is a detail from The Living and the Dead, copyright (c) 2007 Jason)

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PlanetES: Book 1 by Makoto Yukimura inhabits that rarest of niches in comics, the so-called “hard” science fiction niche, which is to say that real-world scientific discourse provides the foundation for Yukimura’s extrapolative storytelling. As such, the book will remind you more of a Gregory Benford or Frederick Pohl novel than Sailor Moon, or even Star Wars. Key moments hinge on such obscure concepts as “Kessler’s Syndrome,” say, or the effects of the moon’s gravity on sunspot radiation flare-ups. That doesn’t mean that you’ll find only dry edutainment here, though. It’s true that our protagonists, Yuri, Fee, and Hachimaki, young astronauts assigned the most tedious job in space — trolling for, picking up, and recycling the bits of wreckage and deliberate litter that have, by the middle of next century, accumulated in Earth orbit, thanks to the over-commercialization of near outer space — see very little pulse-pounding action. But neither does anybody else. It’s just not that kind of a future. Instead, our heroes fight their way through such real and human challenges as osteoporosis (caused by living in zero gravity for extended periods of time), boredom, nicotine addiction, the emotional damage caused by recently-deceased and/or otherwise problematic family members, and the frustrations of unmet career potential.

In other words, PlanetES is utterly gripping.

Yuri’s story arc, in particular, represents one of the most mature, nuanced, and subtle portrayals of bereavement that I’ve seen in any comic, of any genre.

There is some small amount of the old slam-bang razzle-dazzle, too. The female member of the team, Fee, headlines the book’s sole action/adventure storyline, semi-accidentally saving the world from an eco-terrorist plot — but only because she needed a good place to relax and smoke a cigarette.

But the real story here is Hachimaki’s outsized ambition, which everyone (including Hachimaki) agrees will only lead him to disappointment and self-destruction someday. We don’t get as far along in the development of his story arc as we do the others, but that’s perfectly appropriate for the hero of this kind of limited but serialized work, whose arc has to stretch across the entire set of books, and come to a resolution in the final volume.

The artwork is realistic (for manga), attractive, and effective. I am prone to get confused reading manga, occasionally losing the through-line on this or that sequence of images on some arbitrary page or another, probably just because I’m not used to the right-to-left reading pattern, but that didn’t happen even once, reading Planetes. Occasionally — like when Hachimaki walks out onto an “ocean” on the moon with a strange girl he just met — the art can be downright astounding in its quiet power. You can appreciate, in these moments, the blank silence that, statistically speaking, anyway, comprises the entire universe. Everything we care about, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, is so rare, so unique, and so tiny, in the face of the light-years and light-years and light-years of emptiness around us, that we really don’t even count.

And that’s beautiful. So is this book.

Highly recommended.

(The image in this post, a detail from PlanetES Book 1, is copyright (c) 2007 Makoto Yukimura. The English text contained within said image is copyright (c) 2007 TokyoPop)

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