Tag Archives: reviews

What went wrong with Attack on Titan?

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Attack on Titan Vol. 1 Cover[Spoiler Alert – it’s pretty much everything.]

After 12 years of serialized manga, Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan is done. It didn’t take long for the online critics to start dissecting the controversial conclusion: Is it unsatisfying? Is it maybe a little cringeworthy?

I’d argue it’s both. But more than that, now that we can analyze the work as a whole, I’d say Attack on Titan was probably never very good to begin with. The signs were there almost from the very beginning.

It’s hard to overstate how massive a phenomenon Attack on Titan was in its early years. In Tokyo, you could hardly buy snacks at a convenience store without seeing the image of the Colossus Titan peering over Wall Maria. In hindsight, though, maybe a few such iconic images were all the manga really had going for it. » More... » →

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Horror from the East: The H.P. Lovecraft manga of Gou Tanabe

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H.P. Lovecraft manga of Gou TanabeHorror author H.P. Lovecraft never wrote with an Asian audience in mind. He identified as an Easterner, having spent most of his life in New England, but of the Far East he knew nothing. He never traveled abroad. In fact, the farthest he ever ventured from his beloved Providence was to New York, an experience that later led him to describe Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood as “a maze of hybrid squalor.”

About that word, “hybrid.” Lovecraft wasn’t one for mixing with foreigners. While the degree to which he was an overt racist is sometimes overstated, his xenophobia and his mistrust of unfamiliar cultures were real. In fact, they underlie many of his most memorable stories.

Given all of this, it may be surprising to learn that, in my opinion, some of the best recent comics adaptations of Lovecraft’s weird fiction have come from the pen of Japanese manga artist Gou Tanabe. » More... » →

It ain’t easy being a successful manga creator

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I was fascinated by the sections of Frederik L. Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics describing the breakneck, seemingly even harrowing nature of the Japanese manga business, and I wanted to learn more. I found what I was looking for in another book: Manga in Theory and Practice, by Hirohiko Araki.

This slim volume from Shonen Jump was first published in English by Viz Media in 2017 – meaning some 20 years had passed since the revised edition of Schodt’s book. Still, not much seems to have changed in terms of how manga are produced. » More... » →

Frederik L. Schodt wants to introduce you to manga

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I almost didn’t read Frederik L. Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. I’ve been reading a lot of manga lately, so a history of the subject sounded appealing. Had it not been for the Covid-19 pandemic, however, it might have been a near miss.

You see, I’d checked the book out of the public library, but the dense text and its textbook-like format, with its multiple sidebars and explanatory notes, put me off. As its due date approached, I still hadn’t read more than a few pages and I was about to return it. That’s when San Francisco issued its “stay at home” order for the pandemic and the entire library system shut down, book deposit boxes and all. As a result, Schodt’s book was mine for the duration, so I decided to put on my thinking cap and give it a whirl.

I’m glad I did. Manga! Manga! has maintained its reputation as the definitive English-language work on the subject, and despite being somewhat dated – it was the first such work ever written – it deserves its accolades. » More... » →

Frank Miller, you’re no Will Eisner (and other thoughts on the comics biz)

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I’ve had a little-worn copy of Eisner/Miller on my shelf for years. Published in 2005 by Dark Horse Comics, and to my knowledge never reprinted, it offers a dialogue between two respected cartoonists in the mold of François Truffaut’s celebrated conversations with Alfred Hitchcock. In this case, the pairing is of Will Eisner (best known for The Spirit) and Frank Miller (of Dark Knight Returns and Sin City fame).

I’d only read the book once since I bought it, 15 years ago. Considering later developments in both men’s lives, and in the American comic book business in general, I thought it deserved a second look. » More... » →

Wow! I saw Glenn Danzig’s ‘Verotika’ and trust me, you don’t have to

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DanzigIf you stumbled across this article because of a web search, chances are you already know that Glenn Danzig (he of Misfits, Samhain, and his eponymous band) has made a movie. You probably know it’s called Verotika, and that it’s based on various works published by his comic book company of the same name. And you’ve probably heard it’s bad. Like, really bad. All these things are true.

But on the last part, let’s be fair. It wasn’t any movie studio that greenlit Danzig’s passion project, nor even a schlock direct-to-VOD outfit. Rather, it was his friends at Cleopatra Records who put up the cash and gave Glenn their blessing to make the movie he wanted to make. So out of the gate, we have two handicaps: First, a budget the size of Jeff Bezos’s lunch bill. Second, the fact that Glenn Danzig’s personal aesthetic is, um, unique. » More... » →

‘Suspiria’ remake deserves its own place on the screen

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Suspiria (2018)I’ve long been a fan of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror flick Suspiria, and I’m certainly not alone. Among horror film aficionados, Suspiria is revered as much for its memorable cinematography and score as its ability to remain compelling despite having an almost nonsensical plot. So when the news came that a remake of this seminal Italian film was in the works, the natural question was, “Why?” » More... » →

First look at Adobe Edge

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Adobe Edge logoWith the rise of HTML5, a lot of folks wonder whether it might displace plug-ins such as Adobe Flash for rich Internet Application development. Adobe doesn’t see it quite that way. It sees the two technologies as complementary, and it’s putting its money where its mouth is. Adobe Edge is a new technology from Adobe Labs that aims to make it as easy to build complex animations in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript as it is to do the same in Flash. It’s still rough around the edges, but it does make it possible to do some pretty remarkable things, especially if your goal is to develop banner ads, infographics, or other short animated sequences to be embedded in Web pages. Read on for more of my first impressions of the Adobe Edge Preview.