Isn’t it always? To your left is a panel from issue #1 of a mostly unheralded experiment in cultural interplay: Devil, a four-part, Dark Horse-published comic book miniseries created for the North American market by mangaka Torajiro Kishi and anime fandom favorite Madhouse Studios. Both entities are credited on writing and art, with Madhouse acting collectively, like in that one segment of the Batman: Gotham Knight dvd where everyone apparently had their names removed. Issue #2 is due this week, and from the looks of it I’m expecting more of the same prolix exposition and stilted dialogue — interestingly, nobody is credited with an English translation or adaptation — married to a distinctly flat visual style.

That latter aspect is what’s most interesting to me, and possibly to the creators. Kishi is best known (if at all) in North America for his full-color lesbian sex comic Maka-Maka, which picked up some good notices from Dirk Deppey (scanlated form) and Chris Mautner (2008-09 Media Blasters publication, two volumes). And while it’s tempting to observe that Kishi’s arrival on the American scene has transformed ladies kissing into smoking badasses and blazing guns and MUTANTS and VIRUSES and sperm! that makes! people! explode!, the artist himself has described the American comic book approach as “uniqueness in shadow and flattered colors,” in contrast to manga’s “detailing the lines.” Also:

I feel myself more as a creator than an artist. As a creator, I try to keep my focus on the message, and I change/adapt the style, depending the type of the story and the message… I believe that it is more important for the creator to have flexibility in his visual style in order to interpret and deliver the main theme and story of the project, rather than stick in one single style, or to try to protect some kind of ‘visual signature.’ Otherwise, I am afraid that the story itself may end up confined by my personality and patterns.

It’s worth going through the whole interview; I was especially piqued by Kishi’s decision to ensure that every issue has some conclusion to it, given that the ‘decompression’ often discussed a few years ago in collection-focused comic books seemed of a piece with action manga serialized in magazines. In necessitating rising and falling action as serving the story, in adapting his style to a ‘comic book’ approach, Kishi appears to associate broadly Western pop comics style with density, even going so far as to state that American comics are made for readers “who really want to get into the story,” which, from the tenor of the rest of his comments (and frankly the comic itself), relates visual compression with absorption – shadows and colors causing the eye to hang on the page, forcing consideration of the ‘text’ by non-writerly means.

Devil is still a pretty airy, fast-paced comic, though, and a very predictable story (so far) about a cigarette-smoking dude who doesn’t play by the rules in battling a terrible infestation turning people to monsters. As much as I appreciate Kishi’s perspective as looking in on American genre comics from probably a more visually-intensive scene overall, the experiential association I make is with the second credited author, Madhouse, which occupies a special historical place in appealing to a certain generation of anime viewers through accessible, violent works like Ninja Scroll and Wicked City, Yoshiaki Kawajiri pictures that still form the aesthetic basis for U.S.-Japan animated collaborations today — always lots of action, fantasy, even as anime in Japan becomes more and more of an ultra-specialized niche — and reflected a lot of the manga available in English translation at the time, sci-fi and shooting, often published by… Dark Horse.

In this way, the project is both up-to-the-minute and very old-fashioned, in both form and content, an every-issue-an-experience comic book comic that poses like the old anime that wagged the dog of manga. What nostalgia! What a letdown! You know who’s the target audience for this? People like me, exactly my generation of catholic nerds! I wonder if any of the Madhouse old-school are involved on that end? Like, maybe it’s Rintaro working in full script and the plot’s a huge allegory for the production of Yona Yona Penguin.

Hmm, I don’t think a lot of those last words made sense, particularly together. How about some other selections?

Krazy & Ignatz in “Tiger Tea”: I’ll buy any Krazy Kat collection, barring some catastrophic presentational defect like paper coated with flesh-eating bacteria, so this’ll be the first thing I toss around on Wednesday, a 122-page square (7.75″ x 7.75″) IDW hardcover presenting George Herriman’s famous daily sequence (previously seen in RAW) at presumably one installment per page; $12.99.

The Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol. 1: Another affordable history, one that exerts a deep fascination. Nobody made Golden Age superhero comics (or pretty much any superhero comics) like William Moulton Marston & Harry G. Peter, packed full of desire for societal transformation as heralded by personal satisfaction – real evolutionary superheroics, conflicted and sex-coded and awkward and lovely. This is the earliest stuff, 192 pages compiling pertinent portions of All Star Comics #8, Sensation Comics #1-9 and Wonder Woman #1, which should leave it substantively similar to the Wonder Woman Archives vol. 1, only in softcover; $17.99.

Sand & Fury: A Scream Queen Adventure: In which Ho Che Anderson follows the recent republication of his King – A Comics Biography with a sequel to his 2005 living dead girl project Scream Queen, this time 144 b&w and red pages in which a young woman rides with death herself. As usual, Fantagraphics has a big preview; $16.99.

Dorohedoro Vol. 1: The latest in Viz’s SigIKKI effort at combining their Signature line of higher production value, typically older-skewing manga with (Viz co-owner) Shogakukan’s alternative-flavored IKKI magazine of seinen content, often serializing free English translations online and then compiling them into books. I say alternative-flavored because a lot of the stuff I’ve seen conforms to fairly conventional narrative styles, if generally a bit off-kilter in themes and visual approach. This one’s a grime-coated slab of dark fantasy from artist Q Hayashida (if I’m not mistaken, one of relatively few women working in a squarely male-targeted iteration of the genre), in which a guy with a lizard head chomps down on satanic sorcerers to figure out what the hell happened to his life – it’s still ongoing in Japan, currently on vol. 14, so he’s probably got a ways to go. Plenty online here; $12.99.

Ristorante Paradiso: This, meanwhile, does not appear to be an IKKI release, despite being a Viz publication from a SigIKKI artist, Natsume Ono – maybe it’s something to do with the 2005-2006 Japanese serialization occurring in the infamous Manga Erotics F, a porn magazine noted for mixing in some daring, ambitious work. I like Ono’s art a lot (many samples here), although reactions to her prior Viz release, not simple, were very mixed, and this appears to be an even more constrained cut-from-life piece about a young woman in a Roman restaurant staffed by beautiful men, thinking about confronting the mother that abandoned her long ago and still has reason to deny her existence. It’s 176-pages; $12.99.

With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child Vol. 6 (of 7): Sig or IKKI or not, I do get the feeling that self-contained low-key books like Ristorante Paradiso or Fumi Yoshinaga’s All My Darling Daughters might provide some type of alternative for comics readers, in that their interpersonal dramatics, typically delivered in a relaxed, straightforward manga idiom, can augment notions of what makes for ambition in a North American medium that often seems to register non-fantastical drama as de facto ‘literary.’ Perhaps they’re more like television drama, not a common point of comparison for funnies around here, but certainly intuitive for manga like Ai Yazawa’s Nana, or this: a monthly serial aimed at adult housewives, chronicling a young mother’s care for her autistic son. Sadly, artist Keiko Tobe died last January, leaving this 528-page Yen Press release as the penultimate English volume of an unfinished project; $14.99.

MOME Vol. 17 (Winter 2010): Meanwhile, Fantagraphics’ house anthology continues to circle the atmosphere tonally, enough so that collaborators Tom Kaczynski & Dash Shaw (the latter a contributor to this site) jokingly misattribute their story to Heavy Metal. An early connection is severed as Paul Hornschemeier’s Life With Mr. Dangerous finally(!) concludes, while Kurt Wolfgang’s Nothing Eve endures. There’s also continuing stuff from Renée French, Ted Stearn and T. Edward Bak, and two bits of jungle-set slapstick grotesqueness & wounded cross-lined friendship from the excellent Olivier Schrauwen. Diverse samples; $14.99.

The Bronx Kill: Your Peter Milligan of the week, and his entry in the Vertigo Crime line of trim b&w hardcover originals, with artist James Romburger; Greek Street, Milligan’s current Plain Vanilla Vertigo creation, is also sort of a crime comic, but this looks to be more of a meta thing with a crime writer from a family of cops sinking into the mysteries of his wife’s disappearance and his grandfather’s murder. Preview; $19.99.

Batman International: Yes, Batman. They’ve heard of him in countries. The cover feature here is the 2009 Mark Waid/Diego Olmos one-off Batman in Barcelona: Dragon’s Knight, but the real attraction ought to be a set of Alan Grant works, including the 1993 Legends of the Dark Knight storyline Tao (#52-53, drawn by Arthur Ranson) and the 1998 special Batman: The Scottish Connection, featuring the talents of one “Frank Quitely,” then known for the soon vanished Flex Mentallo, and maybe not yet into his controversial period with superhero readers, which I think started with The Authority two years later and boomed enough echo that I found a copy of this thing (the Scottish thing) a few years ago and when I took it up to the counter the clerk grinned and went “yeah, I liked this guy right at the start”; $17.99.

The Muppet Show Comic Book #3: If ever there was a perfect meeting of licensed comic and Roger Langridge, it surely was this; $2.99.

Groo: The Hogs of Horder #4 (of 4): While you’re at it, even money says the kids’ll also appreciate some economic collapse by way of Sergio Aragonés & Mark Evanier. Preview; $3.99.

Prelude to Deadpool Corps #3 (of 5): This is one of those ‘different artist every issue’ deals that leads into a bigger series, of interest for having cycled through some Image founders (Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio) to now reach Philip Bond… Kyle Baker’s due for issue #5. Have a look; $2.99.

Nation X #4 (of 4): Also from Marvel – one of those anthology series grouping short stories around some greater universe matter of concern. Prior issues saw some work from manga-and-elsewhere-influenced artists (Becky Cloonan, Corey Lewis), but the draw of this finale is sheer early ’00s remembrance, reuniting Peter Milligan (him again!) with Mike & Laura Allred, his cohorts on the old new X-Force and X-Statix, high-energy mixes of superhero criticism and defiantly permanent consequences. Samples; $3.99.

Joe the Barbarian #3 (of 8): And now we check off Grant Morrison, who managed a simple but effective trick in the first two issues of this Vertigo creation: giving much of the (cannily $1.00-priced) introductory issue over to artist Sean Murphy and environments apt to devouring lonely boy protagonist Joe, then zapping him to a more literally devouring diabetic shock fantasy of war waged by his toys and pets against horrible forces for issue #2, cut into with bits of Our Boy attempting to navigate the now-elusive real-world terrain presented so bluntly the chapter before, overwritten by his internal conflict. For all its yelling, the story still simmers, but there’s lots of space left; $2.99.

Garth Ennis’ Battlefields: The Firefly and His Majesty #1 (of 3): Garth Ennis once presided over the least fantastic Vertigo concern – War Story, a set of eight self-contained comics (2001-03) in the style of historical combat fiction. In 2008, having decamped from Greater DC with The Boys, Ennis revived the approach with new publisher Dynamite Entertainment as an ongoing series of three-issue miniseries. This is the fifth in the latter line, and the first sequel, following last year’s very good ensemble amble around WWII terrain The Tankies. Artist Carlos Ezquerra returns, as do the tanks, although I’m under the impression this is more of a straight-shot cat & mouse scenario. Preview; $3.50.

Backing Into Forward: A Memoir: And finally, your not-a-comic book of the week – nothing less than a 464-page memoir by Jules Feiffer, whom I trust will not require introduction. It’s… I mean, it’s Jules Feiffer’s memoir. From Random House; $30.00.

Labels: Madhouse Studios, This Week in Comics, Torajiro Kishi