Last week was a slow one for me, comics-wise. My main pleasure was this – finally tracking down a copy of issue #7 of Viz’s old release of Cobra, a Buichi Terasawa manga from the late ’70s/early ’80s about a secret agent-type space hero with a cannon for an arm. This was during Viz’s period of releasing portions of manga series as perfect bound miniseries (at higher prices – Cobra ran $3.25 per issue) which would then sometimes get collected as softcover books, though not in this case. This was also a time of fairly aggressive framing of ‘manga’ as akin to Western comics, so a lot of chest-beating action stuff or fantasy work got translated, all the better if it had some awareness in anime fandom, which Cobra did among miscellaneous sci-fi fans (already aging a bit) who maybe traded tapes of the 1982-83 television anime.

Of course, Cobra ran for 18 volumes in Japan, so Viz’s 12 comic books didn’t get very far into the story. Terasawa would eventually develop into an illustration-oriented, rather cheesecake-y comics artist, but this ’70s stuff bears a lot of Osamu Tezuka’s stamp, in that he started out apprenticing in Tezuka’s studio. This was all part of a plan to somehow become a film director — he did eventually direct some of the anime based on his own comics — which contrasts a bit in approach with the movie pitch comics of today. This is an older kind of comic, even in terms of English adaptation – Marv Wolfman is credited with such, as another means of familiarizing North American audiences with Japanese comics. He has a small essay in issue #7 about discovering the old Cobra tapes while watching anime with Chris Claremont and James D. Hudnall, the latter a prominent figure in manga-in-English, having been (among other designations) one of the souls present for Naoki Urasawa’s first appearance in English in the form of the urban military action series Pineapple Army, though Urasawa (still years off from Monster) was best known as a popular sports mangaka, and anyway was working from scripts by Kazuya Kud? of Mai the Psychic Girl, whose presence I imagine was the real draw (if indeed there was any; the series didn’t run for too long).

And yes, I know I can just buy all these old comics off the internet — issues of Cobra aren’t particularly rare —  but hunting around for missing pieces is part of the fun for me. Many of the following selections are, however, very self-contained or now easier and more collected than ever:

Blacksad Vol. 1: For example, this new 8 3/8″ x 10 7/8″ Dark Horse hardcover edition of one the relatively few European pop comics to capture a bunch of attention in the English language over the last decade. It’s a lushly mounted funny animal noir series from Juan Díaz Canales & Juanjo Guarnido, initially released in North America by iBooks, which went out of business before the 2005 third album could be released. This collects all three extant books, designated vol. 1 in recognition of a vol. 4 hitting the French market later this year. Preview; $29.99.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle #6: Only the latest from Michael Kupperman, whom I trust requires no introduction at the moment. Preview; $4.95.

Meta 4 #1 (of 5): Being a new Image series from artist Ted McKeever; I haven’t seen much from him save for small pieces in Marvel’s assorted b&w superhero experiments of late, but I could be forgetting something. Image and McKeever, however, have been steadily releasing the artist’s older works in small hardcover editions for a while now, so it makes sense to see a full-blown new series, an ‘allegorical’ thing involving an astronaut with no memory and a mighty woman dressed as Santa Claus, and their relationship in NYC. Preview; $3.99.

The Grasshopper and the Ant: For anyone who missed out on the Denis Kitchen edition of this 1960 Harvey Kurtzman Esquire satire-of-working-and-aging from eight or so years back, here’s a new 10″ x 10″ edition from Boom! Studios to fill you in. Preview; $25.00.

Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman: Your Golden Age of Reprints selection of the week — and do note that Hermes Press is starting up both a dailies collection for The Phantom this week along with a ($60.00) line of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Sundays, while IDW has vol. 10 of the collected Dick Tracy, so this isn’t a lacking Wednesday by any means — a 240-page softcover collection/autopsy of the Superman creators’ 1948 superhero follow-up, a comedian-turned-vigilante character who existed in comic book and newspaper strip form. Edited by Mel Gordon & Thomas Andrae. From Feral House; $24.95.

The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics: And this is the new Craig Yoe project from IDW, a 304-page brick of children’s comics (including Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Walt Kelly, Carl Barks, John Stanley, Jules Feiffer, Dan DeCarlo, Frank Frazetta and others) that seems primed as a companion for/response to last year’s The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, at least on first glance; $34.99.

Battle Angel Alita: The Last Order Vol. 13: Ah, speaking of old-timey Viz manga releases! This is one of the great survivors, Yukito Kishiro’s long-running bloody cyborg epic (The Last Order is the second series; the original Battle Angel Alita ran a prior nine books all its own, for a total of 22), which has since mutated into an extensive fight book, one I haven’t kept up on. Still, it’s weathered format changes, multiple market contractions, wholesale shifts in the very idea of what ‘manga’ represents and one million rumors in re: a perpetually forthcoming James Cameron movie adaptation to remain accessible to the interested (well, save for the artist’s one-off side story Ashen Victor, a front-to-back homage to Frank Miller’s Sin City that you’d think would get some attention today, or at least recently, but no). Caught up with the ongoing Japanese releases, up to vol. 14, so it comes out when it does; $9.99.

Detroit Metal City Vol. 5: Meanwhile, this funny Kiminori Wakasugi series about a sensitive boy who doubles as an infamous metal frontman is up to vol. 9, so Viz isn’t likely to hit the wall very soon; $12.99.

Ashley Wood’s F.I.! #1: This seems to be another 48-page showcase series for IDW mainstay Wood (and frequent writers T.P Louise & Chris Ryall), now more directly centered on the theme of Fuck It than ever before, the twist being its 12″ x 12″ dimensions; $9.99.

Spider-Man: Fever #3 (of 3): Concluding Brendan McCarthy’s wanderings with the creations of Ditko. Note that he has a story planned for Vertigo’s House of Mystery #27 next month. Preview; $3.99.

Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven #1 (of 4): Oddball early ’00s comic book revival #1 – is it too early for Bill Jemas nostalgia? ‘Cause here’s a new outing for one of that Marvel age’s attention-grabbing stunts, a revival of an old cowboy character as a not-all-that comedic homosexual. Writer Ron Zimmerman returns, now with Howard Chaykin serving as artist. Preview; $3.99.

Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1 (of 6): And #2 – a Peter Hogan/Chris Sprouse continuation of the Alan Moore-written unified pulp hero, set after the end of the world provided by Moore’s conclusion to sibling title Promethea; $3.99.

Batman #700: In which writer Grant Morrison returns (with plans to hang around for a storyline subsequent) for a self-contained tour of Bat-history-according-to-Morrison, linking up the Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne and DC 1,000,000 iterations of the character for some kind of big mystery, with individual segments drawn by defining-via-Morrison artists Tony Daniel (Bruce), Frank Quitely (Dick) and Andy Kubert (Damian; I’d still say Batman #666 was the overall best issue of this still-ongoing huge run). The 1,000,000 stuff is handled by David Finch, who seems a logical enough extension of the ultra-muscled style practiced by Howard Porter and others during Morrison’s JLA tenure. Mike Mignola draws a variant cover, but it’s one of those 1:75 deals you’ll pay out the nose for; $4.99.

Labels: Buichi Terasawa, This Week in Comics