Late to the Party: Best of aught-eight, Wanted of aught-nine
My yearly recaps usually post in April (or May) (or September) because I kinda like to read the corporate annual reports of various publishers and retailers before driving stakes into the year just past, but that leaves a four month gap between me and everyone else, so maybe I could manage some kind of me-too post about the recent calendar milestone as a stopgap.
Best of 2008:
1. Aqua/Aria. Both the Tokyopop (née ADV) Manga and season one of the Aria anime from Nozomi (aka Right Stuf). speaking of…
2. Nozomi Entertainment: straight up, full slate — Aria, Emma, MariMite (oh, wait… that’s “Maria Watches Over Us” for you poor souls who had never heard of the Oyuki Konno/Satoru Nagasawa manga serialized in Margaret and adapted into an anime by Studio Deen) …hell, I even bought Lost Universe and To Heart this year. The “Toward the Terra” movie looks great too, even if I haven’t been compelled to watch it yet.
3. Crunchyroll.
4. Strawberry Panic — both the Seven Seas manga and light novels and the anime DVDs from MediaBlasters
5. Blood+ manga and novels from Dark Horse
6. The Socrates in Love novel from Viz
7. The Twelve Kingdoms novels from Tokyopop
8. Dororo manga (by Tezuka) from Vertical
9. Lucky Star DVDs from Bandai
10. RocketBomber. Oh sure, you don’t care, but this was a really big deal to me in ’08.
What I’d Love from 2009:
1. Yotsuba&! 6. And 7 and 8, dammit.
2. Yotsuba&! 7. And 6 and 8 while we’re at it. speaking of…
3. Yotsuba&! 8. You knew that was coming. While we’re on the topic of excellent-but-abandoned manga
4. Viz Pulp. 2009 is the year to re-launch. Really.
5. I Mean It: Viz Pulp. If you can’t revive the line, at least finish Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga; we’ve been waiting a while for that.
6. Enough of stupid Warriors cat manga, let’s see Warriors Manga — I think Dabel Bros. is already working on a Warriors comic but it’s going to suck balls; screw that mess and get Umezu or Ito on this.
7. Genuine cross-pacific manga/comics releases. No, not Stan Lee’s Ultimo, or OEL Tokyopop, or Megatokyo; I’d love to see a real east-west fusion, even if it’s just a one-off or an anthology project. —actually, the new Harlequin Magazine looks promising in this department.
8. A Genuine OEL Publisher: “Manga” is just the Japanese word for comics, but more and more it has come to define a genre and a format — Antarctic Press may already be all over this, but it seems like most of their ‘manga’ output is just reprints in the ‘manga’ trim size (I’m open to correction if someone from AP cares to comment.) I’d love to see someone else with a half million dollars (for a printing press) send out a call to all webcomickers and wannabees for submissions to a new American Manga imprint. (If I win the lottery this weekend, I’m on this)
9. Here’s your next event, DC: Batman Punches Everything. A Genuine crossover event in that in any comic, regardless of context or continuity, Batman shows up and Punches Somebody. This is all we really want from a Major Event that Spans The Entire Line: Batman, Punches, Everything. You can even have him punch Continuity into a new Universe a la Superboy. We (I) don’t care so long as Bats hits things. With car batteries. And maybe kicks people. In the face. I don’t even care if it makes sense; keep your plots and stories, just have Bruce show up on the final page and punch somebody (hero, villian, sidekick, innocent bystander) and then walk off. Because He’s the Goddamn Batman, That’s Why. You can waste your time and editorial brainsweat on the next Countdown-to-sorta-Infinite-Final-but-not-really-final-or-material-Crisis-or-minor-inconvenience-in-Kirby’s-Fourth-World-or-New-Gods-but-not-really-because-it-isn’t-in-quote-continuity-unquote-so-screw-Kirby-let’s-just-kill-people-and-maybe-Change-the-Universe-Forever-but-not-really-because-we-have-80-other-titles-that-won’t-tie-into-the-so-called-Universe-Changing-event-which-used-to-be-special-when-there-was-only-one-but-now-that-we-do-it-every-year-why-not-make-it-just-another-title-oh-wait-we-can’t-do-that-no-one-would-buy-*that*-I-guess-we-have-to-keep-up-the-pretense-that-these-are-quote-special-unquote-even-though-they’re-as-routine-as-census-questionaires-at-this-point… OR You Can Have Batman Show Up in Every Comic Book of 2009 and Cold-Cock Somebody. Dude, I’d pay money for that — multiple times over. Just get your PR people to name the series (Batman Punches Everything works for me, tho) and we’re good.
[9-and-a-half: The parallel Marvel event would be “Wolverine Stabs Everything” but with the movie coming out I think they’re working on this right now.]
10. Something New. Not a re-launch, or a re-imagining, or a ret-con or version 2.0 or let’s-kill-the-hero-and-put-the-sidekick-in-the-costume, but something new with the same tropes. Empowered almost made it in 2008, and of course most of the stuff out of Japan is New To Me… but I’d love it if DC or Marvel (or Vertigo or Image) (or IDW or SLG) (or Viz, Vertical, Tokyopop, Seven Seas, Go!Comi, DMP, Dark Horse, CPM, or Aurora — Particularly Aurora, now that I think about it) could surprise me with something in 2009 that would Rock My World.
