Lone Wolf and Cub volume 1: The Assassin’s Road
Writer: Kazuo Koike
Artist: Goseki Kojima
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
ISBN: 1569715025
296 pages

Before I get into talking about the book, I want to take a moment and compliment the translation team for Lone Wolf & Cub. Dana Lewis is credited with “translation,” and a brief google search reveals that Lewis is/was a part of Studio Proteus, one of the main forces that helped bring manga into the mainstream here in the States.

The translation is an adaptation, rather than a word-for-word find/replace job. It takes into account that certain things simply can’t be translated into English or American culture, and adjusts accordingly. Specific terms are often left in their original Japanese, and a combination of context and a solid glossary at the back help to explain what’s going on. There are also a few moments of re-contextualization in the text. One chapter ends with a woman looking on at Ogami and Daigoro as they cross a river. She says, “A baby carriage… on the river Sanzu.” The Sanzu River means nothing to most American readers, but the title of the chapter, “Baby Cart on the River Styx” provides a context clue. While the river Styx isn’t 100% the same as the river Sanzu, the basic idea is the same. The father and son are both caught on the path of the doomed and the dead. It’s an idea that’s repeated fairly often throughout the book, both from Ogami’s mouth and those of the people he encounters.

I knew many of the broad strokes going in due to a passing interest in Japanese history. Iga and Koga ninja, the Yagyu clan, Tokugawa shogunate, and a fistful of other terms will be familiar to anyone who has spent any amount of time partaking in anything that involves samurai or ninjas, from history books to manga to anime.

Japanese history tends to pop up everywhere in their pop culture. Amakusa Shiro is a popular villain in anime and video games, most notably Samurai Shodown. Yagyu Jubei has been presented more than once as the samurai equivalent of Marvel’s Nick Fury, from the eyepatch down to the war hero status and career as a spy. I don’t know that American culture can really compare. I’ve seen very little popular fiction starring George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, and I don’t think any of it has resulted in the same penetration that Japanese historical figures have. It’s fascinating.

Lone Wolf and Cub: The Assassin’s Road contains nine stories. “Son for Hire, Sword for Hire,” “A Father Knows His Child’s Heart, as Only a Child Can Know His Father’s,” From North to South, From West to East,” “Baby Cart on the River Styx,” “Suio School Zanbato,” “Waiting for the Rains,” “Eight Gates of Deceit,” “Wings to the Birds, Fangs to the Beast,” and “The Assassin’s Road” make up just a hair under 300 pages of samurai action.
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Last time on We Care a Lot, I covered the last days of Venom’s solo series. In my last few articles, I totally forgot to cover an obscure comic dedicated to him by the name of Uncanny Origins #7. Uncanny Origins was a somewhat short-lived series where each issue went into the backstory of a random Marvel character, featuring cartoony art by Dave Hoover. Each issue cost only a dollar, so you can’t really hate on it too much.

Bob Budiansky writes through Venom’s origins and story up to his Lethal Protector days.

“He thinks of himself as a superhero – dedicated to defending the innocent from evildoers everywhere. But the reality is that he is a grotesque parody of everything he believes himself to be, a superhero in his mind and his mind alone… for no good deed he does in the present can ever erase the evil of his own wretched past!”

Aw, come on. Don’t be so pessimistic.

The opening couple pages are interesting in that they’re new to us. We see Eddie Brock, smarmy as hell, visiting his ex-wife at a restaurant. He’s pretty high on himself for his successful Sin-Eater stories, but that just pisses off Ann and makes her leave less than a minute into their meeting. Everything always has to be about Eddie. Eddie defends himself, claiming that he’s doing the public a service with honest reporting, but she won’t listen.

Then we see Eddie being called to work and the subsequent firing. From there, it shows the events of his first appearance from his side. After his initial defeat, we get a montage page about how he has lost to Spider-Man again and again, until it gets into how Venom is out to be a good guy. It recreates the events where Ann gets Venom to leave Spider-Man alone and that’s the end of the issue.

I do like how Budiansky helps bring a little understanding to Eddie’s rage by showing another reason the Sin-Eater situation has ruined his life.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! What’s this about girls on girls?

Enough of that. Let’s get to the real article.

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I recently saw the solicit for Batman in Barcelona: Dragon’s Knight, the upcoming one-shot from DC.

When a string of bizarre murders hits Spain’s beautiful coastal city of Barcelona, The Dark Knight makes solving this crime his top priority. Full of international intrigue, high adventure and even higher stakes, BATMAN IN BARCELONA: DRAGON’S KNIGHT showcases The Caped Crusader in a different type of Gotham – but one no less dangerous!

Barcelona is like Gotham?  Because Gotham is an urban hellhole, plagued by every kind of crime, disease, corruption, poverty and natural disaster.  Has the Barcelona Tourist Bureau heard about this?

DC’s The Source blog put up a preview of the new Joe Casey/Chriscross joint, Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance.

FINAL CRISIS AFTERMATH: DANCE #1
Written by Joe Casey
Art by ChrisCross
Cover by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau
Japan’s Super Young Team wants nothing more than to be seen as heroes in the eyes of their adoring public. Unfortunately, their adventures during FINAL CRISIS have gone unnoticed, and they’ve been reduced to performing at public appearances and on various TV shows literally dancing for their livelihood. But the appearance of a new American teammate and a deadly threat complicates the motives of the team as they try and find what truly makes somebody not just a hero, but a sensational hero. Discover the path to greatness in this exciting 6-issue miniseries!

Even better, Brandon Thomas interviewed Joe Casey about the book and his other work. Casey is off Youngblood, so I’m off that book, too. Plus, he says something I agree with 100% on Obama comics:

JC: No way. That move is so played out. Let the guy be the President now, for chrissakes. I think he’s all through being a cheap marketing ploy, a shortcut to making a quick blast of cash in the Direct Market, don’t you?

I’ve been using Comixology to handle my pull list. They’ve got a pretty robust pull list feature going on, and it integrates with my comic shop, so it’s very convenient. Adding and subtracting things is just a matter of pressing a button. I dig it. Check it out, you might, too.

I pulled up my pull list to see how many books I’m regularly buying. This doesn’t count things I grab off the shelf, but it’s a pretty good representation of what I buy.

Marvel- Amazing Spider-Man #593
Vertigo- Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye #2 (of 3) (MR)
Marvel- Black Panther Vol. 2 #4
Vertigo- Young Liars #15 (MR)
Marvel- Amazing Spider-Man #594
DC Comics- Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #1 (of 6)
Vertigo- Hellblazer #255 (MR)
Marvel- Amazing Spider-Man #595
Marvel- Immortal Iron Fist #26
Vertigo- Unknown Soldier #8 (MR)

That’s the entire month of May for me. Eight distinct franchises, a total of ten comics. That comes up to a hair over 30 bucks a month on average.

I pared my pull list down a lot over the past few months. I vastly prefer trades, and DC has done a pretty good job of chasing me away from a lot of books. In fact, I think I buy two main DCU books– Power Girl and Dance. I’m waiting for Batman & Robin to come back, and the Rucka/JHW3 Detective might pull me in depending on how the first issue goes. In fact, just looking at May… I’m not really bothering with the big events from either company. Final Crisis Aftermath counts, I guess, but I expect that to be good, unlike Battle for the Cowl or the other Aftermath books. It’s the only one that sounded appealing to me, anyway.

I made a decision a while back not to buy books I felt were mediocre. If I’m not loving it, or at least liking it a whole lot with a chance of love, I’m not buying it. Life’s too short to read bad comics, and if a comic isn’t pushing my buttons, that’s the very definition of a bad comic. The way my list is now, I really look forward to picking up my books. I know I’ll get a couple of books a week that’ll float my boat.

What’s your pull list looking like? Are you policing your stack by quality or price? I generally don’t buy 3.99 books as a rule, unless it’s genuinely extra sized, as in Amazing Spider-Man’s special issues.

MARCH OF GUILLEM’S DC SIRENS – COMICON.com Panels | Comic Book, Graphic Novel and Cartooning Discussions

GUILLEM MARCH: I like drawing females, but there were a risk of doing a silly series about boobs and butts jumping over the buildings. Once I knew Paul Dini was the writer, I couldn’t be happier. Also I was a little worried, because previous stories with Harley Quinn had a humorous tone that wouldn’t fit with what I’d like to draw, but Dini’s ideas for the story are great, the characters are treated very seriously, and I’m very excited working on this project.

Naw, son.

We hit 1000 posts the day before yesterday, so I figure now is as good a time as any for some station identification.

Who we are: David, Esther, Gavok
What we do: write about comics from a variety of angles using analysis, criticism, comedy, and common sense
What we like: Gavok likes Venom, Esther likes Batman, David likes black people
What we don’t like: Racism, sexism, Howard Mackie
Pet peeves: Gavok

You can find us on RSS (comments feed here) and livejournal. Our posts come with a Related Posts feature at the bottom, which should link you to posts about similar subjects. We’ve got a search box off to the left, and if you click “+/-” under categories, you’ll find all of the categories we’ve written under lately.

If you want to get in touch with us for hate mail, fan letters, or review copies, our email addresses are over on the right under our names, along with a way to sort by name.

Any questions?

Let me tell you about James Howard. He’s a stand up gentlemen and one of my oldest internet friends. If I was Jigsaw, he’d be Loony Bin Jim, only instead of being held up in an asylum where a disgusting fat man steals his applesauce, he’s in Canada where… I’m sorry, I completely lost track of where I was going with this.

James is currently writing a blog called Gone East to Western. At first I was curious as to why we didn’t have a link to it until now, but then I realized, oh yeah, he only started updating it recently. Maybe he’s busy writing that guest article I commissioned him to do like two years ago.

Anyway, he did a recent update about a library mural that he’s forced to see day in and day out. Despite the butt-ugly painting that suggest that different cultures (which includes people without legs, judging from the people in the center) can enjoy library services together, the mural is ripe of things that would get your ass kicked out of any self-respecting library.

Give it a read. It’s funny stuff.

I get bombarded with Marvel‘s press releases on a daily basis. They vary from on-sale announcements (once a week), interview pimping (a few times a week), and sell-out notices (five in the past seven days). Generally, it’s three or four emails a day. Constant information updates, hype, and pimpery.

Some of it is interesting, I’ll admit– it’s nice to see links to interviews on Marvel.com, since I don’t usually check the main site. However, most of it? The sell-out notices for books that are made on something close to a print-to-order basis? I don’t care. It’s stupid. It isn’t news, because it isn’t even a retailer sell out. It’s at the distribution level, and whoops here comes a second printing next week. It’s a total smoke screen.

I work with a lot of PR in my day job, and I’d like to think that I’ve picked up some things over the past few years. Successful PR campaigns tend to be focused, rather than spread out. There’s a target and you have to hit that target the first time. A constant flood of information only serves to dilute your message and turn your news into anything but.

I got something very interesting in the mail today. Top Shelf Comix is re-releasing Jeff Lemire’s (excellent) Essex County trilogy in softcover and hardcover editions in August. Leigh at Top Shelf sent over a pre-release pamphlet, for lack of a better word. The back cover says that it’s a chapbook that was designed by Carlos Hernandez Fisher. So, chapbook it is.

It’s a small booklet, about as tall as my hand, with a brown cover. The book is titled “A Reader’s Introduction to Essex County,” and the interiors are just that. There’s an introduction by Leigh Walton that introduces the trilogy, announces the Complete Essex County volumes, and explains the purpose of the booklet.

What follows are preview pages from each book in the trilogy, with praise from critics and creators alike scattered throughout. The previews give you a brief taste of each volume, just enough to give you an idea of the story and the art, but not enough to blow any reveals. It’s a teaser. After the previews are a couple pages of the extra bonus material from the collected edition. A brief bio of Lemire rounds out the book, with the inside back cover being dedicated to a picture by Lemire that says “Now Leaving Essex County.”

This, to me, is successful PR. It doesn’t get lost in an avalanche of info of varying relevancy and quality. It’s focused on doing one specific thing: reminding you that Jeff Lemire’s award-winning and critically-acclaimed trilogy of Essex County books are getting a deluxe re-issue in three months. It provides order options, details on the format (6.5″x9″, 512 pages, hardcover and softcover), reiterates those details on the back cover, and pulls it all into a neat mini-comic style design.

It’s attractive, memorable, and different. It’s the sort of thing that helps to build interest in a book, as well as delivering a good amount of info in a tiny package. Even better– I got to the page of one of the books just by clicking one link on the home page from a drop down box. No navigating to Universe/Series/Franchise. Easy.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about how women are portrayed on the covers of various comic books.  I’m relieved to hear it because my frustration level, every week when I see the solicits, has been rising.  At least I know I’m not alone.  I’ve planned a longer post on this issue later on, but for now, I’ll keep it short.

I’ve seen many positive responses to the covers.  ‘Being sexy is good, not bad,’ and ”this is what sells’ seem to be the most popular.  Maybe they’re true.  But at the same time, they’re the ones that bother me the most.

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