Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Well, one of comics, the other of a manga series. First, the manga.

The series is called Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro, and it's called The (Nearly) Complete Collection. That's because this collection has 19 issues, the 20th that completes the series was just released. While this may be incomplete, it comes to a quite satisfactory resolution in 19 volumes, each of which is roughly 130-150 pages, so lots of good stuff to read.

First off, as is typical with Kodansha collections, these are Japanese-format: you swipe left to right to advance the page, you're reading it back to front like Japanese books/manga. But it is fully translated. Second, it's a high school romance. And it's a lot of fun.

It starts in the school cafeteria, the boy - a junior - is deeply involved in art: drawing and painting, and is very much a loner, though he has some friends. He's occasionally looking over at a group of younger girls (sophomores) who are having a good time and draws in a sketch book. He's making his own manga, a fantasy adventure focusing on a man and woman saving the world sort of thing. When he leaves to go to the art room to work on a painting, he accidentally leaves his manga sketch book behind. Miss Nagatoro sees it, grabs and and flips through it, then runs after him to return it, catching up with him in the art room where he's working on a still life. She starts criticizing his manga, then declares him to be her senpai and she his kohai, a hierarchical relationship between the two since he's a year up on her in grades.

And thus begins twenty issues of relentless torture and mockery, her of him. She's constantly calling him a creep-o and a perv, bapping him in the head, etc. And he's taking it! She's constantly hanging out in the art studio - he seems to be the only member of the art club - and soon her friends join her since she's no longer hanging out with them, and they join in with the creep-o mockery. But whenever anyone threatens or sneers at Senpai, they all fiercely defend him. Obviously there's much more going on here than meets the eye, or his eye, at least.

It was a very very charming story that I'm glad that I read, I also expect it'll get re-reads from me. I plan on picking up the final volume shortly. You can buy the first two issues for $1, or plunge in with all 19 for $18. The charity of this set is the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund which helps comics creators with legal difficulties. The bundle is running for another 12 days from this posting.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/dont-toy-with-me-miss-nagatoro-manga-collection-kodansha-books


The second Bundle to discuss is a very large collection of Image Comics from the '90s. We're talking Spawn, Savage Dragon, Cyberforce, Tellos Saga, Witch Blade, Darkness, Battle Chasers, Lady Pendragon. LOTS of stuff! A 38-volume bundle for $18!

But there's two particular series that I want to talk about - Mage and Astro City.

These are particular favorites of mine that I'm really glad to see put into Bundles. I got lucky at Denver ComicCon about a decade ago and Matt Wagner, the creator, writer and artist of Mage was there. I found the then available three volumes of Mage and got them signed! Had a great time chatting with him. It's a fantastic gritty retelling of the Arthurian legend from the eyes of Kevin Matchstick that began in 1984 and wasn't completed until 2019! It's a not unfamiliar story of publishers going bankrupt, creators struggling to get the rights back on the things they've created, etc. But he did get to complete the series. I don't know if this collection is the entire series, I suspect it's only the first or first two thirds of it. I haven't bought the entire collection yet, that'll be happening a little later today.

Wagner has won multiple Eisner awards in addition to an Inkpot, he's a very talented creator and story-teller. He also created the character Grendel - not to be confused with the Marvel comic - which is a study in aggression. It is really an amazing series that resulted in a Batman/Grendel mini-series that was highly praised. Both Mage and Grendel have been options for movies and TV, but nothing has come of them. Seems like everything gets optioned for TV and movies these days, just in case.


Astro City is the creation of Kurt Busiek, who has also worked on The Avengers, Thunderbolts, and Superman, among other things. Astro City started in 1995 and is on-going. It's superheroes and villains with a large ensemble casts, kind of like what you'd like to see the Avengers universe be. They have a Superman character complete with secret identity called The Samaritan, only here he's a time traveler, and he literally spends his day flying around the world at superspeed saving people. A Wonder Woman character called Winged Victory (who actually goes on a hilarious date with The Samaritan once), a Fantastic Four family, all sorts of parallels to more recognized heroes but pulled off with much more believability, they feel like they could actually exist in a real world.

To quote its Wikipedia entry, "Its stories focus primarily on everyday life in a superhero comic universe, rather than on superheroic adventures and battles." That nails it spot-on. It is really, really good. I'm quite looking forward to re-reading these.

Kurt is the recipient of both Eisner and Harvey awards, the latter being the equivalent of the Hugo for comic book creators/artists.

The charity for this Bundle is Binc, the Book Industry Charitable Fund. According to HB, "Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation has helped bookstore and comic book store employees and owners who encounter unexpected financial crises. The Binc Foundation works to keep book people in their homes, in their jobs, and with their families – stabilizing the brick and mortar bookstore community." Definitely a worthwhile charity.

As I said, $18 gets you 38 items in CBZ, PDF, or Epub format. The Bundle is available for another 19 days. Myself, I'm buying the full bundle, but I'm not going to bother downloading the Spawn and some of the others. I've read Spawn, it's just not my cup o'tea.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/image-comics-in-90s-books

About two months ago I made a trip to Phoenix, Russet was working so she and the dogs didn't make the trip. I used to be the president of a science fiction film club, and they were having their annual banquet. I like to attend when I can, and I could, so I did. I also have been cleaning out a storage locker, including removing a few hundred comics, and I loaded them up in my car to dump at the dealer from whom I'd bought a vast majority of them.

This is what my car looked like when I did my fuel stop just west of Demming, NM:


This is my beloved 2015 Subaru Crosstrek, which can theoretically make the trip on one tank of gas, but I'd be sucking fumes when I arrived, and I was taking a new route and was not about to take the risk. Take note of the disparity in space between the top of the front tire and the bottom of the wheel well and the distance on the rear tire. That's over 2,000 comic books in the back. The rear seats were folded down, I even had a box in the front seat! Granted, you also have the lever arm of the bike rack and my bike. It didn't affect the handling of the car for the drive, a total of approximately 500 miles, but it was also good weather all the way: no rain or anything else.

I dropped the comics off at the dealer the next day, and a few days later, cleared out a closet at my parent's house of more comics and dropped off a similar volume. I went through all the boxes and pulled some old favorites, but nothing of any extraordinary value, just some sentimental stuff like Cathy Hill's Mad Raccoons. I knew some things were of exceptional value and left them in for my dealer to deal with: they knew how much they were worth and knew how to market them for the best value. And I've been buying from these people for over 30 years and trusted them.

I got an email from them last week saying a check was on the way, and had a bit of a shock when I opened it: it was for a smidge under $300! The vast bulk of that amount was for an original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, second printing. But there were also some valuable Detective Comics, Batmans, Joker #1, etc. I was surprised that my original The Tick run didn't sell, I would have thought that the new Amazon series would have spurred a renewed interest. Oh, well. It may sell later. And the check is safely ensconced in my savings account, waiting for me to start working and to add to it.

But the best thing is that rather than the bulk of the rest of the collection going to be pulped, they're going to schools and are also being shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan for the troops, and the Viz manga volumes are going to a local manga group.

I still have a small amount of comics around the house, but they're very select and mostly collected graphic novels. I was able to get an autographed set of hardbound Mage: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner, along with a nice chat with him, at Denver ComicCon a few years ago. I also have several autographed volumes of XXXenophile by Phil Foglio along with his Buck Godot and What's New With Phil & Dixie, I believe I have an original first printing of The Watchmen and an autographed set of Batman: The Dark Knight four issue run here some place. Stuff that's special that I'll re-read every now and again. I'd like to re-collect the Usagi Yojimbo graphic novels along with the Knights of the Dinner Table volumes, but that'll wait.

W00ties!

We're up in Longmont visiting friends, and they mentioned that Denver is having a comic convention this weekend, so we're going!

I haven't been to a comic con in eight years, basically since I married Russet. We went to a sci fi con in Dallas three or four years ago, and three fan fic conventions together, so I haven't been totally out of the loop.

This should be fun. Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton will be there, along with George Takei and tons of other people. Stan Lee was supposed to be there, but he had a scheduling conflict to shoot his cameo in the next Marvel movie (I'd assume probably Captain America, due next year) so they're bringing in William Shatner on Sunday. I would like to see Shatner, but he's there Sunday-only, so that's not going to happen.

One thing that I'm really looking forward to is that Matt Wagner will be there. He did the comics Grendel and Mage back about 30 years ago, and lots since then. I'm hoping I can find a complete set of Mage and get it signed.