periodic “roundup of comics i’ve been reading” post. end of 2024 edition
THE POOL
new manga from the author and illustrator of AJIN. really fun and compact so far. just like in ajin, there’s this great thing of watching highly competent characters doing their thing in really tight action scenes.
aliens: the movie: the comic book
kamen rider
this is my first time reading a ishinori shotaro manga. i enjoy how straightforward the setting is and how brutal the monster encounters are.
also love that you can sense the renmants of that late 60s japanese militant position oozing through the first volume with the whole anti-pollution themes and the evil nazi organization
hunter x hunter
hunter x hunter is back! it was back for a while, at least. but apparently its coming back again in probably less than four years, which is an improvement from last time.
the current arc is legitimately incredible as a political thriller. you need an actual chart to keep up with all the factions and characters and their motivations. there are so many pieces to this its nuts.
yoshihiro togashi, the author, is a man who’s truly obsessed with, like, systems and rulesets. the type of guy who should by all means be designing the most byzantine board games in the planet, and yet here we are. i love him and i love hunter x hunter
drama queen
this one is complete trainwreck, but i’m so morbidly interested to see where it lands. so far its been a very clear xenophobic, anti-immigrant allegory set in japan after a race of space aliens saved the planet from a meteor. those aliens started settling in urban spaces after gaining a bunch of social capital as saviors of the human race. they get preferential treatment in corporate positions, real estate, there are at the top in sports and advertisements and movies, all that shit. the protagonists goal is to straight up kill enough aliens so that it triggers enough conflict that they’ll just leave earth
its not even dog whistles, but a very clear reactionary work that feeds off of real fascist narratives. it’s so blunt that i’m starting to wonder if there’s gonna be a twist at some point or if its literally just “oh well, i guess shonen jump really is fine publishing Baby’s First Turner Diaries as a Comic Book”. the most recent chapter actually was sort of a curve ball in terms of one of the protagonist’s motivations, so we’ll see.
centuria
this one started really strong but soon degenerated to the most pedestrian level of battle-shounen type thing. it’s still aesthetically pretty strong so i’m keeping up with it, but not a lot going on otherwise
the legend of kamui
one of those classic comics that i should’ve read ages ago and only got around to recently. very granular study of the social formations of feudal japan. it looks beautfiful and the parallels between class society in the tokugawa period and depictions of nature/animals is sooooo elegant. can’t recommend this one enough
the bugle’s call
the best fantasy manga i’ve seen in a while. takes a very realistic approach to magic where the implications of it (and individuals that wield it) are carried out to their logical ends in terms of like, technological constructs that are used to shape a country’s economy, culture, religion, the setup of the state and its war capabilities. the illustrator goes super hard with the panelling, too. some very creative page compositions.
