Three preconceptions I had about manga, before I started reading the stuff, were that it had:

1. a puzzling fascination with teenage girls, extending into their sexual objectification, and a sideline in the oddly child-like depiction of adult characters
2. a persistent interest in organic horror – the transformation, corruption or cancerous eruption of the body
3. wildly complicated, over-extended storylines that require obsessive inclinations and a big bank balance to follow.

My conclusion, after recent paddling about in the margins of the manga ocean, is that all of them are true. But only sometimes, no more so than any of the easy generalisations that could be made about US or European comics, and often in ways that are surprising.

The manga I want to talk about now is shortish – a mere four concise volumes – so that’s the preconception about over-extended storylines quashed. But it’s definitely preoccupied with the transformation of organic forms, and is largely about teenage girls (though thankfully restrained on the overt sexualisation front).

Buckle up. A wild ride lies ahead.
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I realise that the big news about the 2012 Hugo nominations lies in another category entirely (congrats to the whole SF Signal crew of 2011!), but I thought I’d fire off a reaction to the announcement of the Best Graphic Story nominees.

Those nominees are:

• Digger by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press)
• Fables Vol 15: Rose Red by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham (Vertigo)
• Locke & Key Vol 4: Keys to the Kingdom by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)
• Schlock Mercenary: Force Multiplication by Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (The Tayler Corporation)
• The Unwritten Vol 4: Leviathan by Mike Carey and Peter Gross (Vertigo)

The truth is, what I mostly want to do is talk about the one (yes, just one) of the nominees that I can actually say something substantial about, but we’ll get to that in due course.

The Best Graphic Story category in the Hugos has only been around since 2009, and all three of the awards to date have gone to Girl Genius, a webcomic . Its creators, as I understand it, think it’s time someone else had a turn and consequently withdrew their comic from the fray this year, for which I’m inclined to applaud them.
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I guess most folks round here have noticed that there’s been something of a digital revolution turning book publishing on its head, the last year or three.

Difficult though it might be to believe, the whole print/digital thing is, if anything, even more complicated in the world of comics than in the world of prose fiction. There’s a chaotic plethora of formats, styles, distribution models, monetization hopes and basic approaches. Sampling the variety within that plethora is what this post is all about, rather than talking in detail about the individual stories concerned.

I thought it’d be worth dipping my Words & Pictures toes into these turbulent waters for three main reasons:

1. There’s a vaaast amount of material out there, and a lot of it is speculative fiction,
2. Much of it’s FREE!!! So, should the fancy take you, you can pop over right now and read the entirety of whatever it is I’m going to talk about (with a bit of a catch in one case), and…
3. I actually don’t read all that many webcomics, though I’ve sampled a lot, so this is a chance for others to offer their own recommendations, which would be very gratefully received in the comments if anyone’s got any.

On with the (Free! Did I mention that already?) show.
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written by John Layman, art by Rob Guillory, published by Image

Chew is science fictional craziness unlike anything else you can read in comics at the moment (as far as I know). It’s also, in its own idiosyncratic and deceptive way, one of the most ambitious and accomplished comics you could ever hope to read.

Fun is a big deal. For the reader, it might come from many sources: the energetic excitement of a kinetic adventure story, the interaction of immensely likeable characters, wherever. Sometimes from comedy, of which I confess I’m not the most instinctive or biggest fan but I tend to think the most satisfying species is comedy built not on gags but on humour earned through setting, character, events. Chew‘s got exactly that kind of humour.
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You sometimes hear the science fiction genre described as an ongoing dialogue between current authors and those who have gone before (I’m paraphrasing. I want to say the idea was articulated by the late Charles Brown, of Locus fame, but I might be wrong.).

The notion’s appealing, though I’ve never been quite sold on it as a characteristic uniquely applicable to prose science fiction. But suppose it’s true. Does that mean your enjoyment of a given novel, no matter how great, is less than it could be if you had greater familiarity with its antecedents? I don’t know. But I’m going to – kind of – talk about it anyway.

Our subject is a manga series that takes the idea of dialogue with past creators to an extreme. I know pretty much nothing about the older material that inspired it. I enjoyed it enormously, though. So much so that I think any sf fan curious about the comics medium should consider giving it a look.  I kind of think this is what Isaac Asimov might have come up with, were he a 21st century manga creator with an urge to tell robot stories.
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Two comics based on an identical science fictional trope: humanoid animals walking, talking and fighting. Both pretty good, but doing radically different things with that basic idea.

written by Daryl Gregory, art by Carlos Magno, published by Boom! Studios

This new ongoing series is written by the (rather talented) speculative fiction author Daryl Gregory and drawn by Carlos Magno. I figured it might be worth a try, the whole apes-as-overlords thing being one of the most fun ideas in science fiction. Honestly, if you don’t get a little buzz out of gorillas riding horses and brandishing guns as they herd humans around … well, I don’t know if I can help you.

The story’s set 1300 years before Charlton Heston’s unscheduled arrival in the 1968 movie. Ape society is at its steampunky zenith, with humans making up a somewhat rebellious underclass. Things turn ugly when the Lawgiver, an ape champion of species equality, is mown down by a human assassin wielding lost ancient technology (specifically, a machine gun).

What follows is an entertaining, if not yet especially surprising, yarn as ape and human authorities hunt the assassin and the simmering pot of ape-human relations boils over. (Actually, one surprising thing, which you rarely see in any kind of fiction: the leading female human protagonist is heavily pregnant. Intriguing.)

The mystery of the assassin’s identity won’t puzzle readers for long, but it’s not really supposed to. This is less of a ‘Whodunnit?’ and more of a ‘Let’s get this revolution started!’ thing. It’s traditional, straightforward comics story-telling; a long form linear narrative, adeptly paced and splendidly illustrated (some gorgeous ape imagery here). Early days, but there’s enough potential to persuade me back for at least one more volume, to see how things develop.

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Welcome, gentle readers (and the not so gentle ones too, I suppose), to Words & Pictures, a modest little corner of SF SIGNAL devoted to talking about comics and graphic novels. Comics and graphic novels of a broadly sfnal sort, as you might expect. Before we get to the serious business – the first ‘proper’ post won’t be along for a day or three – I thought a little scene-setting might be in order.

Back in the distant past, i.e. the 1980s, I read a lot of comics. And I really do mean a lot. Even after having disposed of boxloads of them, I’ve still got hundreds upon hundreds in a cupboard, occupying storage space I could really do with freeing up. As the 1990s got underway, for a variety of reasons that need not detain us here, I went cold turkey on comics. I paid absolutely no attention to the medium for something approaching fifteen years, and to be honest I didn’t miss the comics-reading habit one little bit. Then, somewhere around 2005/6, I cautiously dipped my toes back into the water. And lo, I got myself hooked all over again.
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