As I mentioned, I popped to Orbital yesterday. It's a great little shop, lots of nice action figures and plenty of back issues. They used to have a really good manga section and it seemed to have disappeared... until I found out they've opened Orbital Manga!!! It's a new shop next to the Cinema Store, opposite Stringfellows. Cool, I wish them every success. And an old friend of a friend, Hannah works there, so just to provide some support, I bought Ohikno (oh, i don't know how to spell it!), something that people have been recommending.
It's a nice little shop - a bit strange in that they have the latest American imports downstairs (ie the first thing you come to) and then all the manga on the upper level (in a similar way that FP shops have all the toys as soon as you come in, and all the comics hidden away). And it's nice to have it next to the cinema store, which sells the american Entertainment Weekly, my favourite magazine. Also good to have something in the vicinity of where Comic Showcase used to be - it was never my favourite shop (it smelled funny), but I do miss it.
Speaking of manga, does anyone know if Lai the psyhcic girl is worth reading? I saw a pack, issues 1-11, in Gosh. Gosh do good packs too. They were selling Alpha Flight 1-50 at Christmas, and I wish I'd snapped it up before someone else did.
9 comments:
Is that "Mai, the Psychic Girl"? Grief, that was one of the first mangas I ever bought, nearly 20 years ago now. Amazing art, as I recall, but a pretty lame story
phew, no loss there, then!
The comic shop here in Brighton has manga and graphic novels in the front, and all the US comics tucked away at the back. Seems the best way to do it, but then I've gone right off US comics nowadays.
no US comix you like at all, kelvin? i keep trying to give up comics, but there's always something out there...
Um... well there's Invincible, All-Star Superman, and I've been enjoying Carey's X-Men run (although I'm waiting for the trade, as Marvel's advert policy makes the comics almost unreadable). Otherwise, the comics I like (nextwave, Young Avengers) all get cancelled!
I used to get Amazing Spider-Man and Avengers without fail, but those have gone to the dogs so I dropped them. There are rumours of a new, good, writer on ASM soon, so we'll see if I go back, adverts and crossovers permitting.
The few 'comic' shops that I visited in Japan put the action figures and cosplay props up front, but, then, it seemed like most people bought their weekly/monthly manga at the local convenience store, and their collected editions at the local bookshop.
As far as I could tell, the only reason to visit a 'comic' shop -- other than to pick up an action figure or cosplay prop -- was either to a) track down an out-of-print collected edition; or b) perv over the really mucky stuff.
did you perv over the mucky stuff a lot, then jamie? ;-)
i never got into Invincible. i bought that first 'ultimate edition' thing and it didn't blow me away.
i got excited about the new x-titles, but jesus, how boring is uncanny? x-men is okay - i love Regan and Karima - but i haaaate Ramos' art.
avengers is an okay read. i mean, i could probably live happily without actually owning the first 25 issues or so. mIghty Avengers is promising and the new avengers team is interesting. weird choice of artist. anyone know who the new Ronin is yet? (make sure to mark it a spoiler lol)
Strangely enough, no, I didn't perv over the mucky stuff. I can't read Japanese, so I wouldn't have been able to follow the stories, so, really what would have been the point? :-)
I enjoyed the early issues of Invincible, but then it got all...involved, and, I don't know, it just fell off my must-read list. Am I the only person who couldn't tell the difference between the art of the original artist and that of the bloke wot replaced him?
no you're not the only person. they're very similar, definitely.
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