Gabba Gabba Hey!

Aren't you sorry you asked?

Jeff Lester
September 29, 2024

Hello, friends! It’s that time again.

Sorta?

We’re just about at the end of the month, which is when I would share in near-excruciating detail what I’ve read for the month and so even though it’s not quite a complete list, it’ll probably be close enough for, y’know, a free newsletter.

That said, I haven’t done it since moving to beehiiv but let’s see what happens, eh?

9/1/2024 Blue Box, chapter 162
9/1/2024 Akane-banashi, chapter 124
9/1/2024 Hima-Ten, chapter 8
9/2/2024 Dandadan, chapter 164
9/3/2024 Chainsaw Man, chapter 176
9/3/2024 Show-Ha Shoten, chapter 33
9/3/2024 Smoking Behind The Supermarket with You, volume 3
9/3/2024 You're So Sloppy, Hotta-sensei, chapter 23
9/3/2024 The Brave and the Bold #85
9/3/2024 Origin, vol. 6
9/3/2024 How To Grill Our Love, vol. 10
9/3/2024 Batman #152
9/4/2024 Shiba-Inu Rooms, extra chapter
9/4/2024 Nana and Karou, vol. 6
9/5/2024 Absolute Power #2
9/5/2024 The Immortal Thor #15
9/5/2024 Public Domain #8
9/5/2024 The Brave and the Bold #86
9/5/2024 The Brave and the Bold #87
9/5/2024 The Brave and the Bold #88
9/8/2024 Blue Box, chapter 163
9/8/2024 Akane-banashi, chapter 125
9/8/2024 Hima-Ten, chapter 9
9/8/2024 Red Cat Ramen, chapter 116
9/8/2024 The Brave and the Bold #89
9/8/2024 The Brave and the Bold #90
9/8/2024 Avengers Forever #1
9/8/2024 Avengers Forever #2
9/8/2024 Avengers Forever #3
9/9/2024 Blooming Love, Chapter 35
9/9/2024 Dandadan, chapter 165
9/10/2024 Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable, final chapter
9/10/2024 You're So Sloppy, Hotta-sensei, chapter 24
9/10/2024 Avengers Forever #4
9/11/2024 Shiba-Inu Rooms, chapter 9
9/13/2024 Avengers Forever #5
9/13/2024 Avengers Forever #6
9/14/2024 Okuni University Art Department Film Program, chapter 9
9/15/2024 Manga-Ten!, chapter 15
9/15/2024 Red Cat Ramen, chapter 117
9/15/2024 You and I are Polar Opposites, chapter 61
9/15/2024 Akane-banashi, chapter 126
9/15/2024 Blue Box, chapter 164
9/15/2024 Countdown to Final Crisis #51
9/15/2024 Countdown to Final Crisis #50
9/15/2024 Countdown to Final Crisis #49
9/15/2024 Avengers Forever #7
9/15/2024 The Brave and the Bold #91
9/16/2024 Dandadan, chapter 166
9/16/2024 Countdown to Final Crisis #48
9/16/2024 Countdown to Final Crisis #47
9/16/2024 Countdown to Final Crisis #46
9/16/2024 Countdown to Final Crisis #45
9/16/2024 Avengers Forever #8
9/16/2024 Avengers Forever #9
9/16/2024 Avengers Forever #10
9/16/2024 Avengers Forever #11
9/16/2024 Avengers Forever #12
9/17/2024 Chainsaw Man, chapter 177
9/18/2024 Joker The World #1 (free Batman Day edition)
9/18/2024 The Power Fantasy #2
9/18/2024 Luther Manning Deathlok #1
9/18/2024 Micronauts #30
9/18/2024 Micronauts #31
9/20/2024 Beat and Motion, chapter 40
9/20/2024 You're So Sloppy, Hota Sensei, chapter 25
9/20/2024 Micronauts #32
9/20/2024 Micronauts #33
9/21/2024 Tokyo These Days, vol. 3
9/21/2024 The Brave and the Bold #92
9/21/2024 The Brave and the Bold #93
9/21/2024 The Brave and the Bold #94
9/21/2024 Micronauts #34
9/22/2024 The God Before Me, chapter 19
9/22/2024 Red Cat Ramen, chapter 118
9/22/2024 Akane-banashi, chapter 127
9/22/2024 Blue Box, chapter 165
9/22/2024 Hima-Ten!, chapter 11
9/22/2024 Micronauts #35
9/22/2024 The Brave and the Bold #95
9/22/2024 The Brave and the Bold #96
9/22/2024 The Brave and the Bold #97
9/23/2024 Blooming Love, Chapter 36
9/23/2024 Dandadan, chapter 167
9/24/2024 Monthly Girls' Nozaki-Kun, volume 15
9/24/2024 Chainsaw Man, chapter 178
9/24/2024 You're So Sloppy, Hotta Sensei, chapter 26
9/24/2024 The Brave and the Bold #98
9/25/2024 Micronauts #36
9/25/2024 Just Like Mona Lisa, vol. 2
9/26/2024 Shiba Inu Rooms, chapter 10
9/26/2024 Taro Miyao Becomes a Cat Parent, chapter 17
9/26/2024 Micronauts #37
9/26/2024 Micronauts #38
9/27/2024 The Brave and the Bold #99
9/27/2024 Micronauts #39
9/28/2024 Astro Baby, chapter 19
9/28/2024 Okuni University Art Department Film Program, chapter 10

Man, I do not even want to admit how long it too me to get this listed pasted in and not looking like total ass…and even still I couldn’t get that list to single space so either (a) my apologies if this email goes on for half a mile with that list alone, or (b) don’t thank me for it being readable, thank the people who program this shit and decide what I do or don’t get to do.

(Don’t even get me started on searching the support pages—let’s just say it looks like beehiiv assumes my only interest in you are as sources from which I can extract as much data as possible, and not someone I would care to, you know, format my page for.)

Anyway! Welcome to my new list format. Stuff that’s bolded is stuff I’m really enjoying, italicized entries are stuff I intend to blab about below, stuff that’s both is both. (Unless it’s not mentioned below, which means I just got lazy/sloppy/panicked about finishing this thing.)

Smoking Behind The Supermarket with You, Vol. 3, and Just Like Mona Lisa, Vol. 2: Square-Enix is a weird publisher, man. At least it is here in the U.S. when it comes to digital stuff? If you’ve ever played a video game, you’re undoubtedly familiar with Square-Enix, as their Final Fantasy is, like, I dunno, the Coca-Cola of JRPGs? (I’ve painted myself into a bit of a corner with this analogy since I’m more a fan of their Dragon Quest, which is also a JRPG, is also huge, but is styled very differently—I guess it’s the Sprite to FF’s Coke?)
But their (U.S.) manga division appears to be a whole different beast, very heavy on the romance: sample titles include Mobsters in Love, The Girl I Like Lost Her Glasses, my beloved My Dress-Up Darling, and the two titles at the top of this little section.
Just Like Mona Lisa was nominated for Best New Manga at the American Manga Awards and it’s…fine? A romance manga set in a world where children are binary until they hit puberty, and then they grow into whatever expression with which they feel most comfortable, it feels simultaneously like a book perfect for our time, and also kind of rudimentary and fuddy-duddy. (Bless the author Tsumuji Yoshimura, but I feel like if they’d just spent nine months with a halfway decent Tumblr account they would’ve developed a much more sophisticated setting.)
The first volume has to lean heavy on a lot of set-up and I finished it with a serious case of “meh,” but volume two was more enjoyable: it just leans heavily into the romantic tropes—first dates, awkward glances, fidgety shyness while glancing at someone’s exposed clavicle, etc.—and frankly the ending notes by the manga-ka make it sound like they feel similarly. It’s tough to tell, of course, because manga-ka are just always notoriously self-deprecating in those things, but there’s a strong element of “I just needed a hook to sell my damn romance manga!” I’ll probably get the next volume, but frankly it wouldn’t surprise me if I forget and never read another one.
No, Smoking Behind The Supermarket With You is wayyyyy more my shit, and of course, it would be: it’s about a kind, clueless over-the-hill salaryman who has a crush on the friendly and sweet registerwoman at his local supermarket, unaware that the surly, punk he smokes with behind the market is the same woman.
Of course, the girl enjoys teasing him, using her knowledge from one identity to give him grief in another, and of course he develops feelings for the surly girl as strong—if not stronger—than his crush on the counter girl. In other words, it’s classic Silver Age superhero hijinks without any silver-age superheroes—Clark Kent/Superman as a twenty-four year old teasing an always-respectful 40 year old salaryman Lois Lane.
It’s 100% the type of slow-burn romance that would have to end once everyone’s feelings come out, but that’s fine: the thing is also just a big, juicy dose of innocent wish fulfillment for middle age guys, all the trappings pushed to adulthood to cover up the enormous adolescence of it all: remember when you were young and you liked a girl and she liked you but neither of you ever either realized or acknowledged it?
It’s nice.
Origin, Vol. 6: I’m 99% sure I’ve made excited gutteral noises about this series before—it’s Boichi, my dude from Sun-Ken Rock, doing motherfucking Machine Man as a battling robot manga with hard sci-fi elements.
Despite being the all-fight wrap-up that’d been escalating since somewhere in vol. 4, this actually wasn’t my favorite volume: Boichi has to cheat a bit to get his hero out of the bind he’s in which is OK but kinda undermines the hard sci-fi edge of things. This volume instead leans heavily into cool-looking double-page spreads and is fun for what it is…but this volume made me realize it is something a bit less successful than I was hoping for. Still good, though.
Avengers Forever #1: Just two quick notes: here, as with the multiple issues of The Micronauts and The Brave and the Bold, I’m reading the trade and listing each issue separately. This kind of feels like a cheat to me, because I find myself wondering even as I’m doing it if I’m just juking the stats to make my monthly reading count look higher? But frankly it also takes a bit of pressure off digging into big trades (like omnibi) because it’s not like if I abandon the book, I “lose” the stat. I no longer have to push through to finish a book, but can dip in and out as I want.
The other note is—I don’t know whether I liked Avengers Forever or not? It’s 100% Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco (with Roger Stern doing a plotting assist) doing a twelve issue Englehart riff—it’s a Kang-Immortus War, with a mismatched group of time-crossed Avengers caught in the middle and continuity patches and implants and misdirects galore—and it feels utterly bloodless to me. It connects all the dots and it’s tidy as all-fuck, but it sure feels like mercury-poisoning Busiek at his nadir, a dude capable of doing this kind of thing in his sleep doing exactly that.
Which is not terrible, mind you, and there’s probably a great analysis to be written about how much this series in particular is both a manifestation and comforting of the fears and anxieties gripping a certain stripe of Marvel fan in 1999. The Avengers aren’t a team of their time but have instead been ganked from points in their history, are thrown into a constant maelstrom beyond their understanding, literally having to take cover in limbo while they figure out what the fuck is going on and what they can do. It’s Marvel Comics after the crash and before the reconstruction, and Busiek (and Stern) and Pacheco (and Brevoort) are here to reassure you, to stroke your hair, and tell you the favorite bedtime story that you loved.
Again, not terrible! (Jeff says, uncomfortable of how churlish he sounds and feels.) But it’s not Englehart, despite it referencing Englehart’s run in multiple ways and despite having some very fun noodling in the periphery of that run. Perhaps because of when it comes out and who’s putting it out, Avengers Forever feels fussy and cowardly while insisting that it’s fun and bold…but whether that’s because Kurt Busiek is no Steve Englehart or Carlos Pacheco is no George Perez, I really can’t say. It just was kind of a slog.
Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable, final chapter: Fans of the podcast might remember this manga title as I mispronounced “Hokkaido” so badly no less than three people wrote or commented to correct me/check if I’d had a stroke.
This one made it a little over a hundred chapters, just a bit after the first season of the anime came out—and exactly as every single person in Manga Plus’s comments section had predicted.
The only reason I mention it here is I found it notable that rather than the manga-ka Kai Ikada pulling the lever on the typical end of the high school romance manga—hey, it’s graduation! Let’s flash forward to the couple in college and see how they’re doing (incredibly well, thank you for asking)—they opted to have a two chapter finale where they speedrun through the couple’s life until in the final full-color chapter they’re giving away their daughter at her wedding.
That final chapter is whatever, but the chapter before shows a lot of thought and effort in how to achieve that fast-forward. Considering the most thought Ikada had put into the series before this was in how to break new barriers in fan-service—a few of the chapter illustrations were so aggressive, they all but tried to unzip your zipper for you—I found it…interesting. They still draw like someone who only made it halfway through the “How to Draw Manga” book—stopping somewhere around the chapter you learn how to draw breasts—but maybe there’s some genuine ambition in there? Wild.
Countdown to Final Crisis #51: On one of our weekly calls, Graeme started summarizing Countdown to Final Crisis which he recently re-read, and I literally laughed until I cried. So the next day I thought, “hey, I’ve got DCUI—why don’t I read it, too?” I made it to issue #45 before having to tap out. My notes on my spreadsheet next to those issues read only, “Graeme McMillan is a maniac.” And it’s true! But it also I guess doesn’t do credit to his underlying genius, his ability to enjoy the end product of so much brutally substandard desperation. (It’s a fucking miracle Paul Dini could find fucking work as a dog-catcher after this, and I actually kinda wonder if his Dark Knight: A Batman True Story graphic novel got the green light as a payoff/thank you for what must’ve been a whole year-long fucking nightmare.)
Still, though…I really thought I could make it more than six issues? Mortifying.
Luther Manning Deathlok #1: An interior text page by senior editor Mark Paniccia makes it seem like this was a passion project for him and…it kinda feels like it?
It features Luther Manning, the original Deathlok in his original setting—the post-apocalyptic America of 1990—starts with a seven page intro story by Christopher Priest and Denys Cowan before switching to a a longer feature from Justina Irland and Carlo Pagulayan.
If you know me, you know I love the original Rich Buckler/ Doug Moench series…and you also know I’m always game to let a little handwringing get in the way of the fun.
In a just world, Buckler would at the very least co-own the character with Marvel as he created the character separately, then plotted the original series…and in that just world, we would probably never see the character ever again just as we’ll probably never see the Ultraverse characters again.
Irland and Pagulayan’s story is well-intentioned, but by the time a half-man/half-rat cyborg breaks through a wall looking like a monster from a Papercutz graphic novel, it’s clear things have gone awry.
So yeah, reading this made me feel not very good at points but I still liked it? Ugh!
Tokyo These Days, Vol. 3: The final volume. I’m a bit ashamed to admit I’m not much of a Taiyō Matsumoto fan so it probably doesn’t mean much when I say this is my favorite thing of his he’s ever done? But man, I enjoyed this. A retired manga editor goes about getting all his favorite artists back so he can do one last manga collection—it sounds like Ocean’s Eleven, but for manga? ("You sonuvabitch, I’m in.”) That also sounds great, to be honest.
But Tokyo These Days is much quieter stuff: people in eating and drinking in izakayas, smoking and wondering if they still have the ability to create, or the courage to do so. It feels like a very gentle love letter to a lot of things—though maybe to manga editors most of all, especially those who can make people believe in themselves again. I loved it a lot, and would’ve happily read thousands of more pages of it.
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-Kun, volume 15: I know there’s a contingent for whom the anime is one of the funniest things ever and the manga leaves them a bit cold…but since I just can’t bring myself to watch anime—I’m weird about voices!—this is the only Nozaki-Kun I’ve ever known.
Although it’s kind of lost its rom-com punch—by now, it feels like every romantic pairing has reached some kind of resolution without anything really happening?—the characters are just so richly amusing, it doesn’t matter.
Chainsaw Man, chapter 178: Welp, it sure would’ve been nice if I hadn’t already written 2700 words on other stuff…is what I find myself thinking as I start in on this.
But frankly, I’m not sure I have much to say about it, other than Mother of God. Week in and week out, I’m more or less utterly lost but also utterly in awe of manga-ka Tatsuki Fujimoto? I read the first twelve volumes or whatever on the web after they came out and those were mindblowing enough but seeing each chapter as it comes out more-or-less-weekly and knowing that the seven pages I’m reading didn’t exist when I read the previous seven pages has me enamored and anxious.
One week you’ll have some kind of really dumb slapstick (Chainsaw Man kills the Ear Devil, and ears cease to exist for a week), another you’ll have some really awkward teen angst…and this week you’ll have The Gun Devil, an utterly horrifying skeletal apparition crawling out of the Statue of Liberty to fire a building-sized bullet at Japan and Chainsaw Man. It’s literally a chapter of pointing fingers—the bullet being summoned, bystanders in awe, Yoru pointing in victory and Asa in despair—but I suspect it’s Fujimoto’s finger pointing above all, pointing at the older generation of Japan and their willingness to sacrifice their youth in order so they themselves can remain comforably ensconced in the destructive ways of the West. It practically gave me gooseflesh the first time I read it, and I practically have gooseflesh now. What a fucking comic.
The Brave and the Bold #98 and 99: All of Bob Haney’s work on The Brave and The Bold is a tonic for me, but I wanted to shout out these two particularly insane earlyish issues. I really hope I return to write more about this later, but part of what makes them both kick ass is how willing Haney is to write a story and then put Batman in it as if Batman was just a generic protagonist.
Issue #98 is an honest-to-god Rosemary’s Baby riff, with Batman as Rosemary: instead of being maneuvered by a coven into having the devil’s child, Batman ends up the godfather to the devil’s child, and the evil coven is the entire community gaslighting him into thinking the actual father died of natural causes. (Fortunately, the Phantom Stranger happens to come along to help save the day.)
Then, in B&B #99, Batman goes back to the old Wayne summer home on a New England home and becomes possessed by the spirit of “Manuel The Port-A-Gee,” the evil harpooner who used to terrorize the island.
Before it’s done, Batman has discovered that his father had experimented in returning to life after death and is now actively helping the malevolent Manuel repair the ancient lighthouse to help guide the spirits back from the afterworld. (Fortunately, The Flash happens to come along to help save the day.)
Part of what makes both issues so great s how wrong they feel. In both instances, Batman isn’t a superhero as much as the generic protagonist of a hackneyed-but-effective genre story. But he’s also, you know, walking around dressed like a fucking bat.
Up to this point, DC had long featured covers where their superheroes were weak, or cowering before evil, or on their knees crying out in pain and fear…but the insides felt mostly like what they were: writers desperately coming up with after-the-fact explanations for attention-grabbing covers the editors had cooked up months earlier. There’s a lot of shoehorning going on, a lot of grunting and groaning to make story element x fit into the superhero’s world.
But in The Brave and The Bold, Haney just comes up with the story that justifies that crazy scenario—”Hitler is the devil, and the protagonist worries he sold his soul to him in order to survive the War? Sure!!”—then pops in Batman (and whatever superhero happens to come along to help save the day). It’s fucking great.
Micronauts #39: Oh Christ, no. I’m right around thirty-four hundred words, for God’s sake! I’ll write about this one next time, I swear.

Okay, enough for now. More than enough for now, right? Good grief.

I hope this finds you well, I hope you read this far (or I dunno, maybe I don’t—I just want what’s best for you, honest), and I hope the final quarter of the year treats you well.

And I hope I can figure out how to do this again without, y’know, doing quite so much of it. Jesus.

-Jeff