Reviewing the Mail: Week of 3/8

Another week; another pile of books. I should mention that a couple of these things are ones I spent my own money on during a recent comic-shop trip, but all of the rest arrived in the mail for review. (And, as always, I hope to get to many of them, either here or at ComicMix, but I've learned that my hopes often exceed my abilities.)

Del Rey Manga is publishing the first two volumes of a new series called Fairy Tail at once on March 25th, and they sent copies of both to me. The manga-ka behind this project is Hiro Mashima, who created Rave Master. (And my older son loves Rave Master, so maybe I should ask him what he thinks of this series.) It's rated T-for-teen, and looks like another one in the long line of boys' adventure stories.

The newest volume of Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima's Path of the Assassin manga series is volume 9, Battle for Power. It's published by Dark Horse, it's available now, and you'd really have to start with the first volume to have any idea what's going on. I like these but, as I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm never quite sure if I'm really getting them.

I know The Bakers: Babies And Kittens has been out for a few weeks now, since the comics shop almost let me buy it the last time I was there. Unfortunately for me, it was a Tuesday, and, after Clerk 1 had already rung me up and I'd finished paying, Clerk 2 noticed The Bakers and said sternly that it wasn't available until the next day. So they had to put it back in my hold box and process a refund. (Yet another example of the bizarre business practices of the modern comics shop: everything has an unbreakable street date. The Direct Market is like a newsstand run by a guy with OCD.) The book itself is by the mighty Kyle Baker and published by Image; it collects some of his recent comics about his family -- and, in particular, his cute young children.

Marvel has brought out the fifth collection of Walt Simonson's great run on Thor under the title Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson, Vol. 5. Of course, the actual cover implies the title is Marvel Visionaries: Walter Simonson: The Mighty Thor and has no number on it, but that's par for the course for the confusing world of Marvel branding. (On the inside front cover, we can see that the first and fourth volumes were "Visionaries," but the second and third were officially Thor Legends (with a cover treatment implying their titles were actually Marvel Legends: yadda yadda yadda). Someday Marvel will grow up into a real publishing company and realize its own name is not the most important part of the packaging...or maybe not, actually, since that strategy has served them awfully well for the last couple of decades. (Another point to note: even though the book is now published, none of the online sellers have the actual cover, just the piece of art Marvel sent at the time of Diamond's solicitation. It's clear where their priorities are.) Whatever the new book is called, it's by Simonson and collects one of the great superhero runs of the '80s. It's available now.

New mass-market paperback lines are nearly as rare as hens' teeth, and the conventional wisdom has been that the format is in a deep slump, if not totally doomed. But, as always, Night Shade Books laughs at the conventional wisdom; they launched a brand new line in mass market last year. And this year they're bringing out Liz William's fine "Detective Inspector Chen" novels in that format -- Snake Agent was published in January and The Demon and the City in February, with Precious Dragon to follow this month. It's an engrossing detective series set in a supernatural near future -- and yet manages to be utterly unlike all of the "urban fantasies" that are so common these days, in large part by using real Chinese mythology (including an impressively bureaucratic Hell). Everyone who has not tried the series because the books are "too expensive" or because "my shelves are purpose-built for mass-markets" are now officially on notice -- you have no excuse now, and I expect you to buy, read, and enjoy these books. That is all.

Also from Night Shade, and also in the "I'm so glad" category, is Walter Jon Williams's new novel, Implied Spaces. Williams is probably the least-known best writer in the SF field, or maybe the writer who had the worst run of luck in the '90s, with great novels as various as Aristoi, Days of Atonement, and Metropolitan, and enough great stories to fill two big collections. But various publishing stuff has kept him from getting the audience he deserves -- and the audience that will really, really love his books, too -- until, I hope, now. Implied Spaces looks like a medium-future post-scarcity book, with pocket universes, massively powerful AIs, and flashing swords. I expect to love it, and I fervently home I'm not the only one. It's coming April 1st in hardcover.