Author: Greg McElhatton

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Love as a Foreign Language Vol. 1

Written by J. Torres
Art by Eric Kim
72 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press

One of my favorite release formats we’ve seen in recent days was Viz’s treatment of Eagle, with small, 100-page volumes showing up on a regular basis. The books were long enough that they were squarebound and looked nice sitting on your bookshelf, but short enough that the consumer wasn’t overwhelmed by the amount of material or the amount of money being spent. That’s what Oni Press’s new series Love as a Foreign Language reminds me of; a perfect-sized quarterly series that I want to see slowly take over my bookshelf.

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Whistle! Vol. 1

WHISTLE! © 1998 by DAISUKE HIGUCHI/SHUEISHA Inc.By Daisuke Higuchi
200 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

Many of my friends may find it hard to believe that I played soccer for six years. It’s probably because unless the World Cup is on television, I don’t have too much interest in the sport these days. It’s fun to see a game from time to time, but on the whole, it just passes me by. Well, in what is certainly high praise, Whistle! not only made me think back fondly to those days playing soccer, but it briefly made me want to watch some soccer games.

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Once in a Blue Moon Vol. 1

Written by Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir
Art by Jennifer Quick
160 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press

As comic books increase their presence in bookstores, it’s interesting to see which companies already seem poised to make great strides into this new market. Take, by way of example, Oni Press’s new book Once in a Blue Moon. Appealing to teenager readers both male and female, it’s a perfect example of a book which should get noticed by a lot of this new audience reading comics. Mind you, Oni’s been publishing this sort of book for years now; it’s just the latest example of the marketplace finally catching up with them.

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Legal Drug Vol. 1

By CLAMP
192 pages, black and white
Published by TokyoPop

It’s strange to be reading a CLAMP series that’s actually “new”, but in the case of Tsubasa, xxxHOLiC, and Legal Drug, we’re getting translations of current-running series in Japan. Now that I’ve sampled all three of them, I think that the best was being saved for last, because Legal Drug is easily the one “must buy” series CLAMP’s producing.

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Rent Girl

Written by Michelle Tea
Art by Laurenn McCubbin
240 pages, two-color
Published by Last Gasp

More often than not, when I read a new book it’s all at once, having grabbed some free time for myself and not knowing when I’ll next get the chance. On rare occasions, though, I find myself holding back, forcing myself to only read one chapter at a time. That’s the sign of a great book, one that I don’t want to end, and that’s exactly what happened with Michelle Tea and Laurenn McCubbin’s Rent Girl.

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Everyman Vol. 1: Be the People

Written by the Brothers Goldman
Art by Joe Bucco
96 pages, black and white
Published by FWDbooks

With the United States’s 2004 Presidential Election just a matter of days away, the country’s political views are at a fevered pitch. Polls are compiled and analyzed daily, and fears and conspiracy theories run hand-in-hand. It’s the perfect time for the new graphic novel Everyman Vol. 1: Be the People, which takes the country down a theoretical road from this upcoming election… and asks the question on if the real world could follow.

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Kwaidan

Written by Jung and Jee-Yun
Art by Jung
144 pages, color
Published by Dark Horse

Ghost stories are often centered around the emotion of love. It makes sense, if you follow the idea that ghosts are kept in our world through a strong emotion. It’s what Jung and Jee-Yun use in their graphic novel Kwaïdan, as a pair of spirits in 12th Century Japan are killed prematurely and struggle to be reunited even after death. What we get here, though, is a bit more than it first appears.

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In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot

By Graham Roumieu
40 pages, color
Published by Manic D Press

Celebrity autobiography is a strange, unique genre unto its own. Maybe it’s because most celebrities don’t have a particular knack for writing, meaning that one of two things happen: they work with a ghostwriter who “cleans up” the language and makes the book sound nothing like the supposed author, or the celebrity writes it on their own and it’s wonderfully incomprehensible, just like them. I think that’s just one of the many reasons why Graham Roumieu’s In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot is so utterly brilliant. You don’t get much more of a dead-on parody than this.

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Noble Causes Vol. 4 #1-2

Written by Jay Faerber
Art by Fran Bueno
32 pages, color
Published by Image Comics

When Noble Causes first burst onto the scene, it was easy to see that creator Jay Faerber had used the soap opera as one of his inspirations for the series of mini-series. Now, after three mini-series (and several one-shots), Noble Causes is back as an ongoing series… and the series has definitely inherited both all of the strengths and weaknesses of its spiritual parent.

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Othello Vol. 1

Othello Vol. 1
By Satomi Ikezawa
208 pages, black and white
Published by Del Rey

Before you get your hopes up, I feel it should be pointed out that Othello is not an adaptation of the same-titled play by William Shakespeare, nor is it about the competitive world of playing the game of Othello (like other game mangas such as Hikaru no Go). It does refer to the black and white two-sided pieces of Othello, though, with opposites existing in the same unit. So it’s not such a bad title after all.

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