(no subject)

[meganbmoore]

 rightstuf.com's current sale is 33% of CMX comics, 40% off if you're in their club thingie.  I highly approve of this, as I've been waiting for that and a Go!Comi sale (which I don't think they'll ever have...another few weeks and i'll have to concede defeat and pay a bit more for a few things at Amazon...)

Has anyone read The Empty Empire, From Eroica With Love (I'm positive someone recced it to me...smillaraaq?) Key to the Kingdom, or Musashi Number Nine?

Comments

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

Teru Teru x Shounen is one we discussed recently. Don't know if you'll like it, but I adore both it and the heroine.

Eroica is brilliant, especially if you have an appreciation for 70's shoujo manga. You'll probably dislike Klaus, though, and that makes me ;_;

Moon Child is wonderful. Check out Oyayubihime Infinity too. Hmmm, Cipher is amazing, and I loved Musashi, but it might be stronger if you have a background in the mangaka's other work and how she likes to play around with the concept of love and gender and "untouchable beings/people".

Really, you can't go wrong with CMX's shoujo. All of them are unique, and some are downright classic.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Is Klaus the (as described to me) homophobic ultra-manly one Our Hero is in love with?

I remembered Teru Teru x Shounen and planned to get it already, actually.

CMX seems to be pretty picky and diverse in its selectons, but also to get a fair chunk of lesser known stuff. I suspect I'll be getting a fair chunk of Vol 1s (Hmm...I'm reminded now that I was curious about Apothecariusc Argentum a while back.)

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

Is Klaus the (as described to me) homophobic ultra-manly one Our Hero is in love with?

I'm not sure I'd really term him "homophobic", since he reacts to the idea of sex with women with equal disgust. (Unless you want to term him misogynistic on top of homophobic, which might not be too far off the mark) What Klaus is, is an absolute asshole. What redeems him is that he hates everyone and everything equally--well, maybe Eroica a liiiiittle bit more. He's a great character, but totally not your type. Then again, Eroica is pretty assholish himself, so he can give as good as he gets.

As far as their relationship goes, Dorian has pretty much found his ideal because he's the sort of jerk that lives for the chase and when the object of his affections gives in, he'll drop the poor lovestruck fool like a sack of potatoes. Whereas Klaus will never, ever, eeeeever give in, so Eroica can chase after him until they both die of old age, battering one another in wheelchairs and canes, no doubt.

Hmm...I'm reminded now that I was curious about Apothecariusc Argentum a while back

I buy almost everything CMX puts out. That one was pretty good, but a touch generic. Empty Empire is sort of a mixed bag--I liked it, but, again, I knew the author from other series, so I was used to her style of storytelling, but I've seen complaints about the mimalist artwork and plotting, so...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Fair enough with Klaus. CMX titles don't show up on the shelves a lot here, so I'm just going by how I remember him being described. In all honesty, I really only react badly (I think) to characters like that when I don't think it's deserved, or they seem to be like that to make them stand out, instead of being a foil for an equal character. It sounds like, in those terms, there's a greater sense of equality on those terms.

CMX, unfortunately, doesn't seem to show up much here. It's a pity. I generally tend to think that it and Del Rey have pretty good, well chosen selections, even if alltheir titles aren't to my taste. But while almost every Del Rey book shows up on the shelves here, and most has been scanslated and is easy to find if I want to read a few chapters to make sure I want to buy it, CMX titles both don't always have scans, and rarely show up on the shelves here.

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

CMX gets mostly "B-list" titles. Not bad titles--most of them are quite good--but the ones that tend to appear in "sister magazines" or unknown-to-the-US mags. A lot of what they get is from BetsuHana, my favorite shoujo magazine, so that's in part why they're so near and dear to my heart. On the other hand, no one's ever heard of BetsuHana titles...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've only ever really heard of BetsuHana in passing. On the flipside, most of the incredibly popular shoujo and I don't get along.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Klaus is basically a deeply cranky, antisocial misanthrope, plain and simply. He reacts with disgust and horror to Eroica's constant "perverted" come-ons, but seems just about as upset when perfectly attractive women hit on him. He also hates his superior officers (stupid, perverted, incompetent, and for reasons of rank he can't threaten them with shooting or exile way he wants to), most of his underlings (incompetent, he constantly threatens to exile them to Alaska), other NATO agents from other countries (stupid, incompetent, and lacking in discipline), his usual KGB foils, flashy non-German sports cars, art, flamboyant clothing...well, really, when you come down to it, he hates just about everything and everyone but his father, one of the nuns at his old boarding school, bad Nescafe instant coffee, cigarettes (as long as they're his own manly brand, not the poofy things Eroica smokes), tanks, sensible German cars like his Benz, and fried potatoes. Oh, and when it really comes down to it, it seems like he doesn't really truly hate some of his more competent agents (Z/Tzet and the cross-dressing G in particular), and he even seems to develop a sort of grudging respect for Eroica himself after a while (he may be a flashy, gaudy pervert, but he's neither stupid nor incompetent). But of course, being the gruff manly-man sort that he is, he's never in a million years going to ADMIT to anything of the sort.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, and how could I forget -- high on the very short list of Things Klaus Doesn't Hate is his gun. As long as he has his bad coffee, his cigs, and his Magnum, the boy is...if not precisely happy, well, at least he seems to be *content* in his crankiness.

Basically, imagine if Sanzo were a brunet German NATO officer, only without all the angst, and that's Klaus in a nutshell.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Sanzo is who I've been thinking about during the Klaus discussion, and since I like Sanzo just fine...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*nods* When I first started getting into Saiyuki, that was pretty much the big parallel that struck me -- "my god, he's like a blond Klaus with an even bigger attitude problem!" If I were the sort who could write crossover crackfic, I'd be doing something RIGHT NOW where they're commiserating over coffee and chain-smoking on how much it sucks being the only competent one trying to save the world when your bosses are perverts and your underlings are pervs and idiots. And if you enjoy the snarky Sanzo/Gojyo dynamic, you might enjoy the Klaus/Dorian exchanges. The big difference being it's arguable whether Gojyo ever *means* any of his flirty teasing around the monk, or is just being a gadfly; Dorian definitely really means it, although he also seems like he's not above camping it up even more outrageously than usual just for the fun of watching the Major get more and more flustered. But in both cases, for all that they're such wildly incompatible personalities, there does seem to be a sort of grudging respect and friendship that's eventually built up under the snark -- not that it's ever going to be spoken out loud, of course.