By Joseph Luster

The tension is palpable in Pluto at this point, but somewhere in the thick miasma of suspense is a subtle hint of disappointment that it's all barreling toward a close. There may be two volumes left, but never before has the light at the end of the tunnel been more visible. With that in mind, I present the same light warning that kicked off the review of volume five: there aren't going to be a...

By Joseph Luster

In the latest volume of Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack , the good doctor goes above and beyond the call of duty many times to show that he's just about the coolest manga character there is. He takes rabid dog-bites to the arm to prove a point, performs surgery through a yakuza member's tattoo under pain of death, and smacks the hell out of a handful of people without a hint of age or gender discrim...

By Erin Finnegan

Before I read Walking Your Way to a Better Life (released by Vertical in August) I'd never heard of a walking class, let alone "face yoga," but apparently these kinds of classes are common in Japan. Kimiko (the book's single-name author) was once an average housewife who enrolled in two local classes in an attempt to get more exercise into her busy routine. Eleven bestselling books later, Kimi...

By Joseph Luster

I shudder to think of what germaphobes would do if they got their hands on Masayuki Ishikawa's Moyasimon . I'm nothing of the sort, yet doing a little post-read refrigerator cleaning had microscopic organisms bouncing before my very eyes. So yes, more than a few people may cringe at the bacterial contents of Moyasimon , but most everyone else should find it charming and funny, wondering why it...

By Joseph Luster

Looking at Ghost in the Shell now, it's hard to see past that massive media franchise that's known so very well at this point. Thanks especially to the GitS activity of recent years—with the Stand Alone Complex series receiving meaty fanfare, spawning a follow-up and a film—Shirow Masamune's original creation seems like a distant memory. In an effort to tap into our collective brain, the manga...

By Joseph Luster

Ah, there goes that ageless, fey creature again—known by some as legendary mangaka Kazuo Umezu, or even just Umezz to those "in the know"—zipping quietly through the streets in an effort to return to his striped abode unseen; a portent of good fortune. It would be a mighty feat to ring in Halloween without the man's work, and I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone do so. But what hor...