I have to admit, about half the time I’ve picked up a record just because the name of the band wouldn’t leave my head—and who can forget a name like Borbetomagus? Those of you who are historically-inclined will remember that being the archaic name for the German town of Worms, although there’s little (overt) connection between that bit of antiquity and three guys from New York—Don Dietrich, Jim Sauter and Donald Miller—who play sax and guitar and in the words of Byron Coley of Forced Exposure, throw down “balls on the line improvisation with enough energy to flatten buildings.”

Like many of you, I've signed up for NaNoWriMo 2007, and I'm already a bit fidgety about what's going to happen.  And a lot of that is due to the fact that the story I'm planning, Vajra, is in some ways a successor to Summerworld.

Note that I didn't say "sequel"!  I don't do sequels -- or, rather, I try not to.  Vajra will not have any of the same characters or situations, so don't expect to see Gô, Tomoe, Utsumaru or Terashima (or Yoichi or any of the others).  But it does have many of the same themes and concepts, just explored in an entirely different way.

What I'll probably be doing is creating a blog for that book later, and I'll have links back to it from here once it's up and running.  (Eventually each of these separate book blogs will be consolidated into something more central, but for now I'm doing everything one book at a time.)

If you've signed up for NaNo as well, drop a line, and we can compare notes!

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

The other day I was trying to describe to someone how both prolific and talented Osamu Tezuka was, and for lack of any better way to express it I said, “He left behind masterpieces as freely as a tree gave fruit.”

There would be no manga as we know it without Tezuka. The more of his work I read as it slowly appears in English-language editions, the more I’m convinced of this. It’s not just because of the visual style he developed—which in turn was inspired by Walt Disney’s designs—but because he produced a body of work that dwarfed almost anything else seen before or since, that almost everything he put his name to was at least good and often outstanding, and because he labored tirelessly to expand the envelope for what manga was about, what it could do and what it could encompass.

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

[Review written for AMN. Click here to read full text.]

I’m fond of quoting Jacques Barzun’s statement about “experimental art”—that if one considers a certain work of art to be experimental, one must also concede that there is the possibility that the experiment has failed. I’ve since expanded my thinking on the issue a bit, and responded with a few questions of my own: What are the parameters of success and failure for a given “experiment”, and who dictates them, the artist or the audience? I don’t think these questions have fixed answers, either; you have to ask yourself such questions every time you approach something new, and see what comes of it. Nobody is ever trying to do the same thing the same way, or for the same reasons, or with the same ends in mind.