Which is fine, given that they do such a good job of it. Project: Romantic is the third in a series of winning anthologies edited and designed by Chris Pitzer from AdHouse Books (following Project: Telstar, a robot anthology, and Project: Superior, a superhero one).
As you may expect from a book edited by a designer, it's a striking-looking one, a pink, black and white objet d'art as much as a graphic novel. Inside, a wide range of artists contribute short stories about "love and love stuff," including such luminaries as Debbie Huey, Hope Larson, Scott Morse and Junko Mizuno.
With so many fun and beautifully rendered stories to choose from, it's hard to find a favorite. I particularly enjoyed Maris Wicks' choose-your-own-adventure story that ends either with her anthropomorphic blobs finding happiness together or with one of them getting eaten by a giant shark creature. And Evan Larson's tale of Cupid's arrows falling into the wrong hands, which leads to the sort of hilarious nightmare scenario that anti-gay marriage activists are always wringing their hands about (cats humping dogs, mummies coupling with leprechauns, and so on). Oh, and Josh Cotter's four-part "Kingdom Animalia," in which animals act out human scenarios, like a tortoise and a hare going on a blind date, and the former telling the latter "I feel like maybe we're moving too fast." And ...
Train_Man Vol. 1
Viz Comics
Romance comics never went away in Japan, of course, a fact made abundantly clear by the abundance of them available in translated form here in the states.
Take Train_Man, for instance, a thoroughly Japanese romance manga with a Hollywood-style rom-com hook. The title character is a hopeless 22-year-old otaku virgin terrified of interacting with women. One day riding home on the train in a car full of them, he notices a beautiful young girl, just as a drunk old man busts into the car and starts berating everyone, accidentally striking the girl.
Train_Man stands up to him, and the chivalrous act gains the attention and gratitude of all in the car, including the girl, who is known to us only by her online nickname, "Hermess."
Thus begins our hero's journey of baby steps toward winning her heart, a journey he's coached along on by a huge cast of anonymous chat-room posters on a message board, who give him advice every step of the way, like an entire online community playing Cyrano De Bergerac for him.
It's supposedly based on a true story that spawned a book, movie and TV series in Japan. The manga version is by Hidenori Hara, who infuses the storytelling with emoticon narration, giving it a unique feel (particularly here in America, where we've yet to see the book, movie and TV series versions).
Popeye Vol. 1: I Yam What I Yam
Fantagraphics Books
One of the great pop culture romances of the last century is at the heart of this important new collection-that of Popeye and Olive Oyl. Fantagraphics follow their definitive collections of early cartoon greats Krazy Kat, Peanuts and Dennis the Menace with cartoonist E.C. Segar's Thimble Theater, which birthed the rough-and-tumble sailor man who would eventually become more famous as a cartoon star.
Collecting strips from 1928-1930, this book will hopefully reestablish Segar as the influential pioneer he was, and bring sharper focus to Popeye's importance in pop mythology. Today we may know him best as a spinach salesman and Bluto beater-upper, but in these early Segar stories it's clear that the nigh-omnipotent fighter is something of a missing link between American tall-tale heroes and the comic-book superheroes to follow.