Yen Press is running a poll on their site for folks to vote on their top three favorite series appearing in Yen Plus. They’re not saying so explicitly, but one has to hope that they’re not really asking, “which series should we ditch next?” - two of my favorites, Hero Tales and Time and Again, are pretty far down there in the rankings…

Humans have a habit of thinking of history as a series of profound isolated events in disparate places. In reality, history is the embodiment of causality; a fluid wave of downs and ups all throughout the world, each one with an effect on the ones after it, both locally and globally. Let’s take the current state of North Korea as an example. A college class could be built on how it came to be in its current state; the Juche ideology, a result of chilling relations with China and the USSR during the Cold War, which initially were warm due to its acceptance of Socialist politics, seeded by Soviet ideology and Chinese money and materiel during the Korean War, itself a result of political stability after the expulsion of the Japanese after the end of the Pacific front of World War II, which was the result of Japanese imperialism in eastern Asia, itself a result of Japanese politicians realizing their nation had missed out on the riches granted to European nations as a result of their imperialism in Africa, the Americas, and other parts of Asia… how much further back would you like to go?

I personally find North Korea’s story rather fascinating, in a somewhat startling and depressing kind of way. I’ve read several stories about foreigners who have traveled in North Korea, and they all tend to have similar memes and emotions: surprise at the volume of idolization of the political system and its leaders; frustration at the seeming single-mindedness of the people, completely unable to show any doubt or make any self-judgements about the things they’re told; shock at the ostentatiousness of the monuments and performances praising the glory of the Worker’s Paradise while people go hungry and the lights don’t stay on all night; and most of all, a pervasive melancholy and a desire to get back home as soon as possible. The best stories I’ve read even give me dreams (nightmares?) about visiting or living in North Korea; no joke. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea must be a good one, because it gave me such a dream.

Pyongyang is an autobiographical comic based on the journey of Québécois artist and animator Guy Delisle, who lived in the titular city for two months as a checker for outsourced tweening animation for a French cartoon series. It’s fairly standard as a North Korean travel story, covering all the familiar places and emotions; if you’re not new to such stories, as I’m not, you probably won’t vicariously “see” anything new in this book. However, the length of Delisle’s stay is a bit unique, and gives him the chance to do a few things we don’t read about in other stories, such as meet several other foreigners, visit several bad restaurants instead of just one, and maybe even make an acquaintance or two among the locals.

Of course, the other unique thing here is the comic format. Delisle’s art is competent, done in a clearly hand-drawn and -shaded style; the cartoony style is occasionally offset by strikingly detailed renditions of propaganda artwork and monuments. (Delisle’s depiction of almost all his Korean characters as short and slit-eyed may upset the politically correct, but such is the nature of caricature.) The comic tends to be text-heavy, with plenty of monologuing, but Delisle knows how to sometimes shut up and let his art alone do the talking. With expert pacing, Delisle is wonderful at capturing all the absurdity and awkwardness possible on a North Korean stay in comic form. It is the encapsulation of a relatively peaceful and calm moment in North Korea’s dynamic history; one which won’t be written about in textbooks, but one that was a result of all the history before it, and one that defined the result of all the history after.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea contains a fresh presentation and perspective which long-time North Korea watchers will find interesting, yet is still accessible to those who don’t know kimchee from Kim Il-Sung. Hunt it down and give it a read.

That thunderous noise you hear is the sound of wallets worldwide being cracked open for Apple’s latest gadget, the iPad, announced earlier today. (No, not that iPad.) It’s a touch-screen computer with the power of a laptop but the interface of an iPhone, and it’s dangerously affordable. One of its main applications is iBooks, an e-book reader with integrated bookstore, and one of the companies announced to be on board from launch is Hachette, the parent company of Yen Press.

So hooray! Comics on the iPad! Right? Well, not so fast. iBooks will be using the non-proprietary EPUB format for its content, which Hachette is apparently already selling its books in - though I’m having a hard time finding details about this on the interwebs besides blustery press releases. However, word on the street is that the EPUB format is great for text-heavy work, but not so great for publications which require precise placement of text around or over artwork - like comics. This article provides an example of a broken comic in EPUB format, though the images appear to be missing at least at the moment - but we can surmise from the text that it’s a mess. And that aside, I can’t find any evidence that Hachette has even attempted to publish any of its comic content via EPUB.

Though I’m still skeptical about the desirability of reading a comic on a screen, I’m hopeful that a workaround may be found. The EPUB format appears to permit images in the SVG format, an interchangeable vector graphics format which should permit precise text and graphics formatting; though the fact that this means that every page will in fact be a large and potentially complex vector image may cause poor performance from e-reader software. And it appears that Apple does not intend to prohibit alternative e-reader programs from being available in its iPad application store; there are a couple similar programs available for the iPhone and iPod touch already available, so it may be possible that an alternative e-reader program specifically designed for comic material may be made available. I’ll keep a (skeptical) eye on the situation.

Though it often seems like many of their other movies get more attention, my favorite Pixar movie, far and away, is Brad Bird’s The Incredibles. It is so many things; a family-friendly comedy that’s genuinely funny, a coming-of-middle-age drama, and, of course, a tribute to the cape and cowl antics of comic book superheroes - the muscles, the gadgetry, the outlandish villains. It’s even kind of politically subversive for a Hollywood movie, if you think about it… though maybe I shouldn’t go there.

If you haven’t seen it… well, you should. I understand that part of my audience of this site is of the “oh, I only watch anime, American cartoons are just for kids” mindset, but I really think you’re doing yourself a disservice, and The Incredibles may be the movie that changes your mind. It basically address the question, “What if Superman and Wonder Woman got hitched, settled down and had a couple of kids?” After vigilante heroism is outlawed by the government, super strong Mr Incredible and stretchy shapeshifter Elastigirl settle down in the suburbs and start a family. But Mr Incredible doesn’t find the domestic life fulfilling, so he continues his heroism covertly, without cluing in his increasingly suspicious wife and kids. However, he soon finds himself over his head…

Given that The Incredibles is basically about comic book-style heroes, I guess it’s little surprise that when Boom! Studios’ Boom! Kids imprint brought the franchise to actual comic book pages, it would feel very much in place. The Incredibles is still ongoing as a comic series; Family Matters collects the first story arc into one paperback. In the story, Mr Incredible discovers he is gradually losing his super strength powers for some reason, and tries to find out why without letting his family find out (old habits die hard, apparently) or, of course, being clobbered in his weakened state. Taking place some point after the movie, where implicitly the Incredible family is apparently able to superhero with impunity (to verb a noun), The Incredibles: Family Matters features many of the same characters as the movie while introducing a few new ones, both heroic and villainous. But more than just the characters, the story maintains a certain The Incredibles feel in such things as how the characters interact; a battle against baddies is interspersed with typical family bickering. Though the traditionally drawn comic necessitates a different look than the 3D animation of the movie, the characters are still instantly recognizable and the same visual gags involving Mr Incredible’s freakish upper body proportions or Elastigirl’s, well, elasticity still “work.”

Bonus pages in the back show off the cover art used for the issues the volume compiles; some of them are done in an absolutely brilliant “golden age” style, with flat, faded colors and bold outlines. Very cool. There’s also a few pages of layout and character development sketches. All in all, the volume may feel a bit on the thin side, but I feel it’s a good value for the $10 price tag. Yes, it’s kiddie, but it won’t insult your intelligence like certain “adult” comics, and it’s definitely a fun read - and isn’t that what it’s all about?