Ananth

Speed lines, awww yeah. 

Hope everyone had a great holiday and New Year! I took a trip home to DC to visit some friends, my brother visited, and then a bunch of friends came up for New Years ... we threw a party and I'm sure I'll get some comics out of that. A lot of folks from Rochester visited, included Conrad's lady Rachelle, who is pretty ace and previously appeared here, eating bacon in a manner that can only be called adorable. 

Yuko does a lot of everyday things very pretty and with a great sense of aesthetic - I know there are plenty of folks who can spiral-peel a clementine, but I can't, so I wrote a comic about it. Apparently Yuko perfected her technique over the course of months (years?) during her childhood. Other things she does nicely: fold up the sleeve chopsticks come in and wrap presents. Oh and she draws or something? Do you guys know anything about that?

For Christmas Yuko got the manga Oishinbo from her parents. It's about cooking, and has been running overseas since 1983. There are over one hundred volumes in print in Japan! The English version is published by Viz, and organizes stories by type of food or cooking (the two Yuko has are Ramen & Gyoza and Sashimi). I'm most of the way through one of them. Oishinbo is light-hearted and centers on the love of food, often times with the subplot rivalry between the protagonist, a culinary journalist, and his gourmand father over the ULTIMATE MENU PROJECT (I'm not making that up). The downside is that because this is a selection of stories there are jumps in certain subplots, most notably some very drastic leaps in the main romantic thread. Sucks, but these books really seem as though they've been packaged to appeal to foodies, and it's cool to see Viz feeling out other markets. If someone in your life is curious but unsure about comics and has a real passion for food, this might be a nice segue to bring comics into their heart (stomach). 

Also, I should warn you - prepare to get really hungry. 

On a side note, I'm committing to having an ink test(s) in the store to go along with Thursday's update. And any orders we've gotten since the New Year will be out by the end of the week, and then we'll be back to our normal shipping schedule. Thanks for your patience!