You all remember my little rant about the Twilight graphic novel a few months back?
Well, there are definitely two sides of the coin as I am more than happy to write about titles I AM looking forward to. So here’s the first: Peepo Choo.
Some of you guys might remember the creator, Felipe Smith, as a runner up in TOKYOPOP‘s Rising Stars of Manga and the creator of MBQ. What many of you might not know is that after MBQ was ended, Mr. Smith made his manga debut IN JAPAN. No small feat for an out-of-towner. (Literally.)
Luckily for Smith, Peepo Choo has been wildly successful and Vertical will be putting it out this year.
Peepo Choo is a story about Milton, an otaku obsessed with anime figures and a very popular (fictional) anime called Peepo Choo. He lives in the projects of Chicago and works in a comic book shop in exchange for figures. His boss, Gill, happens to be an assassin and takes Milton and Judy, another shop assistant, to Japan as a cover up fo his next job of offing some yakuza. What comes out of this already sort of weird story is a wild commentary about American and Japanese perceptions of each others’ cultures and the misunderstandings that usually crop up between those perceptions.
According to this Anime News Network article about his journey from OEL manga to the Japanese industry, Smith has worked incredibly hard on this manga and I am *super*-excited to read it.
