Tag Archives: xxxholic Roundtable

xxxHOLiC Followup

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When I was invited to do a guest post on xxxHOLiC vols. 1-3, I took the assignment literally. Even though I had read the whole series (though not recently), I wrote my review with reference to the first three volumes alone. Since these volumes are episodic and largely self-contained, this struck me as reasonable. But I can see why fans of the series might be unhappy. So I took up Kristy and Kate’s implicit challenge and read the entire series so far, including scanlations of what del Rey hasn’t published yet: these cover volumes 15 and 16, and a few chapters of what will be volume 17. (For those who want to do the same, the new stuff begins with Chapter 171.)

It is quite true that the first three volumes are not representative of the series. It’s also true that the later volumes fix some of the problems with the first three. For one thing, they gradually drop the episodic structure and focus on the regulars rather than the customers, so the “simplistic morality tales” I complained about are gone. For another, some of the characters’ annoying quirks are minimized. (Not all, though: Watanuki’s irrational dislike of Domeki is still prominent, and still not funny.) But for most of the series, Watanuki and Yuko
remain one-dimensional characters, and Yuko is still more of a plot device than a character.

Moreover, the later volumes provide an additional ground for complaint. As the series progresses, the link with Tsubasa becomes much more important. Although it’s still possible to read xxxHOLiC without reading Tsubasa, unless you read Tsubasa you won’t know the full story of who Watanuki is, or why Yuko’s shop exists in the first place, among other important questions. I have read Tsubasa, or tried to. Not only is it long and bad, its plot is a labyrinth which few who enter ever find their way out of. To be fair, Tsubasa does provide a thematic counterpoint to xxxHOLiC; but that’s not enough to make it worth slogging through all 28 volumes.

The first volume of xxxHOLiC I really enjoyed was volume 15. For one thing, the characters of Watanuki, and to a lesser extent Yuko, finally acquire some depth. For another, something big actually happens, as opposed to Yuko telling us that something is about to happen, as she does repeatedly in the preceding volumes. (Even though xxxHOLiC originally appeared in a magazine for young men, CLAMP seems to think that they need to explicitly explain important points over and over, or their readers won’t get them.) And for once, the ending doesn’t disappoint: it’s powerful and affecting, more so than anything else up to that point. And there’s some beautiful and striking art.

It turns out that volume 15 and the first chapter of volume 16 mark the end of an arc that encompasses the entire series up to that point. And when the second arc starts, there are major changes, including in characterization and tone.

If xxxHOLiC ended where the first arc ends, I’d conclude by saying that one good volume isn’t enough to outweigh fourteen mediocre ones. But the second arc feels like it will be a long one, possibly as long as the first. And while it starts off slowly, it may wind up being good enough to redeem the series as a whole. While I stand by what I wrote about the first three volumes, all I can conclude about the series as a whole is that it’s too soon to say.

Update by Noah: The entire xxxholic roundtable is here.

xxxHOLiC Followup

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When I was invited to do a guest post on xxxHOLiC vols. 1-3, I took the assignment literally. Even though I had read the whole series (though not recently), I wrote my review with reference to the first three volumes alone. Since these volumes are episodic and largely self-contained, this struck me as reasonable. But I can see why fans of the series might be unhappy. So I took up Kristy and Kate’s implicit challenge and read the entire series so far, including scanlations of what del Rey hasn’t published yet: these cover volumes 15 and 16, and a few chapters of what will be volume 17. (For those who want to do the same, the new stuff begins with Chapter 171.)

It is quite true that the first three volumes are not representative of the series. It’s also true that the later volumes fix some of the problems with the first three. For one thing, they gradually drop the episodic structure and focus on the regulars rather than the customers, so the “simplistic morality tales” I complained about are gone. For another, some of the characters’ annoying quirks are minimized. (Not all, though: Watanuki’s irrational dislike of Domeki is still prominent, and still not funny.) But for most of the series, Watanuki and Yuko
remain one-dimensional characters, and Yuko is still more of a plot device than a character.

Moreover, the later volumes provide an additional ground for complaint. As the series progresses, the link with Tsubasa becomes much more important. Although it’s still possible to read xxxHOLiC without reading Tsubasa, unless you read Tsubasa you won’t know the full story of who Watanuki is, or why Yuko’s shop exists in the first place, among other important questions. I have read Tsubasa, or tried to. Not only is it long and bad, its plot is a labyrinth which few who enter ever find their way out of. To be fair, Tsubasa does provide a thematic counterpoint to xxxHOLiC; but that’s not enough to make it worth slogging through all 28 volumes.

The first volume of xxxHOLiC I really enjoyed was volume 15. For one thing, the characters of Watanuki, and to a lesser extent Yuko, finally acquire some depth. For another, something big actually happens, as opposed to Yuko telling us that something is about to happen, as she does repeatedly in the preceding volumes. (Even though xxxHOLiC originally appeared in a magazine for young men, CLAMP seems to think that they need to explicitly explain important points over and over, or their readers won’t get them.) And for once, the ending doesn’t disappoint: it’s powerful and affecting, more so than anything else up to that point. And there’s some beautiful and striking art.

It turns out that volume 15 and the first chapter of volume 16 mark the end of an arc that encompasses the entire series up to that point. And when the second arc starts, there are major changes, including in characterization and tone.

If xxxHOLiC ended where the first arc ends, I’d conclude by saying that one good volume isn’t enough to outweigh fourteen mediocre ones. But the second arc feels like it will be a long one, possibly as long as the first. And while it starts off slowly, it may wind up being good enough to redeem the series as a whole. While I stand by what I wrote about the first three volumes, all I can conclude about the series as a whole is that it’s too soon to say.

Update by Noah: The entire xxxholic roundtable is here.

Breaking News: Manga Critics Not Nice!

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During our xxxholic roundtable last week, Suat intimated that manga critics were too nice. M. at coffeeandink, in a post titled: “Summary of some recent comments in a discussion of manga, refutes him thus:

GUY #1: Manga critics are much too nice and praise substandard work. Naturally, I feel no need to provide any evidence of this contention. Maybe it is because of all the girls.

GUY #2: Yeah, I don’t like any manga. Even when it’s good, it’s made for girls. No, wait, I do like one manga — it is by a man, and about stereotypical guy stuff. Since it is male, it is gender-neutral, unlike yaoi or shojo, which people only seem to like for political reasons. My reasons for liking things are completely apolitical and entirely justified by intellectual arguments. When women write in detail about relationships, it’s just not aimed at me. When men write in detail about relationships, it shows complex emotional realism.

Also, why don’t you ever talk about boys’ comics?

GUY #2: Once again, I must assert that people are lying about their opinions of manga for political reasons, without evidence or example, and my list of all male great comics artists is completely without political bias. Also, I am going to cite Osamu Tezuka as a great comics artist, even though his career and oeuvre actually contradict everything else I’ve been claiming about audience and identification.

GUY #2: Wait, I haven’t named enough great male comics artists yet.

I am going to continue to assume that girls’ comics = comics about romance is such an obvious statement that it will inform all my thinking and yet never need to be clearly stated.

GUY #1: Whether situations are realistic, how intellectual they are, and how deeply invested the reader becomes in the story are totally objective metrics that are completely independent of all individual tastes and socio-cultural influences.

GUY #3: The problem is an age bias, not just a gender bias. To prove this, for the rest of this comment, I will only talk about comics written by men.

I would submit that this is truly high class snark, and not even a little bit nice.

I had a back and forth discussion with m that I thought I’d reproduce here, at least in part.

Me: I did want to point out though, that, whatever their failings, Suat and Matthias, were both very open to dialogue, and unfailingly polite when contradicted (as, indeed, were people like Melinda and VM with whom they were arguing.)

m: …comments like Suat and Matthias’ are why I basically gave up on looking at comics or manga blogs not specifically recommended by friends. You characterize Suat and Matthias as “very open to dialogue, and unfailingly polite when contradicted,” and indeed they seemed respectful of the people to whom they were directly speaking. But their comments are not open, polite, or respectful; their comments are extremely sexist. By this I don’t mean that they hate women or spoke with any malice or ill intent; I mean that their comments treated men’s responses and men’s experiences as the default and characterized women’s responses and experiences as deviations from the normal, special exceptions, and less meaningful or authoritative than men’s experiences.

They are hardly the worst cases of this I’ve seen, particularly in the comics blogosphere, but I’m not sure you understand the weariness that comes from encountering this over and over and over again–even in cases, such as this one, where these voices are not in the majority. Ultimately, it was a lot less painful and exhausting for me to stick to a different set of blogs and communities, where the readers and writers did not by default consider women’s writing or women’s reading less significant or less interesting than men’s.

Me: I’ve engaged in a number of irritating interactions with mainstream and arts comics readers on behalf of shojo and manga, so I have some sense of how wearying it is to have the same argument over and over — though, obviously, not being a woman, I’m probably not as personally infuriated. In any case, I certainly understand the impulse not to want to engage with that sort of thing. You certainly have no responsibility to tell people they’re wrong on the internet. I wish I was less prone to do that myself, honestly.

Nonetheless, for me — and I’m coming from a slightly different place, as I said — I think it’s worthwhile to try to have people from different kinds of communities talk to each other. That’s going to entail some (though not necessarily equal, alas) frustration for everyone. But I think the results can also be worthwhile — and seemed to me to be so in this case, where the back and forth was fascinating, and brought up a number of really interesting points (I thought Shaenon and Kristy in particular were fascinating on why they felt manga was worthwhile and/or different from Western comics.)

Along those lines, I think its useful to make some distinctions at least. I think calling Matthias’ and Suat’s comments “extremely sexist” is a bit harsh. It’s not hard to find extreme sexism on the web or in life, alas, but does this really qualify? Neither Suat nor Matthias dismisses women’s writing out of hand; in fact, both have read a fair bit of shojo and acknowledge some of its virtues, despite their reservations. Neither categorically dismisses either women’s writing or romance — in fact, elsewhere in comments, Suat basically says his problem with xxxholic isn’t that it is romance, but that it didn’t move him to tears. Both Matthias and Suat express an eagerness to read more by women critics and to think about these issues in greater depth. Suat linked to Melinda Beasi at the end of his original post; Matthias pressed VM for links (and she linked you, among others.)

I just feel like both Matthias and Suat were very much trying to meet their interlocutors halfway — as indeed, were folks like Melinda and Shaenon and VM. I think that’s worth something, and worth respecting, even if, at the end of the day, my own views are much closer to yours than to theirs.

You can read the whole thing, along with some interesting comments from other folks, at M.’s page here.

xxxholic Roundtable Round Up

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I thought I’d end the xxxholic roundtable by highlighting some of the more interesting comments it generated, both here and on other sites.

Starting off, Kristy Valenti had a longish and thoughtful defense of the series.

I personally enjoy xxxHolic very much. The first few volumes made it as an honorable mention, paired with Petshop of Horrors, on my 2006 TCJ best of lists: at the time, I praised their low-key, late-night cable horror-anthology feel (something that the critics in this roundtable have also identified, as a fault) and wrote, “these are not significant works by any means, but they are good reads and an interesting study in rhythm and narrative structure.”

I find this rhythm to be key to xxxHolic (I realize that a strong argument can be made that if it doesn’t grab you from the beginning, it’s not worth your time, but xxxHolic, in particular, is quite the slow-burn: as Melinda pointed out, it founders a bit for a while, and shifts gears, but then it begins to build to the show-stopping, stunningly drawn Vol. 12 (though no, the philosophical and existential themes in Vol. 12, and of the work overall, are not particularly novel or complex (one’s ability to affect one’s own destiny, how even our tiniest actions affect ourselves and others, hence the butterfly motif (which: not new)); but I appreciated the getting there. My patience was rewarded).

There’s a certain coldness, or distance, about the work which is tonally in concert, considering that it’s concerned with the supernatural and the inhuman. Equally, my attachment to xxxHolic isn’t particularly sentimental: it’s the only thing I’ve ever read from Clamp that I liked, and I don’t particularly even care for the characters (well, Yuko is entertaining), even 13 or so volumes in. I also wasn’t able to stomach Tsubasa.

That’s why I find it somewhat perverse to review only the first three volumes of this series (or for the majority of the critics to have only read the first three volumes). I realize it’s from a practical standpoint, and I realize that a strong argument can be made that if it doesn’t grab you from the beginning, it’s not worth your time, but I do hope that one forthcoming roundtable participant has read the series to date and will look at the first three volumes in retrospect.

Narratively, xxxHolic is a genre work in which I derive pleasure, as a reader, from seeing the ways in which genre conventions are or are not fulfilled, side-swiped, or discarded in favor of other genres. (Suat explains that there much better works in this genre; I submit that it’s no accident that I followed xxxHolic for as long as I have because I can get it for free at the public library.) And I confess that, after having my eyes assaulted by hundreds of hideous comics with absolutely zero literary or artistic merit, sometimes I find it aesthetically soothing to look at lovely art for art’s sake.

Matthias Wivel had several interesting comments discussing his lack of interest in manga. For example:

I wonder too about the blandness of most manga criticism, but my focus was clearly narrower: it basically concerned what I can’t help but see as an idealisation amongst certain critics of shojo and yaoi especially, simply because, it seems, they’re different from American comics.

Inspired by this enthusiasm, I’ve tried to read a bit of it, and definitely recognise the mastery of, say, Ai Yazawa, but at the same time it’s not only clearly targeted at a completely different audience than me to an extent where I can’t sustain even my intellectual enthusiasm for it, but it also only goes so far.

What I’ve read — and perhaps it’s not a sufficient amount — has been rather formulaic, even if driven by a different (and initially fresh-seeming) cultural coding than the one that makes a lot of American and European comics so instantly dull.

At the same time, like Suat, I find much more to think about, much greater emotional resonance when I read a comic by Dan Clowes or, say, Yoshiharu Tsuge. A comic not only more clearly directed to me, but one invested by much more careful attention to emotional reality.

This prompted a reply from Vom Marlowe:

“A comic not only more clearly directed to me, but one invested by much more careful attention to emotional reality.”

I think that says more about your perception of emotional reality than it does about the comics.

I hate to point out the elephant in the room, but you know, what a lot of this boils down to is that Matthias and Suat are arguing that girls comics aren’t getting criticized hard enough, that if they were held to the same standard as the lit comics, more critics would be saying the comics suck.

This is the same argument that is leveled against romance novels all the time. There’s a reason that almost all deep-level romance novel criticism takes place in female-dominated, frequently locked realms. That’s because if you do it in the “mainstream” the criticism tends to boil down to: Girl stuff (like, say, romance itself) is icky (or emotionally shallow). I hear that enough already, and I’m really not interested in hearing it again. If I thought romances were emotionally shallow, I wouldn’t be reading them. Arguing that they’re worth reading is EXHAUSTING.

I’ll just say that I actually read a LOT of good, thoughtful, fierce criticism of shojo, and most of it is in locked spaces where the boys aren’t allowed.

Pallas provided a really sharp assessment of the differences between Japanese and American comic art:

This is so subjective. Its kind of apples and oranges. Clamp’s art suits the stories they do- I think if they were assigned Captain America: the Return #1 to draw, it would be a disaster.

I think that many American comics tend to have more complex character designs and more complex backgrounds- certainly, the use of color alone adds a lot of complexity. I get the impression the ideal in American art is closer to realism than the ideal in a lot of manga.

I think there’s a number of shoujo with very muddled storytelling- some shoujo creators try to do action oriented material but fail at it, because the minimalism that can work for emotional storyline doesn’t necessarily work for an adventure. (Are Clamp fight scenes ever engaging? I remember absurd proportions in Tsubasa fight scenes ticked me off. Actually, I’ve barely read Sailor Moon, but I got the impression it would fall into the muddled fight scene category.)

I think that you can argue that American comics are far more “plot” oriented while manga is more “emotion” oriented.

Its interesting that I think Takahashi it at least somewhat impressed with the art in American comics:

Question: Do you read American comics?

Takahashi: There are a number of titles that I collect. One of them is, of course, Spider-Man.

Question: Using Spider-Man as a reference, what do you think are the differences between manga and American comics?

Takahashi: Hmmm… In a certain sense, the quality, the art of American comics is very high. I think the element of storytelling through images is strong with American comics. Japanese manga are really… manga can be created even without drawing any action into them. Even boring everyday things, such as portraying that it’s a really hot day or that something is really hungry- even just that is enough for manga. I guess it’s a difference of how people see the world, what people think makes a story. I believe that’s where the difference lies.

And Shaenon Garrity chimed in:

Argh…I have so many nerdy, nerdy thoughts on this subject. To me, American comics, even most “art” or “literary” comics, are very external and plot-oriented in their storytelling. This is even true of comics that go in for a lot of visual experimentation; Acme Novelty Library, for instance, never gets inside the characters’ heads in a visual/visceral way, and in fact all its brilliant formal tricks seem designed as distancing mechanisms, like the comic-book equivalent of a Stanley Kubrick film.

Which is a perfectly legitimate approach, of course, but one of the things that draws me to manga is that even the most formulaic genre work is so internal and character/emotion-oriented. By comparison, manga makes American comics look dry, disengaged, and emotionally stunted. I guess a lot of American comics readers see the emotional intensity of manga as silly or shallow or embarrassing, but my reaction is the opposite; to me, American comics are shallow and silly for shying away from any deep depiction of the characters’ internal lives.

Look at the Takahashi quote above: she comes from a comics tradition where a character being hot or hungry can be depicted in a visually rich, exciting way. To me, that’s interesting and worthwhile, and a “genre story” that successfully captures such moments is possibly more interesting than a “literary” work that stays safely confined to the cerebral level.

Elsewhere on the interwebs, David Welsh responded to the accusation that manga critics are too nice. And Bill Randall, in response to the same discussion, posted his decidedly not nice review of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Good-Bye.

There’s lots more of interest in comments; among others, Melinda Beasi (whose own lengthy discussion of xxxholic on her own site is here) chimes in frequently. Thanks again to Kate Dacey and Adam Stephanides for their guest posts, as well as to all the commenters and readers. Again, if you missed it, you can read the entire roundtable here.

Update: Melinda Beasi provides some more thoughts on the roundtable and on manga reviewing.

Update 2: Coffee and Ink weighs in with a scathing assessment of the roundtable.

xxxHolic: Just the trilogy, A roundtable comment

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I’ve seen a couple of comments here and there about choosing to roundtable just the first three volumes of xxxHolic.

Since I’m the person who suggested the roundtable and the three volumes, I thought I’d explain a bit.  (Or at least raise my hand and say, “Blame me!”)

We’d been talking about what to do for the next roundtable and someone suggested the manga Lone Wolf and Cub, but that one is mighty long.  I suggested it would be fun to do a manga and suggested xxxHoLic because I think it is less inherently long-arc-y.  I mean, yes, it does have a lovely long arc, but you’re not just reading an unfulfilled part of a story (which I felt would be unfair to the manga to be roundtabled).

I have long loved it.  I adore Yuko and I really, deeply, truly love the art.  (The ink!  The ink!)  I’ve read a whole lot of xxxHolic but not all of the releases in scanlation.  When trying to decide on a manga to suggest, I looked for one that I liked and which I thought others would enjoy (best laid plans! and sorry to make anyone cry!) but which could be purchased for a reasonable amount.  I’d hate to ask people to drop three hundred dollars on a series only to hate it.  I know that’s kind of a real-world-y reason to not suggest something, but that’s just part of the reality of not being Publishers Weekly or whatever.   I also find that some people who don’t like ‘manga art’ can enjoy xxxHolic.

So those were my reasons.  Sometimes intentions don’t matter, but sometimes they do, and it was not my intent to set up a roundtable that was inherently unfair to the work in question.  For the record, while I do enjoy some of the long-arc stuff, it’s the shorter episodes that I enjoy most, partly because I tend to read manga in a catch-as-catch can fashion, often with long lag times between chapters.

Now, of course people are absolutely entitled be bored silly or to hate it, or what have you.  I’ve, uh, certainly said exactly what I thought about a roundtable item in the past, so I don’t expect any of my fellow hoods to enjoy xxxHolic.    However, I did want to make it clear that I suggested the three volumes, rather than all of them, and so if there’s fault to be had in the criticism for not reading the whole thing, then it lies with me.

Which brings me to my next point.  I can see that several commenters have read the whole manga so far (as well as Tsubasa, which I admit I haven’t read) and so I thought, well, why not open up the discussion a bit more?  I’d love to hear some other thoughts about the manga and about the longer arcs from folks who have read long into it.  I didn’t want to get into a whole lot of the later plot in my intro (also, obviously, I am madly obsessed with the art) since I didn’t know what everyone else had in store and also because I think it’s kind of sucky to put series-long spoilers in intro posts.

So those who have read more, what did you think?  What would you like to see addressed or discussed?

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Update by Noah: The whole roundtable is here.

xxxHOLiC Roundtable: On the Pleasures of Comeuppance Theater

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I’ll be honest: I was nervous about being assigned to run the anchor leg of this week’s xxxHOLiC relay. By now, I’d fully expected that the other participants would have exhausted all the clever things I’d wanted to say about the series, whether it was pointing out the artwork’s sensuous, Jugenstil-meets-ukiyo-e vibe or critiquing the effectiveness of the Tsubasa crossover. Then a funny thing happened: the other contributors did praise the art and, to a lesser extent, the unobtrusive handling of the Cardcaptor subplot, but they were pretty tough on the series as a whole, suggesting it was dull, overwritten, and just plain silly at times.

Well, yes. But that’s exactly the point.

The early volumes of xxxHOLiC provide CLAMP an opportunity to have their cake and eat it too, poking fun at the mystical claptrap that’s part-and-parcel of the wish-granting-emporium genre while offering them a vehicle for staging creepy, effective morality plays. In Adam’s post, he notes the tension between what Yuko says about personal responsibility and how she interacts with Watanuki:

Throughout volumes one through three, Yuko stresses that you must take responsibility for all your actions, and that you are the only one who can change your behavior. This theme could have served as a means of deepening Watanuki’s character. But it’s weakened by the fact that Yuko’s actions towards Watanuki completely contradict it. She magically compels him to enter her shop against his will, and virtually coerces him to make a “contract” with her, high-handedly overriding all his protests. And I see no indication that we are supposed to notice the discrepancy between her words and her deeds.

On one level, I agree with Adam: there is a gap between Yuko’s preaches and practices. Yet I think that inconsistency is intentional in the early volumes, not an accident of careless writing. We’re not meant to take Yuko’s Yogi Beara-esque glosses on fate — sorry, hitsuzen — too seriously; after all, she quotes the dictionary, which seems like a deliberate jab at the kind of overblown, careful-what-you-wish-for speeches that crop up in Pet Shop of Horrors and Nightmares for Sale. Moreover, many of Yuko’s monologues are punctuated by slapstick: early in volume one, for example, she lectures Watanuki at length about fate, then bursts into an effusive rendition of the Romper Room theme song, while in other volumes, the hitsuzen-speak gives way to drunken revelry with the round, bunny-like Mokona.

At the same time, however, by introducing the concept of hitsuzen (which translates roughly as “inevitability”), CLAMP is also setting the table for the morality plays that are generously sprinkled throughout the first three volumes. It’s de rigeur in comeuppance theater to construct some kind of philosophical framework around the action; here, CLAMP’s set-up gives them more flexibility to do something interesting with the stories instead of simply punishing people for their character flaws. All four of the morality plays — the tale of the chronic liar, the tale of the Internet addict, the tale of the ouija-board players, and the tale of the overly confident graduate student — have unexpected twists that illustrate the importance of personal responsibility. In the first story, for example, it’s the liar’s inability to be honest with herself that ultimately leads to her demise (which, I agree, seems a bit extreme), while in the third, it’s the students’ fervent desire to see proof of the supernatural that creates a malicious presence at their school.

Even the monkey paw episode is, at base, a meditation on owning one’s choices. The paw’s owner, a graduate student, wants what all PhDs-in-training want: praise for the quality and originality of her research. (I know: I am one!) Her punishment stems not from over-confidence in her abilities, nor from genuine ambition, but from her assumption that her success stems from an inherently lucky nature. By placing so much stock in coincidence, she denies herself the opportunity to succeed or fail on the strength of her own hard work; when her wishes yield terrible results, she completely loses her sense of self.

I’d be the first to concede that the early volumes of xxxHOLiC aren’t as gripping as the later ones. But if you take them at face value — as both send-up and tribute to one of the most enduring tropes in manga — they’re a lot of fun to read. Oh, and the artwork’s pretty nifty, too.
__________
Update by Noah: The entire xxxholic roundtable is here.

xxxholic Roundtable: xxxPorn

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This is the latest post in a roundtable on Clamp’s xxxholic.
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That’s a sequence from the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man Annual #1. I first saw it when I was 8 or so, and it’s stuck with me to this day. Not that I especially loved it or hated it — it’s obviously a fairly bland and pointless sequence.

That very blandness, though, was what arrested me. I couldn’t figure out why I was reading this. Okay, there’s a Spider-Man story…and then Dr. Strange shows up, and walks through four panels — and then he leaves. At other points in the story, Thor passes through in a similar way, as do the Avengers, as do the Fantastic Four. I think I knew even back then who all these characters were, but having them used in this way, for background cameos, left my eight-year old self completely non-plussed. What was the point? Was I supposed to enjoy this? How come?

Of course, I get it now. Dr. Strange walked through so that they could put “Special Guest Stars: Thor! the Avengers! Dr. Strange!” or some such on the cover. It’s a bait and switch.

Or is it? Not exactly, I don’t think. It certainly is a marketing gimmick, but the gimmick isn’t a cheat. Yes Dr. Strange is promised, and you barely get Dr. Strange at all. But I don’t think that’s likely to have been a disappointment to the readers. Rather, the very gratuitousness of the cameo — the fact that Dr. Strange doesn’t do anything and really has no reason for being there — is the point of the whole exercise. He’s trotted out so Marvel loyalists can basically say, “Hey! I know Dr. Strange! There he is! Right in the same world as Spider-Man! Whoo hoo!” The exercise is validated by the little frisson of pleasure you get from catching an allusion. If Dr. Strange were actually part of the plot, if Lee and Ditko had to explain what he was doing there and why he was involved, he wouldn’t work nearly as well as fan-service. He’s an extra bonus for true-believers — the crossover equivalent of a panty shot. The cutesy crassness isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. You pander to let your audience know you’re pandering. It’s a way of saying, hey, plot, theme, character…who cares? The point is that I know you’re reading, you reader you, and I’m looking out for you. Kawaii lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!

This kind of crossover porn has largely been replaced in American superhero comics by continuity porn — an altogether more depressing line of country. But at least for the first three volumes I read, xxxholic keeps things old school: the series is filled with allusions to other Clamp titles, but those allusions are all deliberately and even egregiously shallow. A glimpse of Cardcaptor Sakura’s staff shows up here; a purchase is made from Legal Drug there, little fuzzy bunny things show up from some other Clamp series there.

Even when Clamp flirts with continuity (as when characters from the simultaneously serialized Tsubasa pop in for an inter-dimensional walk-on) it’s very circumspect. Obviously, Clamp would like you to go buy Tsubasa as well as xxxholic, but they’re not going to be pushy about it. Instead, they’re going to be cute:

Yes, the little bunnies are a kind of dimensional vortex; you feed a useful item to the black bunny in xxxholic, it pops out of the mouth of the white bunny in Tsubasa. Watch bunnies ingest and egest from multiple angles when you collect them all!

There’s a kind of brilliance in that; the Dr. Strange cameo is cutesy in a somewhat sublimated, nudge-nudge way . So why not just drag that out in the open and have the container be as cutesy as the content? Clamp is better at being Stan Lee than Stan Lee ever was, in some sense. The clubby Marvel in-group of true believers could never attain the insular hothouse fervor of the fan-fic doujinshi circles that spawned Clamp.

I can admire that about Clamp. There’s something almost awe-inspiring in the way they combine the blatant enthusiasms of the amateur with the absolute polish of a professional. They give their audience what they want, and they do it without the audible grinding of gears you always got from those old Marvel comics. When Dr. Strange trots across the page, you can see Stan behind him pushing; the whole thing smells of greasepaint and pasteboard. In Clamp, on the other hand, the crossovers slide across the page so sinuously that if you’re not in the know you’ll never see them. Kinukitty, for example, had to point out the Legal Drug reference to me.

Even though I’m impressed with the craft, though, I have to say that, overall, I still agree with my eight year old self. I mean, yes, I enjoy hearing a familiar sample in a hip hop song, and I liked some of League of Extraordinary Gentleman. But there’s more happening in hip hop or Alan Moore than just dog whistles and secret handshakes. I don’t really open a comic to see Dr. Strange trotted out clumsily, or Legal Drug trotted out subtly. I don’t really want to be nudged by the writer and told that he or she knows these characters too, and isn’t that great. I don’t go to art to be inducted into a club — or, I don’t know, maybe this is just the wrong sort of club for me. In any case, the crossover porn in xxxholic had more or less the opposite effect on me from what was intended. Instead of convincing me want to go out and read the other Clamp series referenced, it made me want to avoid them all, even those, like Cardcaptor Sakura, that I had already read and enjoyed.
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I also wanted to respond to Suat, who, along with Matthias Wivel in comments wondered why critics in general, and me in particular, weren’t harder on mainstream Japanese comics and more appreciative of American literary comics. Suat suggested the leniency might be attributable to some kind of Japanophiliac “cultural forbearance”; Matthias countered with the theory that it was a species of hipster contrarianism. (Update: Altered somewhat for clarity.)

Of course, my last mainstream manga review wasn’t lenient at all. In fact, it was so unlenient it prompted Suat to intimate that my perspective might actually be racist.

But the real point, I think, is that there’s a tendency when you don’t agree with someone on aesthetics to assume that they’re putting you on. Oh, you can’t possibly like Mariah Carey more than Dirty Projectors, you’re just saying that to be contrary. This despite the fact that Mariah Carey actually has a bigger audience than the Dirty Projectors overall, and therefore you might reasonably conclude that liking her more is the default position, and liking the Dirty Projectors the contrarian one….but I digress.

Anyway, I explain at some length starting here some of the reasons that I find shojo more appealing than American literary comics. Also, just on a basic level, I tend to be more impressed with the craft in manga than with that in American comics, though obviously there’s a lot of individual variation. Japanese illustration is an amazing tradition, richer in many ways than the Western one, and it shows.

Despite all that, though, I still don’t like xxxholic much.