Swag Bag time! I had a little shopping hiatus the past month, but, believe me, I’ve made up for it in the last couple weeks. So, without further ado, here’s the first of a few Swag Bag posts to cover it all!

To start things off with a dose of boys’ love, I bought the Digital Manga oneshot, Caramel. My first impression was that the little guy has really silly looking hair. Second impression was it looks adorable. Both were correct – the little guy had silly hair and the story was super sweet, albeit a little sad being so short.

My impulse purchase of the day was Dark Horse‘s Blood-C (Vol.01). I don’t have any real interest in the Blood franchise, and my knowledge of this anime stops at CLAMP’s involvement. Still, the cover was really nice and the interior artwork looked good too. It looks very CLAMP-like actually, I’d say very likely inspired by their more recent works such as Tsubasa. We’ll see how the monster hunting itself entertains as I read it.

Something that is never impulse and always a must-have-right-now is Naoki Urasawa’s work. This week that was 21st Century Boys (Vol.02). It’s the last volume in the 20th Century Boys story. It’s so weird knowing this series is now done after all these years. I’ve already read this final volume and I’ve gotta say… I can’t remember who ‘that’ is. Oops. Time to re-read!

It never stops being weird buying a new volume of Fushigi Yugi though, such as this week’s Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden (Vol.11). Now this is a series I’ve been reading a long time. It was one of my first manga from back in the Animerica Extra days of serialization. This prequel series only has one volume left, however, and the downside to it being a prequel is we all know how it’s going to end. So sad! But it’s so good.

Then it was meta territory with Bakuman (Vol. 18) – manga about making manga! This series is fantastic; I adore every volume, even with the awkward romantic subplots. This volume addresses the intensity of manga deadlines when the two leads launch yet another series. How many pages a month!? Freaky.

I finished off my Viz Media purchases with Pokemon Adventures (Vol.15) and Afterschool Charisma (Vol.07). There was quite a wait since the last volumes of each but fortunately neither are especially complicated in the plot department (though telling the clones apart in Afterschool Charisma isn’t always easy).

And then what’s a week without an omnibus? I’m a few months late on this one but I was pleased to buy Young Miss Holmes (Casebook 3-4). The first volume was cute with this precocious niece of Sherlock Holmes solving mysteries. I loved the short cameo from the dowdy Sherlock and Watson as well.

And then lastly for manga I had to nab a digital copy of Sword and Mist, released by SuBLime. It’s a digital only release but I’ve made my peace with these as an occasional thing, and I can’t deny that SuBLime puts out a great product. This title was a must have because it’s by Hayate Kuku. She’s only had one other series released in English – Love Sickness by Digital Manga – but I really loved it. Her masculine characters and sense of humor reminds me a lot of one of my BL favorites, Naono Bohra, who unfortunately hasn’t been as embraced by English publishers as I’d like. In any case, Sword and Mist! It’s got manly men, assassins, feudal China and cross-dressing – how could I resist?

And then finally was a new book by a friend of mine, Faith Erin Hicks. Out now from Dark Horse is a hardcover, full color compilation of her web comic, The Adventures of Superhero Girl. It’s been a while since I read these comic strips so it’s been fun re-experiencing all the funny in-jokes about comics and super heroes. It’s an entertaining and worthwhile purchase for sure, and I’m looking forward to finishing it cover to cover again.

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