#camel!

Operation “Just Read a Lot of Manga Instead” in 2021 Continues: Since starting over on Saturday, I’m nearing chapter 200 of One PIece, i.e. I’m close to 20% through One Piece’s first thousand chapters and have read about 4000 pages, in a relatively small number of hours.  The way this comic / manga-generally can just be inhaled...! 

Plus: just the amount of time you spend with these characters hanging out. Oda sure keeps his eye on making sure the reader feels “part of the family.”  He really gets what the point of the whole comic thing is-- it feels very clear when you read One Piece. “Misfits form their own family” works anytime they do it, it’s comics, of course that works, but instead every American comc I read in the 10′s was like “what if all the superheroes were in a death squad bawtida-baw upjump the diggy”.  Plus, One Piece so far has never lost sight of giving every single member of a very large ensemble big moments (Zolo vs. the small town being the highlight so far to me-- I like that the comic has its “Wolverine character”, but doesn’t overdo him; it’s just the right portion of him)... 

Plus, reading fight manga-- there’ve been some fights I didn’t like (there was one involving a candle or some nonsense), but the later fights have all been against enemies that are significantly more powerful than the heroes, which has been very satisfying.  Plus, Oda will throw in the characters fighting each other enough, too.  I kinda think most fans of American comics just want to see fights, too.  World War Hulk, Civil War, Blackest Night, X-Men vs Avengers, etc., you can go down a list-- the fight crossovers seem like the big, sticky ones for fans.  The ones that don’t seem to land as much are things like “we’re doing a murder mystery” or whatever, where you hear more moaning.  "We’re telling a story here” comics.  But I don’t know you can do fights like these on a monthly level, either, so I don’t know-- maybe that’s the only choice.  Who knows?  Who knows...