I started Natsuki Takaya’s “Fruits Basket” once before and couldn’t get into it. The main character, Tohru, was just too shojo saccharine for me to take; all bubbly kawaii innocence, unfailing optimism, and wide-eyed paens to her dead Mom because…is she an orphan? Of course she is.

Still, I’d heard lots and lots of good things about the series, and I hadn’t hated, hated it the first time through, so I thought I’d give it another go.

It’s working for me somewhat better this time out. I’ve only gotten through the first volume, and, yeah, Tohru is still a bit much. But once you get over that, there are a lot of low-key, touching moments in the series. For instance, in one sequence Shigure Sohma asks is relative, Kyo, what Kyo would do if a girl ever told him that she loved him. Kyo responds, “I can’t even imagine. I guess…I’d ask her if she were insane.” Similarly, Yuki (another Sohma relative) can’t believe that Tohru doesn’t find him repulsive. The thing that makes these moments work is how Takaya downplays them; instead of great torents of dramatic adolescent self-loathing, the self-hatred is touched on quietly. The lack of drama makes the emotions seem more lasting and intractable and sad.

The gimmick is good too. Fruits Basket is centered on the Sohma family, all of whom turn into various animals of the Chinese zodiac when they’re hugged by a member of the opposite sex, or when they get overly stressed. If you know Ranma 1/2, this’ll probably sound familiar. The trick is, in Ranma the fact that all the main characters turn into pandas or cats or pigs or members of the opposite sex when they have water dumped on them is played for madcap comedy. Takaya takes the trope and, improbably and rather brilliantly, finds poetry in it. In Fruits Basket, the transformation curse isn’t a joke; it’s actually a curse, which separates the Sohma from everyone else. The fact that the change is triggered by hugging becomes a metaphor for their isolation and loneliness; they literally can’t touch other people.

So I’ll keep going for the present. Who knows, maybe I’ll even overcome my insulin-shock reaction to Tohru. We’ll see….

My son was attracted by the cover of a Spider-Girl comic, so we bought it. It’s the last one, apparently; the series is being canceled. She will now appear in the pages of Spider-Man Family, whatever that is.

I’d never heard of Spider-Girl. But if I were going to create a comic called “Spider-Girl,” I’d probably aim it at kids, especially girls. Maybe make the art a little manga-y. Try for some romance, some humor. I wouldn’t even necessarily try to connect it to Spider-Man all that closely; certainly I wouldn’t go hog wild on the continuity. After all, if you’re a, say, 8-year old girl, you probably haven’t read every issue of Spider-Man that’s come out in the last 20 years.

Or, you know, you could go the other route, and for your final issue have a plotline that involves the return of the Green Goblin and references forty years of continuity, with highlight flashbacks to — the first battle between Spidey and the Green Goblin! and to — the death of Gwen Stacy! You could throw in ten different iterations of the Green Goblin himself, and have most of the action take place inexplicably in the brain of Peter Parker, who you can tell is old because he’s grown some absolutely hideous facial hair, apparently, the only way Marvel artists have figured out to show that a character is aging. You could have a clone of Spider Girl waltz on stage because hey, we drooling Spidey fans all know that Peter was cloned once, and besides, why the hell not? And, hey, why not have the last panel of your last comic be a gratuitous crotch shot of your barely pubescent protagonist, because that just screams class. And after completing this triumphantly incomprehensible tribute to fanboy wankery, you can slink offstage, wondering why it is your ass got canned.

Extra bonus points for including two pages of letters at the end, all of them — every single one — penned by guys.

Evelyn Waugh in his diary, worldly wise:

We are all American at puberty; we die French.

Aphorisms like the above close out the book, when he was in his 60s and already about to rot to death. Up until then we get his dissatisfied little records of the day to day. One suspects he played up his selfishness in the entries; a writer that good is always aware of effect.

In 1955, about a servant:

Mario is causing annoyance by losing his reason. He is obsessed like a character from a Renaissance drama with suspicion of his wife’s infidelity, pretends to go out and conceals himself under the bed to spy on her. Under the strain her cooking has become unendurable.

Nine days later:

After much coming and going of magistrates and alienists Mario was removed to the lunatic asylum. It is hoped that the cooking may improve.

The diary is too flat and disgusted to ever give much detail. Writing a given entry, Waugh had just enough energy to list the various peoples and events who on that day had proven to be bird crap on his shoulder. Getting together with a friend: “I took Christopher to the cinema and found him insane.” The next day: “I took Christopher to the cinema and found him more insane.” The day after: “I sent Christopher tiger lilies to acknowledge my faults of the evening before.” Uh oh, something got left out. Well, “Christopher” is Christopher Sykes, author of Waugh’s posthumous biography, and a footnote to the second diary entry fills us in with a quote from that same book. Sykes says he had introduced Waugh to a friend, John, and “a rather uncannily well-placed remark by John excited Evelyn to an outpouring of religious polemics, wholly unsuited to the occasion and grossly insulting to the memory of my father.” Don’t ask me what the father has to do with all this; I’m going to let that lie.

Waugh’s diary suffers because it is life as seen by someone who is depressive and incompetent. That is, he has to leave out a whole lot to get the effect he wants, which is that he’s a victim of universal stupidity and bad manners. In the novels, to get this effect, he could put things in, crazy things. Here that’s the job of the editor’s notes, and the crazy things in question all turn out to be specimens of Waugh’s behavior. “The circumstances of Waugh’s expulsion from Jugoslavia, with which the next part of the diary deals, are not easy to follow from the text,” the editor says dryly of a wartime passage. He adds a little further down:

Waugh’s superiors in any case resented his habit of sending comparatively trivial signals to headquarters prefixed by four ‘Q’s, which meant that a senior officer must decode them; a colonel who had got to bed at 4 am was unlikely to be amused when he was woken up an hour later to decode a Waugh signal about, for example, bars of soap.

The new Comics Journal is out, with a long review by Bill of Danica Novgorodoff’s Slow Storm, a short review by Bill of Comic Book Tattoo (“Why did this book happen? Tori Amos knows Neil Gaiman. Next question.”) and a short review by me of Carol Lay’s “The Big Skinny,” which is one of the more vicious things I’ve written recently. Also interviews with Mort Walker (which I have to admit I don’t really care about) and a special comics section of the works of Thomas Rowlandson (which should be great.) Also looking forward to Shaenon Garrity’s review of Black Jack and an article on comic art in Kenya…so check it out.

It’s right here.

UPDATE: Believe it or not, there’s a minor tiff in the right-o-sphere about the rescue. The normally ferocious Ace of Spades noted that Obama gave the go-ahead for force. A blogger called The Other McCain answered with a lampoon headline suggesting that Ace wanted to rob the SEALs of their credit (scroll down to the big purple letters). Ace’s blog has this quote by H.L. Mencken: “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” In fact the logo includes the skull and crossbones: maybe he’s squishy on pirates. But he celebrates the Easter rescue with a photo of a skull surrounded by crawling flames; I’d say he’s really glad those pirates are dead. Still, he mentioned Obama without attacking him, so that means he’s gay.

Reading the fellows is like watching bright 10-year-olds play in a tree fort. They’re so lively! Ace’s logo isn’t a plain “Ace of Spades,” it’s “Ace of Spades HQ.” You have to appreciate the touch.

If liberals could be like wingnuts, we might describe Obama’s role this way, with a terse rat-a-tat: POTUS told the SEALs to do what they had to do, and they went ahead and did it. In other words, way it should be.

But we’re liberals. So we clear our throats, lean into the mike, and read from a wilted piece of paper that the system has worked appropriately, including the dispensation of presidential authority for the use of military force, and we’re happy that the operation has concluded successfully and with no loss of innocent life. Our best wishes to Captain Phillips and his family.

The Ace-McCain contretemps comes by way of Moderate Voice, a blog that is pretty much what you would expect from the title.