New York Comic-con, the Second Time Around
 After 30 years, San Diego's Comic-con show is deservedly a legendary annual gathering for the colorful cast of characters (including its devotees) that comprise the comics industry. But after only one outing, the New York Comic-con is already, it seems, an institution unto itself. (The next show is slated for Feb. 23-25 at the Javits.)
Perhaps it's owing to the fact that the host city is the traditional home of the American comics publishing industry, or that the East Coast audience was starved for its own comics melee. But the fact that the state police had to be called in last year couldn't have hurt the new show's cred.
"Where were you when the police came?" is now a common question among the comics community. Last year's Saturday influx of over 20,000 attendees overwhelmed the show floor at Javits Center, prompting a call for the kind of action usually reserved for national disasters and bad movies. Thousands of fans were stranded outside the hall, along with comics luminaries like Frank Miller and Kevin Smith. A legend was born.
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Teenage drinking, sexual coercion, romance between adopted siblings—all par for the course in this “alternate-ending novel” set in the world of Miki Aihara’s convoluted and inexplicably popular teen manga. Hatsumi, the 16-year-old narrator, begins with a fast-paced introduction to the principal characters—Ryoki, who “enslaves” Hatsumi when he sees her with a home pregnancy kit; nice-guy Azusa; and Hatsumi’s adopted brother, Shinogu. They live in Mrs. Tachibana’s Housing Complex, where different floors create an ad hoc caste system for families. A brief backstory on how Shinogu came to live with Hatsumi’s family gives way to an
interminable game of “will they, won’t they,” all laced with a hint of incestuous taboo and made trickier by the arrival of a beautiful competitor for Shinogu’s heart. A tiny bit of tension arrives late in the tale when Shinogu turns up missing, but by and large it is an uneventful story that spends most of its time in Hatsumi’s head. Fans of the original manga are legion and passionate; the alternate-ending nature of this book (in the original, Hatsumi and Ryoki end up a couple) and the fact that it is written by someone other than Aihara, means it may have a tough time winning over the otaku. (Feb.)
