Wank or Die! - Tactile Troubles

A burning red “11:58 PM” glares from the stark, onyx face of the nearby alarm clock. Snuggly tucked into bed with the TV’s volume turned down too low to hear, your excited paw gropes about the carpeted floor, finally snatching a thin, glossy book purposely positioned for just this occasion. As you juggle the paperback between grips, letting your right hand slides down between the sheets towards your crotch, a funny inconvenience suddenly rears its churlish head—the book’s unyielding spine demands either forever breaking its virginally smooth covering or continuing on with some seriously awkward self-loving.

What’s a dirty boy to do?

Stiff spines and artwork cannibalizing bindings have long been an issue for US manga since morphing into its modern quasi-tankoubon graphic novel incarnation. While remaining an ever present annoyance, it’s a problem that can be somewhat tempered by practicing a routine of wrist-destroying acrobatics during one’s regular reading regiment. For me, such carpal contortions are an utter necessity, because no matter how hard I might try to expel him, inside a dank musty corner of my being lurks a hardcore collector who just will not accept anything other than perfection from his comic books; though I’ve learned to significantly subjugate this obsessive compulsive, I still can’t deal with major pockmarks and spine creases defacing my precious illustrated entertainment.

Now with regards to erotica, obstinate packing was never an area of concern. Thanks to a near total absence of translated adult manga in the US, my entire collection was almost entirely comprised of imported specimens—that is, until recently.

About two years ago, Icarus Publishing tentatively nudged their way into the US scene, unprecedented in their sole offering of domesticated adult manga for men. Unlike the hoard of businesses already catering to female fans with hardcore yaoi books or the established pushers of cartoon smut with their microscopic smattering of Japanese titles, Icarus Publishing’s catalog boldly catered only to the perverted male niche looking for English language editions of Japanese 2D raunch. Not only were their books in our native tongue and bereft of its motherland’s legally imposed genitalia censorship, Icarus also wasn’t scraping the barrel’s bottom in terms of acquiring noteworthy salacious talent, with works by two of my favorite filth furnishers—Yumisuke Kotoyoshi and Gorou Horikawa—soon oozing their way into retail outlets and my own residence.

Problem is—even though Icarus Publishing’s books are slightly larger than their imported counterparts and make decent allowance for art-eating binding—standard American printing conventions tend to produce manga that, in all honesty, aren’t very accommodating to one-handed reading—to prevent leafs from easily loosening, glue is allowed to seep further into each page, creating a much stiffer, sturdier backbone. Japanese publishers, on the other hand, generally employ a different (likely more expensive) process allowing books to inherently open wider without causing spinal damage.

Where physically maintaining regular non-naughty manga isn’t so much a problem (because I’m using both hands), keeping one from Icarus intact is a significantly trickier process, boarding on self defeating. I doubt there’s any delusions over these titles’ intended purpose, yet attempting to avoid spine creases using a lone mitt means keeping a book barely open while…let’s just say while reading.

I know Icarus Publishing is a small company and profit margins are probably tight, but asking consumers to pay between $15.00 and $20.00 per book seems a high price without any special consideration. Ultimately, I’m not sure what a feasible solution would be: maybe reducing the artwork’s size a smidgen to allow for greater gutters, or finding a more forgiving binding method that isn’t an astronomically greater expense. Either way, Icarus Publishing from a content standpoint is gangbusters (I’m most eagerly awaiting their forthcoming Tune Empire title), and I’m hoping they’ll stick around for some time; I just wish they’d try a bit harder to accommodate their fanbase’s physical requirements.