by Anne Packrat

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April 2000

You know you're right, I'm not Ryan Matthews! I'm . Otousan (Ryan is the father of Internet Anime Fanfiction) likes to take April off. I dunno why. Maybe you all badger him to much. Maybe it was that video room thing. I just know it can't be his innocent little fanfic-writing daughter nagging him to let her write a column. ^_^

You know, Ryan says I'm supposed to rant about things on this first page. There's really only one thing I'm really mad at right now so you're going to get an earful of stuff about it. My rant has to do with... Pulp.

For those of you who are unaware of it, Pulp is a monthly manga anthology published by Viz. It's normal content is often of an er... adult nature, including such stories as Strain, Dance Til Tomorrow and Banana Fish. My complaint is not with the graphic nature of this mangazine. On the contrary, I get it regularly. No, my complaint has to do with Viz's treatment the gag manga Heartbroken Angels (HB).

HB is probably my favorite manga in Pulp. It's the one I read first and I continually reread it and its perverted little panels.

HB consists of a series of four panel "strips" with several strips generally appearing in any given issue. At least there used to be a number of strips appearing. Pulp is taking page space from HB and giving it to other manga.

Okay, I can see the reasoning behind this. HB can afford to lose pages while the other serial manga can't. Also, maybe I'm overestimating HB's popularity, so they give more space to the other more popular manga. Still in the current issue there is ONE strip of HB. That's it. ONE. I paid six bucks to get one strip of my favorite manga?

Perhaps Viz feels that since they regularly publish HB strips on their website they feel they can cut down on the manga's prescense in the actual magazine. Unfortunately, the ones they put online have all been printed in past issues of Pulp. I have all of the back issues. If I want to reread past HB strips I'll go and read it there. When I buy a new issue of Pulp I expect at least a decent amount of new material.

A far worse problem that occurs with the layout of HB is that the editors see fit to sometimes place one panel on a page. Now a panel takes up about ten percent of the space on a page. That means that you can fit two full four panel strips on one page. Lately, however, the editors of Pulp have been putting a single panel in the center of the page, wasting all the rest of the space around that one frame.

Even worse is their practice of blowing up a single panel so that it fills a full two pages! Why do they do this?! What concievable reason is there to waste space like this?! They could fit four strips in the space it took them to print that one panel.

If they don't have enough panels for one issue then they could use the space for far better things. Those two pages could be devoted to advertising (thus generating revenue) or they could serve as a letters page (something that March's issue lacked).

I see no need to waste valuable space like this! Everytime I buy Pulp and see them doing this to my favorite manga I get very angry! If things continue in this vein I will likely stop getting Pulp altogether. It's a shame because I love the magazine, but I can't stand to see them wasting my money like this. If they wish to screw with the layout like a certain other manga anthology did (It had two xx's in the title, and I no longer get that one either) then they won't get my hardearned money.

I get a lot of Viz manga, and Pulp has been a favorite of mine for awhile, despite its drop in popularity in my area. (I'm the only one who still gets it from my local anime store.) I hope someone at Viz listens and works on correcting this problem.

If you have a comment or question on this issue, or if you work for Viz and want to defend your treatment of Heartbroken Angels please e-mail me at annepackrat@hotmail.com.

Jeezu, let's just get on to this month's web picks