Yesterday, I picked up BECK number 23 and the October issue of the monthly magazine Afternoon. BECK is getting a bit lame for me. I liked it up till now but it seems it's getting a little too technical with labels, studios and recording details. I guess it was pretty foreseeable since they've gotten this far as a band and this is the logical next step. I'll give it a good read tonight and see if it's still something I want to keep following. Afternoon was full of great titles. Blade of the Immortal is freakin' rockin'. I don't wanna give anything away for those following the American releases but I WILL say Manji is about to EXPLODE. Genshiken has been and always will be another good read. Lovin' the character development in that. Now they have, like, white chick otakus in the comic who speak English well. Something you don't usually find in J-comics. It's awesome. Historie is cool. I liked his previous work Kiseichu more. Rabu Roma is losing me. I liked the innocence when it initially began. Now, they're, like, doin' it and stuff. The art has stayed steadily the same which I find funny for some odd reason. EDEN is cool in that it looks like it's done by one of Otomo's assistants or something and has lots of shooting and blood. Some nice designs to the characters too. One other cool thing they had in this issue is a bonus cover jacket to the recent Mushishi GN. It's a nice printed sleeve on stiff rice paper with beautiful water colour work on it. This is definitely something to think about for future bonus material when I go to cons and promote.