I've been hooked on martial arts manga. Baki and Kengan Ashura/Omega have been my jam, but I'm more or less caught up on both. So lately I've been reading TOUGH: Legend of the High School Iron Fist. It's been published about as long as Baki has, and it seems to have a much greater reverence for MMA history than Baki or Kengan ever go for. It still indulges in its impossible moves and larger than life capabilities, but the art is beautifully drawn and really cool to follow: in particular the mangaka loves drawing grappling situations, and its awe-inspiring to see how he renders the flow from one joint lock to another, counters upon counters upon counters.

my main issue with it is that it's not translated all the way. I've read ~400 chapters, but I can't find the back 100 chapters in English anywhere. For some bizarre reason most of the sequel series have been translated, but no one has managed to actually translate the final stretch of the original manga. I didn't realize this was the case and it was deeply frustrating to find out. Imagine chewing through 400 chapters in a few weeks and then finding you can't even finish the damn thing! I'm debating between just moving on to the sequel series and picking up what happens from context clues or just cutting my losses and moving onto greener pastures.

In terms of comics I'm also back on my X-Men grind since I finally watched season one of X-Men 97. Back when I first read X-Men I started from Claremont's Giant Size X-Men and fell off sometime after the New Mutants were introduced. Not because of quality, but moreso because other things came up in my life, but I'm finally in a place where I can start again. This time I'm starting from the Stan Lee stuff. I still don't like his writing very much, but its interesting how ultimately transparent his process feels issue-to-issue, you can see him rethink stuff and toss out or remix plotlines in real time. It's also just a treat to see the origins of these classic elements -- and those elements that have rightfully fallen to the wayside.