Running the Clamp gamut

For those in the know Clamp is one of the longest running teams of manga artists around. It's certainly the only one I've heard of making it here. While most manga writers work with a team Clamp is composed of four women who take an equal share in the creation of their work, often shifting roles depending on who's baby it is. Beacuse of this the style of each comic changes while still sharing a sligh similarity. That's why I'm not featuring any covers on todays post, but please check out my shelfari list for some because their art is just beautiful. They sell artbooks of steller pictures that I would buy for my mom the artist to put on her table.

Now here's the problem in talking about Clamp. They can write things like Clamp School Detecives and Angelic Layer which I think could be read by anyone. They also write Chobits and Tsubasa, which I think are not appropriate for younger children. They make both styles of comic really really cute. How can you tell which is which? The only way I've found is to actually read them. This is pretty easy most of the time, many of their series are two or three books long. You could spend a half hour sitting on the bookstore floor and go through about 7 series. The longer the series the oftener they get to some pretty good writing though. The better books often have more pages.

One of the big big warning signs for the books that look cute is the Clamp relationships. Now I'm not going to state my own oppinion here, but I do know that some schools have a problem with same sex relationships. Clamp does not. Anotherthing Clamp seems to ignore is age difference, you can often have young children crushing on much older people. This is a little weird to me, but since none of the relationships proceed beyond crushing I'll let you decide for youselves.

Some of the adult stuff is really off the wall (I'm only thinking Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland) but most of it is okay for high schools. Some sexual diologue, some violence depending on the series. All in all most of it is good. Some of it is also literary, and challenges the reader on philosophical and moral grounds. So go give it a look see, if nothing else the drawings will give you a suger rush.