Love Fights, Andi Watson's charming English-language manga, undercuts that impulse toward pompousness with humor. The series seems designed for bookish types who feel antsy when muscular guys sidle up to their girlfriends at parties. It could be worse, after all: Protagonist Jack Newton's romantic competitors are actual superheroes. Jack hasn't had a date in three years, a slump he blames, in this panel, on the fact that the women in his city are all obsessed with caped crusaders.

When Jack falls for Nora, a writer for a glossy superhero tabloid, his insecurities and petty jealousies come to the surface. And if those don't scuttle the relationship, his evil talking cat will. Love Fights is a silly but smart comic that makes up in pleasurable details what it sometimes lacks in story coherence. It's hard not to enjoy a comic that features a closeted gay hero called—natch—"The Flamer."