[I lifted, (un)graciously, all the photos for this post from Jenn's site, THE BITTERMELON]
On June 26, I had the pleasure of being invited (along with my buddy Jenn Yin) to attend an award conferment ceremony and reception honoring the work of translator/author Frederik Schodt! Fred received the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his extensive work promoting Japanese popular culture in the United States. As anyone reading this blog knows, it'd be impossible to overstate the importance of Fred's work on the development of manga fandom outside of Japan. Fred's a generous and cool guy, and someone I deeply respect, so it was great to be a part of this event.
The award ceremony was held in San Francisco at the Official Residence of the Japanese Consul General, Mr. Yasumasa Nagamine. The award is given on behalf of the Japanese government, and signed by the Prime Minister and emperor. Check out the other wild & crazy folks to be awarded this, for some context. The full statement on Fred's work can be viewed on the Japanese Embassy site here [PDF].
The event was fancy but not as formal as I expected, featuring a number of speeches honoring Fred's work-- first as a translator, then later as an interpreter and finally (& most importantly) as a pioneering author introducing manga to English-speaking audiences. One crazy self-indulgent highlight for me was that Consul General Nagamine used an anecdote about Fred working as an interpreter at Sunkist headquarters that was straight from my long 2008 interview with Fred in Electric Ant #1!
The crowd there to honor Fred included his longtime translation partner Jared Cook, president of Tezuka Productions Takayuki Matsutani (who was super festive and flew over from Japan), Viz president Seiji Horibuchi, and assorted publishers & manga editors like Leonard Rifas (Educomics), Ian Robertson (Phoenix), Andy Nakatani (Pluto), Colin and Ron Turner (Last Gasp) and many others. In addition to drinks & dinner (YES), there were lots of interesting tidbits for us manga nerds. Like the fact that Blast's edition of Hideshi Hino's "Panorama of Hell" was the first ever non-flopped English manga publication. (Well, whatta ya know?)
Consul General Nagamine, Fred's nephew, Fia's son, Fred's rad wife Fia, and Fred.
Obligatory nerdy fanboys shot of me & Jenn, with the older and cooler Fred & Fia.
And of course, no official award reception is complete without a band of old buds jamming out to Ue wo Muite and the Todai fight song..
For a video clip of Fred's band playing (with the Pres. of Tezuka Production singing, and the Consul General dancing), check out Jenn's post.
UPDATE: As I was writing this post, I saw that Fred has posted notes from the speech he gave on his site. Enjoy!
[I lifted, (un)graciously, all the photos for this post from Jenn's site, THE BITTERMELON]
On June 26, I had the pleasure of being invited (along with my buddy Jenn Yin) to attend an award conferment ceremony and reception honoring the work of translator/author Frederik Schodt! Fred received the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his extensive work promoting Japanese popular culture in the United States. As anyone reading this blog knows, it'd be impossible to overstate the importance of Fred's work on the development of manga fandom outside of Japan. Fred's a generous and cool guy, and someone I deeply respect, so it was great to be a part of this event.
The award ceremony was held in San Francisco at the Official Residence of the Japanese Consul General, Mr. Yasumasa Nagamine. The award is given on behalf of the Japanese government, and signed by the Prime Minister and emperor. Check out the other wild & crazy folks to be awarded this, for some context. The full statement on Fred's work can be viewed on the Japanese Embassy site here [PDF].
The event was fancy but not as formal as I expected, featuring a number of speeches honoring Fred's work-- first as a translator, then later as an interpreter and finally (& most importantly) as a pioneering author introducing manga to English-speaking audiences. One crazy self-indulgent highlight for me was that Consul General Nagamine used an anecdote about Fred working as an interpreter at Sunkist headquarters that was straight from my long 2008 interview with Fred in Electric Ant #1!
The crowd there to honor Fred included his longtime translation partner Jared Cook, president of Tezuka Productions Takayuki Matsutani (who was super festive and flew over from Japan), Viz president Seiji Horibuchi, and assorted publishers & manga editors like Leonard Rifas (Educomics), Ian Robertson (Phoenix), Andy Nakatani (Pluto), Colin and Ron Turner (Last Gasp) and many others. In addition to drinks & dinner (YES), there were lots of interesting tidbits for us manga nerds. Like the fact that Blast's edition of Hideshi Hino's "Panorama of Hell" was the first ever non-flopped English manga publication. (Well, whatta ya know?)
Consul General Nagamine, Fred's nephew, Fia's son, Fred's rad wife Fia, and Fred.
Obligatory nerdy fanboys shot of me & Jenn, with the older and cooler Fred & Fia.
And of course, no official award reception is complete without a band of old buds jamming out to Ue wo Muite and the Todai fight song..
For a video clip of Fred's band playing (with the Pres. of Tezuka Production singing, and the Consul General dancing), check out Jenn's post.
UPDATE: As I was writing this post, I saw that Fred has posted notes from the speech he gave on his site. Enjoy!
In the comments of the 4th anniversary post, jimpac asked for a post sharing pics and details about TACO che. I've had dozens of photos saved up and now that I've been kicked in the pants (and found a happy solution for hosting lots of pictures with PictoBrowser), it's time to post everything!
Folks reading on RSS: PictoBrowser doesn't play nice with you, so please click through and come see the 100+ photos! Mouse over 'Notes' to read the photo captions.
If you've been reading Same Hat for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the Nakano Broadway Mall. It's located just west of Shinjuku, and home to a sprawling complex of strange, otaku stores-- including the massive 15+ Mandarake shops. It's like a more underground and less commercialized version of Akiba, minus the foreign tourists with cameras and with more of the stuff we all like. How to get to Nakano Broadway and maps/pics from the Mandarake shops can be found here.
Last Spring, my GF and I went to Japan for two weeks, and I managed to fit two trips to the greatest shop in Nakano Broadway (and quite possibly, my favorite shop of any kind in the world), TACO che!! I was originally told about the shop by my German buddy Ben (who gavee me the Shintaro Kago Bullying kit from there back in 2007). TACO che is pretty much THE underground manga shop of your dreams. They don't have a specific tie to any one publisher, but I heard that the owner is close with the folks that fun Seirinkogeisha. The shop carries fan zines, dojinshi, along with nearly every title by Seirinkogeisha, EnterBrain/Beam and all the other indies we love.
The shop is located on the 3rd floor, in the general vicinity of the northwest end of the Nakano Broadway mall. Here are some shots from inside the store. The place is tiny, but every square foot is something cool and tempting:
These photos are all from March 2008, and reflect the books and goods that were hot at the time. Kazuo Umezu's 50th Anniversary (of his career in manga) celebration was in full force, and the store was crammed full of incredible Umezz goods:
In my two trips to the shop, I spent (eeek) over 300 bucks and filled a suitcase with books. I didn't really have 300 bucks to spend on comics, but I. JUST. COULDN'T. HELP. MYSELF. In addition to the bigger pubs and indie zines I mentioned above, TACO che also publishes their own occasional zines and pamphlets (which are insanely excellent, like this). Here is just a small smattering of the manga gems I am talking about:
Not content to be simply the BOOK store of our dreams, TACO che also carries limited edition shirts, toys and DVDs, including Suehiro Maruo posters made just for TACO che (sorry, I can't find that pic at the moment, will take one of the miniposter on my wall). Here are some of the shirts:
And here are some of the goodies:
They also carry lapel pins by all our favorites:
I tried to include good captions for all those pics, but if you have any questions (or corrections!) leave a comment here! You can see the photos directly at the non-flashy Same Hat flickr, which I'm using just to store pics for PictoBrowser to pull from.
TACO che continues to be the epicenter for all the manga and art we all love so much, so I'll keep my eyes ope on their blog and post interesting news. In the coming month or so, TACO che will be hosting signing events with Takashi Nemoto and Jun Hayami- hopefully Nate or Schultz can check those out for us!!
In the comments of the 4th anniversary post, jimpac asked for a post sharing pics and details about TACO che. I've had dozens of photos saved up and now that I've been kicked in the pants (and found a happy solution for hosting lots of pictures with PictoBrowser), it's time to post everything!
Folks reading on RSS: PictoBrowser doesn't play nice with you, so please click through and come see the 100+ photos! Mouse over 'Notes' to read the photo captions.
If you've been reading Same Hat for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the Nakano Broadway Mall. It's located just west of Shinjuku, and home to a sprawling complex of strange, otaku stores-- including the massive 15+ Mandarake shops. It's like a more underground and less commercialized version of Akiba, minus the foreign tourists with cameras and with more of the stuff we all like. How to get to Nakano Broadway and maps/pics from the Mandarake shops can be found here.
Last Spring, my GF and I went to Japan for two weeks, and I managed to fit two trips to the greatest shop in Nakano Broadway (and quite possibly, my favorite shop of any kind in the world), TACO che!! I was originally told about the shop by my German buddy Ben (who gavee me the Shintaro Kago Bullying kit from there back in 2007). TACO che is pretty much THE underground manga shop of your dreams. They don't have a specific tie to any one publisher, but I heard that the owner is close with the folks that fun Seirinkogeisha. The shop carries fan zines, dojinshi, along with nearly every title by Seirinkogeisha, EnterBrain/Beam and all the other indies we love.
The shop is located on the 3rd floor, in the general vicinity of the northwest end of the Nakano Broadway mall. Here are some shots from inside the store. The place is tiny, but every square foot is something cool and tempting:
These photos are all from March 2008, and reflect the books and goods that were hot at the time. Kazuo Umezu's 50th Anniversary (of his career in manga) celebration was in full force, and the store was crammed full of incredible Umezz goods:
In my two trips to the shop, I spent (eeek) over 300 bucks and filled a suitcase with books. I didn't really have 300 bucks to spend on comics, but I. JUST. COULDN'T. HELP. MYSELF. In addition to the bigger pubs and indie zines I mentioned above, TACO che also publishes their own occasional zines and pamphlets (which are insanely excellent, like this). Here is just a small smattering of the manga gems I am talking about:
Not content to be simply the BOOK store of our dreams, TACO che also carries limited edition shirts, toys and DVDs, including Suehiro Maruo posters made just for TACO che (sorry, I can't find that pic at the moment, will take one of the miniposter on my wall). Here are some of the shirts:
And here are some of the goodies:
They also carry lapel pins by all our favorites:
I tried to include good captions for all those pics, but if you have any questions (or corrections!) leave a comment here! You can see the photos directly at the non-flashy Same Hat flickr, which I'm using just to store pics for PictoBrowser to pull from.
TACO che continues to be the epicenter for all the manga and art we all love so much, so I'll keep my eyes ope on their blog and post interesting news. In the coming month or so, TACO che will be hosting signing events with Takashi Nemoto and Jun Hayami- hopefully Nate or Schultz can check those out for us!!
I came up with the idea for a snazzy regular feature on Same Hat (NEW COMICS DAY!), but then promptly forgot to keep it up and got way behind. Goddamn it. This is fairly typical of how things operate around here. I think the main problem is that I hate writing manga reviews, and would rather stick to the type of posts you're used to: "OMG DIS MANGA IS THE FOOKIN' COOLEST THING EVARS LOLBBQ!!>?1!?" And really, isn't that more effective than like, thoughtful commentary and objective weighing of qualities that might inform your purchasing decisions?
But the last few weeks have included some quality goods, and I wanna get back on track. So, here's my roundup of the past few weeks of horror manga releases/purchases:
MPD PSYCHO Vol.1 from Dark Horse
THE GOOD: + The quality of the book production is impressive. Dark Horse had made it clear that they were taking MPD very seriously, promoting it online and talking about their commitment to the series in various places. It shows in the book itself, which features a beautiful, semi-embossed cover, really crisp images on a nice paper stock, and keeps the first few color pages of the volume intact. The book feels good in your hands. They also included an afterward and notes from creator Eiji Otsuka.
+ MPD Psycho is a scanlation-turned-legit success story. Despite what Dark Horse may or may not say on this point, it's clear that the original scanlations of MPD created a huge cult following that eventually helped convince Dark Horse to license and release it. I have a sense that DH, which as you guys all know have cancelled most of their other (non-Otsuka - Mail, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service) horror titles, are putting all their horror manga tamagos in one basket. I have a feeling that MPD will be a success, and we'll see the entire run come out. The prevalence of the scanlations might be one factor encouraging DH to go all out on the production and quality of the MPD releases, and this is a good thing for consumers. Shorthand: YAY SCANLATORS-- You DO have an influence on the licensing and publishing decision process.
+ The story freaked me out and has a lot of promise. I had never read any of MPD Psycho (or seen the Takashi Miike series based on the manga), and a few of the sequences (cannibal public suicide, depotting a brain from a skull) really made me squirm and grossed me out. I'm interested to see where Otsuka takes the characters and setting he established in this first book.
THE BAD: + Exclusively gendered violence is not a good sign. I know that MPD is a famously gory and depraved manga, and that wouldn't be something to turn me away. What I really didn't like, however, was the exclusive depiction of one kind of fetishistic violence toward women depicted in this first volume. By my count, we meet two serial killers in this short book that both seem to put women in similar bondage gear, displaying them in stages of torture, before chopping them up and publicly displaying their corpses. I found the repetition of this visual (a tamer form of which also pops up often in Otsuka's Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service) a bit tiring and blech-making. You could argue that there WERE male victims at the hands of the aforementioned cannibal killer midway through the book, but all we get of these victims are a few shots framed as autopsy photos. The gore itself in MPD is not a problem, but I'm not going to stick around if we're facing volume after volume of the same type of rape-y violence against women.
+ The bold & italic font used through the book. This sounds like a dumb complaint, but after seeing the awesome production on this book, I was put off by the gnarly always bold, always italicized font they chose for the entire book. I really wish they would have gone with a more typical Comic Sans type font, and made wading through the confusing first few chapters a little easier.
VERDICT: I want to support this book because it's a scanlation-gone-legit, it's one of the darkest and creepiest mainstream titles available, and the book itself is really gorgeous. That said, I honestly didn't enjoy reading this first volume that much and hope the story improves in volume 2.
THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM Vol.6 from Viz
THE GOOD: + Time travel logic taken directly from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. My favorite part in that movie is when they're in the police station and make a mental note to go back in time later and place a radio to distract Bill's dad... and then, POW!, it's come to be just by the act of making that mental note. Except in Umezu's imagination, that same logic applies to stuffing medicine into a mummified corpse.
+ More present-day sequences with Sho's mom. She is extremely sympathetic, even as she: i) attacks a pro baseball player as he is running toward home plate, ii) spits on grieving mothers and throws the incense and flowers for their 'dead' children on the ground, and iii) cuts her own arm up in order to sneak into a hospital. You are awesome, Mrs. Takamatsu.
+ Killing off 1/2 of the entire school population in a 10 page sequence. Mr. Umezu, you amaze me.
THE BAD: + This intensity is NOT sustainable. With 5 more volumes left, Umezu has left me wondering how he can POSSIBLY keep up this shit without it unraveling.
+ People's heads and arms aren't supposed to fly off during a flash flood. This was awesome but HONESTLY??
+ That's about it. This series is radical. The only bad news is having to wait a few more months for volume 7!
VERDICT: Drifting Classroom is Umezu in rare form, and each new volume of this series is a serious treat to tear through.
THE ART OF HIDESHI HINO from Last Gasp
THE GOOD: + Tons of previously unseen art and paintings. The book contains about 30-40 pages of full-color paintings depicting Hino's usual suspects: Urban hellscapes, mutated bug boys and hell babies, lizards fucking humans, landfills and annihilation. Ridiculous and awesome stuff.
+ New comics in translation. After the paintings, you get three complete horror tales, "Memories of the Mermaid," "The Red Fruit," and "The Snow Flower." I especially dug the mermaid one, which looks especially nice in full color!
+ Blurbs and introductions from Maruo and Mizuno mean you are a badass. I'll try to scan Maruo's insane introduction, titled "Pseudo Amida Sutra of a Dreaming Embryo." It's very short, but something to behold.
THE BAD: + The quality of the pages is not great. Sadly, when you look at the painting reproductions, on some of them you can make out blurriness and what looks like the edges of inket printing. It's fantastic to see this stuff in color, but the actual images and book production is lacking in crispness and quality.
+ I love Hino, but I want to see underrepresented horror manga-ka in English. Hino has seen a LARGE share of his manga translated into English (for better or for worse), and I'd love to see others get their chance to reach and English-speaking audience.
THE VERDICT: This isn't the book I'd recommend to a casual manga fan, but for the Hideshi Hino fanatics and completists this is a MUST GET.
In other news-- we're still accepting submissions for the 4-Panel Gag Manga contest! Send yours tonight to beat the deadline!! Evan and I will decide a winner tomorrow and post the results (and ship out that copy of Junji Ito's Flesh-Colored Horror) on Tuesday morning.
As for the World of Same Hat booklets, I put 11 copies in the mail on Friday, and have a few ready to drop at the post office tomorrow on my lunch break. Once I've heard from people on the original list, I'll try to come up with a fair way to get rid of any extras. Thanks again!
I came up with the idea for a snazzy regular feature on Same Hat (NEW COMICS DAY!), but then promptly forgot to keep it up and got way behind. Goddamn it. This is fairly typical of how things operate around here. I think the main problem is that I hate writing manga reviews, and would rather stick to the type of posts you're used to: "OMG DIS MANGA IS THE FOOKIN' COOLEST THING EVARS LOLBBQ!!>?1!?" And really, isn't that more effective than like, thoughtful commentary and objective weighing of qualities that might inform your purchasing decisions?
But the last few weeks have included some quality goods, and I wanna get back on track. So, here's my roundup of the past few weeks of horror manga releases/purchases:
MPD PSYCHO Vol.1 from Dark Horse
THE GOOD: + The quality of the book production is impressive. Dark Horse had made it clear that they were taking MPD very seriously, promoting it online and talking about their commitment to the series in various places. It shows in the book itself, which features a beautiful, semi-embossed cover, really crisp images on a nice paper stock, and keeps the first few color pages of the volume intact. The book feels good in your hands. They also included an afterward and notes from creator Eiji Otsuka.
+ MPD Psycho is a scanlation-turned-legit success story. Despite what Dark Horse may or may not say on this point, it's clear that the original scanlations of MPD created a huge cult following that eventually helped convince Dark Horse to license and release it. I have a sense that DH, which as you guys all know have cancelled most of their other (non-Otsuka - Mail, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service) horror titles, are putting all their horror manga tamagos in one basket. I have a feeling that MPD will be a success, and we'll see the entire run come out. The prevalence of the scanlations might be one factor encouraging DH to go all out on the production and quality of the MPD releases, and this is a good thing for consumers. Shorthand: YAY SCANLATORS-- You DO have an influence on the licensing and publishing decision process.
+ The story freaked me out and has a lot of promise. I had never read any of MPD Psycho (or seen the Takashi Miike series based on the manga), and a few of the sequences (cannibal public suicide, depotting a brain from a skull) really made me squirm and grossed me out. I'm interested to see where Otsuka takes the characters and setting he established in this first book.
THE BAD: + Exclusively gendered violence is not a good sign. I know that MPD is a famously gory and depraved manga, and that wouldn't be something to turn me away. What I really didn't like, however, was the exclusive depiction of one kind of fetishistic violence toward women depicted in this first volume. By my count, we meet two serial killers in this short book that both seem to put women in similar bondage gear, displaying them in stages of torture, before chopping them up and publicly displaying their corpses. I found the repetition of this visual (a tamer form of which also pops up often in Otsuka's Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service) a bit tiring and blech-making. You could argue that there WERE male victims at the hands of the aforementioned cannibal killer midway through the book, but all we get of these victims are a few shots framed as autopsy photos. The gore itself in MPD is not a problem, but I'm not going to stick around if we're facing volume after volume of the same type of rape-y violence against women.
+ The bold & italic font used through the book. This sounds like a dumb complaint, but after seeing the awesome production on this book, I was put off by the gnarly always bold, always italicized font they chose for the entire book. I really wish they would have gone with a more typical Comic Sans type font, and made wading through the confusing first few chapters a little easier.
VERDICT: I want to support this book because it's a scanlation-gone-legit, it's one of the darkest and creepiest mainstream titles available, and the book itself is really gorgeous. That said, I honestly didn't enjoy reading this first volume that much and hope the story improves in volume 2.
THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM Vol.6 from Viz
THE GOOD: + Time travel logic taken directly from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. My favorite part in that movie is when they're in the police station and make a mental note to go back in time later and place a radio to distract Bill's dad... and then, POW!, it's come to be just by the act of making that mental note. Except in Umezu's imagination, that same logic applies to stuffing medicine into a mummified corpse.
+ More present-day sequences with Sho's mom. She is extremely sympathetic, even as she: i) attacks a pro baseball player as he is running toward home plate, ii) spits on grieving mothers and throws the incense and flowers for their 'dead' children on the ground, and iii) cuts her own arm up in order to sneak into a hospital. You are awesome, Mrs. Takamatsu.
+ Killing off 1/2 of the entire school population in a 10 page sequence. Mr. Umezu, you amaze me.
THE BAD: + This intensity is NOT sustainable. With 5 more volumes left, Umezu has left me wondering how he can POSSIBLY keep up this shit without it unraveling.
+ People's heads and arms aren't supposed to fly off during a flash flood. This was awesome but HONESTLY??
+ That's about it. This series is radical. The only bad news is having to wait a few more months for volume 7!
VERDICT: Drifting Classroom is Umezu in rare form, and each new volume of this series is a serious treat to tear through.
THE ART OF HIDESHI HINO from Last Gasp
THE GOOD: + Tons of previously unseen art and paintings. The book contains about 30-40 pages of full-color paintings depicting Hino's usual suspects: Urban hellscapes, mutated bug boys and hell babies, lizards fucking humans, landfills and annihilation. Ridiculous and awesome stuff.
+ New comics in translation. After the paintings, you get three complete horror tales, "Memories of the Mermaid," "The Red Fruit," and "The Snow Flower." I especially dug the mermaid one, which looks especially nice in full color!
+ Blurbs and introductions from Maruo and Mizuno mean you are a badass. I'll try to scan Maruo's insane introduction, titled "Pseudo Amida Sutra of a Dreaming Embryo." It's very short, but something to behold.
THE BAD: + The quality of the pages is not great. Sadly, when you look at the painting reproductions, on some of them you can make out blurriness and what looks like the edges of inket printing. It's fantastic to see this stuff in color, but the actual images and book production is lacking in crispness and quality.
+ I love Hino, but I want to see underrepresented horror manga-ka in English. Hino has seen a LARGE share of his manga translated into English (for better or for worse), and I'd love to see others get their chance to reach and English-speaking audience.
THE VERDICT: This isn't the book I'd recommend to a casual manga fan, but for the Hideshi Hino fanatics and completists this is a MUST GET.
In other news-- we're still accepting submissions for the 4-Panel Gag Manga contest! Send yours tonight to beat the deadline!! Evan and I will decide a winner tomorrow and post the results (and ship out that copy of Junji Ito's Flesh-Colored Horror) on Tuesday morning.
As for the World of Same Hat booklets, I put 11 copies in the mail on Friday, and have a few ready to drop at the post office tomorrow on my lunch break. Once I've heard from people on the original list, I'll try to come up with a fair way to get rid of any extras. Thanks again!
I guess it’s a good sign when it takes an entire week to recover and compose a recap. In general, my week in New York was tight, except for a gnarly hangover on a weekday (whoops) and the noxious humidity-rain-heat combo that is summer in NYC.
I spent the entire BookExpo America weekend working my company’s booth, and it was exhausting, relentless and hard on the feet. But, as always, my downtime was all about comics, manga and free books.
One major highlight of the whole trip was a Saturday night karaoke party with Erin & Ed from Mangacast, Kit from Viz and Anne from Vertical (and her bf). I’m proud to report that Morning Musume, Danzig, Gackt, Smashing Pumpkins, Biz Markie and Pat Benatar renditions were in full force that night.
Having now been to my fair share of both comics events (New York Comic Con, Alternative Press Expo, Sand Diego Comic Con) and book publishing trade shows (BookExpo America, Frankfurt Book Fair), it’s become clear to me that meeting comics people is MUCH BETTER at book trade shows.
At comic events, everyone is there to see them, and you have to fight and volley for the attention of creators and publishers. At publishing trade shows, the main stars are the mainstream trade publishers like Penguin and Random House, and comics and indie publishers usually relegated to their own “GRAPHICS NOVELS" alley. This means that when a dork like me shows up all starry-eyed, the publishers we love are usually: i) not busy, ii) appreciative of the support, and iii) down with talking comics and hanging out. This year was no different! Here are some of the rumor mill tidbits, along with freebies I got my hands on:
LAST GASP
We got to be friendly with Last Gasp this past year at their APE mixer, and the awesome staff was promoting both their own catalogue and the books they distribute at this year's BEA. One of the titles they were showing off is their recent, “The Art of Hideshi Hino" – a collection of paintings and drawings with a few previously untranslated stories in the back:
I got my copy of this a few weeks back, but forgot to blog about it. I had never seen many of the images before, and his nasty/fetal hellscapes benefit from the full-color treatment. My only gripe is that the resolution and printing of some of the images is sortof blurry and un-crisp. That said, it’s a pretty awesome book for Hino fans.
Not to name names yet, but they might be adding another book from an under-represented (in English) horror/ero-guro creator that you all know and love. I offered our help and support with that project, so we’ll let you know details as they develop. If you haven’t seen it, Last Gasp’s website is one of the few places to get a hold of experimental comics magazine AX, and other rarities. Click here for AX (akkusu) action.
DRAWN & QUARTERLY
As usual, Chris from D&Q was very generous and friendly. They were there to push upcoming books like their 2nd Moomin book, 365 Days by Julie Doucet, and Spent by Joe Matt. They also handed out their Free Comic Book Day sampler of Lynda Barry’s new book What It Is (coming out in Spring 2008), and it’s basically one of the best single issues of anything I’ve picked up in a while. Lynda Barry is one of my favorites, and the new book seems experimental and magical.
I asked Chris about the future of their Tatsumi series, which seems to have stalled out with the release last year of his amazing Abandon the Old in New Tokyo. Chris confirmed that they ARE definitely doing a third book (Unnamed 1971 collection), probably in the first half of 2008, and hoping to be able to continue the chronological series in the future.
Chris also confirmed that they are planning on publishing Tatsumi’s 800 page graphic autobiography, A Drifting Life in Gekiga, and that Adrian Tomine would likely be involved in that book as well. AWESOME! It sounds like they are extremely excited about this epic book, but that it is a few years away.
Also on the manga front, D&Q is looking to continue pushing the envelope with other experimental & gekiga titles. After the third Tatsumi book, but before his autobiography, they will be releasing the famous Red-Colored Elegy ( 赤色エレジー) by Seiichi Hayashi. Check out this blog for a review of this title, and here for Hayashi’s website. I'm not as familiar with Hayashi as I should be, but he is a contemporary of Tsuge, did covers for GARO and continues to produce all sorts of interesting visual work.
Man, you gotta love what D&Q (and Vertical) are doing to push high-end titles to English audience. This is great news for Same Hat readers looking for challenging reads.
ALSO: On Saturday, I got the chance to meet and chat with Mr. Adrian Tomine in person, who was at the booth to promote his fall collection, Shortcomings. I got a promo poster signed and heard about his book tour this fall; It sounds like he’ll be reading/signing at the Booksmith on Haight in SF in September or October.
FANTAGRAPHICS
I didn’t have a chance to chat as much with Eric and the rest of the Fantagraphics crew, but they were handing out copies of their FCBD sampler of lost Peanuts strips, along with their Fall catalog. Here are the best of the upcoming titles:
+ 2 NEW BOOKS by JASON: “I Killed Adolf Hitler" and “The Last Musketeer". Hot on the heels of his zombie-romance “The Living and The Dead," these short books about time traveling dictators and old-timey marauders fighting martians (respectively) both sound fun. PS, you can preview 'Hitler' here on Amazon! The Last Musketeer preview from their fall catalog: Release date: June 2007 and January 2008
+ A NEW T. OTT BOOK: Titled “The Number: 73304-23-4153-6-96-8" and tagged as “a horrific graphic, without words." The catalog describes the story of a prison guard who finds a small piece of paper with a combination on it while cleaning out the jail sell of a recently executed prisoner. Crazy exploits, turmoil and betrayal ensue.
Release date: November 2007
+ INTERESTING DEBUT GRAPHIC NOVEL: Funeral of the Heart by Leah Hayes. The entire book is hand-lettered, and illustrated with an Ott-style scratchboard sparseness. Sounds like promising tales of stark childhoold realities. Could be rad.
Release date: February 2008
+ NEW ANGRY YOUTH COMICS COLLECTION: I’ve read all these issues already, but Johnny Ryan’s XXX Scumbag Party collection is a must-have if you never managed to track the later AYCs down. Release date: September 2009
PENGUIN
Penguin didn’t have any comics news per se but I did note two pieces of info regarding illustrators we like designing covers for Penguin.
+ NEW PENGUIN GRAPHIC CLASSICS: This is the same series that’s released Shirley Jackson with a T. Ott cover, Sinclair with a Charles Burns cover, Akutagawa with a Tatsumi cover, and more. I think everyone knew that Daniel Clowes would be illustrating the Frankenstein cover, but did you know that Tom Gauld is doing Three Musketeers!? RAD. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, Cover by Tom Gauld
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Cover by Julie Doucet
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Cover by Daniel Clowes
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, Cover by Joe Sacco(?)
+ FICTION COLLETION WITH BURNS COVER: Zadie Smith (author of On Beauty, White Teeth) is editing an interesting collection called The Book of Other People featuring Chris Ware, David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem and others. Worth noting on Same Hat because Charles Burns has done a stark but striking series of illustrations for the cover. It looks a lot like the stuff he does for The Believer magazine. Release date: Devember 2007
VIZ
No major news here that hasn’t been covered by other blogs. I did see and advance copy of Drifting Classroom 6 (Spoiler = His mom sends medicine through time to cure the plague, encased in the corpse of a dude), and our buddy Kit hooked me up with a complimentary copy of Nana 6!
VERTICAL
Vertical was promoting new prose fiction books, along with their awesome and successful Aranzi Aronzo craft line. I helped Anne at Vertical’s booth at Makers Faire in San Mateo a few weeks back, and got to see the first two Aranzi Machine Gun books then— the books are rad and featuring a hodgepodge of photographs, 4-panel gag strips and craft projects. They are a steal at around 10 bucks each.
In other news, the Vertical crew are gearing up for new Tezuka (Apollo’s Song, MW) and Takemiya (Andromeda Stories) in the coming months, along with work on their 2008 summer imprint. I also got to see a proof copy of Beat Takeshi’s short story collection Boy, coming out later this year.
MISC COOL STUFF
+ Kodansha is doing a FRUITS-esque photo book, called The Tokyo Look Book, by author Philomena Keet and photographer Yuri Manabe. This thing is sortof 3-4 years late to the Tokyo street fashion mag explosion in the US, but Kodansha’s books have really intensely high production and quality, so this could be a great coffee table book for arty hipsters/
+ Dark Horse were in effect, again focusing on their American horror and media tie-in comics, but editor Chris Warner was in attendance and was nice enough to talk manga with me. Sounds like they might send us a copy of MPD Psycho 2 to review. Very cool.
+ DC’s YA for girls imprint Minx was promoting their spring and summer books, and I got to see a preview copy of our buddy Derek Kirk Kim’s new book, Good As Lily. The art is not what I was expecting, but the story about future and past selves coming to confront you during tumultuous high school anxiety years sounds pretty great. The booth was handing out postcards and pins too.
SOME NON-COMICS STUFF + Small Beer Press’ Kelly Link and Gavin Grant are extremely awesome. Their books are beautiful, they are generous, and we plan to steal a bunch of layout ideas from their zine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet!
+ Vice Books gave out samplers of their Misshapes photo book, and a new Dos & Donts book. They also gave away copies of the SKINEMA essay/rants book coming out this fall. Vice is pretty evil, but we still love the Dos & Donts as guilty pleasures!
+ The company that puts out Choose Your Own Adventure books was there, and gave me a free copy of Journey Under the Sea. I read this a bunch of times on the subway in New York. Getting eaten by sharks sucks though.
+ Grabbed various new YA novels from Bloomsbury, FSG, and Candlewick, a new vampire novel (13 Bullets) by David Wellington-- the dude that got his zombie novels published after originally serializing them over his blog, a fucking great post-apocalyptic Russian novel (The Slynx) from New York Review of Books, various bags, pens, flyers and stickers, etc. FREE BOOKS = YES, ALWAYS.
Hopefully, that wasn’t too painful to wade through. I’m most excited about the Last Gasp, D&Q, Fantagraphics and Vertical stuff coming up later this year. 2007 is looking excellent for fans like us!
