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I missed (skipped?) Comic-Con this year, but followed the details vicariously through friends' tweets. I was actually relieved to not have to deal with the mash of BO and lines, the dehydration and sterile air, and cramping 5 people into one hotel room.
That said, I am bummed to have missed a chance to kick it with a lot of the Electric Ant Zine crew, and high-five Moto Hagio-- who was brought as a special guest by Fantagraphics to celebrate/promote the release of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. I also would've loved to congratulate in person MBQ and Peepo Choo artist Felipe Smith for his much-deserved success.
[As a side note, I highly recommend folks read my friend Deb Aoki's interview with Felipe Smith at About.com. He drops lots of REAL TALK about what it takes to make it as a professional creative, and in the Japanese manga industry specifically. It made me like a guy I was already a huge fan of even more than before. Oh yeah, and pick up a copy of Peepo Choo v.1 from Vertical, fucking duh!]
During the week of madness, a few exciting licenses were announced by our buddies at Vertical and Drawn & Quarterly. These are old news by now, but I thought I'd do a quick round-up and link dump for anyone that missed them:
1) DRAWN & QUARTERLY RELEASING SHIGERU MIZUKI!
Original announcement on the D+Q blog.
Drawn & Quarterly has acquired North American English rights to two graphic novel memoirs, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths and NonNonBā, by one of Japan's most acclaimed and legendary manga-kas, Shigeru Mizuki
In addition to the licensing of these works filling a glaring and long-present gap in the English manga scene, Shigeru Mizuki himself is an amazing dude. How can you not love this guy?!
2) VERTICAL TO RELEASE FURUYA'S LYCHEE LIGHT CLUB IN 2011
Were you feeling sad because CMX crashed and burned and it become painfully obvious that the first new Usamaru Furuya manga in English wasn't ever coming out? (Me too). Well, despite his post-apocalyptic survival shonen (seinen?) seres 51 Ways to Save Her getting killed in the CMX meltdown, we have a lot of stuff to look forward to...
Haters gonna hate (on Viz's forthcoming Genkaku Picasso), but my buddy and editor wunderkind Ed Chavez announced that he and Vertical have picked up the license for Furuya's Taisho madness tale, Lychee Light Club. The hilarious thing about this to me is that I actually first got a copy of this manga (in Japanese) from Ed himself about two years ago!
The book is a whopping 320 pager, and the English edition (softcover) is coming out next April, 2011. As described deftly by ANN (because I'm too lazy to summarize things properly, sorry!), the story is about:nine students at an all-boys school who create a god-like Lychee machine — that runs on lychee fruits — to seek out the beautiful women of the world. However, the machine eventually becomes self-aware "and is soon equally capable of measuring beauty and executing justice."
The look of Furuya's lines and inks in this book will (happily) remind many Same Hat readers of a mix of Suehiro Maruo, and also a grimier version of the Showa aesthetic in Koji Kumeta's Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Furuya's manga is quite goofy(?) at times, but seriously grim and gory too. It's a mixed bag of good elements, and I think Same Hat folks will really love it.
3) PRISON PIT #2 HAS ARRIVED
Johnny Ryan, a friend of Same Hat and all-around great dude, released the second volume of his battle epic Prison Pit at Comic-Con. It is amazing, nasty, and Lovecraftian. It also features a direct allusion to a scene from Tetsuo Hara's CYBER BLUE!!! Did anyone spot it?
Johnny Ryan & Calvin Wong, power-twins unite!
If you're not already on board with this series (What's wrong with you?) check out the cover to #3.
I missed (skipped?) Comic-Con this year, but followed the details vicariously through friends' tweets. I was actually relieved to not have to deal with the mash of BO and lines, the dehydration and sterile air, and cramping 5 people into one hotel room.
That said, I am bummed to have missed a chance to kick it with a lot of the Electric Ant Zine crew, and high-five Moto Hagio-- who was brought as a special guest by Fantagraphics to celebrate/promote the release of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. I also would've loved to congratulate in person MBQ and Peepo Choo artist Felipe Smith for his much-deserved success.
[As a side note, I highly recommend folks read my friend Deb Aoki's interview with Felipe Smith at About.com. He drops lots of REAL TALK about what it takes to make it as a professional creative, and in the Japanese manga industry specifically. It made me like a guy I was already a huge fan of even more than before. Oh yeah, and pick up a copy of Peepo Choo v.1 from Vertical, fucking duh!]
During the week of madness, a few exciting licenses were announced by our buddies at Vertical and Drawn & Quarterly. These are old news by now, but I thought I'd do a quick round-up and link dump for anyone that missed them:
1) DRAWN & QUARTERLY RELEASING SHIGERU MIZUKI!
Original announcement on the D+Q blog.
Drawn & Quarterly has acquired North American English rights to two graphic novel memoirs, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths and NonNonBā, by one of Japan's most acclaimed and legendary manga-kas, Shigeru Mizuki
In addition to the licensing of these works filling a glaring and long-present gap in the English manga scene, Shigeru Mizuki himself is an amazing dude. How can you not love this guy?!
2) VERTICAL TO RELEASE FURUYA'S LYCHEE LIGHT CLUB IN 2011
Were you feeling sad because CMX crashed and burned and it become painfully obvious that the first new Usamaru Furuya manga in English wasn't ever coming out? (Me too). Well, despite his post-apocalyptic survival shonen (seinen?) seres 51 Ways to Save Her getting killed in the CMX meltdown, we have a lot of stuff to look forward to...
Haters gonna hate (on Viz's forthcoming Genkaku Picasso), but my buddy and editor wunderkind Ed Chavez announced that he and Vertical have picked up the license for Furuya's Taisho madness tale, Lychee Light Club. The hilarious thing about this to me is that I actually first got a copy of this manga (in Japanese) from Ed himself about two years ago!
The book is a whopping 320 pager, and the English edition (softcover) is coming out next April, 2011. As described deftly by ANN (because I'm too lazy to summarize things properly, sorry!), the story is about:nine students at an all-boys school who create a god-like Lychee machine — that runs on lychee fruits — to seek out the beautiful women of the world. However, the machine eventually becomes self-aware "and is soon equally capable of measuring beauty and executing justice."
The look of Furuya's lines and inks in this book will (happily) remind many Same Hat readers of a mix of Suehiro Maruo, and also a grimier version of the Showa aesthetic in Koji Kumeta's Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Furuya's manga is quite goofy(?) at times, but seriously grim and gory too. It's a mixed bag of good elements, and I think Same Hat folks will really love it.
3) PRISON PIT #2 HAS ARRIVED
Johnny Ryan, a friend of Same Hat and all-around great dude, released the second volume of his battle epic Prison Pit at Comic-Con. It is amazing, nasty, and Lovecraftian. It also features a direct allusion to a scene from Tetsuo Hara's CYBER BLUE!!! Did anyone spot it?
Johnny Ryan & Calvin Wong, power-twins unite!
If you're not already on board with this series (What's wrong with you?) check out the cover to #3.
Over the past week, I was reminded about two upcoming books by a friend at D&Q and Same Hat reader Adam that I wanted to share here. Below are the details gathered from Amazon, and I'll continue to add links/images as I come across them.
(BTW, if you haven't seen Adam's manga review blog Complelely Futile, I strongly encourage you to check it. It's a bit light on visual stimulus but full of insightful reviews and essays on various untranslated manga).
Anyway, time to get stoked about the Fall!
1. GENKAKU PICASSO by Usumaru Furuya
Details here from the listing on Amazon
# Paperback: 256 pages
# Release: VIZ, November 2, 2010
Product Description
Hikari Hamura, nicknamed Picasso because of his natural artistic abilities, survived a horrible accident, but his friend Chiaki wasn't so lucky. Suddenly, Chiaki appears in front of him and tells him in order to keep living he must help the people around him. Can Hikari save people with his sketchbook and a 2B pencil?
About the Author
Furuya debuted as a manga artist in an avant-garde comics magazine called Garo in 1994. Since then, his manga have appeared in Young Sunday and other major weekly magazines. His work has also been published in English in VIZ's PULP magazine and Secret Comics Japan. VIZ published his book Short Cuts in 2003.
2. A SINGLE MATCH (Red Kimono) by Oji Suzuki
Details here from the listing on Amazon
# Paperback: 240 pages
# Release: Drawn & Quarterly, October 12, 2010
[This book was originally scheduled for a March 2010 release, under the title Red Kimono. My original post]
Product Description
In this collection of hauntingly elliptical short stories, Oji Suzuki explores memory, relationships, and loss with a loose narrative style, filling each tale with a sense of unfulfilled longing. He plumbs the dissolute depths of human psychology, literally bathing his characters in expansive shadows that paradoxically reveal as much as they obscure. A young man catches a cold after being soaked in the rain and is tended to by his grandmother. He drifts, dreaming of a train trip with an older brother he doesn’t have. A traveling salesman comes across a boy lying in the middle of the road and stops to have a cigarette and tell a story that sifts through memories of faces and places before settling back on the boy and pretending to not look at the stars. A young woman walks along the river with her bicycle and a friend who is nothing more than a disembodied head—discussing past times together, memories they have of each other.
About the Author
Although he touches on many of the same themes as his contemporaries in the field of postwar alternative manga—Yoshihiro Tsuge (L’Homme Sans Talent) and Seiichi Hayashi (Red Coloured Elegy)—Suzuki uses an ever shifting narrative approach and dashes of surrealist humor to distinguish his work from that of his peers.
Oji Suzuki was born in 1949 in Nagoya, Japan. He moved to Tokyo in 1967 and within two years his first short stories were published in the avant-garde Japanese comics magazine Garo. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s at least ten collections of his short stories were published. Suzuki has produced short films and has written and drawn children’s books.
From the French edition:
Over the past week, I was reminded about two upcoming books by a friend at D&Q and Same Hat reader Adam that I wanted to share here. Below are the details gathered from Amazon, and I'll continue to add links/images as I come across them.
(BTW, if you haven't seen Adam's manga review blog Complelely Futile, I strongly encourage you to check it. It's a bit light on visual stimulus but full of insightful reviews and essays on various untranslated manga).
Anyway, time to get stoked about the Fall!
1. GENKAKU PICASSO by Usumaru Furuya
Details here from the listing on Amazon
# Paperback: 256 pages
# Release: VIZ, November 2, 2010
Product Description
Hikari Hamura, nicknamed Picasso because of his natural artistic abilities, survived a horrible accident, but his friend Chiaki wasn't so lucky. Suddenly, Chiaki appears in front of him and tells him in order to keep living he must help the people around him. Can Hikari save people with his sketchbook and a 2B pencil?
About the Author
Furuya debuted as a manga artist in an avant-garde comics magazine called Garo in 1994. Since then, his manga have appeared in Young Sunday and other major weekly magazines. His work has also been published in English in VIZ's PULP magazine and Secret Comics Japan. VIZ published his book Short Cuts in 2003.
2. A SINGLE MATCH (Red Kimono) by Oji Suzuki
Details here from the listing on Amazon
# Paperback: 240 pages
# Release: Drawn & Quarterly, October 12, 2010
[This book was originally scheduled for a March 2010 release, under the title Red Kimono. My original post]
Product Description
In this collection of hauntingly elliptical short stories, Oji Suzuki explores memory, relationships, and loss with a loose narrative style, filling each tale with a sense of unfulfilled longing. He plumbs the dissolute depths of human psychology, literally bathing his characters in expansive shadows that paradoxically reveal as much as they obscure. A young man catches a cold after being soaked in the rain and is tended to by his grandmother. He drifts, dreaming of a train trip with an older brother he doesn’t have. A traveling salesman comes across a boy lying in the middle of the road and stops to have a cigarette and tell a story that sifts through memories of faces and places before settling back on the boy and pretending to not look at the stars. A young woman walks along the river with her bicycle and a friend who is nothing more than a disembodied head—discussing past times together, memories they have of each other.
About the Author
Although he touches on many of the same themes as his contemporaries in the field of postwar alternative manga—Yoshihiro Tsuge (L’Homme Sans Talent) and Seiichi Hayashi (Red Coloured Elegy)—Suzuki uses an ever shifting narrative approach and dashes of surrealist humor to distinguish his work from that of his peers.
Oji Suzuki was born in 1949 in Nagoya, Japan. He moved to Tokyo in 1967 and within two years his first short stories were published in the avant-garde Japanese comics magazine Garo. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s at least ten collections of his short stories were published. Suzuki has produced short films and has written and drawn children’s books.
From the French edition:
As unearthed by Travis McGee in the comments of a previous post, Drawn & Quarterly will be releasing Black Blizzard (黒い吹雪 - Kuroi Fubuki) in April 2010. The details are listed on Amazon and in the Spring 2010 catalogue of FSG (D&Q's distributor). For folks that have read A Drifting Life, the publication of Black Blizzard in Japanese back in the 1950s features in the plot of that autobiography.
From the listing on Amazon:
THE PREEMMINENT GEKIGA-KA'S FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL FROM FIFTY YEARS AGO
Created in the late 1950s, Black Blizzard is Yoshihiro Tatsumi's remarkable first full-length graphic novel and one of the first published examples of Gekiga. Tatsumi documented how his love for Mickey Spillane and hard-boiled crime novels led him to create this landmark genre of manga in his epic, critically acclaimed 2009 autobiography, A Drifting Life. With Black Blizzard, Tatsumi explores the dark underbelly of his working-class heroes that five decades later has made him one of the best-known Japanese cartoonists in North America.
Susumu Yamaji, a twenty-four-year-old pianist, is arrested formurder and ends up handcuffed to a career criminal on the train that will take them to prison. An avalanche derails the train and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging a reluctant Susumu with him into the blizzard raging outside. They flee into the mountains to an abandoned ranger station, where they take shelter from the storm. As they sit around the fire they built, Susumu relates how love drove him to become a murderer. A cinematic adventure story, Black Blizzard uncovers an unlikely love story and an even unlikelier friendship.
According to their listing, it will be a $20.00 softcover book, 144 pages, coming out on April 27, 2010. We'll post more details as the release gets closer-- very exciting!
As unearthed by Travis McGee in the comments of a previous post, Drawn & Quarterly will be releasing Black Blizzard (黒い吹雪 - Kuroi Fubuki) in April 2010. The details are listed on Amazon and in the Spring 2010 catalogue of FSG (D&Q's distributor). For folks that have read A Drifting Life, the publication of Black Blizzard in Japanese back in the 1950s features in the plot of that autobiography.
From the listing on Amazon:
THE PREEMMINENT GEKIGA-KA'S FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL FROM FIFTY YEARS AGO
Created in the late 1950s, Black Blizzard is Yoshihiro Tatsumi's remarkable first full-length graphic novel and one of the first published examples of Gekiga. Tatsumi documented how his love for Mickey Spillane and hard-boiled crime novels led him to create this landmark genre of manga in his epic, critically acclaimed 2009 autobiography, A Drifting Life. With Black Blizzard, Tatsumi explores the dark underbelly of his working-class heroes that five decades later has made him one of the best-known Japanese cartoonists in North America.
Susumu Yamaji, a twenty-four-year-old pianist, is arrested formurder and ends up handcuffed to a career criminal on the train that will take them to prison. An avalanche derails the train and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging a reluctant Susumu with him into the blizzard raging outside. They flee into the mountains to an abandoned ranger station, where they take shelter from the storm. As they sit around the fire they built, Susumu relates how love drove him to become a murderer. A cinematic adventure story, Black Blizzard uncovers an unlikely love story and an even unlikelier friendship.
According to their listing, it will be a $20.00 softcover book, 144 pages, coming out on April 27, 2010. We'll post more details as the release gets closer-- very exciting!
Doing my periodic digging around on Amazon, I came across some news that I haven't seen posted on any blogs or the Drawn & Quarterly site. That's right, SAME HAT EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS:
Drawn & Quarterly will be publishing Red Kimono by Oji Suzuki on March 16, 2010! This is exciting news for gekiga fans and fits in well with their editorial direction of late; Suzuki was an original broham of the alternative manga scene, and part of the GARO 1-2-3 trio of cartoonists, alongside Shinichi Abe and Masuzou Furukawa (founder of Mandarake, according to the very knowledgeable Bill Randall.
Red Kimono was originally published in collected form in 1985 by Seirindo. Page # and ISBN for the English edition of Red Kimono are available on the Amazon listing.
Oji Suzuki was also noted as a contemporary of Yoshiharu Tsuge, and publishing works often in Garo in the 70s and 80s. Interestingly enough, three Suzuki manga have been published in France already by Le Seuil, details on "Le Kimono Rouge," "Vaste le ciel," and "Bleu Transparent" are here.
For some visual examples of Suzuki's work, check out these pages that Dirk at TCJ's Journalista! posted from a Suzuki manga here when showing off copies of old GARO issues he bought:
A little more information on Oji Suzuki can be found in the Portuguese blog, Ler BD. [English translation via Google here].
Doing my periodic digging around on Amazon, I came across some news that I haven't seen posted on any blogs or the Drawn & Quarterly site. That's right, SAME HAT EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS:
Drawn & Quarterly will be publishing Red Kimono by Oji Suzuki on March 16, 2010! This is exciting news for gekiga fans and fits in well with their editorial direction of late; Suzuki was an original broham of the alternative manga scene, and part of the GARO 1-2-3 trio of cartoonists, alongside Shinichi Abe and Masuzou Furukawa (founder of Mandarake, according to the very knowledgeable Bill Randall.
Red Kimono was originally published in collected form in 1985 by Seirindo. Page # and ISBN for the English edition of Red Kimono are available on the Amazon listing.
Oji Suzuki was also noted as a contemporary of Yoshiharu Tsuge, and publishing works often in Garo in the 70s and 80s. Interestingly enough, three Suzuki manga have been published in France already by Le Seuil, details on "Le Kimono Rouge," "Vaste le ciel," and "Bleu Transparent" are here.
For some visual examples of Suzuki's work, check out these pages that Dirk at TCJ's Journalista! posted from a Suzuki manga here when showing off copies of old GARO issues he bought:
A little more information on Oji Suzuki can be found in the Portuguese blog, Ler BD. [English translation via Google here].
