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 What I'm Lookin' At, PART THREE
Written by Park Cooper
A review of the popular-culture-related imported things Barb and I have been lookin’ at lately...
--EARTH-SHATTERING BREAKING MANGA NEWS!
While I was busy networking at NYCC, some companies, like, actually made announcements about important things! Why in the world would anyone announce anything at a convention? All the journalists are on the con floor trying to get jobs/get their pet projects published! But sure enough, that's what Yen Press did, and boy is this one important, seriously:
Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma - Starting with volume 6, Yen Press will be picking up this comedy series from the creator of Azumanga Daioh. For those not familiar with the series, it’s the story of an energetic girl named Yotsuba and her encounters with everyday objects. Her enthusiastic curiosity is both hilarious and heartwarming, and we are very pleased to be releasing the rest of this fantastic story.
WOW! (What they don't say is "Because ADV Manga has proven unable to do so for reasons no one is privy to." Go ahead, try to call ADV and talk to them about this. Ask them about volume 2 of Blue Inferior, too, I dare you. But Yen Press is stepping in to continue the magic!) YAY! Librarians and people who like fun stories, rejoice!
--Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit
Viz
Like Battle Royale meets Confidential Confessions... only more of a downer. A terrible, horrible, evil country (Battle Royale started this trend of allowing Japan to vent about things it doesn’t like about... gee, I don’t know, could we be thinking of North Korea maybe?) inoculated everyone against diseases... but because of something intentionally added to the syringes, one in one thousand is going to die suddenly sometime in their very late teens or very early twenties... Partly to make us realize how precious the gift of life is, but mostly to underscore what it’s like to have a government that’s ready to kill you at any time if you get out of line—which they also do, any time anyone gets out of line and speaks up against the government. Depressing, and so far there’s no way out in sight.
--Bat-Manga: The Secret History of Batman in Japan; Pantheon Books, 2008
Guess what yet again: back in the day, Batman existed in manga form in Japan. Here is a collection of some of it. This is a pretty cool book, actually, if you like dated camp... and I am capable of liking dated camp, to a point (we own six copies of Bride of Deimos in this house, after all). But there is one noticeable flaw: it gets boring whenever they make up bad guys, and is therefore only interesting when they are doing their take on Batman’s usual rogues’ gallery, such as Clayface.
--The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels
by Danny Fingeroth with some illustrations by Roger Langridge
Rough Guides Ltd, 2008
Better than one might think.
Every time I pick up any sort of guide or index to graphic novels these days, they tend to marginalize, put down, slight, and/or ghettoize manga. Or else they just do it wrong. They certainly show that they don’t approve of manga and that mention of manga is only there because their publishers/money-loving hearts made them include manga so that the book would sell better.
But THIS book doesn’t seem to have that problem, or at least it’s not jumping out at me on very casual inspection (I’m afraid to sniff too closely at each sentence, since I don’t WANT to find such an attitude), thereby putting this guide very very very much in the noble minority these days.
I do wonder about listing Megatokyo in the manga chapter, though... so much for 10 million American manga fans (and Chynna Clugston, as I seem to specifically recall) telling me that “manga is defined as comics created and originally published in Japan”. I always disagreed anyway, but... Megatokyo, eh? I’m on your side about this IN GENERAL, Danny, but did you run this idea past the last 10,000,001 American manga fans I talked to?
Of even more interest to me was: the “included graphic novel!” that comes with this book—Fingeroth and Langridge did a little graphic novel about making graphic novels. What fascinates me is that the artist is a dude but the writer he finds to work with is a female! Why, it's as if Fingeroth respects the concept of women who can create-- indeed, WRITE-- comics and graphic novels! Golly, wotta concept.
It is a little odd how they show that the big companies want to ruin the creators’ work, so they self-publish, and immediately are picked up by a small indie company... there were a few cases where I wanted to say “what’re you trying to say, Danny?” but I have to admit... that’s about as realistic of a hypothetical example as one can probably get...
--Disappearance Diary
by Hideo Azuma
Fanfare/Ponent Mon 2005 (Japan)/2008 (in English)
The artist/creator has had three times in his life when he just couldn’t take the pressure any more and dropped out of his own life.
Part 1: He can’t stand the manga industry any more and becomes a homeless man, eating stuff he finds on the street and smoking the best cigarette butts he can find.
Critique: This is the least likable part. Azuma, stop that and get back to work. People aren’t supposed to choose to do this until they have absolutely no other options. You could have gotten manga work, or even other work, and you weren’t on drugs, and you weren’t insane enough to be an insane homeless person, so just cut that out.
Part 2: He drops out of his life again and gets a job in the natural gas/pipe fitting/utilities industry.
Critique: This is better than last time, and yet, at the same time, boring. Azuma, if you’re going to chuck your manga career, that’s up to you, but if your new job isn’t interesting, don’t make a manga about it later.
Part 3: He drops out of his life again, this time to go into rehab for being a truly, seriously sick alcoholic.
Critique: Well, it’s the best section... First of all, he gives us a lot more about the wacky, irritating workings of the manga industry, somewhat establishing what comes next, which he really didn’t do in the other two parts. (He’s still a PROLIFIC MANGA CREATOR IN JAPAN, of course, so you have my permission to have absolutely zero sympathy with him, especially when he talks about knowingly doing a half-assed job, but at least he tries to set things up this time to a certain extent.) Second, he’s actually got a reasonable excuse for leaving his life this time: say what you want about the foolishness of his BECOMING an alcoholic, but he sure enough FULLY QUALIFIES as an alcoholic—the guy from LOST WEEKEND wasn’t this close to dying (plus, that only took one weekend). Third, therefore, we get his adventures in rehab, rounding out this section and helping to make it the above-and-beyond least-boring section of the whole book.
So, if you want to see a guy ruin his life while drawn in a cute, halfway-to-chibi style, come on down to Hideo Azuma’s Disappearance Diary, and watch a storyteller with every intellectual and emotional faculty at his disposal except for Wisdom and Shame tell about the most embarrassing parts of his life. I hope his nice little wife gets some of the proceeds...
Note: For an extended, more-non-manga-filled version of this column, see here:
http://www.comicsbulletin.com/pb/124085056287584.htm
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