SAME HAT!

SAME HAT T-SHIRT NOW ON SALE!

2011-11-20T15:31:00.001-08:00

The Same Hat t-shirt is now on sale! Wear your allegiance to indie/weirdo/horror manga loud and proud with this dorky thing celebrating our blog and community.YOU CAN GET IT HEREIt's on sale for $16 (+ shipping) to anywhere in the world, and features a design by JONNY NEGRON, and lettering by MICHAEL DEFORGE. The shirt is available in sizes XS to XXXL on that familiar high-grade American Apparel Men's tee. White ink on black shirt, printed locally in the Bay Area with assistance from our buddy SEIBEI. All orders ship within 2-3 business days, and there should be enough for folks who want one to get them without problems. I'll have some shirts at my table at Brooklyn Fest on 12/3 as well. If you have any question, leave a comment or hit me up at samehat AT gmail DOT com!

HALLOWEEN MANGA MAKE-UP 2011

2011-10-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, it's time again! Halloween is upon us and like every year I wanna know... is anyone dressing up as anything horror-manga related? If you're on the fence, let me present this still awesome tutorial on horror manga make-up! (I've posted it every Halloween since we started!)

In previous years, the Same Hat community has shared some intense and rad costumes. If you bust out a manga-related costume and wanna share, please send it to SAMEHAT at GMAIL doot COM and I'll post it after the weekend! Can't wait to see what folks come up with... I wonder what the Tokyo Scum guys will bust out this year?

(PS: If you wondered, I'm working on a Reverend Harry Powell (from Night of the Hunter) costume, if I can get my act together!)

THE INAUGURAL SAME HAT SHIRT!

2011-10-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

DETAILS:

(click for bigger versions)

This shirt features a design by JONNY NEGRON, and lettering by MICHAEL DEFORGE. I’m planning to sell it in sizes XS -XXXL depending on what you want, and it’s looking like it will be around $16-18 bucks depending on how many we print. I’m getting printing help from apparel wizard/buddy SEIBEI, and he says the shirts will be a supersoft print on a high-grade American Apparel Men's tee.

I am planning to have the shirts at the Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Festival on December 3 (where DeForge/Negron will be in person too) and then selling via this site right beforehand!

And yes, creating an actual t-shirt means that I plan to fully revive Same Hat with regular posting!

WHILE THIS BLOG LANGUISHED, THE TUMBLR LIVED!

2011-10-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm back on the scene, and working for you to keep Same Hat rolling and interesting. I'm happy to report that while the blog was in temporary haitus, the SAME HAT TUMBLR has continued serving up the goods!

I've continued to post at least a few times a week, and the other super contributors like Jim, Olivia, Caroline, Mis Nas, and the crew have been keeping it fresh. Here are a few highlights recently:

Stills from the new Gyo adaptation!? - Even Junji Ito is excited about this one
SleepyTezuka, the hottest new meme (also as an animated .gif)
Anna Tsubaki punk scans
Kaneda by Jonny Negron
and much, much more!

Please follow this thing and contribute links if you aren't already!

RIP JERRY FELLOWS

2011-10-25T11:04:00.000-07:00

[My first post back! I've been working on zines and translations and mostly my day job, but have plans to get this jam up and rolling again--- with guest posts and some long-planned essay posts. We are also just about a month away from finally releasing our first Same Hat shirt--- a joint-design by Michael DeForge and Jonny Negron that I think you will love. My goal is to get posting regularly on here again before that happens, so you and I won't be ashamed to don the shirt!]

I read last month that early fandom contributor and zinester Jerry Fellows passed away -- my condolences go out to his friends and family. I never had the chance to meet Jerry, but he sounds like a dude after our own hearts and the kind of person I'd like to highlight here on Same Hat.

Jerry came to my attention a few years back, when I was reading Fred Patten's personal history of the development of Anime/Manga fandom in America, "Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews". In Patten's timeline of anime fandom, he noted the following about February 1983 (the same month that Nakazawa's I Saw It was published in English by Educomics):

Space Fanzine Yamato is published by Steve Harrison, Ardith Carlton, and Jerry Fellows in Michigan as "the ultimate information source" on Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers. This is the first American fan effort to produce a "Roman Album"-style complete information guide to a particular anime title.

Manga fandom is a strange and fascinating thing to me, and treads somewhere between the two (formerly-overlapping) worlds of early SF fandom and comic book fandom. Manga (and more specifically, Anime) fandom developed along similar timeframes as the SF scene, but remained the realm of very devoted enthusiasts for a long time; the scene was, perhaps happily, kept small initially by the double-whammy limitations of 1) a physical barrier to getting your hands on the actual media you wanted to consume-- first 16mm films, then later more easily VHS tapes-- and 2) a language barrier to understanding the anime/manga, in a time before the "boom" in Japanese Language programs at US universities that happened alongside the Japanese economic bubble of the mid-to-late 80s.

Interestingly enough, a "collector" market of manga/anime (as distinct from toys, models, vinyl) remains mostly non-existent to this day; you can find old VHS tapes and 1st editions of early Viz floppies for under a buck easily at used book shops. The fan translations, early dubs, and fanzines at the start of the scene were simply labors of love, currency of in-group identification between folks "in the know" but mostly invisible and valueless to folks outside of fandom--- and now mostly forgotten to all but the hardest core/weirdest of current anime/manga fans.

In the context of typewriters and expensive/early Xerox technology (and no access to things like InDesign or um, the internet), the gleeful and thorough devotion of fans like Steve, Ardith and Jerry impresses me and inspires the little zine projects I want to work on. Steve wrote a detailed and very personal recounting of the experience creating Space Fanzine Yamato on his blog, Let's Anime!, and it details the dorky/poignant way in which friendships blossom and wither over the course of a long project. Please take a second to read it!

This excerpt from my interview with Fred Schodt in 2007 gives a little more context to the scene that Jerry was a part of, the pioneers of fandom from which all weeaboos are descended:

ANT: There’s some stuff written about other early fandoms – whether it’s science fiction fandom or American comic book fandom – that thing when a sub-culture scene later turns into a big business. I’m always curious about how that gets started. The people you knew in the US who read your first book were probably part of a sort of vanguard of manga or anime fans. Who were those people? Were they science fiction fans? Dungeons and Dragons people? Or Japanophiles?

FRED: I knew a lot of those people in the very beginning, the people from the really enthusiastic manga and anime fans were very unusual people. Jared and I were actually working and interpreting for Tezuka on an early trip – I think ’79 or 1980, I don’t remember the exact date, but I know that we went to see the C/FO folks (Cartoon Fantasy Organization) and I had never met people like that in my life. It was almost frightening. [LAUGHS] I had never met people who were so dedicated to something which was so obscure in the United States at the time, and it was a very small group. But they were people who became quite big in fandom, such as Fred Patton in particular, he was a real central figure in American fandom, and still is.
They were people who were obsessed with anime – more anime than manga, very few people could read it because there weren’t any English manga available. So their entry point had been actually the early 60s anime that was shown in the United States, such as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Fred Patten's good friend Robin Leyden from the C/FO was a huge Astro Boy fan, the likes of which you’d rarely see. He later on became a special effects animator. Robyn actually made a model of Astro Boy and presented it to Tezuka...

ANT: What was Tezuka’s reaction to that, to these strange American anime fans?

FRED: Oh, he was overwhelmed. [Tezuka] had been in contact with some of them even before Jared and I met him. But they were the first Anime fans in the US, to such a serious degree. Almost scary. These were not people who were interested in Japanese business or technology or anything like that. They were just focused on anime, the characters and the stories, they just loved it. So it was actually very touching.

ANT: It seems like a lot of those people in the early 80s were the ones that eventually drummed up interest in anime, and a lot of them were the people who first ones that did fan subtitles.

FRED: That’s right. And organized the first conventions.

Here are a few more images from Steve's post, I gotta take a minute and track down a PDF/scans of this great piece of fandom history sometime soon.

RIP, Jerry Fellows... and hats off to all the early fandom pioneers!

(The staff of Space Fanzine Yamato)

[More soon: Gyo manga, tons of Vertical releases, my dumb projects, Umezz Carnival 2011, etc!]

ULTIMATE SUEHIRO MARUO TATTOO?

2011-06-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

Longtime reader and Suehiro Maruo superfan Suzanne just sent us pics of her RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME tattoos. For her sleeve piece, Suzanne worked to carefully compile images from a number of Suehiro Maruo works, including panels from The Laughing Vampire and illustration work featured in his Maruograph art books.

If you can believe it, she says it's still an in-progress piece, with further details to be added to her arm(!!). The tattoo artist was Piotrek Taton at Good Times in London.

Suzanne, and our previously-mentioned friend Beth... you are the queens of Maruo fandom!

To see all of the Same Hat community's awesome manga tattoo, simply click the "tattoo" label.

DANG, LOOK AT THIS MANGA INK!

2011-06-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

Over on the Same Hat Tumblr, I restarted an open call for pictures of your manga-related tattoos... These are to add to our growing archive of tattoos (depicting the works of Kazuo Umezu, Shintaro Kago, Suehiro Maruo, and others!)

The lovely secretcat's amazing NEKOJIRU tattoo!

teendrama's crazy GURREN LAGANN tattoo!

UPDATE:

Jake's UZUMAKI tattoo!

UPDATE 2:

Jeremy's GETTER ROBO tattoo!

UPDATE 3:

If you have a picture to share, send me an email at SAMEHAT [at] GMAIL [dot] COM.

LOOKING BACK AT SECRET COMICS JAPAN

2011-06-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent a lovely couple of hours re-reading back issues of PULP off my shelves (for research for my Usamaru Furuya post). While most all of the series that ran in PULP have been collected in their own trade paperbacks (though I believe they are all out of print other than Uzumaki), and some of the best essays and columns were collected in "Fresh Pulp", there really is nothing quite as fun as reading these comics in serialized form, running alongside each other!

As an extension of the PULP experiment/enterprise, the editors (including Jason Thompson, Izumi Evers, Carl Gustav Horn and others I'm surely forgetting) worked with Chikao Shiratori (an ex-GARO editor) to put together an anthology called Secret Comics Japan. I've previously posted about this important collection which (along with Comics Underground Japan and, to a lesser degree, Sake Jock) is a key piece of reading for any Same Hat reader.

I have really distinct memories of first encountering this book when Evan brought it along on our cross-country road trip to get me out to Stanford in 2001. This book is where I first encountered Shintaro Kago, as well as Furuya's PALEPOLI strips and Makoto Aida's groundbreaking MUTANT HANAKO. At the time of Secret Comics Japan's publication, PULP ran an overview of the state of "indie manga" in Japan in the early-2000s, as well as detailed notes on each story included in the anthology. I found it pretty fascinating to revisit this stuff, and have included large scans for your reading pleasure below:

CLICK EACH PAGE FOR THE FULL-SIZE IMAGE:

(Interview about PULP x SECRET COMICS JAPAN, page 1)

(Interview about PULP x SECRET COMICS JAPAN, page 2)

(LOOKING AT: The Life of Momongo, Gedatsu Man)

(LOOKING AT: Swing Shell, JR.)

(LOOKING AT: Heartless Bitch/Painful Love, Punctures)

(LOOKING AT: Mutant Hanako)

(LOOKING AT: Editor Woman, Palepoli)

(A hilarious "rating" of each story in terms of Gore, Porn-ness, Huh?, Laffs, and other traits)

JUNJI ITO'S "CAT DIARIES"

2011-06-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

This quick post was spurred by a question asked over on the Same Hat TUMBLR (which, by the way, has remained very active the past two months even as Same Hat proper was languishing). strangeandstranger asked about finding evidence online of Junji Ito's "CAT DIARIES"...?

Somehow I'd missed this manga's release, but it turns out it is a real thing that actually exists!

There book is called 伊藤潤二の猫日記　よん＆むー ("Junji Ito's Cat Diaries: Yon & Muu"), and here is the listing on Amazon.co.jp. It looks like the book is about 116 pages and pretty cheap, a one-off collection published by Kodansha.

I dug around the internets and found some panels to share. Enjoy!

There's more about Junji Ito's cat insanity here on this Japanese blog about cats and this other blog by a Junji Ito fan.

And in case you've forgotten who we are dealing with, hear is a wonderfully eerie (and oddly romantic) photograph of Junji Ito:

[As a final piece of Junji Ito miscellany, here is some Ito ASCII art I found on a Japanese message board!]

UPDATE!: Lovely readers of the Same Hat Tumblr have alerted me to the fact that a Yon & Muu scanlation does exist (and was posted recently). If you feel so include you can check it out at MANGA READER and MANGAFOX.

JIRO ISHIKAWA ON MY MIND

2011-06-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Over at the (relatively) recently-revamped The Comics Journal site, my buddy Michael DeForge is posting a series of rad "A Cartoonist's Diary" dispatches; in these posts, DeForge talks about his comics work and process, muses about gig poster design, and talks about comics he's enjoying.

In the "Day 2" post, Michael mentioned picking up GIRO by Jiro Ishikawa, which is a lovely little book published in-house by TACO che:

For those that missed my earlier posts, TACO che is a wonderful shop in the Nakano Broadway mall on the west edge of Tokyo, specializing in indie/horror/alternative manga. Basically, it's if the beating heart and cultural brain was manifested into a tiny bookstore of wonders. In addition to selling books by Seirinkogeisha, EnterBrain, Ohta, and others, TACO che has a series of self-published art books/collections. In addition to GIRO, they have also published booklets featuring the Namio Harukawa's thick ladies, paintings by Imiri Sakabashira, and the gay eroticism of Gekko Hayashi.

GIRO itself features an sampling of the intense and rad work of underground artist, Jiro Ishikawa, from comics and minis he cread between 1996 and 2001. Some images here (taken from TCJ.com):

You can actually buy a copy via TACO che, or for US folks at this site (and I believe The Beguiling in Toronto has copies as well).

I didn't want to just write about Jiro Ishikawa, without adding some visual ammunition to the interweb, so I dug up two additional mini-comics I snagged while in Tokyo last year. These are both self-published book and look more like the comics our friends sling at Alternative Press Expo than the typical manga tankobon you encounter. Here are my favorite images/pages from these two minis:

(CLICK EACH IMAGE FOR A LARGER VERSION)

(Cover for スナックまぼろし - "SUNAKKU maboroshi/Snack Bar Phantom")

(Jiro Ishikawa is really into dogs, it seems)

(Cover of チンコマン - "Chinkoman / Dick Man")

(Dick Man fighting. I love the thickness(!) of Ishikawa's lines.)

(Bird demon schoolgirls. Check out that "evil train" panel on the left page!)

(Why does this dog get in on the action?!)

(Beach babe and Dick Man drinking a coke...somehow.)

More scans from Ishikawa's work are on this Japanese blog.

MET USAMARU FURUYA IN TORONTO!

2011-06-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

Last month, I took a lovely trip to Canada and attended the fantastic Toronto Comics Art Festival. I was there specifically to sell my zines, including a book of erotic indie comics titled THICKNESS #1. The book was created and edited by me and my buddy Michael DeForge, and includes original comics by my favorites: Jonny Negron, Ze Jian Shen, Derek Ballard, Katie Skelly and a new color strip by True Chubbo.

[PS: You can buy a copy for $10 (+shipping) right now.]

I'm going to write about the zines and comics I picked up at TCAF over on the EAZB this weekend, but for Same Hat I wanted to post about a dream coming true... having the opportunity to meet genius mangaka USAMARU FURUYA!

[Furuya photo via this site]

Usamaru Furuya was at TCAF as a "Guest of Honor", and promoting both Viz's Genkaku Picasso and Vertical's release of Lychee Light Club. I feel intimidated by the task of explaining Furuya's importance/talents in a simple Same Hat post due to both my deep fondness for his work and the variety/breadth of genres and types of cartooning he has produced over his career. For a primer, this profile of Furuya does a great job of introducing his work if you've not read anything by the dude.

I first encountered Furuya's work back when I was in high school, in the now-defunct PULP Magazine. PULP was a monthly manga magazine, which functioned as a primer on all things "indie" for English readers in the late '90s. I spoke at length (along with Chris Butcher and David Welsh) about the importance of this book on my reading habits and sensibilities on this episode of Inkstuds, and Furuya's kogal-skewering SHORT CUTS strips were a focal point of that teenage excitement about what manga and comics could set out to achieve.

Ostensibly, a 2-page formal gag strip skewering Kogals, SHORT CUTS was a funny gag comedy about youth culture with great timing, cute girls, and surprisingly beautiful art; but it also was an avenue for literary and internationally-minded Furuya to namecheck Dali, Yoshiharu Tsuge, Kazuo Umezu, Aphex Twin, and Osamu Dazai (along with boob jokes!). It's an absolute delight to read and a collection of gags that I come back to every few years and find another reference or angle I had missed previously.

Here's a bonus Short Cut strip (which is fantastically NSFW and hilarious): Page 1, Page 2.

SECRET COMICS JAPAN: PALEPOLI
Furuya's silly and quietly amazing strips for Short Cuts were predated in his bibliography by a series of 4-panel gags published under the name, PALEPOLI. I'm prone to hyperbole, and biased by encountering these comics at an extremely impressionable phase of my teenage years, but I've found Palepoli holds up extremely well to repeated re-reading. A selection of the Palepoli strips were published in English in the fantastic Viz-published indie anthology, SECRET COMICS JAPAN. Here is how editors Jason Thompson and Izumi Evers described Palepoli:

At TCAF, Furuya mentioned that his biggest challenge when starting out was around paneling and pacing his manga to tell effective stories. With Palepoli, Furuya purposely constrained each strip to 4-panel/"yon-koma" format. Within that format, Furuya soars artistically and slams formally against the visual language of a four-panel grid. It's full of hilarious sex jokes and pop culture references, as well as formal experiments rivaling Shintaro Kago's Abstraction.

Here is an example of one kind of approach the strip took, with a juxtaposition of Furuya's Makoto-chan stand-in Takashi pondering his own hand:

Additional Palepoli strips: 1 2 3

As I started the post off saying... Usamaru Furuya was a Featured Guest of the festival, and a number of events highlighting his work were scheduled throughout the weekend. As part of this, Furuya signed books for fans for a few hours on Saturday... I had a chance to talk to him, shake his hand enthusiastically, and have him sign my Disneyland Autograph book!!

(Furuya and a red-faced with excitement Me)

Furuya was incredibly sweet in person, and was nice enough to take a photograph with me (below). He had his wife and baby (both were insanely cute) in tow, and later after his signing Furuya walked around the festival checking out minicomics and booths on display.

In addition to the signing, Festival Director and master blogger Chris Butcher hosted a Spotlight Panel and interview with Usamaru Furuya. I haven't seen video surface yet, but this summary of the Spotlight Panel over at Kuriousity does a great job of summarizing the event. (The mentioned "audience member" who asked about Plastic Girl is me, haha). My buddy Ikki Nikki also conducted a fantastic interview with Furuya for the Shonen Jump Magazine site that includes further great details about his process and thoughts on comics.

The most interesting and crazy points to me were:

Furuya created his ground-breaking PALEPOLI comics when he was only 24 years old(!!). This was the #1 holy shit moment of TCAF for me.
He described drawing layouts and panels as a muscle that needs to be flexed and can only be honed via repetition. 'Someone once said "you can master any kind of skill with 10,000 hours of practice." I also find this to be true.'
Furuya talked extensively of the influence of Suehiro Maruo on his work, and that he idolized Maruo and wanted to be a part of GARO after seeing his short stories printed in the magazine. Furuya called Lychee Light Club his tribute to the Grand Guignol theatre and Suehiro Maruo.
There wasn't a real point to my question, except that I got to say out loud to Usamaru Furuya in public that he was one of my alltime favorite cartoonists and a genius, and that Plastic Girl was an amazing and beautiful piece of work :)
Furuya is very interested in digital publishing and integrating social media into the experience of sharing his work with an audience. He mentioned how other than conventions (which he doesn't really attend) he never has the experience of experiencing an immediate reaction to his works. As part of this, Furuya is serializing his newest manga online, allowing users to comment directly on individual panels (more below).

After hearing Seth and other somewhat-crankypants cartoonists talk about their weariness of the internet and ebooks, it was surprising and exciting to hear that Furuya was the one that drove his publisher to serialize his prequel to Lychee Light Club for free online. You guys are all reading this new series, right? If not, you gotta check out BOKURA NO HIKARI CLUB.

Ah, it feels good to finally be back posting on Same Hat! I missed you guys.

A WEEK LATER...

2011-03-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

Like all of you, I'm heartbroken about the devastation in Japan in the aftermath of last Friday's earthquake and tsunami (and continuing aftershocks), and the ongoing nuclear crisis in Fukushima. All of our close friends and family (centered mostly in Kyoto and Tokyo) are safe and accounted for, and our thoughts lie most squarely with afflicted and suffering people in Miyagi, Fukushima, and Iwate Prefectures.

If you haven't already, please consider donating to one of the following relief efforts, as the needs continue to grow for a long recovery:

Japanese Red Cross Society (via Google's Crisis Response page)
Japan Foundation Earhquake Relief Fund
American Red Cross Society

(View of farmlands in Touhoku, taken from the window of our northbound shinkansen)

Last Sunday, I was cleaning my shelves and re-organizing books and serendipitously came upon my color film snapshots from a trip I took with fellow classmates in Japan during Golden Week in2003. Oliver, Mike, Eric and I took a sojourn up North from Kyoto by JR to visit Nikko, as well as venturing on to Sendai. We spent two days in Sendai, singing Queen at karaoke at a small izakaya called Pub Hibiki, then drinking at an inn overlooking the hills and coastal areas; before leaving, we also ventured to the famously picturesque Matsushima Bay. [Since that trip, Basho's famous "Ah Matsushima Ah!" haiku of adulation at the islands and wind-swept trees has been a shorthand inside joke between me and Oliver for seeing something insane/astonishing.]

(Looking out at Sendai at night)

(Islands at Matsushima Bay)

I don't have much to add during this surreal and awful crisis, and like you guys I'll be here constantly refreshing the Facebook and Twitter feeds of friends for the latest developments. If you have any additional suggestions for ways to donate/help, please post in the comments and I'll add them above.

FROM THE COMMENTS:
Caroline says: "According to the Seirinkogeisha twitter, Osamu Kanno (who we blogged about earlier -ryan) lives in Morioka, in Iwate, an area that was affected by the quake and has been experiencing power outages and other problems. Luckily, he and his family are okay. Areas like Morioka badly need supplies, so it wouldn't hurt to contribute relief."

From Kazuo Umezu's flickr, a message to earthquake/tsunami-affected people:

被災地の皆さん
がんばりましょう。
生きる力に変えましょう。
グーの力でいきましょう。
楳図

GO NAGAI IN EPIC ILLUSTRATED #18: "ONI"

2011-02-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days", chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

This one comes hot on the heels of yesterday's post, which detailed how a profile of Go Nagai came to be published in the American comics anthology Epic Illustrated #18 in 1983. I recommend you go check it out if you haven't already.

In addition to the editor's note and annotated gallery of Go Nagai art, issue 18 also included a short manga by Go Nagai called "Oni" (鬼). From some quick searches on English and Japanese Wikipedia, it seems that Go Nagai created this short comic specifically for Epic Illustrated. Coming out in 1983, this places "Oni" in the very early annals of Manga-in-English history. Enjoy!
(Click pages for larger versions)

GO NAGAI IN EPIC ILLUSTRATED #18: GALLERY

2011-02-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days", chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

Hot on the heels of the final "MANGA STORY" essay, I'm happy to present (for what I believe is the first time on the internet?) another of the earliest manga translated into English. Our list of early manga is storied, and held in the "Early Manga Days: A Chronology" post, an evolving list of the initial attempts to make Japanese comics available to English readers. (Oh yeah, one major piece of manga history from the early 70s is not on this list, which I've planned to talk about at length after getting this Go Nagai business out of my system.)

Back to the topic at hand: The year was 1983 and both Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated (two "adult"-oriented science fiction & fantasy anthologies) had established themselves as a sort of vanguard for manga in america, featuring manga by a few radical artists that was close to the American and European comics filling their pages. Kaze Shinobu's "Violence Becomes Tranquility" and the art of Hajime Sorayama had been featured in Heavy Metal in 1980, while a profile of work by Shotaro Ishimori and another Shinobu manga ("Heart and Steel") had been featured in 1982.

It was decided by the editors of Epic Illustrated that issue #18 was the time to introduce its readers to a madman master of manga: Go Nagai. The connection is a perfect fit for the dude-oriented SF readers of the publication, and they described their thought process in an Note from the editors (click for scan) thusly:

We are longtime fans of Japanese animation and cartooning, and we take every opportunity we can to see and enjoy it. So when Hiromasa Shibazaki, an artists' agent from Tokyo whom we've worked with before, wrote to us, of course we were interested.

(Mr. Shibazaki represents, among others, Kaze Shinobu, whose beautiful Heart and Steel appeared in Epic #10.) This time, he said, his client was a cartoonist whom we might not have heard of, but who is immensely popular with Japanese audiences, and whose work had also gained some recognition in Europe. Well, that artist turned out to be none other than Go Nagai, one of our all-time favorites. The week we moved into our new offices last spring, both Hriomasa and Go, along with Miss Sumiko Higo, who was since become Mrs. Nagai, visited us. And somehow, amid the chaos of walls being corked, carpets being laid, and furniture being misrouted, we managed to arrange for the purchase of two pieces. One is a painting, Space Atlas, on page sixty-nine. The other is a story called Oni (which means "demon" in Japanese, by the way.) We think it's one of Go's loveliest pieces ever. It was a struggle to relinquish the pages to the engraver, we've enjoyed having them in the office to admire so much.

Pretty awesome, right? My thoughts are immediately upon this Hiromasa Shibazaki, who seems to have been a key figure among the Japanese artists/agents/publishers of the time for bringing potential artists to the American publishers for consideration. After I post this up I'm going to dig around in some of my books and see if I can find more information on that name.

Scanned here for your reading pleasure, is the profile of Go Nagai and a collection of works Epic Illustrated used to introduce him to readers. Interesting to note, at the time of this magazine's publication Go Nagai's seminal work on Devilman, Violence Jack, Mazinger Z and other series had already cemented his mass fame in Japan. Interesting to note, it appears "Oni" (which I'll be posted tomorrow) was created specifically for Epic, amongst dozens of other ongoing series and one-shots in the 80s.

ENJOY!:

THE MANGA STORY #3 BY JAMES HUDNALL

2011-02-06T18:30:00.000-08:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days", chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

A couple months later, I'm returning to "The Manga Story" essays, which were an introduction to the genre/style of "manga" published in the first few floppy issues of Viz's Mai the Psychic Girl. These were written in 1987 by the manga/Japan experts of the day- with the first essay written by Cartoon/Fantasy Organization co-founder and author Fred Patten, and the second essay by the insightful translator/author (and all around wonderful dude) Frederik Schodt.

This third and final "Manga Story" was written by James D. Hudnall, who offers a unique and practical overview of the job of "script polisher". James has a long career of writing in the comics world (including Espers, and Dark Realm which got adapated into a TV show) and then later churning out editorial comics for scumbag Andrew Breitbart's political blog, but back in 1987 he worked as the script polisher for Area 88 and Mai, the Psychic Girl. These were two of the original three flagship series that Viz/Eclipse released in May 1987, and This essay comes from early in 1988 (Issue 6? I've lost my notes since scanning it last Fall).

In this essay, James discusses working with the Japanese translator for the series, who provides more literal translations of the text. While less of an over-arching/historical discussion of the manga/comics publishing scene of the day, it was really interesting for me to see how much of the groundwork and process laid out back in the late 80s still applies to how manga is adapted for overseas readers even today. Enjoy!
(Click for larger versions)

THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS by James D. Hudnall

If you're curious enough to read this page, in all likelihood you've read the credits on the inside front cover. You must have looked at the long list of names and said to yourself, "What do all those people do, anyway?"

Well, it's a good question, with an interesting answer. Do you really want to know what we people at VIZ and ECLIPSE are actually doing to these books?

Okay, I'll tell you...

It all begins with the original comics. They are, of course, in Japanese. This makes them difficult to read if you don't know the language, so we need a translator. For this task, VIZ has hired the excellent Satoru Fujii, an expatriate Nihon-jin (that's Japanese to you Gai-jin out there) who has settled down to live in the good old U.S. of A.

Satoru's task is to take a copy of the original and translate the Japanese into English literally. Now, this may sound really simple. After all, Satoru knows both languages very well. All he has to do is translate them, right?

In the case of some languages, it would be very simple. Unfortunately, Japanese is a very unique language - one the does not easily lend itself to translation. For one thing, Japanese is (generally) without plurals; they are implied by the context. This means one has to be very cafeful.

Furthermore, many of the lines of dialogue in a Japanese comic are utter gibberish when translated into English. They may be puns based on a play of words, or expressions that mean something other than what is actually said (like out expressions: "It's cool! It's hot! It's where it's at, baby!"). After all, dialogue can often be street slang, understood by its culture. Satoru has to make all of this understandable to the script polisher.

That particular job is handled by yours truly. I am script polisher for Area 88 and Mai, the Psychic Girl; The Legend of Kamui is handled by my old friend, the multi-talented Toren Smith.

What Toren and I do is take the literal translation and rewrite it so that it sounds natural to the American comics reader. Now you may say, "Why? What are you needed for, anyway? Why not give us the literal meaning so that we can be closer to the original?"

I'll answer that question with another question. Have you ever seen a Godzilla movie? Ever sat down to watch a Kung-Fu flick to Hong Kong? Much of the oriental language does not lend itself to literal translation. Their psychology is in some ways different from outs, as are the implications found in a line of their dialogue. Sometimes a simple sentence in Japanese can be a regular mouthful in English.

Here's a line from Mai, #4 as translated by Satoru: MADARAO: "This is the eight-direction-light battle formation of the Togakushi school named 'Attaching as an Empty Sky Wheel'!!" Now, that may have sounded utterly profound in Japanese, but in English, well...

So, what I do is take something like that and turn it into something like this: MADARAO: "This is eight-direction battle formation of the Togakushi school... THIS is the EMPTY SKY-WHEEL DOOM!"

Sounds a little more dramatic, don't you think?

Or how about: MADARAO: "I will show you an esoteric battle formation of the Togakushi school named 'Hawk Wing'! It's going to be your souvenir for the other world!"

My version: MADARAO: "Now I'm going to show you an esoteric battle formation called the HAWK WING. It'll be your ticket to HELL!!"

The idea is to remain as close to the original as possible without changing the meaning, while at the same time making it sound better to us English speaking folk.

Most of the time it's not as obvious as the above examples, but you get the idea. It try to make it sound as natural as can be, without altering the writer's original prose any more than I have to.

Next comes to editing. First, Abra at VIZ looks over my script in order to catch any typos or improper grammar. Then she and Satoru check to see if there are any places where I may have accidentally changed the meaning of the original. This does happen sometimes, because I may have misread the context of the translated sentence.

Once this process has been done, Satoru and I go over script in order to work out the best possible replacement lines for anything I may have goofed up. Sometimes we have to expand or contract the dialogue in order to fit the size of the word balloon.

After all of this, the script is sent to ECLIPSE, where the editor (Letitia Glozer for Mai and Fred Burke for The Legend of Kamui and Area 88) goes over it.

Perfection is everyone's goal, after all! Now comes the fun part.

Once the scripts are approved by VIZ and the editor at ECLIPSE, they are sent to the letterer along with copies of the original art. Since the original is designed to be read from right to left (as all Japanese books are), we have to make a reversed copy so that it can be read from left to right.

Next, the letterer has to examine the art for any sound effects. He has to erase the Japanese characters and replace them with the English sound effects found in the script. This often involves erasing bits of artwork, as the sound effects cover the backgrounds. As a result, the letter has to redraw the parts that were erased, lay down new ziptone in such places where it has been used, or match very fine stippling or shading.

Once all of that is done, the word balloons are relettered in English. Since Japanese balloons can be vertical (Japanese characters are sometimes read from top to bottom), the letterer must sometimes redraw the balloons. Needless to say, the letterer has the most strenuous job of all.

Now that the touch-up and lettering is complete, the pages are sent back to ECLIPSE again. The book is proofread for lettering errors, and the editor makes sure that all of the touch-up work looks great.

Finally, the completed page are sent to VIZ for their approval. If VIZ doesn't like the lettering style used for the sound effects of titles, they are sometimes sent back for changes. VIZ wants to make sure the finished product is as close to the Japanese version as possible. We are all interested in maintaining the creator's vision when bringing his work to America, and we hope that our long and complicated editorial and approval process helps.

Cover layouts are handled by Mr. Shinkji Horibuchi, who does an excellent job of providing a Japanese design sensibility to the American editions.

And the results are in your hands.

James D. Hudnall is the co-translator of Mai, the Psychic Girl and Area 88. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Espers series from Eclipse Comics. Rumor has it that he will be coming out with two new comic series in 1988.

Next up: Scans of the Go Nagai article and his early translated work "Oni" from Epic Illustrated #18 (June 1983).

SHINTARO KAGO GETS RELEASED IN FRENCH!

2011-01-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

Exciting news for French speaking fans of the weird and experimental. A new collection of manga by our friend Shintaro Kago has been published in French by Editions IMHO! The collection is titled, Carnets de massacre: 13 contes cruels du Grand Edô and is available now via their site, Amazon.fr and other online retailers!

This is extremely exciting progress on the expansion of Kago's overseas notoriety. This book is a nice addition to the short list of his works available outside of Japan (I believe two monographs of his stories were published a few years back in Italian, by d/visual that are now out of print. As noted in the comments by Ileca, Kago also had a story appear in ORANG 8, as well as the French collection, "EXTRÊME ORIENT.

Hands off to Benoit, the head of Editions IMHO, for snatching up the license for this book and making it happen. Editions IMHO is basically the dream publisher for Same Hat fans, having books by Suehiro Maruo, Tori Miki, Atsushi Kaneko, Usumaru Furuya, Yusaku Hanakuma, Shigeru Sugiura, Imiri Sakabashira, and others in their impressive catalog. Now here's to an English edition finally happening for us North American fans...!

I've got an email out to Benoit asking which specific Kago comics are in the book, and will update this post once I hear from him!

[PS: Happy New Year 2011! I'm off to a slow start with blogging but have many plans to pick up and delight you guys soon!]

HANGING BALLOONS BY JUNJI ITO: COMPLETE!

2011-01-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

Hanging Balloons by Junji Ito is now completely posted on the Same Hat Tumblr! Many thanks again to Dave & Michael for sharing their fan translation with everyone!

Enjoy this madness, one of my favorite "short stories" by the dude! For your reading enjoyment, here are links to each of the 59 pages (thanks to ----comix):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

HANGING BALLOONS BY JUNJI ITO

2010-12-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a quick trip to Texas to visit my mom and aunts/cousins for the holiday. I'm working on some final posts of the year, after a pitiful lack of any posts on Same Hat in December! GUHHHH. SORRY GUYS!

I do have some exciting news about a posting experiment of sorts! Thanks to the generosity of Michael & Dave, I’m serializing their skillful and impressive fan translation of HANGING BALLOONS by Junji Ito over on the Same Hat TUMBLR. I've been posting 5 pages a day, and you can start at the beginning and read them in reverse order (if you aren't already)!

Hanging Balloons is a longer standalone story that would have been part of the Museum of Terror series had it not been killed off by Dark Horse after volume three. We're up to page 34 already, and shit is about to go down that will haunt your dreams! The entire story should be complete by Monday, January 3 if my mental math is on point.

GO CHECK IT OUT! (and subscribe to the Same Hat Tumblr if you like things that are awesome).

ART FROM THE KITAHARA COLLECTION IN TOKYO

2010-11-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

These images came in via the Same Hat Tumblr's open submissions form :) Same Hat reader Han was recently in Tokyo and saw an amazing exhibit of pieces from the "Kitahara Collection" at the Mori Gallery in Tokyo.

Many, many thanks to Han for sharing these amazing photographs! Once again, Same Hat readers prove themselves to be the coolest and most generous comic fans on the interwebs. Han, you rule! If you like what you see below, check out the complete Kitahara Collection photos.

Poster pattern frenzy!

A wall full of Tadanori Yokoo poster prints. I think I would have straight-up fainted on the spot.

Signed piece by Yokoo-- this poster was adopted as a poster campaign by some national onsen organization, remember seeing it earlier this year while visiting Nate in Nakano at a public bathhouse.

Damn, the tiny details on these Yokoo pieces never cease to amaze me.

Giant robots / record players!

Does anyone recognize this sculptor/artist's work?

These look to be paintings by Imiri Sakabashira, but someone correct me if I'm wrong...

Astro Boy redux

Click here to check out the rest of this great set of images.

QUESTION: Any interest in a Same Hat shirt?

2010-11-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

Quick question for regular readers: Would you be interested in a Same Hat t-shirt?

A few people have asked about this over the years, and recently the idea stuck with me... before I go down that road, I was curious if folks would actually get one and wear it-- and what you'd like to see?

For my tastes, a white/color on a black t-shirt is probably the best, right? We wouldn't be able to use any panels/art from our favorite folks without getting permission, but it could be a type-treatment or new logo or other design by cartoonists we know. Lemme know if this is something you'd be interested in, how much you'd be willing to pay (my impulse would be to sell it as cheap as possible to cover costs and give a bunch away in contests and stuff), and I'll talk to a few t-shirt designer friends I know!

NEW KAGO PIECES FOR SALE

2010-11-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that Shintaro Kago posted another batch of original art for sale on his site-- and this time most of them are only $50 dollars! These include a number of really catchy and sharp watercolor paintings (some of which were reproduced as part of his postcard sets):

Instructions for ordering a piece of original art on listed on the pages above, and in my experience Kago is a very fast and careful shipper. Christmas presents, anyone?

PHOTOS FROM THE TOSHIO SAEKI EXHIBIT

2010-11-22T22:40:00.000-08:00

As I blogged earlier this month, San Francisco is playing host to a rare exhibit of the works of famed erotic artist, Toshio Saeki! My girlfriend and I were running errands on Saturday nearby 111 Minna Gallery, and decided to stop by and check it out!

The show took advantage of the large space (where previous magazine release parties, Last Gasp shows, etc have been hosted), and featured a mixture of Saeki's original inked B&W drawings, his color guides for the printmaker he works with, and a number of lush chinto prints in various sizes. For folks in the area, you have until November 27 to see the exhibit, and I strongly encourage any fans of the perverted and elegant to stop by!

Without further ado, here are my photos and notes from the exhibit!

Mood lighting... we were the only folks during a rainstorm and got to check the entire exhibit out in peace.

Color prints lined both rooms of the exhibit, in Saeki's signature style. These pieces are created in collaboration by Saeki in collaboration with a print-maker via his "semi-traditional" offsent print technique. These were full color prints in his most distinct style, and each is one of an edition of 75.

As much as I like Saeki's normal work, which reproduces really well on glossy paper and as big posters, I was most excited about these more subtle and elegant prints on washi with a slight grain and imperfections. Though these are each chinto offset prints, each one is only printed in editions of one (!) making each one of them "unique".

An original color guide by Saeki, used by the printer per his instructions in the collaborative process of creating the actual print.

Ghost grandma does not approve.

Lush colors and balance, achieved via CMYK-esque color separations dictated by Saeki.

The other room of the exhibit.

Also on display were a few original ink drawings (on the right), selling for around $5K each!

We stared at these for a long while-- some of my favorites of the entire show! The middle one was so damn impressive (but sold already!), as well as the shakier lines of the upper-left print.

Every one of these full-color prints were sold when we visited, each one of an edition of 75.

Micah, the nice guy curating the gallery was cool enough to bring up additional prints that hadn't been displayed in the show. These were additional pieces (all 1 of an edition of 1) that they hadn't had room on the wall for but were available for sale. I decided I really wanted to get the following piece, and though my credit card is sad I will deal with it later after my next paycheck...

It didn't have a title, so the dude made one up for the invoice; "Dwarf on the road with 4-wheeled severed head". I think Saeki would approve.

(details)

Like I mentioned, local folks have just a few more days to check out this awesome show! Another high-five to 111 Minna Gallery and Last Gasp for putting this exciting exhibit together! Check out their site above for a full gallery of the prints/originals that were on the walls.

KOIKE KAZUO IN NORTH AMERICA?

2010-11-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Hey folks! Today's post is something a little different than usual-- a guest post by Ryan Holmberg, who as many of you know was the curator of Garo Manga: The First Decade (1964-1973) show earlier this year and is currently a postdoc in Contemporary Art.

This is a group research project of sorts, as he's looking for our help (and the help of the greater comics/mangasphere) to dig up details about the American reaction to the translated works of Koike Kazuo. I'll let him take it away below, and please add your thoughts/links/contributions in the comments. Some answers to these questions may be in interview with Frank Miller and Dark Horse editors, along with books by Paul Gravett or Frederik Schodt. But I also I know there are lots of other writings from the 80s and 90s, along with personal anecdotes, that can fill in the details. Thanks in advance!

(Frank Miller/Lynn Varley's cover to the first issue of First Comics' run of Lone Wolf & Cub. Check out the complete covers from those floppy issues)

From Ryan Holmberg:

A colleague of mine in Tokyo is currently writing about the famous manga script writer Koike Kazuo of "Lone Wolf and Cub" and "Crying Freeman" fame. He recently asked me some questions about the reception and reputation of Koike Kazuo in North America. Having first come into contact with his work in Japan, I was not sure how to answer. So on his behalf, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I wonder if readers of Same Hat might be able to share some facts or general impressions or anecdotes? The more specific people can be about dates and places et cetera, the more helpful it would be.

First, does anyone know the history of how Koike's work came to be translated in the United States? Is there an industry back story of any note? Also, any thoughts about what kind of audience his work was initially marketed to – age-wise, reading taste-wise, et cetera? Was there any substantial critical response at the time?

Second, Frank Miller's admiration of Koike Kazuo is well-known. I wonder if anyone could flesh out the details of that, and the various ways in which it shaped Miller's work, or how Miller was involved in popularizing Koike's work? I am aware that Miller/Varley did covers for Lone Wolf and Cub, and the impact on Ronin and Sin City…but I am wondering if anyone might be able to expand on that.

Third, it seems the status of writers is much lower than that of artists when it comes to comics in North America. Do you think this might also be the case for Koike? In other words, do people first think of Kojima Goseki and Ikegami Ryoichi when the titles of Koike's work come up?

Last, in the early 70s, Koike was writing a Japanese version of the "Hulk" for Bokura Magazine. It has never been collected, and probably never will be because of copyright issues. My colleague is wondering whether, in North America, at the time of "Lone Wolf and Cub's" release, would it have had the same readership as the Hulk? He’s trying again to get a sense of if the readership of Koike's work in Japan overlaps with that elsewhere?

Sorry for the many and lengthy questions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

(Lone Wolf & Cub board game by Mayfair Games, 1989. Cover by Grendel artist Matt Wagner)

UPDATE: Received this update from Ryan Holmberg:

Thanks for this treasure trove of information. It's amazingly helpful and much much more than I had hoped for. I apologize for not being active on the posting myself. On the one hand, I couldn't be of much use as my contact with Koike's work has been almost entirely in Japan. Also, I have been too buried in circa 1960 "hardboiled" manga the past few weeks -- essentially the breeding ground for Koike-type gekiga. Maybe I can return the favor in a week or so with some gems from that world. Again, thank you thank you

[From Ryan: Covers from Bokura Magazine, 1971]

MARUO WOULD BE PROUD

2010-11-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

Here is some serious Halloween/Suehiro Maruo realness, courtesy of my friends Monika and y16o.

y16o is dressed in a Maruo/Rampo-inspired outfit, while Monika is dressed as Midori, the Camellia Girl (Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show).

What did YOU dress up as for Halloween?

COVER FOR NEW SHINTARO KAGO MANGA

2010-11-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

Exciting news for Shintaro Kago and monster manga fans! The cover of his new manga, アナモルフォシスの冥獣 (The Dark Beast Animorphosis), has just been published on the ANIMORPHOSIS blog:

Here is a video of Shintaro Kago inking this cover illustration. I read on Kago's twitter that he just finished proofing the book a week or two ago... The book is scheduled to be published in in Japan on 11/18/2010, published by コアマガジン (Core Magazine).

UPDATE: Here's a newly-added description of the book on Amazon.co.jp:

事件や事故の現場を再現し被害者の霊を呼び出す降霊イベント”アナモルフォシスの館”。特撮セットの中で非業の死を遂げた男の霊の降霊に成功するが、イベント参加者の男女６人が次々と怪死を遂げていく・・・。（帯文）前作「フラクション」で第三回世界バカミス☆アワードを受賞し、ミステリ漫画家としても評価の高まる駕籠真太郎の133ページもの単行本書き下ろし長編第二弾。著者の特撮への造詣の深さを思わせる小ネタ、オカルト描写など、これまでの駕籠真太郎作品の別解釈＋αがてんこ盛り。一挙書き下ろしを通じて新たなマンガ体験をお楽しみください。書き下ろしと同時収録されるのは、全て単行本未収録の短編が9本。

Will post a quick translation when I'm not riding on a bus (feel free to Google Translate or suggest one in the comments)

UPDATE 2: They added a short book trailer for the title as well:

TOSHIO SAEKI SHOW OPENING THIS WEEK IN SF

2010-11-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

Hot on the heels of a series of horrific and exciting San Francisco events (Alternative Press Expo, Halloween parties, post-World Series victory riots), our fair city has another trick up its sleeve for November: A solo art exhibit by artist Toshio Saeki!

[Click image for directions/details of the Opening]

This Thursday, 111 Minna Gallery will be co-presenting a show of Toshio Saeki's chinto printing pieces with publisher Last Gasp. This show will run until November 28th, and be a rare opportunity for folks outside of Japan to see Saeki's prints in person.

If you're a fan of Toshio Saeki and/or erotic art, you should've already checked out Last Gasp's fabulously oversized art book Onikage. It's a lush and unique hardcover showing both large color works and the chinto printing process via interesting vellum overlays in the book itself. Pricy but worth it for fans-- I've never seen another book that gives such interesting insights into how CMYK or woodblock printing works.

I'll be stopping by the opening to see the pieces in person- I'm super curious to see if any prints will be on sale and how much they run! Will post pictures and a report from the event here on Friday morning for folks outside of the Bay Area.

UPDATE from Colin at Last Gasp: "There will definitely be prints for sale, and some originals too. Prices range from $125 - $5100, I think."

UMEZU HALLOWEEN BONUS!

2010-10-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a little extra bonus in addition to the UMEZU CARNIVAL post from a few minutes ago... Uncle Umezz on-stage earlier today at Tokyo's famous Kawasaki Halloween Parade event... dressed up as Makoto-chan!

Coverage on the event at Umezz.com's blog post, including a shout-out to Tokyo Scum Brigade's sick "蛇娘と白髪魔" costume:

UMEZZ CARNIVAL 2010

2010-10-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

It's Halloween already, which means our favorite manga event of the year has arrived... and sadly, already passed! That's right, Kazuo Umezu's birthday and accompanying Umezz Festival! Never fear, you manga fans unable to attend due to geographic and temporal restrictions-- as with last year, our buddies over at Tokyo Scum Brigade were there documenting and participating in UMEZZ CARNIVAL 2010!

In a series of posts on their blog, Voidmare & Dr. Senbei covered the actual Umezz Carnival, along with his live rock concert and the accompanying animation festival. Here is the list of must-read posts (The 1st post includes bonus Demerin-as-Hebi Onna cosplay pics!)

+ Umezu Carnival 2010

"This year, the Kichijoji Theater provided the backdrop for a three-tiered event grounded with a talk show delving into the man's obsession with snakes, followed by an appearance by anime diva Horie Mitsuko, then topped off with a performance by his band CAPS!! and the Gwash dancers."

[READ MORE ABOUT UMEZU CARNIVAL!]

+ Umezu Rock Live 2010

"If anything, retiring from manga has given him the time to focus on his second passion: Music. Umezu began writing songs for popular musicians back in the 70's and even recorded two full length CDs, Yami no Album (The Darkness Album) and Gwash!! Makoto-Chan/Umezu Kazuo World. The Umezu Carnival is held both to celebrate his birthday and scratch the rockstar itch that has been driving him batty for the past quarter of a century."

[READ MORE ABOUT UMEZU ROCK LIVE!]

+ Kichijoji Animation Festival

"The 5th annual Kichijoji Film Festival was held yesterday as part of Kichijoji Anime Wonderland. Hometown animation companies Studio 4 C and studio Studio Deen, as well as manga publisher Coamix, were there to represent their turf. They were backed up by academic manga researchers from Kyoto Seika University, Takekuma Kentaro and Tsugata Nobuyuku."

[READ MORE ABOUT KICHIJOJI ANIMATION FEST!]

ALSO FOR ADDED PLEASURE: Your the Man Now, Umezu

Unrelated to Umezu, I'm curious to know if anyone did horror/indie manga cosplay this year? Last year's bunch was fantastic... please email me any photos and I'll post them up! My buddy Moni and her BF dressed up as Maruo characters...

KAGO INKING THE COVER OF HIS NEW MANGA

2010-10-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to my previous post from last week, another video has been posted of Shintaro Kago's mesmerizing inking technique. The previous post and this one feature him inking pages from his newest manga, アナモルフォシスの冥獣 (Dark Beast Animorphosis), which looks to be a Horror/SF kaiju-Cloverfield mutation story. There aren't a lot of details yet on the book itself, but it's schedule to come out in Japan on 11/23/2010, published as a book by コアマガジン (Core Magazine).

Here is a new video posted on the "ANIMORPHOSIS" blog, basically a sped-up clip of him inking the cover illustration. Pretty amazing to watch him fill in all the details:

More details as I have them about the book itself. You know I'm gonna have to talk the San Francisco Kinokuniya into importing myself a copy!

OUT TODAY ON DVD: HOUSE!

2010-10-26T08:15:00.001-07:00

Our buddy Brendan Ninness reminded me this morning on Facebook of some exciting pre-Halloween news... HOUSE by Nobuhiko Obayashi comes out on Criterion DVD today in America!

I've blogged previously about this this masterpiece of goofy surreal horror-- one of my alltime favorite films. This official and lush DVD include the following notables:

Constructing a “House,” a new video piece featuring interviews with director Nobuhiko Obayashi, story scenarist and daughter of the filmmaker Chigumi Obayashi, and screenwriter Chiho Katsura

Emotion, a 1966 experimental film by Obayashi

New video appreciation by director Ti West (House of the Devil)

New and improved English subtitle translation

PLUS: An essay by critic Chuck Stephens

The main piece of awesomeness is simply having HOUSE available on a non-VCD, non-fan translated rip-- but I'm pretty stoked to see the interview with Obayashi and his daughter(!) along with a DVD-quality of his short film Emotion. For folks interested in learning more, Criterion posted a great interview with Janus Films’ Brian Belovarac about the process of "discovering" and releasing the film for English-speaking audiences.

AMAZING SHOJO WORK BY LITTLE THUNDER

2010-10-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

Little Thunder is one of our favorite contemporary illustrator/cartoonists, an artist around my age working in Hong Kong. She does narrative comics, along with illustration and design gigs for rad products and sites around the world.

Last week, Little Thunder posted a new batch of sketchbook pages, paintings, and illustrations to her Flickr. I actually gasped when I saw the Shojo manga-inspired "JOEY" series, which summon the sexy and rich textures and compositions of Moto Hagio and other Magnificent 49ers masters.

Check out more of LT's work on her flickr and facebook page, enjoy these pieces, and spread the word about her awesomeness:

COME SEE US AT APE!

2010-10-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

For folks within driving distance of the Bay Area, tomorrow is the 2010 Alternative Press Expo! I'll be tabling for the 5th consecutive year with the supergroup known as THE BANG GANG!

I don't have any brand-new zines this time, but will be selling PRISON FOR BITCHES, the Lady Gaga fanzine that me & Michael DeForge created, featuring comics/essays/art by our favorite indie cartoonists and illustrators. I'll be tabling with a fantastic squad of comic creators, and they'll be slinging awesome comics and prints and goodies:
Hellen Jo
Calvin Wong
Anthony Wu
Derek Yu
Aaron Mew
Ryan Germick
Angie Wang
Mare Odomo

We are at booth #613, located here:

[Click for big version]

We'll be there Saturday from 11am-7pm, and Sunday 11am-6pm. Stop by and say hello!

SHINTARO KAGO INKING VIDEOS FROM HIS NEW MANGA

2010-10-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

We haven't posted lately about our friend Shintaro Kago, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been keeping busy! Between gags and a longer "sumo detective" comic for the eManga periodical ComiCloud, Kago has also been working on a new book called アナモルフォシスの冥獣 (Dark Beast Animorphosis), which sounds like a twisted kaiju science fiction/monster comic. AWESOME!

I'm not sure of many of the details about this book, but did find a great series of videos on this new "ANIMORPHOSIS" blog of Kago penciling and inking a few panels from the book. They don't give away much plot-wise, but the level of precision and detail he puts into his line work always amazes me. I was lucky enough to snag two pieces of his original work, and I find myself often squinting and staring at them in our hallway remaking on the insane cross-hatching, dot tones, and fine inking. No matter the subject matter, magazine or medium, dude is truly impressive.

I'll dig around for more information on this book (coming out this week on November 18, 2010) and will post them on Same Hat. In the meantime, enjoy these videos!

Video 1 of 2

Video 2 of 2

Consolidated 2x speed video!

GIVING AWAY SOME MANGA/COMICS

2010-09-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

I was cleaning my apartment a little this weekend, and have a stack of manga and American comics to give away. These are things I purchased, along with a few free books from friends here and there.

(These books not actually included)

The rub is, these books are free but you're gonna have to Paypal me for shipping. I sorta discourage international folks from claiming books unless you're okay with the ~$8-14 bucks it costs to mail things. For US folks, I'm sure it will be like $2-$4 for any books you'd want.

If you see something you want, leave a message in the comments claiming it/them AND send me an email at SAMEHAT[at]GMAIL[dot]COM. I'd recommend you check the comments to see if someone else has claimed a book first, and I'll strike them out of the post as fast as I can to avoid confusion. OKAY, ENJOY FREE STUFF!

~~Welcome to the N.H.K.~~ ~~v.1 by Takimoto / Oiwa~~
~~Nightmare Inspector~~ ~~v.1 by Shin Mashiba~~
~~ALIVE~~ ~~v.1 by Tadashi Kawashima~~
~~Gantz~~ ~~by Hiroya Oku v.1~~
~~Swan~~ ~~by Ariyoshi Kyoko v.1~~
~~After School Nightmare~~ ~~v.1 by Setona Mizushiro~~
~~Ristorante Paradiso~~ ~~by Natsume Ono~~
~~The Wallflower~~ ~~v.1 by Tomoko Hayakawa~~
~~A Distant Neighborhood~~ ~~v.1 by Jiro Taniguchi~~
~~A Distant Neighborhood~~ ~~v.2 by Jiro Taniguchi~~
~~DMZ: On the Ground~~ ~~(v.1) by Wood/Burchielli~~
~~Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil~~ ~~v.1, 2, 3 by Jeff Smith~~
~~The Plain Janes~~ ~~by Castelucci & Rugg~~
~~Janes in Love~~ ~~by Castelucci & Rugg~~
~~My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down~~ ~~by David Heatley~~

SEIRINKOGEISHA BOOK PREVIEWS ONLINE!

2010-09-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

I figure a lot of Same Hat readers are familiar with the publisher Seirinkogeisha (青林工藝舎), but if you're not they are one of the driving forces of contemporary indie manga-- a small publisher (not unlike Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly in North America) behind a stable of diverse and exciting artists, many showcased in their AX anthology/magazine. They are also closely connected to tacoCHE in Nakano. Along with IKKI, EnterBrain/COMIC BEAM, and a few other publishers in Japan (Ohta, some of the stuff in MORNING), Seirinkogeisha is carrying the torch for indie manga- publishing both manga by contemporary creators and collections of unknown or under-appreciated artists of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I realized recently that lots of fans of this stuff, waiting to see it in translation, might not be aware that the rad folks at Seirinkogeisha have been posting online a growing selection of previews of their new releases. These are all in Japanese (of course) but even untranslated hopefully present a cool flavor of what's happening right now. They post updates to their blog each time they add new previews too!

If you're interested in seeing what's happening in contemporary indie manga from one of the most interesting comics publishers in the world, I strongly encourage you guys check out the samples! For most titles, they put up the first chapter or so of the book-- and though their web reader is a bit slow to load, it's a great resource for nerds like us. I haven't read any of these books (except for the Yamada Hanako one) so please share comments if you have!

Thematically and visually, Seirinkogeisha's crop of new releases are all over the place (in a good way), but here are a few of ones I found most interesting:

生きる2010 (Ikiru 2010 aka We Live 2010) by Takashi Nemoto [PREVIEW]
The gnarliness we've come to love and expect from Takashi Nemoto is in full force here. The first story in the book/preview is in trippy full-color, and the entire book looks to be equally dense and brimming with sketchy details.

レッツゴー!!おスナック (Let's Go! Snack Bar) by Toyo Kataoka [PREVIEW]
Kataoka is featured in the AX Anthology, and has published a series of short story collections. In his work, Tokyoite Kataoka's uber-ornate and grotesque manga style is used (to great effect) to tell blue collar neighborhood stories about the city's day laborers, bar flies, and housewives.

ドストエフスキーの犬 (Dostoevsky's Dog) by George Akiyama [PREVIEW]
I picked up a copy of this book, along with Akiyama's ANGURA after having them recommended by Shintaro Kago himself. In Dostoevsky's Dog, Akiyama's elegant and clean lines serve up a a collection of raw tales, full of sex, sin, and coming of age angst. One of my favorite discoveries of the last year!

FLIGHT by Tsurita Kuniko [PREVIEW]
I'm not super familiar with Tsurita Kuniko, but this book collecting various manga from her short career has majorly piqued my interest. From a few online bios, it sounds like Tsurita's comics were published by Shirato Sanpei in GARO, starting right away in the mid-60s when she was just a high school student and continuing until the early 80s. She is reported to have worked in some way with Shigeru Mizuki, but fell ill with SLE and died at the early age of 37,

砂の剣 (Sword of the Sand)) by Susumu Higa [PREVIEW]
Another title/creator I'm not super familiar with, this one is Seirinkogeisha's latest book released (also featured on the cover of the latest AX). Sword of the Sand looks to be a humane and personal wartime tale set on Okinawa during the end of WWII.

Sujiko by Osamu Kanno [PREVIEW]
This is the first collection from Seirinkogeisha of the absurd and weirdly literary art comics of Osamu Kanno. I don't know much about this guy (post in the comments if you do!) but he has been consistently publishing short stories in AX since the beginning, and made his cartooning debut in 1982 (according to this profile via a Tsuge site). His "The Stranger" is the first story in the new AX Anthology. I am intrigued by this preview and want to learn more about these comics...

From Caroline Bren in the comments:

In addition to last year's book from Serinkogeisha, Osamu had another collection around the same time by Hokutoh Shobu, which I believe has been his regular publisher since the begining of his 80's. The recent book as well as one older one seem to still be available, but there is larger bibliography here. Most of the excerpt from his book that appears on the Serinkogeisha site first appeared in AX #58, and AX #71 had a cover feature on Osamu (but only a short comic). I haven't read any of the books but the pieces in AX are great.

ダニー・ボーイ (Danny Boy) by Shimada Toranosuke [PREVIEW]
I picked up a manga called "Träumerei" by artist Shimada Toranosuke last Spring in Tokyo, after seeing his works at the BIG AX FESTIVAL (pics of him from the show in that post). At first I didn't realize he was a contemporary cartoonist, and thought Seirinkogeisha had reprinted something from the early 70s.

Shimatora has a lovely little story in the AX Anthology ("Enrique Kobayashi's Eldorado"). His style is cartooning in a really beautiful and literal sense, simplifying faces and settings down to elegant lines and contrasting black & white shapes. I haven't read any of his stuff beyond Träumerei, which jumped setting from Cambodia to Japan to the Middle East to America, but this book seems to be a series of short stories named after songs (Danny Boy, Far East Suite, etc), focusing on war, music and late-20th Century politics(?).

正義隊3 (Justice Corps 3) by Yuka Goto [PREVIEW]
The third volume of this action series by young & awesome cartoonist Yuka Goto (age 32). Justice Corps looks like weird shirt drawn in a retarded and mean high school girl's notebook, which is an aesthetic that I love. Goto has a story called The Neighbor in the AX Anthology, and I just love that Seirinkogeisha publishes this type of work. The HETA in her heta-uma is STRONG, but also hilarious, like if Mat Brinkman's MULTIFORCE was drawn by Tammy from Esther Pearl Watson's Unloveable.

As a final note, I realized I never blogged about "Tamashii no ASOKO" the book about the late (& genius!) Yamada Hanako-- a fantastic biography & collection of her high school comics, college zines and assorted works. I've had an art crush on her since first seeing her comics in Comics Underground Japan, and will devote a full post to the book sometime (of which, you can get a sample at the link above).

WEEKEND LINKS 9/25/2010

2010-09-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

Happy weekend, everyone! I'm gonna try to spend it off the internet after an insanely busy week of work, but wanted to share a bunch of interesting reads, cool blogs, and weird stuff I've been enjoying this past week. I'm gonna make this a regular feature each Saturday from now on. Enjoy!

+ Third rate artisty - Also known as Ero Gekiga, a fantastic and promising new blog started by a friend to Same Hat. He says the blog will be:
"Dedicated to the lost art of ero gekiga, or sanryu gekiga, Japanese erotic comics from the 1970s and 1980s. For each artist's entry I will strive to include magazines they appeared in, collected works published and a sample of their panel work and book covers."

Seems like a fantastic new addition to the small handful of blogs digging into this ground, and I've already added it to the Same Hat sidebar links. Go over and show him some love!

+ AX Anthology Twitter review-a-thon - Manga reviewers on Twitter are doing a story-by-story review of the entire AX Anthology, which hit stores this week. They got through half the book on Friday and are gonna weigh in on the second half on Sunday. I'm planning a series of posts about artists in the book, but this is a great primer for the comics included in this meaty anthology!

+ The art of Jonny Negron - Last week I heard about the art of Jonny Negron. The dude's work is a weird mix of the non-lame parts of R.Crumb's pin-up work, 70s hentai, Seiichi Hayashi, and my teenage wet dreams rolled into one. I bought two paintings from him and am scheming on how I can get him in a future zine. Click through for more of his work, along with links to his site and Flickr.

+ THE RUINED CAST production blog - A new blog run by my friend & cartoonist Dash Shaw, following the production of his feature length animated film, The Ruined Cast. Dash wrote the screenplay and is directing the film, which features additional animation/art by Jane Samborski, Frank Santoro, & Ray Sohn, and is being produced by co-produced by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig & The Angry Inch, Shortbus).

In addition to posting details about the film and daily sketches, Dash is using the blog to talk about his love for the limited animation of Japanese OAV (which I know is close to a lot of our hearts). For starters, check out this great interview with Katsuhiro Otomo, thoughts on the Testujin 28-go opening sequence, and a concept title animation for a prison sitcom with Will Ferrel.

+ Insane title sequence from Enter The Void - A short 1min clip from the new Gaspar Noe film about siblings and psychedelia in Tokyo. The number of typefaces per second in this opening is insane and won me over.

+ Kentaro Takekuma and Koji Aihara in the woods - Hilarious photo shoot by the kings of gag manga and creators of Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. Also features a few nice cameos by my friend Demerin (UMEZZ.COM)!

JAPAN 2010 TRIP: BIG AX FESTIVAL

2010-09-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

At some point last weekend between eating pizza, drinking beers in the park and eating indian pizza, my buddy Ramenate reminded me that I still haven't posted the majority of the massive stockpile of photos and dispatches from my trip out to Tokyo earlier this year. How true!

I have a knack lately with all the blogs, projects, brainfarts (oh yeah, and day job) I'm foolishly juggling of forgetting that coming up with an idea is like 10% of the actual work. I am gonna try to be better about this and post more goodies for you guys... How many times have I said that? BUT THIS TIME I MEAN IT :B

So anyway, Nate put me on blast for being lazy while we were inventing a kimchi bloody mary cocktail we're calling the "Gwangju Mary:

(so damn tasty! click above for the recipe)

Ready to prove him wrong, here is the next in a series of posts I've labeled Japan 2010!

BIG AX FESTIVAL AT BILLIKEN GALLERY

I had a short list of things set in stone for my Tokyo trip earlier this year that I specifically wanted to check out & photograph for Same Hat. One of the most auspicious was the BIG AX FESTIVAL, a month-long art show organized by manga publisher Seirinkogeisha. The exhibit was held in Billiken Gallery, and featured a huge set of featured artists; in fact, the month-long show was split down the middle with two separate openings and sets of artists. I was lucky enough to visit the final weekend of the exhibit with Nate, and see the 2nd half of BIG AX FESTIVAl (which featured original works by Same Hat patron saints Suehiro Maruo, Yusaku Hanakuma, Shintaro Kago, and many other amazing artists).

Billiken Gallery (Billiken Shokai) is a super cute shop in the highly fashionable and consumerist Aoyama neighborhood of Tokyo. For those that haven't had the pleasure, Aoyama is the 'hood further down the way from Harajuku, home to the crazy Comme des Garçons and Vuitton flagships, swank little eateries, and some of the hottest/fanciest ladies in Tokyo.

(photo by saripom)

The gallery space at Billiken Shokai is in the back, while the front half of the shop features American indie comics (David Bowing by Clowes, David B's Epileptic, etc) along with vintage vinyl figurines, tin toys, and other collectibles. The staff there was cute and polite, a juxtaposition to the wacky-ass art hanging for the AX show. I took a few photos (below) before they informed me that was actually frowned upon... and ended our time there by buying some autographed manga and pins for friends.

Check out the Billiken Gallery's exhibit blog for lots of pics of their ongoing exhibits; I have found tons and tons of contemporary artists to follow/stalk/read about from their blog! It makes me wish that the SuperFrog Gallery in San Francisco was 1/10th as, well, relevant for lack of a better word. Not to harp on this, but it's spaces like Billiken that underscore how much of a missed opportunity for Japan/Manga/Cartoon gallery space the New People building is in its current form.

ON WITH THE PICTURES! HERE ARE MINE:

By Yuka Goto, awesome artists of the Justice Corps series. She captures this art brut x nasty high school girl's diary aesthetic really well (and has a story called The Neighbor in the AX Anthology)

Paintings & prints mounted on the wall, manga by AX artists stacked for folks to peruse on all the tables!

BIG AX FESTIVAL t-shirt (not for sale)

Oh yeah, and every issue of AX to date (along with paintings by Maruo, drawing by Hanakuma)

Glass case full of AX/Seirinkogeisha artists pins, including sets by Suehiro Maruo.

Tsuge, Hanakuma, Hayami, and others! These pins were for sale (and are also available at Taco Che

MORE PICS FROM THE BILLIKEN BLOG

Hirakuchi Hitomi

A painting by one of the Same Hat pantheon: Shintaro Kago!

Shimatora Torada, author of the lovely manga, Träumerei

Minimalist pen drawing by Yusaku Hanakuma

Pieces by Yoshikazu Ebisu

This dude is jolly: Yoshikazu Ebisu

Suehiro Maruo signing books

Damn dude! Yoshikazu Ebisu, Minami Shinbou, and Suehiro Maruo

Yuka Goto and Toshiko Suzuki(?)

Check out this sea of talent! That is Mr. Buff Hotness (Hanakuma!) in the purple turtleneck.

Original painting by Suehiro Maruo. It was sold when I visited, for something like $1200? (Wait, it had to be way more than that... I forget)

The dude Nishioka of Nishioka Kyoudai

Piece by Kurihara Takashi

Piece by Imiri Sakabashira

Piece by Toyo Kataoka

Piece by Fukuzawa Minako

Piece by Akino Kondoh

Every issue of AX!

Piece by Kazuichi Hanawa

I hope folks enjoyed this collection of photographs and details on the gallery. There are more pics on the Billiken Gallery blog, but it doesn't have permalinks to previous posts unfortunately. Just go back through the archives to February to see 'em!

I would definitely include Billiken Shokai on my list of Tokyo stops, especially if you're already over in West Tokyo at Harajuku or kicking it on the Chuo Line. I just added it to the Same Hat Guide To Everything for anyone planning an upcoming trip!

UPDATE ABOUT THE AX ANTHOLOGY FROM LEIGH AT TOP SHELF:

Hey guys,
Leigh here from Top Shelf. The AX book is indeed real, not to worry! It's available via direct order from our web site or at conventions. Unfortunately we had some logistical delays with the book moving through distribution channels, but Diamond has it now and will be distributing to comic shops, bookstores, Amazon, etc within a week or two. Sorry for the confusion and hope you enjoy the book!

The direct order page for AX is here, by the way (
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/ax-vol-1-a-collection-of-alternative-manga/645) and as Jose-Luis mentioned, we are in the middle of a big mail-order sale right now. Thanks everybody for all your interest and support!

COMMENTS NOW TURNED BACK ON

2010-09-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks, I had accidentally turned them off a week ago to thwart a persistent troll/spammer... and then forgot to turn them back on! Feel free to comment away to your heart's content!

ARE YOU READING THE SAME HAT TUMBLR?

2010-09-12T22:22:00.001-07:00

If not, you are missing out on a weird treasure trove of cultural flotsam & jetsam! I've been trying to post at least once a day, and the crew (Olivia, Carrie, Caronline, Mis Nas, Stefan, Adam, etc!) are doing a bang-up job unearthing strange and delightful images...

SAME HAT TUMBLR!

You can also suggest a post if you come across a cool image/video/link not already posted other places, or ask a question that I'll try to answer.

New SAME HAT post tomorrow at lunchtime featuring my Tokyo photographs from the BIG AX FESTIVAL group art show in Aoyama from earlier this year...

SHINTARO KAGO MANGA FOR YR KINDLE

2010-08-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

A minor release of note, but perhaps of interest to folks with a Kindle. Shintaro Kago announced on his site that he contributed a manga to a new manga eMagazine called COMICLOUD, which just launched in Japan:

The first issue of COMICLOUD is available (in English) for fans for $4.99 digital download!

It's not clear yet how frequently new issues will be coming out, or exactly what type of stories this anthology will specialize in... but it is definitely unique in terms of a Japanese-created digital magazine made for English consumers. Other cartoonists involved in this first issue include Takeshi Okamoto, Shizuka Nanami, Taro Matsumoto, and our friend Shintaro Kago.

~~I don't have a Kindle myself, but I am curious about the Kago comic... if someone checks this out, let us know about it in the comments!~~

UPDATE: Okay, DUH... you don't need a Kindle to read the magazine; as JRBrown has noted in the comments, you can download software to read Kindle books on any device.

I actually just read it, the first issue is a little weak in my opinion-- stiff production/lettering and the quality of the Kindle images is not super high. That said, it is awesome to see Shintaro Kago officially available in English. I think readers can skip this first one but it sounds like Issue 2 will be quite interesting!

From Brian about the issue:

The mag has four one-panel gag manga from Kago (one of which is about toilet paper). I didn't get the first one, "Ultra high level endgame," but I think that's because it alludes to a Japanese TV show I haven't seen.

The preview for the second issue is tempting with even more Kago: "Shintaro Kago is pushing into a new frontier: an authentic mystery story! The out-of-this-world manga artist has attempted his first genuine work in the genre. Can you solve the puzzle?!"

The mag is also on Twitter - @comicloud (mostly Japanese) and @bookloud (English).

UPDATE #2: Jiro Nemoto, one of the editors of COMICLOUD stopped by and left a comment! He notes:
[Shintaro Kago's] new shot is a comical mystery (??) with 24 pages. I'll post the news about Shintaro Kago and our e-magazine via @bookloud in Twitter. Stay tuned for COMICLOUD No.2, please!

PEACE OUT, SATOSHI KON

2010-08-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

Satoshi Kon died yesterday in Japan at age 46 from pancreatic cancer. This is some bullshit is what's up.

I was late to getting into his work-- somehow missed it during the first half of college when everyone else was first freaking out over Millennium Actress -- but was an admirer of his films and the wide-ranging inspiration to 2D animators and illustrators he wrought. In retrospect, I first saw his "Magnetic Rose" as part of Otomo's Memories, and have fond memories of the cerebral impact of watching Paprika's insane imagery unfold in front of my eyes. There's been no word yet on the status of his ongoing most recent project, THE DREAM MACHINE [Yume miru kikai].

+ Details via ANN
+ A nice tribute from LA Weekly
+ We're posting up Satoshi Kon art and works on the Same Hat Tumblr

"It's not that anime will never be the same with Satoshi Kon gone. It's now much more likely that anime will always be the same." - Jeff Betteridge on his twitter.

UPDATE: ANN has reported that Satoshi Kon's final message (written in May 18 after his terminal diagnosis) has been posted to his site today. The site is crashing from traffic, but you can read a copy here (in Japanese).

さて、ここまで長々とこの文章におつき合いしてくれた皆さん、どうもありがとう。
世界中に存する善きものすべてに感謝したい気持ちと共に、筆をおくことにしよう。

じゃ、お先に。
今敏

With feelings of gratitude for all that is good in this world, I put down my pen. Goodbye now. Satoshi Kon

TOKYO SCUM BRIGAGE X COSPLAY = UMEZZING!

2010-08-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

What were you doing this weekend, while my buddies Voidmare & Dr. Senbei from TOKYO SCUM BRIGADE were covering Comiket? By definition, whatever you were up to was nowhere near as rad as this:

KAZUO UMEZU & KANEKO DEMERIN COSPLAY!!!

Pull your jaw off the floor and go check out all of their Comiket 78 coverage.

UPCOMING TITLES ANNOUNCED AT SDCC

2010-08-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

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.

SAME HAT TUMBLR (RE)LAUNCHED!!

2010-08-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

For folks that haven't checked it yet, the newly re-launched SAME HAT TUMBLR is up and running!

The Tumblr is off to a fantastic start, being curated and run by 8 awesome contributors: Marie, Olivia, Carrie, Stefan, Katano, Adam, Miss Nas and Jim (with occasional posts by me & Evan). It features art/videos/music and random whatever from the bowels of the internet-- all stuff loosely related to the imagined community that is "SAME HAT". Please check it out, follow it, reblog it, and all that good stuff!

I am MAJORLY behind in all areas of my life-- my day job and some family stuff have completely taken over my days and nights!-- but will be back with more stuff soon. I'm planning a week of AX ANTHOLOGY artist highlights next week as we get very close to its official release!

MEANWHILE, OVER ON THE EAZB

2010-07-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

I am thinking to start doing a weekly "LINKS" post, just to capture all the notable stuff that I plan to post about and then run out of time and forget to post about... Would folks dig that? Maybe I'll start doing that tomorrow!

In other site news, I'm looking for a few folks to deputize to help run the (currently) wimpy Same Hat TUMBLR. I started it a while ago, as a place specifically to share random photos and YouTube clips, and while it's a great platform for that-- I keep getting distracted by other pressing projects, print runs of Prison for Bitches, and Twitter. So... yeah! I'm looking for 3-4 people (to start) to take over and help contribute to that Tumblr! (Azraelito? Jaclyn?)

Ideally, people who have weird and varied (but not too gnarly) tastes, who are into a wide range of topics (visual art, books, music, games, etc) and wanna share interesting finds with the rest of the crew... this doesn't have to be actual things you own/IRL stuff, but anything rare/interesting/timely from the web. It's a thankless job, but I'd send you rare goodies for taking part! Send me an email if you're interested! --deference goes to longtime posters/readers and folks that currently doing cool blogging or sharing online.

[[UPDATE! I'm all set on contributors for now, thanks to everyone that emailed in!!]]

So as practice for a weekly Links Roundup post, I wanted to remind folks to check out the group Electric Ant Zine Blog too. Lots of goodies lately, including:

A Tale of Revenge on Ice: Getting ICE'd on my birthday, and then getting sweet revenge (Shawshank Redemption style!) [LINK]

Janelle Monae fan art: Featuring fan art from Angie Wang, Lamar Abrams, and 20 other artists! [LINK]

HARVEYJAMES super-cheap art commissions: He is going to draw me either Kei from Akira or the spiral-faced girl from Uzumaki [LINK]

Porno shoes by Lisa Hanawalt She won the internet, why do the rest of us even try? Oh yeah, NSFW. [LINK]

Jason Shiga rap tribue to 2Pac Long live the Shigacorn and his blasphemous rhymes! [LINK]

The terrifying prints of y16o Same Hat body horror fans will not want to miss this stuff [LINK]

UPCOMING BOOKS: GENKAKU PICASSO & A SINGLE MATCH

2010-07-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

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:

JAPAN 2010 TRIP: FURUYA'S TENSHI NO FELLATIO [NSFW]

2010-07-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

I'm finally getting back to my photos and goodies from my trip to Japan earlier this year; I planned to post these things earlier, but then got sidetracked by the Early Manga Days posts and the Prison For Bitches zine.

I've got a few huge photodump posts coming, but in looking through the stacks of manga and magazines a sick and hilarious short by Usamaru Furuya stood out and I wanted to share it now.

Nate and I spent the first Friday I was there digging around for rad and weird used manga at a book shop in Koenji. I had heard about the anthology Comic Cue, which was released for a while in the mid-1990s and focused heavily on gag manga, but also science fiction, humor and erotic comics. For under 5 bucks each I was able to grab the first and third issues:

The anthologies contain a lot of my favorite cartoonists-- some of which have been published in English, but most of which are sadly unfamiliar to Western audiences. The first issue includes cartoonists like Koji Aihara (who Evan and I did fan translations of at the launch of Same Hat 5 years ago!), Tori Miki, King Terry, Radio Wada, Yoshida Sensha, Yamada Naito, Taiyo Matsuomoto, Minetaro Mochizuki, Kiriko Nananan, Imashiro Takashi, Yoshimoto Yoshitomo, Katsuhiro Otomo, and others.

The third issue is the "PORNO SPECIAL" which means lots of totally dirty and sexy comics by the folks above, and also including Suehiro Maruo, Qta Minami, and an article comparing sex manga anthologies for men and women. As mentioned at the top of this post, there is a comic by Usamaru Furuya that is just out of control and I wanted to share a few panels. ENJOY:

Title Page: 天使のフェラチオ (Fellatio of the Angels)

It's a short comic, about an insanely dorky/gawky dude who is seduced by a beautiful "angel" that comes to his bedroom to seduce him. [Check the comments for a full synopsis from reader Adam!] Oh yeah, and leave it to Furuya to reference Dali's El Cristo de San Juan de la Cruz.

The dude can't believe his luck; she remains illustrated amazingly clearly while he devolves into a pile of limp squiggly, sweaty lines.

Receiving the full-body treatment from the angel

EXCEPT, OH SHIT DUDE! Left unawares, 3 STRAIGHT-UP CHERUBS come down and take over the errr sexual duties.

And yes, HE GOES THERE
CLICK FOR THE FUNNIEST/SICKEST PANEL

And just like that the cherubs return to Heaven, the dude is blissful and the Angel is embarrassed at being usurped.

Hope you enjoyed the hilarious depravity. More soon!

KOMIKUSU, AN INDIE MANGA ROUNDTABLE ON TCJ

2010-06-30T08:57:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to share that I recently was invited to take part in a roundtable series of essays on The Comics Journal's column, The Hooded Utilitarian, which is an outpost for comics critic Noah Berlatsky (and a slew of guest contributors) to talk seriously about comics.

The roundtable was called "Komikusu: Selling Awesome Manga" and was focused around "indie manga"-- what it is, the challenges of finding a readership, and how to get more people turned onto the quirkier and underground titles out there.

Other folks included were:

Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic.
Brigid Alverson of lots of places, inlcuding Mangablog.
Erica Friedman of Okazu.
Shaenon Garrity who writes at tcj.com.
Deb Aoki of About.com.
Ed Chavez of Vertical.

My contribution, "Indie is as indie does" meanders a lot and doesn't quite make its points very clearly, but I tried to tackle the history of manga released in the states and how it has been positioned via genre/publisher. And also the idea that a title being referred to as "indie" in the States often has little to do with how it was originally published/received in Japan. Or something? Give it a read and tell me what you think!

I encourage you guys to check out the entire roundtable when you have some free time!

YOSHIKAZU EBISU EXHIBIT IN PARIS

2010-06-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

A few months ago in Paris, an interesting exhibit opened featuring original comic pages and paintings from a fantastic line-up of some of my favorite artists. Running from April 15 until May 22, the exhibit, Underground & Secret Manga, featured work by Yoshikazu Ebisu, Usamaru Furuya, Kanako Inuki, Suehiro Maruo, Junko Mizuno, and Toru Terada.

More details on the exhibit are on this post on the Hattenba Production blog. Hattennba Productions appears to be taking on an interesting role of advocacy that I haven't really seen before, doing outreach from Japan to other countries in English (and Spanish, French, etc) about their stable of cartoonists. Right now, they are promoting Garo alums and influential underground manga artists Yoshikazu Ebisu, Takashi Nemoto, and Issei Sagawa.

This is a pretty exciting idea, and I wonder who in the States is already in touch with them? I can imagine with Hattenba providing the support and making deals/coordination easier, it could theoretically be possible to have a show like this in New York or at San Francisco's SUPERFROG Gallery space in the New People center. --For folks that have been to visit, SUPERFROG is a fantastic space for interesting shows but their programming and curation to date has been really weak. Loosely themed and sorta uncontemporary group shows? Yoshitaka Amano overprized day-glo paintings? They seem to not really have an idea what they want to do with the space, and it seems to be months passing before new exhibits go up. In lieu of every show they've done to date, I'd have loved to see an exhibit like this one in Paris made to happen in San Francisco-- along with about a dozen other ideas for shows I have (What I'm Saying Is: HIRE ME TO CURATE THAT THING, PLZ)???

Anyway, I'll stop with my self-absorbed mild rant and get back to the "Deichu ni Hasu" exhibit; here are some photographs from the Hattenba blog and the gallery's site:

The Manga we know today is as much a child of the Japanese artistic tradition as of the trauma of the War and the atom bomb. Its first master was Tezuka and its first hero Astroboy, a robot-child created by a scientist rendered inconsolable by the loss of his son. Astroboy’s begetter went on to construct the girl robot Uran (short for Uranium) and a second boy, Cobalt (another metal used for making atomic bombs): these were machine children endowed with superpowers, destined to save humanity and bearing the same names as the radioactive substances that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Unique in our time, Manga has become a culture, a world and an industry whose stories and characters appear in the print media, films, video games and tie-ins. It also represents a resource pool many contemporary artists have no qualms about exploiting.

The feudal world, science-fiction and everyday life, cyborgs, magical creatures and perfectly ordinary characters, animal impulses, kitsch heroism and sentimentality: beyond the conventional codes of the types of Manga targeting
specific readerships – Shounen for boys, Shoujo for girls, Seinen for adults –there also exist unclassifiable experimental books hinging more on deep experience than on mere entertainment. Whether Manga’s critics like it or not, these books are «dangerous» in that they represent a host of thresholds, doorways and channels leading to visionary, nightmarish, grotesque worlds whose common characteristic seems to be the absorption of those who look into them.

Yoshikazu Ebisu, Usamaru Furuya, Kanako Inuki, Suehiro Maruo, Junko Mizuno and Toru Terada: it is to these dedicated practitioners of the draughtsman’s art that this exhibition is devoted.
- David Rosenberg, curator of show

While the exhibit features a number of cartoonists we dig, I wanted to specifically highlight the works of Yoshikazu Ebisu. I admit to not knowing a ton about the artist beyond what Fred Schodt wrote about him in Dreamland Japan, and his short bio from the back of Comics Underground Japan. He seems like a fascinating dude, who didn't start drawing manga until his 40s, publishing a number of short comics in Garo during the 80s and 90s about the hellish life of white-collar drones.

Two of those comic, "Hell's Angel" (Jigoku no Tenshi) and "It's Alright If You Don't Understand (Wakaranakutee mo Daijoubu) were published in the 90s in Comics Underground Japan. "Hell's Angel" is the first comic in that anthology, and sets a darkly satirical tone for the tome as it follows a nightmarish, neverending commute home by a generic every(salary)man.

The soulless tedium and mechanized alienation of Japan's corporate culture is a recurring theme in Ebisu's witty and scratchy depictions. He did a whole run of salaryman comics, one of which (Salaryman From Hell) was scanlated by our friend Rizzah over at Wanted: Cheap Manga.

For forks looking for more on Yoshizaku Ebisu, please check out his personal website, and the three pages from Dreamland Japan that Fred Schodt dedicated to his works.

Here are more fantastic pieces by Yoshikazu Ebisu from the exhibit:

And here is the man himself, Ebisu!

BEAMS RELEASES A SHINTARO KAGO T-SHIRT

2010-06-14T10:52:00.001-07:00

My friend Moni posted on Twitter some rad apparel news. It seems that our man Shintaro Kago has joined the ranks of other creators (most notably, Uncle Umezz) by being honored with designer T-Shirts by BEAMS.

The first Kago shirt (made in collaboration with the design studio whiteFUCTORY, which appears to also be doing a shirt with VICE. The shirt is about ¥5,600 and only available at their shop and online for folks living in Japan. You can check it out on their site. Looking forward to more designs in the future?

(For other shirts designs, check out the "BEAMS" label)

PRISON FOR BITCHES

2010-06-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hope everyone is enjoying the full-on appearance of Summer (in the Norther Hemisphere, at least). I just got back from a work trip to New York, followed by a short but rad weekend of hanging out. The theme of this trip ended up being "The Internet... COMES ALIVE!" as I got to meet and convert 4 different online friends into IRL friends; It's always a weird experience at first, but a total pleasure when it goes smoothly... Thanks to newly-IRL folks Moni, y16o, Matt, and gea* for the great times hanging out!

So, what else have I been up to lately? Aside from slacking on Same Hat posts, and working on some promo materials for Last Gasp's Comic-Con booth, you may have heard that I put out a new zine with a (ahem) particular focus. That's right, cartoonist Michael DeForge and I collaborated on a 64 page Lady Gaga fanzine called PRISON FOR BITCHES!

The idea for the zine came about the day after the video for Telephone debuted, and the entire book went from drunken (Was I drunk? I must have been drunk.) email thread with Michael to printed book in under 7 weeks. The zine went on sale at Toronto Comics Art Festival last month, and is AVAILABLE NOW via our site: http://prisonforbitches.com. Kudos go to contributor Tony T for having the foresight to buy that domain (and http://letsmakeasandwich.com) while we were watching Telephone that night, haha.

You may be scratching your head, and if so that's fine and understandable. The new zine is a one-time deal, a proper fanzine in the style of fanzines I used to read in the 90s. The whole thing is the size of a 7" record, and was xeroxed and hand-stapled. It features over 35 contributors(!!) and 64 pages (including a 12pg color insert) of fan art, a Hegellian deconstruction of Gaga;s lyrics, comic strips, a live report, photos of Gaga cosplay in Kobe, and other nonsense.

The artists included are an amazing batch of most all of our current favorite working cartoonists and printmakers, including Johnny Ryan, Michael Kupperman, Hellen Jo, Lisa Hanawalt, the Wowee Zonk crew, Saicoink, Makkinoso, Nick Gazin, Elio, Derek Yu, Angie Wang, HARVEYJAMES, Lala Albert, and tons more!

If you wanna see more, check out this 25 page free preview:

And if you really wanna see our zine in its proper form, you can buy it using Paypal/Checkout through the site. It was recently written up on Robot6 and the SF Weekly, which were big surprises and quite flattering for me & Michael.

Anyway, that same weekend in Toronto, I was on a TCAF panel titled, "Indie Comics Japan: Manga Outside of the Mainstream". The other panel members included About.com's manga maven Deb Aoki, PictureBox's head honcho Dan Nadel, D&Q translator for Tatsumi Jocelyne Allen, and Udon's Erik Ko-- and was moderated by The Beguiling/Comic212.net's Chris Butcher.

I don't remember feeling like I said anything super-insightful that day, but if you want to read a great recap of the conversation please see Deb's great report on About.com.

Another "Early Manga Days" essay (and pics from Tokyo) coming in the next day or two!

THE MANGA STORY #2 BY FREDERIK SCHODT

2010-05-19T00:20:00.001-07:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days", chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

After a few weeks off, I'm returning to "The Manga Story" essays, which were an introduction to the genre/style of "manga" published in the first few floppy issues of Viz's Mai the Psychic Girl. These were written in 1987 by the manga/Japan experts of the day-- with the first essay written by Cartoon/Fantasy Organization co-founder and author Fred Patten.

The 2nd essay in the series is by someone I admire greatly, and one of the most interesting dudes in manga, interpretor/translator/author Frederik Schodt. If you've been reading Same Hat or know anything about manga, you are aware of Fred's important role in the development of a "manga industry" for English speakers. On top of that, Fred is one of the smartest and most genuinely nice and insightful dudes in the world of comics. When I tweeted about posting this essay he joked that he couldn't even remember what he wrote at the time; I find this essay especially interesting given his long history of commentary on manga's history (and future) in America.

For more from Fred on the early days of manga, please see my extensive interview with him in late 2008 for Electric Ant Zine #1.

ENTER THE ID by Frederik Schodt
Click for large versions! Full transcript below!
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ENTER THE ID by Frederik Schodt

Many years ago in Tokyo, I talked with the local Marvel Comics representative about translating American and Japanese comics, and I still remember how pessimistic he was. American comics took much of the world by storm in the fifties, so much so that they caused protests in some countries. But in Japan, despite the fact that many Marvel and DC titles were translated into Japanese in the 1970s, the reading public never really accepted them-- they were often said to be too boring, alien or wordy. As a result, the Marvel rep had concluded that as far as Japan and America were concerned, comics and culture were inseparably linked, and "People may be able to tolerate exoticism in other media, but not in their comics.

I often think about that statement. I've probably been directly involved with, or have closely observed, most attempts since the mid-seventies to introduce Japanese comics into the United States and, needless to say, most of the attempts -- if not always artistic failures -- have had a rough time in the marketplace. Today, though, with the new Viz-Eclipse International titles, and others from competing firms, it looks as though translated Japanese comics have finally come into their own, breaking out of a ghetto of isolated fans. At this point, the words of the Marvel rep bear re-thinking.

If comics and culture are particularly inseparable in Japan it may be because they have developed in relative isolation from the rest of the world. No matter how well translated, many Japanese comics are still very "Japanese," not only in story, but in visual style and pacing as well. Sometimes pictures are intrinsically linked with verbal jokes and puns. Characters may seem to have nothing but dots in their word balloons, to be gazing incessantly at horizons, or making poignant gestures. Often the plot seems to move in a rather round-about way. Why don't they get to the point? The answer is, of course, that Japanese comics were written and drawn by artists thinking in Japanese, not English. For us to read these comics, even when translated into English, takes a little more work and understanding. A new visual as well as written vocabulary must be learned.

Comics and different from other media, in that they are so accessible and personal. There are well over a billion produced each year in Japan, including weeklies, bi-weeklies, monthlies, bi-monthlies, quarterlies, paperbacks, and hardbacks. Because the market is so huge and there are so many publishers, and because the comics have stressed stories and characterization rather than artistic ability, comics are one of the easiest creative mediums to break into in Japan (but success is not guaranteed). Expectations are lower to begin with, and creating a comic does not require the same level of education or writing skills as the creation of a novel. Some famous artists may have assistants or outside scripters or eve, like Takao Saito, a staff photograph (for backgrounds), but most don't. All an aspiring artist really needs are pens, paper and pencils, talent, time and a good idea. Compare to making a film, financing a comic is a joke. The result of all this is that Japanese comic books are sometimes a repository for eccentric talent, but they are also a very direct reflection of what is going on in the mind of the average person-on-the-street, relatively unfiltered by massive editing, the commercialization of other mass media and "committee"-style production.

The unique social role played by comics in today's Japan must be considered. In the last few years reader in their fifties have become fans of comics, making them a true "mass" media, in the sense that nearly everyone reads them. Comics are still different from television, records, novels or newspapers; although some are very serious and comparable to the best literature, most are light, disposable entertainment, to be read when on the train, waiting for a haircut, or over a bowl of ramen noodles. Many young "salary-men" buy two three hundred and fifty page weekly comic magazines when leaving the office at the end of the day, read the comics from cover to cover during an hour-long train ride on the way home, and then toss them in the trash can when they get off.

Of the billion or so comics produced each year, the vast majority have a dream-like quality. Sometimes I think of Japanese comics as being the place where stressed-out modern urbanites work out their neuroses. Viewed in their totality, the phenomenal number of stories produced are like the constant chatter of the collective subconscious-- an articulation of the dream world. Sort of like MTV in America, only on a much larger scale.

So why do I think Japanese comics have a hope of making it in the United States? The first reason is the sheer size of the Japanese industry and the variety of material it churns out. Probably ninety-five percent of Japanese comics are not worth translating. A lot of them are soft-core porn for men or trashy romances for women, stuff we Americans could create on our own, thanks. And who wants to read volumes about the problems of hierarchical relationships in boring office jobs or the spiritual rewards of selling discount cameras in Tokyo's Shinjuku district? But precisely because there is so much stuff produced, there is something for nearly everyone, if selected properly. You want a story on the Russian revolution, or an analysis of gourmet cooking? You wan wild, original art work? You want something that looks just like an American comic? If you can name it, Japanese comics probably have it. I recently bought a three hundred and fifty page hardback comic book on the Japanese economy that has been on the non-fiction book bestseller list, and sold over three hundred thousand copies; it is filled with information.

The second reason Japanese comics may finally make it in the United States is also related to volume. The comics industry in Japan is more than comics, and has evolved into a giant, self-perpetuating organism. Serialized stories in huge three hundred to five hundred page comic magazines are compiled into paperback books. Paperback books are compiled into hardback books. Stories are made into television animation series, then feature films, then novels, toys, merchandise and eventually sequels of the original stories are produced.

Animation has boosted the popularity of Japanese comics around the world. Since animation is less personal, and is filtered through producers, directors, and the hands of thousands of staff, it is often a little less culture-specific than comics. And besides, since it moves, it transcends language more easily. In mainland China, animation guaranteed the popularity of Osamu Tezuka's comic Mighty Atom (Astroboy). In Italy, animation paved the way for the success of the girl's comic, Candy Candy, and Go Nagai's Mazinger Z. With interest generated by animation, Europeans have gone on to publish quite a few other Japanese comics. Kazuo Koike, who wrote the script for the samurai classc Lone Wolf and Cub also authored a hard-boiled action series being published in France under the title Mutants-Android

The same thing has happened in the United States. So much Japanese animation has been shown on American TV that people are curious the comics on which the films are based and there is a large body of fans, ready to read something translated into English. This is a wonderful thing, because it means that most people who buy a Japanese comic are going to expect something a little different from an American one, and not be put off by things like big eyes and weird hair color. A little bit of exoticism here is not going to hurt.

It's a thrill for me to see comics like Mai, the Psychic Girl, The Legend of Kamui, and Area 88 finally published in English, largely unedited. I'm not sure everyone will like them equally, but that's the way it's supposed to be. I am even more excited because these comics haven't yet been on television here. Most American fans of Japanese comics tend to gravitate toward whatever they have seen on TV or in video, which cuts them off from the real richness and variety of Japanese comics.

Sometimes when you're reading Japanese comics, it may seem as though it takes a little more work to understand them than the thirty page American variety. Don't worry. The rewards at the end are enormous. Not only are you reading a comic, but you're getting a rare opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another culture. There's a lot to learn out there.

-Frederik Schodt is the author of Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, winner of the "Special Award" in the 1983 Manga Oscars.

BACK IN BUSINESS: SHINTARO KAGO DAILY STRIPS

2010-05-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Back in business! I wrote 3 posts over the pasts few days, but thought Shintaro Kago daily strips was the way to start. If you were in Japan this past weekend, perhaps you got to meet Kago himself; He was holding down a booth at Design Festa, as witnessed by my buddy David (of the fantastic SEIBEI apparel fame) and Chris from The Beguiling.

Next up after this is another installment of "The Manga Story" essays, reprinted from the late '80s, followed by the first (fucking FINALLY) post of manga reports from my 2010 Tokyo trip. Let's get things going again with 7 gaga comics about errr unique plant cultivation & husbandry ideas, via his site. My translations are, as always, presented below. Enjoy!

Monday - Cornea transplant farm

Tuesday - Meatpacking green peppers(??)
（Saving time & labor in the refinement of meats by remodeling small animals as peppers!）

Wednesday - Ready-to-slice tamago chicken!

Thursday - Kidney transplant farming technique

Friday - Salted beef tongue cultivation

Saturday - Breastfeeder part-time job

Sunday - Transcendental subspace vagina

(You can check out all the previous Kago strips by clicking the daily strips label)

PICS FROM GARO EXHIBIT IN NYC

2010-05-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

As I've blogged about a few times now, New York's Center for Book Arts is hosting an ongoing exhibit showing off the full collection of legendary alternative manga anthology GARO.

Same Hat reader and cartoonist Noel attended the exhibit opening a few weeks back, and sent along these rad photos from inside the gallery. As you can see, there's a mixture of mounted covers, notable spreads on display, and explanatory notes and writings. The exhibit Garo Manga: The First Decade, 1964-1973 is on display until June 26, 2010.

JOHNNY RYAN X KAZUO UMEZU

2010-04-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

A gross and rad group art show is on display right now in San Francisco; The Boys are Back in Town, featuring the art of Matt Furie, La Merde, and Johnny Ryan is at Giant Robot SF until May 12, 2010. The show is made up of 150 small pieces and paintings, many of which are takes on popular culture, characters from other comics, and riffs on each other's books.

I checked out the opening, and really loved the stuff that Johnny Ryan created (Matt's stuff was awesome as usual too. I'm not a hufe fan of La Merde's simple style but the entire show is worthwhile). Johnny's a friend of Same Hat and a fan of weirdo manga, so I was geeked (and not too surprised) to see that he had done a Kazuo Umezu tribute piece as part of the show!

All of Johnny's pieces from the show are selling out fast, but the Cat-Eyed Blecky one is still available for sale via the GRSF website!

For more Johnny Ryan action, check out his website. Volume 2 of his battle manga serial gross-out fest Prison Pit is coming out later this year.

NEW MARUO BOOK: "RAMPO PANORAMA"

2010-04-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

As some of you have perhaps already seen on my twitter or on the EnterBrain site, a new book was released by Suehiro Maruo this month in Japan! Unlike his last two works, this release is more of an art book than a proper manga. But like his last few published works, the theme of this collection is the world and works of the king of Japanese noir & macabre, Edogawa Rampo!

The book is titled RAMPO PANORAMA, and looks really stunning:

I've ordered a copy via my local Kinokuniya, and will be picking it up after work tomorrow. Full details on the book size/cost are all on the EnterBrain online shop. From my understanding (and hearing from Same Hat buddy Ho-Ling), the book includes the following things:

A collection of various Rampo-inspired paintings, drawings, album art, etc. from Suehiro Maruo's long career.

Sketches and designs from Maruo's work on The Strange Tale of Panorama Island and Caterpillar, his previous longer-form adaptations of Rampo stories.

Maruo's third manga adaptation of an Edogawa Rampo story, a shorter manga this time of 踊る一寸法師 (Odoru Odoru Isshunboush - Dancing Dwarf).

Nice art book paper stock and a great painted cover.

I'm not sure exactly how long it is or more specifics yet, but I'm planning to post pictures of this book over the weekend, once I've gotten my hands on my own copy! Have any of you seen the book in person? What do you think of it?

REMINDER: GARO EXHIBIT OPENING TONIGHT IN NYC

2010-04-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

Just a short reminder, tonight from 6-8pm at New York's Center for Book Arts is the opening reception of "Garo Manga, 1964-1973". The reception is free, and will feature "every issue of Garo, from its first issue in September 1964 to its 120th issue in December 1973." A catalogue of the exhibit will also be on sale in person (UPDATE: And is now available via their online store.)

Have fun, New York people! If you happen to attend and sneak some photos of the event and exhibit, lemme know how it went over email at samehatATgmailDOTcom.

Opening Reception: Garo Manga, 1964-1973
Wednesday, April 14th, 6 to 8pm
Free to the public

Directions from their site:
The Center for Book Arts is located at 28 West 27th Street, between 6th and Broadway. (Broadway is east of 6th Avenue in this neighborhood.)

by subway
N or R train to 28th Street and Broadway
F train to 23rd Street and 6th Avenue
6 train to 28th and Lexington Avenue
1 or 9 train to 28th Street and 7th Avenue
B, D, Q and F trains to 34th and 6th Avenue (Herald Square)
2, 3, or 7 to 34th Street (Penn Station)

by bus
M1, M2, M3, M5, M6, M7, M10 buses
crosstown buses M23 & M34

from outside the city
PATH trains to 33rd Street and 6th Avenue
Amtrak and NJT to Penn Station (34th Street and 7th Avenue)
MetroNorth trains to Grand Central Station, then the downtown 6 subway to 28th Street and Lexington Avenue

parking lot locations
29 West 28th Street, between Broadway and 6th Avenue. Enter on 28th Street or Broadway
6th Avenue between 29th and 30th Streets
101 West 23rd Street, near 6th Avenue
1251 Broadway, near 31st Street
39 West 23rd Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues

pics are by me, from shopping in Koenji last month

APRIL BATCH OF KAGO DAILY STRIPS

2010-04-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except taxes and new Shintaro Kago daily strips. Keeping to his impressive schedule, Kago has pumped out another 7 short gags for your viewing pleasure at his site. This batch is all over the map, and my quick translations are presented below. Enjoy!

Monday - Miso Soup Curling

Tuesday - Sakai Masaaki's side job at the nursing home
Says: Using his tablecloth trick to help out
But how do you put the sheets back on...?

Wednesday - Fitting Room

Thursday - Tire

Friday - Chaplin's The Gold Rush

Saturday - Unending long roll TP system

Sunday - Irreconcilable differences between the buttons & buttonholes

(You can check out all the previous Kago strips by clicking the daily strips label)

In other Shintaro Kago news, he has recently updated his site with details about upcoming events/appearances. These are only helpful for folks in Japan, but perhaps some of you will be in Tokyo around these times?

COMITIA 92
May 4, 11am - 4pm
Tokyo Big Site, Halls 1&2
Kago's booth: え01b
He'll be selling comics & dojinshi

Shintaro Kago special goods event
May 8, 2pm - 6pm
ちょこれーとちわわ(Chokore tochiwawa) 3min walk from JR Koenji South gate
Selling original goods, more details later

Design Festa 31
May 15 & 16, 11am - 7pm
Tokyo Big Site
Kago's Booth: C-0547

Film screening at Capriccio in Ekoda
June 11, doors at 7, starts at 7:30
Showing new animated shorts, selling goods

THE MANGA STORY #1 BY FRED PATTEN

2010-04-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days", chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

As mentioned in my earlier post about Mai the Psychic Girl, the first few floppy issues included a series of essays called "The Manga Story" in the back. These were written in 1987 by the manga/Japan experts of the day. I'm going to re-create the text of these essays here, as I don't believe they were reprinted elsewhere(?).

The first of these articles was published in Mai the Psychic Girl #3 and written by Fred Patten, "one of the five creators of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (C/FO) and author of numerous articles on Japanese manga and animation. Fred Patten came up in my interview with Frederik Schodt about the early days of manga fandom for Electric Ant Zine #1.

Click for large versions! Full transcript below!

BEYOND SUPER-HEROES by Fred Patten

What is there to look for in Japanese comics? To start, set your tastes for something rich and exotic. Costumed heroes are fine, I enjoy many costumed-hero titles myself, but they aren’t all there is to cartoon-art literature. Conventional American / British cartoon-art storytelling isn’t the only approach to the writing and drawing of comic books, either.

Japanese comic books are very personalized works. This is no longer unusual in America, given the rise of the Independent comics industry. However, the standard American practice is still for the publisher to own a title and assign various artists and writers to produce it over the years. Japanese comics are owned by the writers and artists who create them, which gives the comics a very individual look. Even when a Japanese title is the work of a cartoonist who has a large staff to assist him or her, the book unmistakably shows his personal artistic touch. Virtually no Japanese comics, no matter how popular, are passed on to new writers or artists when their creators are no longer able to continue them. If you have an eye for an artist’s style -- If you’re more interested in the individual nuances of Byrne’s art or Bark’s art or Spiegle’s art rather than in generic costumed-hero art or funny-animal art -- then you’ll find much to enjoy in the varied styles of the many excellent Japanese comic-book artists. (There are also many lousy Japanese artists, but their work isn’t being reprinted in America so you don’t have to worry about getting any of it by mistake.)

American comic books are traditionally open-ended, intended to be produced indefinitely, as long as they sell. There are some open-ended Japanese comics as well. Many of the best, however, are designed as novels, with a definite conclusion in mind from the time that the story is conceived. The Japanese practice of publishing comics as thick “real books” is a key factor here. Two of the first Japanese comics I saw were Osamu Tezuka’s Vampire (1968), 575 pages published as two thick paperback volumes, and Takao Saito’s The Shadow Man (1967-68), 559 pages (plus two separate 50-page short stories), published in three volumes. I was stunned when I read these (well, when I looked at the art and guessed at the story), and realized that they weren’t just complete sequences from an open-ended title such as Dick Tracy or Batman. They were clearly designed as independent novels in cartoon-art form. We are just getting to this in America, with such works as Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest, Frank Miller’s Ronin and The Dark Knight, Howard Chaykin’s The Shadow, and Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon’s The Watchmen. The Japanese have been doing this for decades. There are many tightly-written stories that are 500 pages or more. America doesn’t have the habit of publishing comic books in a 200- or 300-page format, so we’ll be getting these stories serialized in the standard “pamphlet” format of about 30 pages at a time. But, we have the foreknowledge that these aren’t just a publisher’s open-ended commercial product. They are literary works and there is a well-planned climax and conclusion to come, when the story has run its course.

American comic books tend to be very current. There are some reprint projects such as the Collected EC Comics and Donning/Starblaze’s four-volume Elfquest set, but generally, once a comic book is a couple of months old and is replaced by its next issue, it’s gone. In contrast, Japanese comic books tend to be kept in print in paperback collections. Osamu Tezuka’s Mighty Atom (Astro Boy) was written between 1951 and the early 1970s. There hasn’t been a new story in fifteen years, but the complete Astro Boy stories are available in a 22-volume paperback set. Kaoru Shintani’s Area 88 was first collected in 1979. That first volume now carries a “40th printing” statement and is still available, as are the more than twenty volumes that have followed it.

Japanese comic-art is generally more cinematic than its American counterpart; check the average American comic book, and you’ll find speech balloons in seven panels out of eight. Check the average Japanese comic book, and you’ll find lots of wordless art. Some of this may be establishing shots, setting a scene or a mood. Some of it may be pure visual action or suspense, told solely through motion, facial expressions, or body language.

Another cinematic trait in Japanese comics is the use of detailed backgrounds. Automobiles, beer cans and other commercial products are genuine, recognizable brands. The character-art style of Kaoru Shintani's Area 88 aerial-adventure series is very cartoony, but his military hardware is accurate. The reader can distinguish one type or airplane or missile from another, and all are models actually in use in the air forces of the Middle East. Some artists, such as Takao Saito in his Golgo 13 stories, open a sequence in a foreign city by "rotoscoping" an actual photograph of that city to establish it as convincingly as possible before beginning the fictional action.

Many Japanese cartoonists pride themselves on creating original "sound effects" rather than relying on the standard BOOM, WHAM or WHOOSH. Others, such as Sanpei Shirato, the author of The Legend of Kamui, prefer to keep written sound effects to a bare minimum. They trust that the reader will mentally supply the appropriate background sound from the visuals alone, such as a scene of heavy surf crashing on a rocky shore.

One major difference between American and Japanese comics is the tendency in the latter toward realistic depiction of mature themes. For one thing, there are fewer taboos on these in Japanese society. For another, comic-art in Japan is more accepted as a literary art form for readers of all ages, rather than just children. As a result, Japanese cartoonists are more experienced in depicting such themes. Despite recent advances in America towards producing comics for mature readers, many artists have not yet mastered the realistic details. Visual violence is often either too sanitized or sophomorically exaggerated. Nudity is, to some extent, still censored, or played for shock value or risque humor, rather than with naturalness. Dialogue is either too cleaned up or overemphasizes the use of profanity. Japanese comics for mature readers look more like what you might see in today's average R-rated motion pictures, rather than comic books designed to titillate adolescent boys.

While American comics tend to fall into a few specific genres (superhero, science fiction, etc.), Japanese comics are designed for a much wider range of reading interests. There are Japanese comics for infants, young boys, young girls, teenage boys, teenage girls, young men, young women, and adults of all tastes and interests. There are sports comics, soap-opera comics, "ambitious young corporate executive" comics -- just about any subject matter you can name. Many of these are much too specialized for the American market (how many buyers would there be for a comic book about the adventures of a high school girls' volleyball team, with page after page devoted to a single game in details?), but they are fascinating to know about. And you just might find something that's really tailored to you!

Japanese comics are just beginning to be introduced into America. There are those who say that they'll never catch on, that they're too unusual; that American comics-buyers won't touch anything that's not stuffed inside a super-hero's costume. Fortunately, not every comic-art title has to conquer the mass-market appeal and be written for the broadest possible tastes. For those readers who are interested in something more challenging than world-shaking hero/villain slug-fests, Japanese comics have a lot to offer.

Manga Story #2 and #3 are coming soon!

STEVE OLIFF ON THE EARLY DAYS OF COMICS COLORING

2010-04-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

This past weekend in San Francisco was WonderCon, our wetter and more contained version of Comic-Con. I opted this year to skip the main festivities entirely, save for seeing cartoonist friends Lark and Thien; WonderCon is growing, a show that is definitely on the rise in terms of exposure & celebrity appearances, but for a fan like me there was little of specific interest-- give me APE or TCAF any day!

That said, I did make a point of attending the end of WonderCon on Friday to watch a panel titled, "How Computers Took Over Comics." This panel featured Steve Oliff reuniting with a number of artists from his original Olyoptics crew, along with Erik Larsen of Image Comics. In the panel, Steve and the guys talked about their work on the Epic color edition of Akira, which was a major and important step in the transition from flat 64-color to computer full-color.

If you want to read a little deeper into the specifics of computer color and blue-line process, please check out this interview with Steve Oliff conducted by Frank Santoro. For folks that remember, Last Fall I put up a post about the Akira color guides, the
B&W xeroxes of Otomo's line work that Steve hand painted and colored to serve as guides for separations and computer coloring. Steve also mentioned he will again be selling the Akira color guides at APE 2010(!).

I wasn't able to get my hand on an audio recorder to capture the entire panel, but I took a few notes and shot a short video when Steve was discussing Akira. Two asides that really stuck out to me were:

Working and thinking in CMYK was the way of life for the Olyoptics crew; To this end, they used to play games around the office where someone would point at a color on a wall or sign and folks would try to guess the exact CMYK numbers!
When asked for his main piece of advice, Steve said to always "Color a comic like you were lighting for a film."
When asked about his favorite color work he's done, Steve pointed to Issue #32 of Akira as the high point of trying out new techniques with the technology.
As for current projects, Steve/Olyoptics are now working on doing new coloring for Walter Simonson's entire run on Thor for a re-release Marvel is planning to tie-in to the film next year.

For Akira fans, here is a 4-minute video where Steve Oliff goes into some of the specifics of working on the first few issues for Epic:

I'll add this video to Vimeo soon, but here's another short clip about Oliff working with Otomo on blocking out color themes for the first issues of Akira:

UPDATE ON THE GARO EXHIBIT CATALOGUE

2010-04-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

As posted previously, this month in New York The Center for Book Arts is hosting an exciting showcase titled "Garo Manga, 1964-1973". I've just received some details from show curator Ryan Holmberg regarding a exhibition catalogue available for purchase.

I won't be making the exhibition, but have hopes I might find my way out there before it closes on June 26, 2010. I am hoping that some of you guys will go to the opening reception and in-person discussion with Akin Kondoh and send pics?

Related events at CBA:
Opening Reception: Garo Manga, 1964-1973
Wednesday, April 14th, 6 to 8pm
Free to the public

Artist Talk: Garo Manga, The First Decade, 1964-1973
Wednesday, April 21st, 6:30pm
With Ryan Holmberg and Akino Kondoh, Artist, Illustrator and Author.
$10/ $5 CBA Members

Here are the details on ordering a catalogue from Ryan Holmberg:

For those interested in obtaining a copy of the catalogue of the Garo exhibition, please note the following instructions and the pre-opening discount.

A scholarly catalogue (color, 50 pages) will accompany the exhibition, and is available from the Center for Book Arts for $20. A $5 dollar discount is available to those who reserve and pay for a copy prior to the opening of the exhibition on the 14th (see note below). Payment can be made in person at the Center for Book Arts, or by check, MasterCard, or Visa (NO AMEX). Personal checks should be made out to the Center for Book Arts and mailed to the address below; credit card orders should be phoned in: (212) 481-0295. A shipping and handling charge of $3 must be added to each order.

DISCOUNT NOTE: When submitting your payment information to the CBA, you must mention the keyword "Kamuy." This discount is not available after the 13th of April. For those ordering in advance, you may opt to pick up your copy of the catalog on or after the opening to avoid shipping charges. Please note that you will be doing so upon payment.

The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th Street, Third Floor
(Located between 6th Avenue and Broadway)
212-481-0295

8 FREE KAZUO UMEZU POSTCARDS

2010-03-25T15:14:00.001-07:00

Okay, spontaneous giveaway #1 starts now! I grabbed a small stack of the following Kazuo Umezu postcards at the screening of the documentary "GWASHI! KAZUO UMEZU DESU". They feature Orochi on the front, and have details on the UMEZUMA mobile site on the back.

The next EIGHT people who leave comments saying they want one will get a postcard mailed to you tomorrow. I also have a special separate postcard gift for the NINTH person who leaves a comment! I literally don't have any more cards after those, so it's totally first come, first served.

PS: I already designated another 4 cards to people I owed mail so Jaclyn, Zytroop, Azraelito, and TomorrowBoy- you're already on the list and no need to enter.

UPDATE: DONE! That was super fast. Here are the 8 folks getting postcards tomorrow:
A.B.
adam
mxxbock
Lilly
4zumanga
Malasdair
burialapplicant829
miss nas
EXTRA BONUS POSTCARD (a Suehiro Maruo postcard!)
Dembol

SORRY JOSHUA & RUSSELL, YOU WERE TOO LATE (BY A MINUTE).
Can all 9 of you above send me your mailing address to [[samehat AT gmail DOT com]]

MORE REAL POSTS COMING SOON (TOMORROW?)

HAPPY TUESDAY FROM SHINTARO KAGO

2010-03-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've got more "Early Manga Days" essays and report from my Tokyo trip coming soon, I promise. In the meantime, Shintaro Kago has posted another lovely 7-panel wordless gag manga by Shintaro Kago. This was taken from the Daily Manga page of his site:

Kago also posted another 12 originals on his drawings for sale page as well; these are pricier, actual comic pages that are a bit more extreme and gnarly, for the discerning fan. Check 'em out-- if you dare!

MAI THE PSYCHEDELIC GIRL

2010-03-21T20:06:00.000-07:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as early manga days, chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

After everyone's great work on the early manga (in English) chronology, I'm stoked to dig deeper on some specific titles. Concurrent to creating that list, I've been digging around on ebay and at used book shops in the bay area for physical copies of some of these gems. Now that we have the list, I'm gonna dig in and highlight some scans and ephemera from these "artifacts" (haha) from the early publishing history of manga in English.

This post is to highlight the awesome covers and design of one of Viz's first three flagship titles, Mai the Psychic Girl by Kazuya Kudo and Ryoichi Ikegami. I remember loving this title when it was first collected in the early 90s, and the series held up really well when I re-read it last year. Like much of the manga selected to be published in the first wave, Mai is a boys manga with heavy science fiction & action elements.

You gotta love that front cover copy, haha:
"She is pretty. She is psychic. She is japanese"

In a nutshell, a dastardly and shadowy organization called the "Wisdom Alliance" (so good) is hellbent on taking over the world, and enrolling a squad of telekinetic children to help them destroy their enemies. The book follows the eponymous Mai (who is a 14 year old psychic girl) as she is hunted by the Wisdom Alliance and includes children having massive psychic battles, some 80s crime noir and international intrigue. Pretty badass stuff. Add to this the fact that it's all illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami (Strain, Crying Freeman, Sanctuary, etc!) and you have a pretty solid (albeit, stylistically dated) and fun science fiction/action series.

In the front inside cover of Mai the Psychic Girl #1, the editors included a message to readers of these first Viz comics books from 1987. This same note was included in the inside Front Cover of Area 88 #1 and Legend of Kamui #1 as well:
[Click for bigger version]

Here are the covers to a few of the first issues, along with the crazy back cover images- I'm not sure whose idea it was to do these floursecent/psychedelic color treatments, but I am loving them. The covers are entirely made up of colorized version of internal panels, along with goofy summary copy and blocks and lines; Each back cover (for the first 15 issues or so) includes a radical panel from the inside of the book.

[Click each for the large versions]

Next up in this series of posts, I'm going to reproduce three essays that were published in the back of the floppy issues of Mai The Psychic Girl, called "The Manga Story". These were written in 1986-1987 by the manga/Japan experts of the day, including stuff by Fred Patten, Frederik Schodt, and James D. Hudnall. These are fascinating essays on their own, and are all the more interesting for their predictions about the future of manga in English, nearly 25 years later.

HAPPY MONDAY FROM SHINTARO KAGO

2010-03-15T08:28:00.001-07:00

Just getting my week started, greeted this groggy morning with a new 7-panel wordless gag manga by Shintaro Kago. This was posted on the Daily Manga page of his site:

Also worth noting, Kago continues to post new original drawings for sale on his site; The latest batch includes some original comic pages along with the usual spot illustrations. Here's my favorite of the new batch:

SPECIAL MANGASTUDS PODCAST

2010-03-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention before I left for Japan, I was a guest on a special manga-themed edition of the excellent comics podcast, Inkstuds! Inkstuds is hosted by Robin McConnell, and features interviews and group discussions centered around indie comix. I've been listening to Robin's show for a while now online, so it was an honor to get to participate in this discussion (along with folks whose blogs and opinions I hold in high regard).

Today’s episode of Inkstuds takes a detour East, with a chat about Japanese manga for indie comics readers with your guest host, Deb Aoki, Manga Editor for About.com (manga.about.com) and special guests:

Chris Butcher, manager of The Beguiling, comics blogger (comics212.net) and co-founder of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival.

David P. Welsh, manga and comics blogger at The Manga Curmudgeon, and former columnist for Flipped!, a weekly feature on Japanese comics for The Comics Reporter.

Ryan Sands, indie/horror manga and comics blogger at Same Hat!, editor of Electric Ant Zine and translator/editor for Tokyo Zombie by Yusaku Hanakuma and the upcoming The Strange Tale of Panorama Island by Suehiro Maruo, both from Last Gasp.

You can check out the podcast here; it's a 45-minute discussion, talking about how folks got into manga, manga titles of interest to comix fans who usually read Fantagraphics/Drawn & Quarterly/Top Shelf style American comics, and lots of other stuff. It's over Skype, so I sound even more dorky, nasally and professorial than usual; The link above includes a full list of all the titles that came up, including many Same Hat favorites. Thanks again to Deb for putting a great show together and inviting me to take part. Enjoy!(?)

[Working today on a few Japan trip posts and the back log of "Early Manga Days" posts too!]

I'M BACK FROM JAPAN

2010-03-09T21:20:00.000-08:00

[photo by VoidMare, Tokyo Scum Brigade]

REPORTS / UPDATES / DETAILS SOON!

SPECIAL "SUEHIRO MARUO" ISSUE OF GARO

2010-02-22T18:15:00.000-08:00

Did you know that there was an issue of GARO in the 90s showcasing Suehiro Maruo's work? The May 1993 issues of GARO featured a Maruo cover, and included a long interview with the main. The issue also featured a gallery of Suehiro Maruo's full-color paintings, comic panels, and a photographic bibliography of his work (to date at the time).

Here are some of the lush, full-color pieces featured in the magazine. Many thanks to Stefan, who originally posted these great scans on his Tumblr. Stefan posted recently to help on the Early Manga Days chronology, and posts art on his DeviantArt page.
[Click for larger scans of these pages]

I'm gonna try to track down a cheap used copy of this when I'm at Mandarake this coming weekend. I leave for Japan in less than 48 hours!

LANDED BY KEIICHI KOIKE, OCTOBER 1984

2010-02-18T08:33:00.001-08:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days", chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

Today, I'm happy to share another piece of history from the early days of manga publishing in English. This one was provided to me by Paul, a manga fan in Holland. Below are the pages to "Landed" by Keiichi Koike, an 8 page comic published in Epic Illustrated #26 -- the October 1984 issue on pages 83-90.

This post features scans from Epic Illustrated found online by Paul, but I was just able to order a copy of the original publication off eBay for only 5 bucks. (Thanks internet, you the bestest).

I didn't know too much about Keiichi Koike before digging around for this post. Koike began his career as a published cartoonist in the late '70s, with a steady stream of series in the 1980s and some in the '90s too. You can see a full bibliography of his long career on his Japanese Wikipedia page. Unfortunately for English speakers, "Landed" seems to be the only work of his that's been translated and published.

As usual when it comes to art/indie manga, the Europeans have it way better than us. Glenat has released a French collection of his stories called Heaven's Door (2003), and is currently releasing his ULTRA HEAVEN (2008-2010) books. You can read about Volume 1 and Volume 2 on their site, which also featured a 20 page online preview of the book.

The third volume came out pretty recently in Japan, here's the cover:

As you can see, Keiichi Koike looks to be another mangaka heavily influenced by the French science fiction comics of Philippe Druillet and Moebius. According to the JP Wikipedia article, he won the Tezuka Prize for New Talent for his comics URASHIMA in 1976, at the age of 16(!). His books often muse on psychedelic experience and transcendental philosophy. I just saw that the July 2009 issue of Seidosha's magazine about manga EUREKA is themed "Moebius x Manga" and features comics & articles by Naoki Urasawa, Jiro Taniguchi, Koike and others!

His line work also reminds me of the '80s style of super-detailed cityscapes/technology and tones from SF and cyberpunk manga, a la Katsuhiro Otomo. I really don't know much beyond that Wikipedia page, but would love to hear more about him (especially from folks in Europe that have read the Glenat releases).

Without further ado, I'm happy to share with you "Landed" by Keiichi Koike from 1984:
(Click for full size pages)

PAGE 1

PAGE 2

PAGE 3

PAGE 4

PAGE 5

PAGE 6

PAGE 7

PAGE 8

GARO MAGAZINE EXHIBIT IN NEW YORK!

2010-02-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

Exciting news for the East Cost. New York City's unique and prestigious Center for Book Arts will be hosting a radical exhibition on Garo Magazine this Spring. The exhibit is titled "Garo Manga, 1964-1973" and is organized by Ryan Holmberg, Assistant Art Professor, Writer.

Running from April 14, 2010 - June 26, 2010, this will be a must see for any manga fans that can make it out there. From their site:

"Garo Manga, 1964-1973" will be an exhibition focused around the renowned manga (Japanese comics) journal Garo during the period of its greatest aesthetic experimentation and political commitment. Garo is well-known amongst comic enthusiasts and historians of postwar Japanese culture both for its challenging of formal and thematic conventions within the field of comics as well as for its engagement with the main political issues of the day, from rightwing incursions into national education policy to Japanese involvement in the Vietnam War.

This exhibition presents the work and development of Garo during this seminal period. The core of the exhibition will be each and every issue of Garo, from its first issue in September 1964 to its 120th issue in December 1973. Most of the issues will either be shelved serially on a book shelf roughly 8 feet from the floor or, alternately and perhaps preferably, each issue mounted serially upon the wall with their covers facing outward. Exhibition cases will be used to display a number of individual Garo volumes open, showing representative moments in the history of the magazine and the work of important artists. In other exhibition cases, supplementary materials will be exhibited, including direct precursors to Garo, a selection of important Garo issues from later periods, other journals inspired by Garo (including Tezuka Osamu’s COM), and issues of Manga-shugi (Manga-ism), a small but important magazine of manga criticism, much of which focused on the work of Garo.

Unfortunately, the exhibit will be opening the week after this year's MoCCA Festival (bad timing, folks!). But this would be a great excuse to stay a few days in New York...

UPDATE!: Ryan Holmberg, curator of this Garo exhibit, stopped by and left further details in the comments. Turns out there will be a pamphlet from the show and in-person discussion with Ax mangaka Akino Kondoh! Details from Ryan:

Thanks for posting news of the Garo exhibition. I am happy to see that it is getting some publicity. There will be a small scholarly catalog accompanying the exhibition: a portable version for those unable to visit. Also, on April 21st, there will be a public event, a conversation between myself and Akino Kondoh, an artist associated with Ax (her work appears on the cover of the forthcoming Ax volume from Top Shelf), whose early comics were inspired by early Garo artists like Tsuge Yoshiharu and Hayashi Seiichi. Please attend if you are able. It should be interesting.

The show builds on my dissertation, which was on Garo, focusing on the work of Shirato Sanpei, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Sasaki Maki, and Hayashi Seiichi. I have recently begun expanding the dissertation for a book-length manuscript on early Garo, spanning the magazine’s inception to its transformation into a subcultural magazine in the mid-70s, and treating all the main artists of that period. It will be a couple years before I finish.

As for obtaining old Garo issues: it's super easy and cheap if you are in Japan. Go to Mandarake, the used-manga megastore -- which by the way was founded by Furukawa Masuzo, a central Garo artist in the 70s. If you are not in Japan, still go to Mandarake on the web. They have English-capable personnel. However, you will have to tell them exactly what issue you want. Single issues -- excluding special issues and early issues -- cost between 300 to 800 yen, typically -- that's about 4 to 10 USD. Shipping, on the other hand, will be high.

Thanks again. I hope you are able to make the show. If you make either the opening or the Kondoh event, please say hello.

EARLY MANGA DAYS: A CHRONOLOGY

2010-02-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

I started compiling this list over on the site MyAnimeList, which has a cool community called "The Alternative Manga Club" that I've been posting on. Since it's a bit hard to comment on that thread without being registered, I decided to move it here. Please help fill in details below!

I'm trying to compile a chronological list (by publication date) of very early manga from Japan published in English. Specifically, I wanna list everything that was translated and published in America (or in bilingual editions in Japan, in Europe, etc) prior to the big explosion at the end of the 80s by Viz and Dark Horse, etc.

(Thanks so far to Joe McCulloch, Azraelito, pekochan, Deb Aoki, and Fred Schodt for their additions)

1977
+ Star*Reach #7 (January)

"The Bushi" written by Satoshi Hirota & art by Masaichi Mukaide
Star*Reach bibliography
comics.org

1978
+ BAREFOOT GEN Vol.1 by Keiji Nakazawa

Published by Project Gen in April
Photos and details on Same Hat

+ Imagine #3 (August)
"The Spider Thread" by by Masaichi Mukaide
MyComicShop

+ Imagine #4 (November)
"The Awakening of Tamaki" written by Lee Marrs & art by Masaichi Mukaide
MyComicShop

1979
+ BAREFOOT GEN Vol. 2 published by Project Gen
From Frederik Schodt's bibliography page

+ Imagine #6 (July)
"Salvation" by Masaichi Mukaide
MyComicShop

1980
+ Heavy Metal, March issue: "Violence Becomes Tranquility" - Kaze Shinobu
+ Heavy Metal, December issue: Front Cover by Hajime Sorayama
Scans and details on Same Hat
List of full issue contents

+ Epic Illustrated #4 (Winter):
Article: "Portfolio: The Art of Shotaro Ishimori" by Gene Pelc & Archie Goodwin
List of full issue contents

+ Food Comix: "When Socrates Drinks, Everybody Drinks!," by Akira Narita with Fred Schodt and Leonard Rifas
Published by EduComics, San Francisco

1981
+ Heavy Metal, August issue: Back Cover by Hajime Sorayama
Scans and details on Same Hat
List of full issue contents

+ The Rose of Versailles Vols. 1 & 2, by Riyoko Ikeda,
Published in bilingual editions by Sanyusha in Japan

1982
+ Epic Illustrated #10 (February issue): "Heart And Steel" - Kaze Shinobu
List of full issue contents

+ I Saw It! The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima: A True Survivor's Story by Keiji Nakazawa
Published by Educomics
Wikipedia

1983
+ Epic Illustrated #18 (June issue):
"Article: The Art Of Go Nagai" - Jo Duffy
"Oni" - Go Nagai
List of full issue contents

+ Manga translated & excerpted in Frederik Schodt's Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics:
- Phoenix by Osamu Tezuka
- Rose of Versailles by Ryoko Ikeda
- Ghost Warrior by Leiji Matsumoto
- Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa

+Bilingual edition Urusei Yatsura by Rumiko Takahashi
Published by Shogakukan, at least 3 volumes were released
Listing on Bunkoudo

1984
+ Epic Illustrated #26: "Landed" - Keiichi Koike
Scans and details on Same Hat

1985
+ RAW v. 1 n. 7
Edited/published by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman
Featured an insert of Yoshiharu Tsuge's "Red Flowers"
along with comics by Terry Yumura; Yosuke Kowamuro; Sugiuro Shigeru;
Indy Magazine article by Bill Kartalopoulos

1986
+ Golgo 13 No. 1: Into the Wolves' Lair by Takao Saito
+ Golgo 13 No. 2: Galinpero by Takao Saito
+ Golgo 13 No. 3: Ice Lake Hit by Takao Saito
All published by Lead Publishing

1987
+ Golgo 13 No. 4: The Ivory Connection
Published by Lead Publishing

+ Samurai Son of Death by Sharman DiVono & Hiroshi Hirata
Published as Eclipse Graphic Novel #14
My Comic Shop listing

+ Legend of Kamui by Sanpei Shirato
Published by Eclipse/Viz starting in May
eBay listing

+ Mai the Psychic Girl by Kazuya Kudō & Ryoichi Ikegami.
Published in May by Eclipse/Viz
Covers and details on Same Hat
eBay listing

+ Area 88 by Kaoru Shintani
Published by Eclipse/VIP
eBay listing

+ Lone Wolf & Cub by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima
Published in May by First Comics
eBay listing

+ Xenon by Masaomi Kanzaki
Published by Eclipse/Viz
MyComicShop

1988
+ Cheval Noir #1 (comics magazine)
"Angel Fusion" by by Keisuke Goto and Hiroyuki Kato
Published by Dark Horse

+ Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo
Published by Epic Comics
eBay listing
Background on publication history
Same Hat post about Steve Oliff's color guides

+ Mazinger by Go Nagai
Published by First Publishing
MyComicShop

+ Dirty Pair by Haruka Takachiho
Published by Eclipse Comics
eBay listing

+ Appleseed by Masumune Shirow
Published by Eclipse Comics
eBay listing

+ Outlanders #1 by Johji Manabe
Published by Dark Horse / Studio Proteus
eBay listing

+ Justy by Tsuguo Okazaki
Published by Viz
MyComicShop

+ Crying Freeman by Kazuo Koike & Ryoichi Ikegami
Published by Viz
MyComicShop

+ Pineapple Army by by Kazuya Kudo & Naoki Urasawa
Published by Viz
MyComicShop

+ Good-Bye and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Published by Catalan Communications
(A "semi-legal" book, translated from Spanish into English by Catalan)

1989
+ Rumic World by Rumiko Takahashi
Published by Viz
Issue 1: Fire Tripper
Issue 2: Laughing Target
MyComicShop

+ Lum #1-8 by Rumiko Takahashi
Published by Viz (May - December)
MyComicShop
+ Baoh by Hirohiko Araki
Published by Viz
MyComicShop

+ Panorama of Hell by Hideshi Hino
Published by Blast Books
Noted by Fred Schodt as the first manga published "unflipped" in English

+ Cyber 7 by Shuho Itahashi
Published by Eclipse Comics
MyComicShop

+ Golgo 13 #1 - The Impossible Hit by Takao Saito
Published by Lead Publishing
eBay listing

+ Dominion #1-6 by Masamune Shirow
Published by Eclipse
MyComicShop

1990-1991
+ Golgo 13 #2: Hopper the Border
Published by Lead Publishing

+ RAW v. 2 n. 2
Edited/published by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman
"Oba's Electroplate Factory" by Yoshihiro Tsuge

+ Black Magic #1-4 by Masamune Shirow
Published by Eclipse
MyComicShop

+ Grey by Yoshihisa Tagami, published by Viz [eBay]
+ Lost Continent by Akihiro Yamada, published by Eclipse [eBay]
+ Hotel Harbour View by Natsuo Sekikawa & Jiro Taniguchi, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ Saber Tiger by Yukinobu Hoshino, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ Shion Blade of the Minstrel by Yu Kinutani, published by Viz [eBay]
+ Cobra by Buichi Terasawa, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ Horobi, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ What's Michael by Makoto Kobayashi, published by Eclipse [MyComicShop]

NEEDS TO BE CONFIRMED/DATED
+ MANGA 1984
- Front cover by Hajime Sorayama
- Two Warriors by Hiroshi Hirata
- Down Time by Yosuke Tamori
- The Mask of the Red Dwarf Star by Yukinori Hoshino
- Olai Portfolio by Noriyoshi Olai (illustrations)
- Watermelon Messiah by Otomo Katsuhiro (wordless)
- Midsummer Night's Dream by Lee Marrs & Keizo Miyanishi
- The Great Ten by Noboru Miyama
- Schizophrenia by Youji Fukuyama
- The Promise by Masaichi Mukaide
- Cat in Animation by Masayuki Wako (wordless)
- Back cover: Hiroshi Hirata
This book was published in Japan and exported to America. This 88 page book contains color and B&W entries.
Complete analysis and descriptions by Job on the Savage Critic blog

1977: Star*Reach #7 includes a story by Satoshi Hirota/Masaichi Mukaide

Ostensibly, the first English "Manga" was Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama's "The Four Immigrants" comics, created in the 1920s while he was living in the United States. These comics were translated by Frederik Schodt and published by Stone Bridge Press in 1998
Further reading on Fred Schodt's site

MORE READING:
+ "Manga: Another SF/F Trend Missed by SF/F?" by Cynthia Ward (published in Locas Online)
Cynthia states in this article (among other great tidbits):
Eclipse/Viz followed these titles with several SF manga (Appleseed, Cyber 7, Cosmo Police Justy, Dominion, and Xenon: Heavy Metal Warrior).

+ The Age of Fake Manga - a fantastic collection of American comics created in the 80s that mimicked the style of manga, including: Ninja Funnies, The Fat Ninja, Eagle (a ninja comic unrelated to the Sawaguchi political manga), Shuriken, Mecha, Gigantor & Speed Racer remakes, Metal Bikini, and Rion 2990. CHECK THIS OUT!

ABOUT PUBLISHING TSUGE IN RAW:
From Indy Magazine article by Bill Kartalopoulos

Mouly: We did go see all of those people while we were in Tokyo in 1983, so we managed to find out about them even before we went... We also very very early on made contact with Kosei Ono... Kosei Ono is a book critic, and a writer, and a scholar of comics and he's the one who put us in touch with Tsuge and, a really smart guy. So we basically made connections with the right people.

It's the only time that Tsuge published outside of Japan. He just won't allow it. He let it happen with a book that just came out in France this year, ten years later. It was basically because Kosei Ono vouched for us, and Tsuge gave us permission for "Red Flowers." And of course we had to do it as an insert. He didn't want it blown up in Raw, and he liked the idea that it would have its own format, that he would be presented. The reason that he doesn't want to be published anywhere else is that he contends, and I can see, if you read his books you can understand what he means, that if you truly want to understand his work, you have to go move to Japan, learn Japanese, and then you can understand his books.

Karasik: The translations that I did of Tsuge's remarkable tales remain the Raw work of which I am proudest. My close pal, Akira Satake, who is one of the best banjo players in the world and quickly becoming one of the best ceramicists, as well, was familiar with Tsuge's work and would do a rough translation of the story. Because he and I are so close, even though I do not understand Japanese, I was able to take his translations into vernacular English while retain what I believe and hope is the intonation and intention of Tsuge's original work. Footnoting the "Red Flowers" was Art's bright idea. It gave us a way of explaining the sound-effects, inflection and subtleties inherent in the original Japanese which would be lost to Western readers.

Mouly: It turned out that Tsuge loved the idea of having footnotes, we loved the idea of having footnotes. It was nice, we liked the idea of a comic strip with footnotes. It slows down the reading, which was the same project that we had as well.

PLEASE ADD ANY ADDITIONS IN THE COMMENTS AND I'LL UPDATE THIS POST! Adding images today.

VALENTINE'S DAY SHINTARO KAGO GAGS

2010-02-14T18:15:00.001-08:00

What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than with another new batch of Shintaro Kago gag comics. Taken per usual from his site, the theme this time is toilet paper roll dispensers!

Monday - Toilet paper dispenser roll cake

Tuesday - Toilet paper dispenser runny nose

Wednesday - Toilet paper dispenser hair follicle

Thursday - Toilet paper dispenser waterfall

Friday - Toilet paper dispenser wave laser cannon

Saturday - Toilet paper dispenser Final Fantasy

Sunday - Obi toilet paper dispenser
Says: Oyurushi kudasai dono - Please excuse me, sir!

(You can check out all the previous Kago strips by clicking the daily strips label)

I'M GOING TO TOKYO

2010-02-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

Just a quick little post before new Kago Daily strips and another fantastic set of early manga days scans...

I JUST BOUGHT A TICKET TO GO TO JAPAN!

A (relatively) short trip, I'll be there exactly one week (from 2/25/10 to 3/4/10) The agenda so far is:

Crash with my buddy RameNate and drink beers in Golden Gai, eat ramen & see shows, ride bikes, read and discuss manga (and translations thereof).

Hang out with other friends in the area, like The Notorious I-Shi-I, Mr. MCVMCV, the Tokyo Scum dudes, and other friends!

See the AX gallery show at Billiken Shokai gallery, featuring original art by dozens and dozens of mangaka featured in AX over the years (Including Suehiro Maruo, Yusaku Hanakuma, Takashi Nemoto, and basically everyone else we've ever posted about on Same Hat).

SO PUMPED RIGHT NOW! I'm going to pick up a lot of goodies from TACO CHE, and will definitely have giveaways and contests when I get back for you guys... along with tons of photos. If you have any recommendations, lemme know in the comments or on the Same Hat Guide to Everything!

YUICHI YOKOYAMA ECOMIC: OUTDOOR

2010-02-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

Before I head off for, I wanted to share the link to OUTDOOR a free online "EcoMIC" by Yuichi Yokoyama. This three-chapter story is hosted at MouRa's Ecologue site. MouRa is "a digital publishing platform which covers the whole Kodansha universe".

You can check out all 3 chapters over on their site!

Thanks to Kevin at Laser Crab Revue for sending this link!

Oh, and if you're still not satiated with online manga reading (for free!), the SigIKKI site is still posting tons of new chapters... including their newest series Bob and His Funky Crew.

UPDATE ON "VIOLENCE BECOMES TRANQUILITY"

2010-02-04T15:34:00.000-08:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as early manga days, chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

The internet is a magical place. I posed a question about the circumstances around the publication of Shinobu Kaze's Violence Becomes Tranquility in Heavy Metal in 1980, and within a few days the exact right person to answer that question came and filled us in!

Many thanks to Dan Steffan for this super interesting anecdote:

I worked in the art department at HM during Ted White's year as editor. Besides editing two sf mags, he is also the author of 17 books -- including "The Great Gold Steal" a 1966 novel about Captain America. He was also one of the first comic fans from the early 1950s, among many other things.

Anyway, as far as I remember, "Violence" was a blind submission to the magazine. It may have come into the mag before Ted got there, as there was a huge pile of material that had accumulated, but was never looked at by the previous editor. Ted pulled it out of the "slush pile," and put it into the magazine.

I'm not sure that many of us had seen much in the way of manga before this, except for perhaps Tezuka, but we all thought it was worth publishing anyway. But the thing that really cinched it was the fact that the strip very closely resembled -- in rendering, design, and coloring -- the work of the French cartoonist and fantacist, Philippe Druillet.

Druillet was one of the founding partners at Metal Hurlant and HM had published as much of his work as we could get our hands on. We all welcomed the opportunity to publish something else that seemed to be inspired by his work. "Violence" fit the bill.

The fact that the strip was from Japan was cool, but it wasn't really the main reason why it was published. I hope this helps fill in some holes for you. Thanks.

Dan Steffan

FEBRUARY GAGS FROM SHINTARO KAGO

2010-02-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

We're knee-deep in another week, and a new batch of Shintaro Kago gag comics have surfaced on his site. I'm super-impressed with Kago's tenacity, and happy to present them here (with my rought & tumble quick translations). Enjoy!

Monday - Dresser (Tansu) Deposits
Says: You deposit your dresser, and then withdraw it later... with interest!

Tuesday - Yakiniku for One

Wednesday - BARUSU! バルス!
I don't get this one... a Castle in the Sky joke? Comment if you have info! -Ryan

Thursday - Low-budget air raid（Moist towelettes)

Friday - Handshake

Saturday - Breastfeeding

Sunday - Half-Off Ticket Magic Show
Says: Restoring you back to 50%!

(You can check out all the previous Kago strips by clicking the daily strips label)

In unrelated news, I got some .98 stamps and am starting to send postcards to international folks. This is part of my new year's resolution to send mail every single day the post office is open in 2010. I'm 24 for 25 so far, and going strong.

VIOLENCE BECOMES TRANQUILITY, MARCH 1980

2010-02-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

(This post is part of a series I've tagged as "early manga days, chronicling rare/weird gems from the beginning of manga's now 30+ year history of publication in English)

Noted in Manga! Manga! by Frederik Schodt as one of the first manga published in an American publication with "its original artwork intact", "Violence Becomes Tranquility" is a short and colorful 10-page story by Shinobu Kazu. It appeared in the March 1980 issue of Heavy Metal, the long-running science fiction and fantasy comics magazine published by Leonard Mogel.

Shinobu Kaze is given a detailed profile in this section of Manga Zombie, which I highly recommend you check out right now. This great article includes tons of fantastic covers and pages of his work from the '70s, '80s, and '90s, and a great overview on his "masterpiece", 'Ryū, Strongest Man on the Face of the Planet'(Chijō Saikyū no Otoko, Ryū). According to Manga Zombie, Shinobu Kaze was influences heavily by French artist Philippe Druillet, and found his creative home among Japanese and American Science Fiction fans. (They also mention he spent a lot of time hanging out at SF Cons in the States during the Eighties!).

Known in the late '70s and '80s for being home to "adult" comics by folks like Moebius and other European artists, Heavy Metal was an American spin-off of the successful French anthology magazine, Métal Hurlant. Coming out of the French comics and SF scene (which was always a bit hipper and faster to catch on to Japanese pop culture exports), it's not a huge surprise in retrospect that Heavy Metal was the first US home to this type of manga. At the time "Violence Becomes Tranquility", Heavy Metal's editor was a guy named Ted White, who worked as a magazine editor in the 1970s at the Science Fiction monthlies Amazing Stories and Fantastic. It's not clear from the issue itself who exactly was involved in choosing to feature a comic from Japan, but I'd be very interested to hear more from anyone with insights.

Only a few months later, the December 1980 issue of Heavy Metal featured the now-famous pin-up painting by 80s hotshot, Hajime Sorayama:

Sorayama continued to work for Heavy Metal in the '80s, producing the back cover painting for the August 1981 issue.

A few years after the volunteer-produced first English edition of Barefoot Gen, but a full two years before San Francisco published Educomics released their color comic "I Saw It" (another Nakazawa adaptation), "Violence Becomes Tranquility" marks an interesting milestone in the early history of manga publication in English.

Here for your pleasure, are scans of the complete 10-page comic, from the original copy I tracked down on eBay. Enjoy!

Violence Becomes Tranquility by Shinobu Kaze
Published in the March 1980 issue of Heavy Metal

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9

Page 10

Listed on the copyright page of the issue (March 1980, Vol. III No. 11):
"Violence Becomes Tranquility" by Shinobu Kaze © 1980, Shinobu Kaze and Hiro Media Associates, Inc. Tokyo.

NEW "MY NAME IS SHINGO" COVERS

2010-01-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

On the always-hopping UMEZZ.COM blog, our favorite uncle Kazuo Umezuo has posted covers for volumes 1-4 of "My Name Is Shingo". These covers are part of the ongoing UMEZZ PERFECTION series of definitive re-releases from Shogakukan, celebrating Umezz's 50+ years in the business. All of the releases to date have been super fresh, and these don't disappoint. Check out the minimal spot colors and digital font treatment!

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Volume 4

Each book is around ~150 pages and sells for 1500 Yen. Volumes 5 & 6 will be released later in 2010. For other posts about UMEZZ PERFECTION releases, check out these results!

A GIFT FROM KAGO TO YOU

2010-01-26T09:14:00.000-08:00

It's the beginning of a new week in 2010, which means only one thing! A fresh batch of 7 new daily strips over on his site. Please enjoy the strips (along with my quick & lazy translations):

Monday - Sorted & classified
Says: "Unnecessary, Unnecessary, Unnecessary, Unnecessary"

Tuesday - Foreskin uses
Clockwise from top left: Water balloon, Cheese fermentation, Hand warmer, Cold weather tent

Wednesday - Prostitute Oral Training Bottle

Thursday - Dekichatta Marriage 1 (They went & did it marriage!, convoluted pun joke)
Says: So, that's a "Dekichatta Marriage" ("Deki" here means: death by drowning!)

Friday - Linear Motor Toupee
(a Perfume joke from Kago!? Rhymes with Linear Motor Girl)

Saturday - Real Octopus Wieners

Sunday - Dekichatta Marriage 2 (They went & did it marriage!, convoluted pun joke)
Says: So, that's a "Dekichatta Marriage" ("Deki" here means: death by dismemberment!)

(You can check out all the previous Kago strips by clicking the daily strips label)

NEW COMICS WEEKEND!

2010-01-25T12:07:00.000-08:00

I promised myself I would show proper love to Same Hat and post more in 2010. Here's me getting back to basics and down to brass tacks... it's time to talk about NEW COMICS! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention here, but a few weeks back I was the guest contributor for Robot 6's What Are You Reading? and talked about Moyasimon & Shintaro Kago's new book Fraction.

Anyway, I hadn't bought new comics for a few weeks, so I went sorta overboard this past Wednesday at my local shop. Here's what I've just read (or am about to read tonight):

+ Pluto vol.7 by Urasawa X Tezuka

It's hard to have new things to add about Pluto that hasn't already been laid out by jog, Ed Sizemore and many others comics bloggers. Pluto is an unwound Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead approach to a big ol' tree in the forest of Tezuka's greatness, and required contemporary manga reading for all fans.

I got weepy a few times in the early volumes, and as the finale in Volume 8 is coming, this series has already burrowed a place in my top comics of all time list. That said, I'm finding myself riding harder on the 20th Century Boys train right now. I've heard folks say many times that Pluto is the Watchmen of manga except even better... But I am wondering if given the structural, I dunno, quickness(?) of Urasawa's pacing will make this short series hold up to multiple re-reads the way Watchmen does? Regardless, it's breakneck awesomeness right now, a must-read for manga fans of all stripes. [link]

+ not simple by Natsume Ono

This is one of the books that I saw EVERYWHERE when I was in Japan last, in Spring 2008. It was featured at mainstream bookshops and also heavily at places like taco CHE and Mandarake in Nakano. And now, 2010 is looking to be the year of Natsume Ono over at Viz, with the planned release of four of her titles in English in the coming months: House of Five Leaves, Ristorante Paradiso, and Gente.

I haven't read beyond the first chapter yet, so I won't/can't take a stab at anything approaching a review. Ono's simple line style is unique among most of the manga I've read, which in not simple seems helpful for creating visual space while telling a tense, meta-fictional road story. I felt confused about the inter-personal relationships among the family members and strangers that fill out the first chapter of the book, but confused in a curious, compelled-to-read-further way-- rather than a "What is going on here, and why should I give a shit?" Secret paternity, fictional narratives, hitmen, and deception seem to await in the remainder of the book, and I can't wait to get knee-deep in this book tonight. [link]

+ King of RPGs by Jason Thompson & Victor Hao

Is it a graphic novel? Is it Original English Language (OEL) manga? Do I give a shit about that sort of categorization? WHO KNOWS! This book is the excellent debut publication from a longtime friend of mine, author Jason Thompson. Jason spent 10 of the most exciting years in manga publication (mid-90s to mid-00s) as an editor at Viz, working on projects like Dragon Ball, Uzumaki, PULP magazine and about a few dozen other radical books. He also wrote the totemic encyclopedia on manga, Manga: The Ultimate Guide-- the Elements of Style bible for any manga completist.

For his hilarious graphic novel debut in King of RPGs vol. 1, Jason penned an elaborated version of an old mini-comic of his, following the story of two college Freshman gamers. The dudes have their own vices (Online MMORPGs, Japanese console RPGs) and are navigating the dicey waters of identity and self-invention in their dorm when they get sucked into the word of tabletop RPGs. The book structure is a mix of Rumiko Takahashi's episodic unfolding of interpersonal relationships, and the EACH CHAPTER = A BATTLE format of Hikaru no Go or even Detroit Metal City. For the book, Jason teamed up with new illustrator Victor Hao. My only complaint is that Hao's page compositions and skill at cartooning the character's faces/body language (that is, simplifying down) starts out really static and awkward in the first half of the book's pages. That said, by the final chapter, I felt like Hao had figured out his characters and got looser with art, to solid comedic effect. I'm super stoked for the next book, and many congrats to Jason & Victor! [link]

+ RASL #6 by Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith forever has my D&D (dollars & devotion) after Bone. Though I read Bone (starting with issue #11?) in floppies as it came out sporadically over almost 10 years, subsequent re-reads of the collected volumes had dulled my memory of how frustrating it can be to wait for new issues of a fascinating serialized book. Thankfully, Smith has moved to a faster, near-bimonthly schedule for RASL in 2010.

This installment is all Tesla, all the time. This issue uses our narrator recounting of his grade school fascination with uber-genius inventor Nikola Tesla as a frame for schooling the reader on Tesla's meteoric rise (and fall) to prominence. I already knew this stuff, but it was exciting to see the chronology depicted by Smith's inky and smooth lines here. Tesla energy, parallel universe art thievery, sex scenes, and freakish mutant corporate assassins. I'm definitely on board with this book for the long haul. [link]

+ The Unwritten: by Mike Carey & Peter Gross

I just got this and haven't had a chance to dive in yet. I've heard really solid things about this new-ish Vertigo Fantasy-meets-noir series. I haven't been into a Vertigo book for a long time (Unknown Soldier and Air both left me apathetic about further installments) so I'm hopeful that The Unwritten delivers. If I like the trade, I plan on grabbing issues 6-9 at the store and following along monthly. Has anyone read this one? [link]

So... What stuff have you guys been reading and enjoying lately? Manga, indie comics, zines, European comics?

WEEKEND READING: DESERT EYEBALL BY MAKI SASAKI

2010-01-22T10:49:00.000-08:00

The end of the work week is so close I can almost taste it! For your weekend reading pleasure, the guys at Pink Tentacle have posted scans of an incredible indie manga gem they scanned from the '70s. From their post (which features large scans):

"Desert Eyeball" (Sabaku no Medama - 砂漠の眼玉), a deliciously nonsensical one-shot manga by Maki Sasaki, appeared in the August 1970 issue of Garo magazine.

Pink Tentacle previously posted another short by Maki Sasaki, "A Dream To Have In Heaven" (Tengoku De Miru Yume – 天国でみる夢) from the November 1967 issue of Garo.

I'm posting some capsule reviews this afternoon of the excellent slew of new comics that came out this week, so please check that out in a few hours!

ANOTHER BATCH OF KAGO DAILY STRIPS

2010-01-20T09:23:00.000-08:00

Our man Shintaro Kago is setting himself a rapid pace in 2010, posting a fresh batch of seven peculiar Daily Strips on his site. As usual, here they are with my quick fan translations!

Before getting to the daily strips, it's worth noting that Shintaro Kago did a major update to the B&W originals section of his overseas mail order page, which now includes a number of smaller pieces (many of them originally daily strips themselves) that go for $30-$50 USD. These are selling fast, but would be a great way to get yourself an original Kago piece for a great price!

Monday - Bride with one month left live

Tuesday - PM Hatoyama's gift envelope (to himself)
Says: Costs 'bout 100 Million yen?
Bag - "New Year's Gift"

Wednesday - Eczema Park

Thursday - Russian roulette nipples
Says: Which one's poisoned?!

Friday - Cat & Duck joins forces to cheer up Yui-chan
Says: Ahhh, so good!

Saturday - Elderly death row inmate's final meal
Clockwise from top: "Sweet Red Bean Soup, Konjac Jelly, Isobe Mochi"

Sunday - The Grateful Crane [a Japanese folk tale]
Says: "Thanks you!"

"HOUSE" FINALLY COMING OUT ON DVD

2010-01-13T18:20:00.000-08:00

Exciting news for fans of psychedelic horror, one of my alltime favorite Japanese films is finally getting a proper DVD release (with English subtitles). Eureka Video is planning a 2010 release of cult masterpiece, HOUSE (aka HAUSU), directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi (director of the insane film adaptation of Umezu's Drifting Classroom).

It's been a bit of a challenge to track down, but lots of folks including me know this film from torrents that have made the rounds online. More recently, it was shown at a number of film festivals in the Fall of 2009. HOUSE is an insane and retarded piece of perfection- a visual distillation of most everything we at Same Hat hold dear aesthetically. Flying heads a la Bali Mystics? CHECK. Hand-drawn trippy backdrops and bursts of anachronystic, analog color sfx? CHECK. Singing babes and blood-spewing cats? CHECK. Carnivorous piano and Amityville horror? CHECK.

With help from Evan and Ryan G., we actually projected HOUSE on the wall of my apartment at my last birthday party. This article from the Village Voice helps give some context on this 1977 triumph (is that the right word here?). They say:

An uncanny prophecy of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2 a decade later, this exhumed freaker conjoins New Agey schoolgirl farce and the cheesiest then-there-were-none haunted-house dynamic imaginable, while the painted backdrop skies suggest Teletubbies and the special effects run from solarized-video-absurd to cardboard-hilarious. The rum-stumble cast and crew obey no rules—the movie often seems to have two or three conflicting scores running simultaneously, and inappropriate freeze frames and pointless fades to black are the norm. The story isn't a story at all: A gaggle of sailor-uniformed schoolgirls (with names like Gorgeous, Prof, and Fantasy) head to a weird aunt's cheap-set house for spring break, and start getting minced up, one by one, into crude superimpositions, perambulating body parts, and rivers of blood that look like cherry Hi-C.

It's a real treat to finally get a proper DVD release of HOUSE, and it's my most-wanted film release of 2010. The Eureka Video catalogue doesn't give a specific release date, but I'll be keeping my eyes peeled:

If you're already into HOUSE and can't get enough, I'd like to also mention that Same Hat friend and artist Brendan Ninness created a HOUSE-inspired piece for Electric Ant #2's illustration feature, THESE BLOODY MOMENTS. Here is a smaller version of that piece:

[As always, if you haven't yet you can still purchase a copy of the zine.]

Here's the Japanese trailer for HOUSE, followed by some stills. Enjoy!

UPDATE: As commenter Stephen mentioned, there are rumors that Janus/Criterion are going to be releasing HOUSE in the US as a Criterion DVD/Blu-Ray, as Janus was responsible for organizing the showings of the film at festivals last fall. The just posted this Q&A article on their blog too. That said, it's still sorta unofficial 'til they confirm or put it on their release schedule. Has anyone heard more specifics? (thanks, Stephen!) In the meantime, as Matt points out, Janus is taking HOUSE to independent movie theaters around the US in the Spring and Summer. Full schedule is online here. I'll be at the April 17 show in San Francisco!

2010 STARTS WITH NEW KAGO DAILY COMICS!

2010-01-12T22:48:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year, 2010!

I'm back from another overly-long break and anxious to get going with posts. I spent the last 3 weeks swamped with work at the day job, then traveling to the Midwest to see extended family. More recently, I've had a few weeks to hang out with my GF, watch movies, play Call of Duty (gamertag: "hell of mirrors") and be lazy.

[By the way, I have a New Years Resolution for 2010 to send mail every single day the post office is open, so if you wanna be pen pals, mail me your address to samehatATgmailDOTcom!]

Time to get back to business here on Same Hat. To start what I plan to be a long run of new content, I've posted our friend Shintaro Kago's new batch of daily comic strips! This bunch is more cerebral, but creepy and goofy like you'd expect. Please enjoy these quick translations by me :)

1 - The truth behind Usui Yoshito's passing

2 - Boob-covering Prevention Function

3 - Stone Age LASIK surgery

4 - New condom technique

PS: Kago updated his overseas mail order page, with new B&W original illustrations and now... TOYS!

ORIGINAL PAGES OF ABSTRACTION NOW ON SALE

2009-12-16T10:52:00.000-08:00

Exciting news for Shintaro Kago fans... The original pages of his cereberal & formalist (dare I say?) masterpiece, ABSTRACTION are now on sale. The first two pages are priced at 10,000YEN each, while the remainder of the pages are 30,000YEN each. Big pieces with stunning & intricate line work, these would incredible piece of original art to have and hold.

Ordering instructions are available via the page listed above, along with many more original drawings still available on his site. I actually got a second original by Kago this past week, so my art coffer is all tapped out :)

I emailed with Kago again this week, and he let me know that you can buy copies of a few of his manga directly from him as well. The following titles are available (+ shipping). Simply send a list of what you want to his email and he'll give you an estimate of cost. I've found he gets stuff in the mail within a day or two once you Paypal the money.

アリ地獄vsバラバラ少女 - Arizigoku vs Barabarasyoujo 1,260JPY

おばあちゃんが死体くさいよ - Obaachan ga shitai kusaiyo 1,260JPY

飛び出す妄想 - Tobidasu Mousou 1,565JPY

Happy holidays! I'm heading to the Midwest to visit family starting tomorrow. Will try to write a few posts on the plane(s) and get them up before Christmas. Hope all of you guys are doing really well and have relaxing breaks ahead of you!

LINKS AROUND THE INTERWEBS

2009-12-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

The weekend's completely over and it's been rainy and now feezing cold in San Francisco. Totally bogus. Here are some heard-warming links to interesting reads from the past weekend.

Tokyo Scum Brigade vs. Kazuo Umezz Parts 1 & 2 The big news! My friends at TSB have begun serializing their in-depth interview with Kazuo Umezu! They were lucky enough to visit the Makoto-chan house in person, have lunch with Umezz & Demerin, and interview him on camera a few weeks ago. By everyone's reckoning, this is Umezu's first English language interview. In the first two parts, the TSB boys talk to Uncle Kaz about his childhood, and early encounters with Tezuka's manga and drawing Shojo weeklies. These are a MUST-READ for Same Hat horror junkies!
[PART 1] & [PART 2]

Kazuo Umezu in high school showing off a drawing!

Jog dissects the '80s MANGA anthology (and in doing so, drops major science on the definition of "manga" among Western audiences). This was a fascinating read from pretty much the best comics/manga reviewer on the internet. Jog uses this odd collection of manga (featuring Keizo Miyanishi , Noriyoshi Olai, Otomo and others) as a jumping off point for a long discussion of publishing trends since the early 80s.
[PART 1] and [PART 2]

I DRAW YOUR SHIT series on the Electric Ant Zine Blog! It's a series of posts where we take turns doing tributes/covers to each other's characters. It's admittedly self-referential, but has become a great excuse for the extended EAZB readership to get off out butts each week and draw. So far, we've done TING & TERNG, the conjoined twin bullies from Hellen Jo's Jin & Jam #1, and MAX GUY from Lamar Abrams' Remake. It's open to anyone that wants to join, so check 'em out and take part in the next round (starting on Monday)
[LINK]

The Drifting Classroom: The Game: The Soundtrack OTAKU USA games/anime editor and Same Hat buddy Joseph Luster created a chiptune tribue to an imagined 8-bit game adaptation of Kazuo Umezu's child/anarchism nightmarescape manga Drifting Classroom.
[LINK]

Daul Kim, RIP Not necessarily relevant to everyone here, but I wrote up a short memorial post for the passing of supermodel / blogger Daul Kim, who died by suicide last month. Among other things, Kim was a cool girl and into the same stuff as us: blogging, zines, Shinya Tsukamoto, Wong Kar-Wai, Klaus Kinski, etc.
[LINK]

Who is Makoto Takahashi? Same Hat BFF zytroop has been on a role lately at KURUTTA (despite a tragic hard drive crash), but this post was a stunning gem for me- a collection of art from a "1957 shōjo manga called The Rows of Cherry Trees (さくら並木) by a man named Macoto, or Makoto, Takahashi (高橋真琴)."
[LINK]

I also share a bunch of random posts on Google Reader, which you can see on the links on the left or can view/subscribe to them here.