unrequited desire in the men's room

A new Yoshida Sensha strip!

as usual, please read from right-to-left.

greenday

It's Midori no Hi in Japan today

(That's "GREENERY DAY"-- The holiday formerly known as the Showa emperor's birthday)

For reasons not too hard to understand, I'm not a huge fan of this holiday. My communist host family in Osaka knew the score: despite it's enviromentally-charming name change & makeover, how could anyone celebrate the birthday of someone who allowed (or helped plan, depending on who you talk to...) a war that caused the deaths and murders of millions?

Soon, Japan's going to change the name back to "Showa no Hi" in 2007, according to this article in the Asahi newspaper



For our "celebration," we're re-posting our first Suehiro Maruo story, "Farewell Showa" -- a sardonic rumination on the passing of Hirohito and the end of a bloody era.



GOOD NEWS! We'll be posting a new Yoshida Sensha strip later tonight!
CHECK BACK LATER!

aaron k's horrorshows

VACUUM HORROR
While we work on some new comics for you (2 Suehiro Maruo shorts, 3 new Yoshida Sensha strips, and epic Kazuo Umezu & Junji Ito undertakings), we want to provide you with some free, radical comics. The links to these comics by aaron k. come courtesy of mr. derek yu (thank you!), and have some really exciting & disturbing panels and images. The above image links to "Vacuum Horror," a 50-page story about intergalactic appliances, lawless incest stepdads and gore, gore, gore!

Also:

Check out, 20,000 leagues under nebraska, a short/unfinished tale about homemade dimension-jumping and communist bee-people. There's also the hyper-corporate salaryman-tale of HYPERCO, and other sketches by Aaron K..

ENJOY! more translations coming soon!

* BOOM! *

Sorry about the recent slow-down in posting. We both now have full-time jobs, and free time has diminished a bit, thus we're probably going to post 2-3 times a week (as opposed to every other day) for a while. As usual, please read from right-to-left.

welcome back kazuko!

Another Yoshida Sensha strip, one of our favorites. Simple, but I really LOVE that last panel!!

as usual, please read from right-to-left.

NEW PURCHASES

A short post today, since I'm feeling a bit under the weather. On Saturday, after checking out the booths at APE, and seeing Los Brothers Hernandez, Seth, Dan Clowes, Adrian Tomine and Johnny Ryan, we headed over to J-Town for dinner. We also visited Kinokuniya and picked up NEW MANGA to translate!



The first thing we bought was a copy of the first volume of Kazuo Umezu's Baptism, which was later adapted into the movie Baptism of Blood. It is the story of a beauty-obsessed woman who attempts a brain transplant on her daughter, leading to horrific, g-ross results.



The second book we got is a collection of short stories by Junji Ito called "Rojiura," much akin to the look and feel of the stories in FLESH-COLORED HORROR. This collection includes some like "The Town with No Roads," "The Ice Cream Bus," "Memory," "The Smoking Club," and one called "The Back Alley." It looks to be really really beautiful and creepy.

Along with more gag strips from Yoshida Sensha, and two more strips by Maruo (a 7-pager and a 20-pager), we will be hoping to put up pages from these collections soon! Tomorrow Wednesday, we'll be putting up the strip that supplied the bottom half of the zine cover. Also, I'm mailing a few copies of the zine off tomorrow to those of you who asked for them!

daddy's little helper

Please enjoy our latest Yoshida Sensha strip!

as usual, please read from right-to-left.


In other news, I just read Kazuo Umezu's Orochi:Blood... Now I wish I could track down the entire series, as this one is apparently book six of a reoccuring story Umezu wrote. Also, reading up on this, came across this, an interesting explanation of the mythological Orochi. Wheeee

DESTINATION: A.P.E.

APE this weekend in San Francisco!

Just wanted to post a quick reminder that the Alternative Press Expo is going on this weekend. My lady friend and I will be going up on Saturday to meet Evan for the show. There's nobody especially exciting we wanna meet (though Adrian Tomine, Johnny Ryan and Dan Clowes seem to come every year), but hopefully we can pick up some cool indie comics, buttons or zines.

Additionally, we'll be passing out a free 16-page 'zine' we threw together last night as a promotion for this blog. It contains about 6 pages of Yoshida Sensha strips, 2 Suehiro Maruo shorts and an ad for the upcoming comic that my girlfriend and I are writing (Ok, she is doing most of the heavy lifting and i'm a rookie when it comes to this stuff, but it's a collaboration!) and Evan will be illustrating. Look for more info on that original comic in the coming weeks on this blog. We're thinking: exploding corpses, child narrators and mind-controlling parasites-- you dig?

Here is the cover of the comic we'll be handing out. If anyone really wanted one, we might be able to send some extras to readers of this blog. If you are interested, send us an email at samehat @ gmail.com and we'll get back to you early next week about it!



PS. blogger sucks! this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but blogger was on the fritz ALL DAY!

Maruo's 'TOTALLY SCARY'

Happy to announce a new short by the macabre master, Suehiro Maruo. PLEASE ENJOY! < /hell yess! >

This story was originally published in the Japanese collection "New National Kid" in 1999.



AS USUAL, PLEASE READ from RIGHT-TO-LEFT
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beware, backwash falls!!

BOOOO. It's rainy and dreary on this Sunday night. Thank the maker for daylight savings though-- now it wont be dark when I get out of work. Spring has sprung-- usher out the rainstorms and hoodies, and usher in night breezes, gfs in skirts, spring haircuts and the beginning of blockbuster movie season!

if you haven't seen SIN CITY yet, then you need to get yourself off the streets and into a movie theater, my friend!

ENJOY the latest Yoshida Sensha strip:

as usual, please read from right-to-left.


we'd love to have this blog be more interactive, so please leave any comments you have! since SIN CITY came out this weekend, maybe we can chat movies. what comic book adapation OR j-horror remake are you looking forward to this year?

missile me

R.I.P. BILLY 'BASS' WOLF


seiji & billy from the guitar wolf show we saw just 2 weeks ago.


On the comics front, we have another half dozen or so Yoshida Sensha strips, along with two Suehiro Maruo shorts (3-6 pagers) that we're finishing this weekend. Also, we decided on a semi-regular posting schedule-- new comics every other day, comics news and recommendations as we get the feeling. ENJOY!

as usual, please read from right-to-left.