Wednesday, October 31, 2007

COMMEMORATIVE KAZUO UMEZU SNEAKERS!

I just noticed that Umezu (or perhaps it's Demerin, his webmaster/assistant) has been updating his offical Picasa Web Album. The latest addition: Commemorative Umezu Chuck Taylors!








Umezu with his new shoes (In a karaoke booth? Umezu's office??)

The photo album notes say,
"モバイルサイト「ウメズマ」スタッフの皆さんから楳図かずお71歳の誕生日を記念して特注のスニーカーがプレゼントされたのらー!"

In English,
"These special edition sneakers were given to Kazuo Umezu from the staff of the 'UMEZUMA' mobile site in commemoration of Umezu's 71st birthday!"

Dang dude... what a great present! FYI, Umezu's 71st birthday was on September 3, 2007. No word on if there is any possible way for the general public to get their hands on a pair. I'm a size 9.5, if that helps :)

LAST-MINUTE COSTUME IDEAS....

I'm not doing the Halloween thing this year, but I wondered to myself...


IS ANYONE GOING AS KAZUO UMEZU??

The person that did would be my hero forever, and we would immortalize you on Same Hat as the biggest/coolest horror manga nerd in existence!

Click here for reference photos of Uncle Umezu, and click here for instructions on making your own GWASHI hand prop.

(Seriously, if someone does this send us an email at samehatATgmailDOTcom with pics!)

Also, I wanted to point new readers to the HORROR MANGA MAKE-UP post from last year, which might be helpful too. CLICK HERE!



THE BEST POSSIBLE TEZUKA NEWS!

VERTICAL WILL BE RELEASING BLACK JACK!



Yes, you read that right!
According to a PW article, what many consider Osamu Tezuka's finest work has been licensed by Vertical, and they are planning to begin releasing it in Fall 2008. While I've geeked to know we get MW and Dororo, Black Jack has been on the top of my wish list for many, many years. (News via MangaCast)



Previously, Viz had attempted to publish Black Jack, but only released two volumes before discontinuing the series due to licensing conflicts with Tezuka Productions and poor sales (According to Viz folks at this summer's Tezuka Panel in SF). The books are very out-of-print and a bit of a pain to track down:


Of course, the market for manga has changed and Vertical's shown that if you package Tezuka's classic manga as luxury editions, they can sell and turn a profit. I've read various Black Jack collections here and there in Japanese, but having a release by Vertical (with Chip Kidd-ified covers a la Buddha) is a dream come true.

In the meantime, you can check out descriptions of all the Black Jack stories over at this Tezuka World page. They also have included references and guest appearances from other Tezuka manga. A few favorites:

Amidst Fire and Ashes - March 24, 1975
The president of a big company and his son argue over the management of their company. The President wants his son to succeed him, but the son rejects his offer and even threatens to ruin the company. The son falls into the crater of a volcano, and is badly burned. Discovering that he was pushed by his father, Black Jack performs an operation to treat the entangled relationship between them, while all the while the volcano continues to erupt violently.

AND

Wildcat Boy - March 13, 1978
Black Jack visits a clinic in the mountains at the request of a French doctor named Truffaut. There he finds a micro cephalic boy who was raised by a wildcat. His flattened parietal apparently indicates that his head had been sandwiched by objects soon after his birth. If he were to be left untreated, he would not live long. BJ performs an orthopedic operation on his skull and starts to train him to behave like a human. But...


And as far as Black Jack stories go, that's seriously just the tip of the iceberg...


(Click picture above for more Black Jack cosplayers!)

According the the article, the 25 volume series will be printed in wideban format (Vertical estimates their complete English edition will run 12 volumes). Like other Tezuka releases, it's assumed that the pages will be flipped for the English edition.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

NEW COMICS DAY: Osamu Tezuka's MW

I'll be blogging later in the week about other bits of manga/comics news, but first and foremost...

GUESS WHAT CAME OUT TODAY?



MW by OSAMU TEZUKA!!


I've been basically panting for this release for a few months now, and am now about to sit down and read it. 583 pages of raw Tezuka power, here I come! Also, not only is the cover of the book great, the inside hard cover (under the book jacket) is crazy scenes of riots and gas masks wrapped around the spine. Very cool.

If you haven't tracked the book down just yet, you can get a nice preview of the first chapter via Vertical's site. Or just catch the preview pages directly:

Chapter 1, pages 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





In other news, the battery on my Mac (the one with all the pictures from Germany) died recently so I'm way behind on my Frankfurt Book Fair post-- big surprise, right? Meanwhile, I'm also working on posts about Kago and Umezu toys, some details about a new contributor to Same Hat and some pics and finds from the SF ZineFest a few weeks back.

Finally, Evan just got back from a 8-day trip to Japan! Once he recovers from his jet lag, I'll have him post manga news here! Evan was visiting some friends, eating MOS Burger and taking photos at the Tokyo Auto Show. It's good to have him back!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

MANGA: THE COMPLETE GUIDE (or, Thompson's Manga Bible)

As you probably heard, our friend Jason Thompson's incredible manga guidetome has been released! MANGA: THE COMPLETE GUIDE features reviews on EVERY MANGA EVER RELEASED IN ENGLISH (updated through this summer-- yes, he read them all), along with succinct, thoughtful primers on the different manga genres. The Four-Panel Manga primer is on page 111, and Horror is on page 150.

I got my copy from Del Rey last week, and have been poring over it, making lists of things to read and spot-checking Jason's commentary on all my favorite titles. We're a little late to the party, but Evan and I wanted to say-- CONGRATULATIONS, DUDE!



(For those who need a reminder, Jason is a former Viz editor who spent 10 years editing manga, helping launch the English edition of Shonen Jump, working on PULP and Secret Comics Japan, and editing Same Hat favorites like Uzumaki and Gyo. He still works freelance and is the continuing editor of Drifting Classroom and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Oh, and we posted earlier about a manga event at the Asian Art Museum where Jason waxed poetic about manga magazines in Japan.

Dang, it's been a Thompson frenzy in the blogosphere (or is it, mangasphere?), with tons of reviews and interviews with Jason floating around (see here and here, to start). As of this week, THOMPSON FEVER has hit print media too, with a cover feature on HOW MANGA CONQUERED AMERICA in the newest issue of Wired. Jason wrote the 10-pg history of manga comic, with art by Atsuhisa Okura:


Click above image to read the comic

Have people picked up this book yet? It's required reading for any manga fan, and so far I've been using it to compile must-read lists of classics (including tons of stuff outside the usual genres I stick to...), read up on out-of-print titles I've been considering tracking down and seeing what Jason thought of some of my favorites. Generally speaking, the reviews are extremely fair and pretty right on (my only complaint I can remember is that Octopus Girl deserves a 3.5 stars instead of 3! HA!).


(Dubbed 'The 4 Horseman of the Mangapocalypse: Fred Schodt, Gilles Poitras, Patrick Macias, and Jason Thompson')

I also have been reading the book for simple vanity. I actually wrote 12 reviews for Jason, convering some small, hard to find ebook releases. Mine aren't nearly as polished as Jason's (or other guest reviewers like Carl Gustav Horn or Shannon Garrity), but if you have the book, feel free to check them out!

My reviews:
BASS MASTER RANMARU
DREAM HOTEL
ELECTRIC MAN ARROW
HAMSTER CLUB
LOAN WOLF
MOURNING OF AUTUMN RAIN
NURSE CALL
PACHINKO PLAYER
STANDARD BLUE
WILD BOOGIE
URBAN MIRAGE
DEVIL IN THE WATER

Congrats again to Jason-- He worked his ass off on the book for nearly two years (and read WAY MORE MANGA than any human being should), but the end result is an incredibly fun and useful guide. GO BUY IT!

Monday, October 22, 2007

Chip Kidd no longer phoning it in (Dororo covers?)

I've been back for about a week, but catching up on work and life stuff and (surprise, surprise) behind on blogging. I have a ton of things to post, and promise to get all the news, links, reports, and German Cosplay pics up soon!

First post back, let's talk Tezuka. As announced about a month ago, Vertical's Spring 2008 line-up includes a 3-volume release of Dororo. The covers for Volumes 1 and 2 are online at Amazon, and I'm happy to report... Chip Kidd new Vertical Art Director Peter Mendelsund has delivered some extremely great work. I know I'm sortof the king of online hyperbole, but I think these are his best manga covers yet.

Before we check them out, let's take a quick look back... Here is what we've gotten from Chip (to date):


BUDDHA. Sleek and simple hard cover books with continuous spines depicting Buddha's entire life. Set the standard for fancy, high price point manga editions and won tons of awards.
GRADE: A-


ODE TO KIRIHITO. A crazy cover for a crazy story, this cover featured a vertical obi that could be slid back and forth depicting the transmutation of Dr. Kirihito. The inside flaps depicted menacing, shadowy scenes and the entire volume was thicker than the bible. He even used that font everyone seems to use before it got played out.
GRADE: A


TO TERRA: For each volume, Chip juxtaposes one of Takemiya's detailed and emotional close-ups with a battle/earth scene. The author and book details are a bit busy on the front and back covers, and it's hard to tell each indvidual volume apart. They're good but not great.
GRADE: B


APOLLO'S SONG: Well, the color scheme is bold and sort of fresh, but I don't feel any immediate connection to the contents of the book. The crying close-up face is actually a fake obi (glued-on) that gives the illusion of a nude female below. The image underneath is actually tame, and the obi on my book got caught on something in my bag and tore. There's a lot going on here, but it didn't come together for me.
GRADE: B-


ANDROMEDA STORIES: Dude, it's just.. faces? All in profile looking to the left? I like the idea behind sticking Takemiya's usually breath-taking art front and center, but these covers seemed kind of flimsy to me. The typography and entire bottom bar look more like an advanced preview copy.
GRADE: C-

OKAY, NOW FOR THE NEW STUFF


MW: OH SHIT, CHIP. This is more like it! The black and purple is totally striking, and the rectangular panels with parallel MW = ムウ totally works. This cover drips of depravity and bad morals and I love it. Tezuka's art provides so many raw images and options, and Kidd chose well here.
GRADE: A




[[UPDATE: As noted in the comments below, the Dororo covers were done by new Vertical Art Director, Peter Mendelsund! He posted to say,

wow- i ended up on this page totally by accident- and saw your post. Actually, I designed the Dororo covers, all three- and now am hard at work on Tezuka's magnum opus "Black Jack" for Vertical press, where I just started as Art Director. I figgered, as long as i landed here, I might as well set the record straight!

Keep on keeping on,
Peter Mendelsund
]]

DORORO: When I saw these covers on Amazon my first reaction was, HOLY SHIT! NO WAY! That's the kind of design I'm talking about! Dororo seems like a cute adventure, but it's basically about a warrior traveling around killing demons to reclaim forty-eight (48!!) missing body parts.

These covers include lots of imagery NOT from inside the book, depicting limbs, organs and tissues, like a grisly Invisible Man toy set meets Phoebe Gloeckner's Atrocity Exhibition illustrations. Chip Peter's work here is aesthetically striking enough to honor Tezuka's legacy, but isn't afraid to be fucking weird and gross and choppy with the themes and art from within the manga. Mr. Kidd, you have simultaneously given Dr. Tezuka his due and got me extremely geeked for these releases-- RIGHT ON!
GRADE: A+

Here are a few other incarnations of Dororo, a cover from a Japanese release and the live-action adaptation poster:


And if you can't get enough, here is the trailer to the Dororo film (released in Japan earlier this year. I hear that Sony has the US rights for the movie but isn't sure yet how to market and release it for American audiences...


Friday, October 12, 2007

still alive



DISPATCH FROM MY HOTEL LOBBY IN FRANKFURT: No time for a real post yet (and I left my camera cable at home), but here is a quick summary (in unsorted, oblique keyword format!)

diabolik, snot rockets, euro>dollar, glenat>us manga licening, maiwai by minetaro mochizuki, scott mccloud, draw like judith workshops, missing bags, reprodukt, carlsen manga, manga shakespeare, sascha hommer, orang>mome, sore feet, nana 14 in german, shogakukan, catalonia pride, german hotel lounge muzak, hotel lobby wifi, low battery!!!


PICTURES AND NEWS SOON. I'm off to a release party at the Museum für Kommunikation Frankfurt. How's everything with you?

Friday, October 05, 2007

Ryan heading to FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR 2007

FYI: I'll be heading out to the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF), and be out of the country from 10/8 - 10/15.



This will be my second year attending the Fair, and if you're bored you can read all the previous FBF posts in the archives. My plan is to muster up whatever manga and comics reporting I can fit in during my breaks and post it for you guys here.

I read on the TOKYOPOP DE site that Christina Plaka and Anike Hage will be signing at the TPDE booth, and the Deutsche Cosplaymeisterschaft (German Cosplay Championship!) will be happening again. SO RAD!




Another big highlight is that I might be tagging along with friends to a dinner with Sascha Hommer and the Reprodukt crew. As I posted before, Reprodukt is the coolest indie publisher in Germany, like an amalgam between Buenaventura Press, Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics and Dark Horse. Check out their creator stable on the main page if you don't believe me.



Sascha Hommer is an superb cartoonist, and it's a damn shame that no U.S. publisher (Dark Horse? Ignatz? Last Gasp?) has licensed his stuff yet. We posted previously about his fantastic book Insekt.

Sascha's new book Vier Augen (Four Eyes in English), is scheduled to be released in Germany in February 2008. He also is the founder and editor of the comic anthology Orang. Oh, and I also just learned that he did a character design/sketch thingy for Trident gum in Europe.

(UPDATE: From the comments, I hear that the cover to Orang 7 is designed by Moki, a fellow artist in Hamburg. You can check out her site here. Thanks!)



My plan is to buy up any and all comics and magazines he's got on sale.

As a little bonus, I'm reposting strips from his daily comic At the Museum in the German newspaper, Frankfurter Rundschau. He created the strip with friend Jan-Frederik Bandel, and it's been running since May. It sounds like Sascha and Jan-Frederik translated these strips in English themselves, and have already published ~90 strips so far in the paper, with plans to try to collect these into a book later this year.

The strips here start with Episode 40, and were published during July. Enjoy, and leave comments on his blog if you enjoy them!

"At The Museum" (Episodes 40-50) by Sascha Hommer & Jan-Frederik Bandel