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!
Thursday, July 01, 2010
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20 comments:
Somebody needs to pick up rights to republish select strips from Comic Cue as well as Garo and release more anthologies like they did with AX. This is life sustaining manga, because let's admit it, the vast majority of what's being translated these days is complete and utter shite. I want to rediscover the originality introduced to me back in the 'early manga days'. Everything used to be so fresh and mind blowing...
Hahaha, this is fantastic. Love the title, too.
Excellent post! A quick furuya question...
do you know why 51 Ways To Save Her vol. 1 was taken off Amazon? Was it canceled or something? :(
@Mr.Alchemy: Couldn't have said it better myself :) Thanks for the great comment!
@Joseph: I thought you might like this one
@RSS: Thanks! OH yeah man, I do know why and it's going to bum you out. I'm guessing you maybe heard the news last month that DC is shutting down their CMX manga imprint? This means their new titles are not gonna be coming out :( It fucking SUCKS that we lost our chance for a proper Furuya series to finally come out.
Good stuff! Looks like Bruegel's Tower of Babel makes an appearance in there too. Looking forward to the future photodumps...
Thank you so much for sharing. This stuff is awesome. It's rather maddening to think there's a whole wealth of crazy goodness that we'll never see translated.
It reminds me that the other day I was poking around my books and found two old issues of Tokion fashion magazine I'd bought because they each came with a bound-in mini-comic insert with strips by Mimiyo Tomozawa, Hanakuma, etc. I think I'm gonna scan'em and stick'em online.
Funny, "Angelic Fellatio" was just recently sc****ted by Kotonoha as part of "Garden," arguably Usamaru Furuya's best anthology to date. You haven't seen the guy's real talent until you're read "Book of the Moon" and "Emi."
I actually have owned this issue for over a decade. At the time, both Kinokuniya and Asahiya (now sadly closed), had small sections devoted to underground manga, and one of them had back issues of various underground manga magazines, including Comic Cue. Alas, I was only starting to get interested in manga at the time, so I only bought a couple. Now, of course, I wish I'd bought everything they had.
Your summary of Tenshi no Fellatio misses some key points. A more detailed summary: The girl (named Maria) isn't an angel, despite the halo she's shown with in two panels. She was visited by an angel, who basically told her that she was chosen to be a second Virgin Mary and to give birth to a "special child" (in the non-euphemistic sense). She doesn't like the idea, and reasons that if she's not a virgin, she can't be a virgin mother, which is why she wants to have sex with the dork. The goal of the cherubs is to prevent her from having sex: their fellatio is apparently literally mind-blowing, as the recipients' ecstasy is so great that their brains are permanently scrambled. After repeatedly being foiled in this manner, Maria gives up and accepts her destiny.
I notice you didn't mention Machino Henmaru's contribution, even though it's hard to ignore. I suspect that you won't be scanning that one, even though it out-depraves Furuya's story by a considerable margin.
Amazing post, Ryan. Looking forward to seeing more of your Tokyo finds.
Awesome.
I laughed at that more than I have any strip in ages even without being able to read it. Viz or someone needs to translate Palepoli. It might be a commercial failure but it would be the right thing to do morally. I think.
Adam has made me want to see Machino Henmaru's work now. Scan it. Dares ya.
By the way, the above Adam is not me. He has a much more enviable knowledge and collection and knowledge of manga than myself by the sounds of things.
Adam- Most of Palepoli was translated as part of "Secret Comics Japan", a book Viz printed when the Pulp anthology was still coming out. They printed the rest of it in the magazine itself- it's pretty uneven, but there are a handful of pages that are the funniest stuff I have ever read.
@Scott: Ah, good catch- i totally missed that :) More stuff coming soon!
@Root: Would love to see those if you get them up somewhere.
@anonymous: oh what a weird coincidence! I wonder how long Kotonoha will be around with the publishers consortium knocking down doors...
@Adam: Oh crazy, sounds like you had quite the hook-up! Comic Cue was one of those anthologies I had heard mentioned online but never saw until my recent trip Spring.
Thanks for the elaborated write-up! I totally glossed over all the nitty-gritty, mea culpa x2. I'll put a link in the post pointing to your explanation, thanks for that!
That's funny you mention the Machino Henmaru piece, i actually thought it was one of the weaker comics in the collection. Not really my thing.
@jimpac: Thanks dude, more soon I promise!
@Adam @Sean: Yes definitely, I have the complete Palepoli here from my gf, and the pulp back issues on a shelf somewhere. I have to go check, I get the impression looking at the jp book here that there must be a lot of it that Viz never got to... (Same with his Short Cuts, which you also must track down-- 2 small collections came out in English reprinting the PULP stuff) but maybe I'm forgetting. Either way, some of the stuff in Secret Comics Japan is really fantastic like Sean says--- you can get a sorta insight into Furuya's mind and it's a crazy-ass wonderful place!
Incredible author. I love short cuts! Ja is incredible the storytelling of these ones you post. I think Furuya deserves more attention than no one in the world. He has done for more than a decade a lot of incredible work.
I am reading his new series Genkakku Picasso and it is wonderful.
Saludos from Argentina, as always keep up the good work.
ps: Dont forget to put the other story of kaze shinobu of the epic illustrated!!
ps2: I have a doubt about heartbroken angels. I know there are three volumes and viz only release two of them. Does the second volume has a continue to the third volume? ¿Or each volume finish there?
Good news: Viz recently announced that they had licensed Genkaku Picasso. The first volume is supposed to appear on November 3.
@azraelito: Thanks dude, I agree he is probably one of the most under- appreciated out of the creators that have been licensed into English. When I look at his comedy strips, and Palepoli, and Plastic Girl, I'm convinced of his amazing skill (genius?). He is so versatile.
You don't need to worry about continuity in Heartbroken Angels-- Kikuni has some reoccurring characters and jokes but mostly each strip stands alone as a 4koma. I would definitely recommend getting the two books that Viz put out if you can. Some of my alltime favorite gag manga in English.
>@anonymous: oh what a weird coincidence! I wonder how long Kotonoha will be around with the publishers consortium knocking down doors...
Oh, I would LOVE to see the coalition start suing individual fans/scanlators. Of course, since it looks like they are unlikely to get rid of Mangafox and Onemanga anytime soon, what better way to polish your image than to drag scanlators (who actually try to play by the rules) to court.
BTW, since SameHat is hosting scanlations itself, shouldn't you be worried too? ;)
@Anonymous hahaha, fair enough :) It's all "in the past" to me really, but Evan & I always had a very specific approach and perspective from the beginning (single strips or short stories, only unlicensed stuff, no hosting full books or english-published stuff).
It's a big-ass confusing argument to get into, but i see a big difference between Kotonoha vs. OneManga... I actually haven't read anything in scans for a few months so it sorta is unrelated to my daily life in a sense. That said, I think the main thrust of it is more about 1st-world vs. rest-of-the-world in terms of usage and fairness. I have no sympathy for the lazy American dude who is too cheap to buy/wait for new Naruto chapters, but when it's a dude in like Turkey or S. India with no $$$/access for legit English products OR japanese books then the whole thing gets confusing. My .02 on that part of it, but generally I'm not interested in getting into that discussion :B
I've had Comic Cue number 1 for a few years now, but only read it for the first time about a month back. Mostly excellent except I found it weird there were two stories in there focussed on piano lessons. Just a pointless observation.
KS
@Kumar: Oh cool, what a coincidence! I was trying to figure out how many issues came out in total before they shut down-- it seems like more than 5 but less than 12? They had a bunch of random issue (for $4 each?) at a Koenji Bunko Center (a little used comics and clothes shop there). The main deterrent from grabbing more was simply space and weight.
Very unshocking revelation, but I always am so surprised/pleased by the lack of "collector" mentality in Japan vs. America. Seems like it's less so in the US than it was in the 90s, but in Japan it's great how cheap and not that hard to find old issues of stuff like CUE or AX or even COM. :)
(Thanks for stopping by!)
The Wiki page says 12 volumes total (though with funny numbers -- 10, 11, and 12 were numbered 100, 200, and 300).
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMIC_CUE
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