EARLY MANGA DAYS: RAW #7 (1985)

Managed to finally snag a copy of RAW #7 (May 1985), known as the “torn” issue with a hand-torn corner - but relevant here for the “TOKYO RAW” section. This section always loomed large in my mental imagination, as sorta THE moment of convergence between New York 80s indie (Beyer, Burns, Swart) intersecting with the core GARO team. Seeing it in person, it’s both striking in how contemporary and plugged into a shared aesthetic and moment it seems, while also having so much weird racialized anxiety throughout it. 

While I see a straight line from this RAW issue with musings by Art Spiegelman to the essays and columns of Carl Gustav Horn and Kit Fox in Pulp (and the early manga musings of Eric Nakamura in Giant Robot), the Japan imagined in Raw #7 is held and viewed at arm’s length (or further) while the California Millennial vantage point in Viz’s PULP sees the indie manga contemporaries as adjacent, brothers-in-arms of a shared aesthetic (and politic?).







The main section is 12 pages and features King Terry, Yosuke Kawamura, and Sugiura Shigeru - as well as a special 12 page Tsuge Yoshiharu color ashcan of “Red Flowers.” The typesetting in this latter insert is impressive and extremely contemporary (done by Phil Felix) with a translation by Yoshiko Kasuga and Paul Karasik. This insert is the standout piece of the book - though now we are blessed with the 5 volume (and growing) anthology of Tsuge’s work thanks to D&Q and Ryan Holmberg.







The tabloid size of RAW #7 is the main arresting feature, giving King Terry’s strips a reverence that is deserved and playful. That same wealth of space in the introduction section is a curse - leaving lots of room for edgelord-esque columns and “Gung Ho” stereotypes that would have been wild even back in1985. As an object of history for the early days of manga, it’s a fascinating snapshot of how Art and the New York scene of art comix was observing and monitoring a slice of Japanese cartoonists from afar.