An astounding wealth of fucking weird stuff is being accumulated by our friend (and spiritual cousin) at Monster Brains! This week, he's posting any and all things LOVECRAFTIAN, which (of course) warms my heart. The collection of images and links is growing each day, and my favorites so far have been the gnarly Michael Whelan covers that continue to gross me out, ready-to-screenprint size comparisons of the monsters in the mythos, and Michael Komarck's paintings for a Cthulhu CCG (Isn't Magic: The Gathering that already?)... DANG!
Go over to Monster Brains now and pay your respects! ALL HAIL THE KING OF THE COSMICLY CREEPY
Oh, one last thing-- for another example of why Monster Brains is one of our favorite blogs, check out this massive post on The Temptation of St. Anthony. He's collected dozens and dozens of representations of St. Anthony and the beasties he encountered / hallucinated, including an utterly terrifying tryptch by Hieronymus Bosch, along with many more paintings, etchings, and murals. All that, along with some commentary on the influence of this biblical freakfrest on contemporary horror. I love it.
As the name of the post reveals, I wanted to take a minute and write about Swiss cartoonist Thomas Ott (billed on his books as simply T. Ott). Ott's books have been released stateside by Fantagraphics, and he is one of the too-small handful of European comic artists with books released/translated in the U.S. (although :01 and others have been changing this lately, thankfully).
Do people dig his stuff? Are you over it already? Here come the cliches my geeky-alter ago uses to describe Ott's comics: Channeling the dead ghosts of silent cinema (ooh!). Macabre morality plays with contemporary settings and repercussions (oooh!). Short yarns reminiscint of The Twilight Zone blended with the hard knocks zingers of EC's horror comics (ooooh!). BANG BANG BANG-- that shit is all true!
Some of the books that should be on your shelves:
I kept running into his stuff in really odd places in 2006, and I wish I knew more about him and his earlier work (ahem, European readers of this blog--a little help?). From what I gathered, he lives in France, and used to front a band called The Playboys. His work is getting more widely distributed, it seems, and I came across this awesome shirt from a Spencer Gifts-meets-Hot Topic style shop in Berlin, below a records store where I got early Malaria! and DAF records:
Don't pretend that you don't want this t-shirt
It was 25 Euro, but STILL--- why didn't I buy it?
In addition to this, some genius at Penguin tapped Ott to do one of the covers for their Graphic Classics editions-- a series of luxury reprints coupled with covers by indie cartoonists. Radical ones include Akutagawa's Rashomon and other stories, translated by Japanese PopLit all-star Jay Rubin and illustrated by my main man, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and Charles Burns' nasty meat slab cover for The Jungle, and Kerouac's Dharma Bums with a cover by Jason.
But the best, most-inspired edition is T. Ott illustrating the cover of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, with an introduction by the SF-turned-literary, Philip K. Dick-evangelizing author, Mr. Jonathan Lethem. Could you ask for a better team? Shirley Jackson is one of my favorite authors (she wrote a score of creepy stories, including The Lottery, along with claustrophic novels like The Haunting of Hill House) and this is one of her best (and surprisingly hard to track down) books. When I saw the mock-up for this cover back in June 2006, at Penguin's BookExpo America booth, my response was "NO FUCKING WAY!" Check it out:
And that is my squeeling lovefest. Long live the Swiss! Any Europeans have more info on him they want to send our way?
Welcome to the future. After a hiatus for visting family and relaxing, we've reared our heads for more crazy-ass posts. We've got news, gossip, recommendations, rants and tons more original scanlations and original comics coming your way this year.
For those of you that don't know, we are big fans of Johnny Ryan. Honestly, if you're into the weird shit we write about here, you've probably already read his Angry Youth Comix (published by Fantagraphics), seen his gag strip Blecky Yuckerella in your local weekly, or seen his cartoons in Mad or Vice. My old roommate Oli first got me into Johnny's AYC, and we'd check out the newest issues over cheeseburgers and comics as part of our saturday agenda.
Evan ran into Johnny at Comic-Con this past summer, and we were flabbergasted to hear that he had checked out Same Hat! and knew who we were-- turns out Johnny is a big fan of Junji Ito, along with other underground favorites like Suehiro Maruo and Shunji Enomoto (we've put his stuff on our scanlation agenda, per his suggestion), and enjoyed our scanlation, Falling.
This past fall, I bought a piece by JR: a small painting of Chucky that now decorates our apartment:
So, for XMAS 2006, I commissioned two pieces from Johnny as presents: one for Evan, one for myself :) The first was an ensemble shot of 4 characters from a comic Evan was drawing when we were buddies in high school, called Neo-Necropolis. I tricked Evan into scanning and sending some character sketches, and Johnny took it from there. Evan was totally surprised and absolutely LOVED it:
We framed it and it's hanging by Evan's desk right now :)
For myself, knowing that Johnny had said he loved Gyo in an interview recently with The Comics Journal (and this compounded by my intense, intense fear of sharks and love of that comic), I commissioned this:
Me being eaten by the shark-machine from Gyo
Seriously, the best money I've spent in a long time. If you are interested, there are details on his site for ordering your own custom art. Thanks again, Johnny!
More posts coming soon! Hope everyone's 2007 is off to a good start!
Holy crap. These posts are getting tougher to write as the time since my trip gets longer and the details are harder to remember. But I want to get some of these details (and pics) down on the blog. AND-- I want to get to the grand finale: GERMAN COSPLAY CONVENTION pics & videos!
This quick, pic-heavy installment is about a happy coincidence while I was working my company's booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. FBF is the world's largest book fair, and the 10 huge halls there covered all genres, languages and types of printed media. As I've said, I spent all my down time navigating the Graphic Novels section, where European, Japanese, Korean and American comic publishers vied for geek attention, cosplayers roamed and comic creators signed their books. A great surprise was an interview and signing session with Jeff Smith, creator of Bone, who was there to celebrate the German publication of Bone (in both a manga-style B&W and a color version by TokyoPop DE).
German dude, Jeff Smith, German lady
This stop at Frankfurt was part of Jeff's month-long European sojourn, in support of his (near)-simultaneous release of Bone in Italy, Germany, Spain, Norway, Greece, France, and other western/nordic European countries/languages. It's hard to fathom so many people all reading the same title in all those different languages, but Bone definitely has that level of universal appeal. In high school, it was one of the comics that kept me excited about the form, and is my favorite american comic story ever. Jeff actually wrote up his take on the same Frankfurt Book Fair on his blog.
A side note-- I met Jeff in 2004 at WonderCon in SF, and got the chance to tell him how much I appreciated all his work on Bone, and showed him my ratty, broken-spine copy of Out From Boneville. He was super gracious, signed (and put a small drawing in) my book, and even ended a phone call with his wife to chat with me for a few minutes. I don't know too much about him, but I was impressed with his respect for his fans. And his upcoming Shazam miniseries is one of the scant few American superhero comics I plan on buying soon (okay, excepting Volume 4 of Seven Soldiers!!).
Okay, on to the pictures! In the main pavillion of the Graphic Novels section, there was a large Bone display, with numerous paintings, sketches, and behind-the-scenes details on the process of coloring the B&W original pages for the color edition (published by Scholastic in the U.S.) :
Page layout sketches from book 7: Ghost Circles (I think?)
The US Scholastic edition covers, in futuristic frames.
Jeff did a one hour interview with a German host that was well-attended-- lots of nerds and geeks of various ages asked questions in both English and German, and Jeff did his best to talk about the history and future of the Bone stories, along with upcoming projects and issues related to translating the comic. On-stage interview with lots of translating between English & German.
Rapt audience of book and Bone lovers
As I linked above, Jeff did a detailed post on his take on FBF and this event, and a CERTAIN comic geek (dressed in my on-duty, work attire, no less!) was caught in an audience shot: Am I picking my nose? We look like undercover cops or something!!
I shot a video and posted it on our new Same Hat channel on YouTube; Here are Jeff Smith's comments on the (not likely) possibility of a Bone sequel:
Finally, as a personal souvenir, I bought a copy of the TokyoPop "manga-size" edition of their Bone 1 (which combines Out From Boneville & The Great Cow Race into one edition). Hmmm. It doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "STUPID STUPID RAT CREATURES!"
Valley of the uncanny, a page from Out From Boneville in German!
Next post in the series: Trans-Europe Express 5: German gem, Insekt by Sascha Hommer!
Our latest scanlation is something slightly different for us-- Honey #3: a 16-panel gag comic by Yoshida Sensha!
All the awesomeness of previous Sensha scanlations but this time with 4x the fun...er, panels! It is the third installment in a series of unrelated gag strips, taken from a book Nate brought us from Japan a while back. Hope you enjoy!
as usual, please read each panel from right-to-left. Click here (or the image above) for the strip!
That's right... our main man and comedic hero, Yoshida Sensha!
Not too much news just yet, except that it's FREEZING in SF right now, and we survived Thanksgiving holiday in style (Benihana excess and hilarity: shrimp + butter + fancy island drinks = retardo fun for Evan, me and my lady). Our next project is about 75% done and we're excited to get it posted soon: A 15-panel gag strip by MR. YOSHIDA SENSHA. We're hoping to have this up next week, and then we're following that up with a 16-PAGE short story as well. ZANG!!
In the meantime, there are some NEW SENSHA TOYS from Artstorm available.
Next up: Trans-Europe Express 4: Jeff Smith and his Bone in deutsch
Gwoemul (AKA THE HOST) - the FRESHEST monster movie of 2006?
This might be old news to the lucky readers that live outside of the US and saw this released already. From a few folks, I've been hearing really amazing things about Gwoemul (The Host in English, グエムル in Japanese). Sounds like a a mix of solid, monster & murder mayhem, political commentary on fucked up post-colonialism in E. Asia, with a dash of the joke stylings of Korean comedies.
The story takes its starting point from a real event: "The event described in the beginning of Gwoemul is based on an actual event. In February 2000 in a US military facility located in the center of Seoul, US military civilian employee Mr. McFarland ordered to dispose formaldehyde into the sewer system leading to Han River despite the objection of a Korean subordinate. Korean government attempted to prosecute Mr. McFarland in Korean court but US military refused to hand over the custody of Mr. McFarland to the Korean legal system. Later, a Korean judge convicted Mr. McFarland in absentia. Public enraged at the Korean government's inability to enforce its law on its own soil. In 2005, nearly five years after the original incident, Mr. McFarland was finally found guilty in Korean court in his presence. He never served the actual prison sentence, however." - from IMDB
Here is one of a few English reviews online. You can check out the UK Trailer here:
For some more info and stills, The Japanese official site has a lot of details. According to Twitch, even even Kim Jong-ill loved the movie, for it's 'anti-American influence' stance and subtext.
Has anyone seen this? Was it as radical as it sounds? Twitch says it's set to come out in the US at the end of January.
Is this the greatest t-shirt ever made?! YOU BE THE JUDGE.
I came across this at one of the boutiques on Haight this past weekend:
Mishima. Pink ON Pink with Stars... And the kanji says: SUPER-GAY LOVER!! (literally: cho-douseiaisha)
I want to know... who is the demented genius that designed this thing? For those of you interested, here is the famous original image of Yukio Mishima used as the source.
EDIT! Thanks to whoever commented this info. Turns out the shirtmaker is local (from details in his blog) and you can buy the ULTRAHOMO shirt directly at his site, Seibei!!
Updated: SAME HAT stopped updating in 2013! For all new projects, please see Youth in Decline's sit and Instagram.
All fan translations of manga that you'll see in the archives are previously untranslated into English and range from comedy to horror to avant-absurd weirdness.
Same Hat is written & edited by Ryan. If you would like to contact me, please email: samehat @ gmail.com. Also, you can Ask me anything on the Same Hat Tumblr!
