Back in business after after a short lull in activity on the site, I wanted to show off some of the awesome finds we had during two trips to New York this past winter. While both SF and NYC have equally impressive Kinokuniya stores for new English manga releases, New York wins the manga arms race because of one secret weapon, nestled midtown about a block from the New York Public Library... BOOK-OFF!
BOOK-OFF is used-book chain that's pretty ubiquitous in Japan, but only a few exist in the States in LA, Honolulu and New York. For us, this shop (and more specifically, the second-floor used Manga valhalla) is a required stop whenever we're lucky enough to make it out East.
These manga stacks are actually where we've found some of the source materials for past scanlations we've done. The only downside to the place is that the second floor is REALLY HOT and STUFFY (we think intentionally to keep people from standing and reading for hours on end). So, here are some pics of recent gems... YES, this post is basically us bragging about awesome shit we got for cheap!
Osamu Tezuka's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT!
As some of you may know, Tezuka did tackle a few classics of Western Lit in manga form (the other most notable being Faust). Hearing about this firsthand at the Tezuka Museum in Kansai, I was both baffled and excited to hear that Tezuka had ventured to take on the canonical, existential tale of Raskolnikov. The story is really dense, even in comic form (duh) and the panel work is a weird mix of his 1950s style and more experimental layouts-- for example, holding the fixed and limited vantage point of the stairwell for pages and pages, while we know that Raskolnikov is inside killing the old pawnbroker and workmen are just down the stairs (in and out of the bottom of the panel) was an intense and interesting choice.
It's also vaguely weird and compelling to see the conflict between the detective Porfiry and Raskolnikov portrayed by Tezuka's archetypal cast of characters.
I'm not sure that Tezuka's Crime and Punishment is that hard to track down in Japan, but it seems most American fans of Buddha, Astroboy and Phoenix might not yet be aware of it. You can read more details on the Tezuka site. Please enjoy these pics... (Oh, and in case you were wondering, he DOES manage to polish off the entire novel in only 130 pages of manga!)
Kasei Rumba (Martian Rumba) by my man, Yoshida Sensha!
And perhaps the greatest find we could possibly hope for: An original, hardcover COLOR edition of UTSURUN DESU Vol.1 (伝染るんです) by Yoshida Sensha!
..and finally, LONG LIVE THE KING!!
Happy non-religious Vernal Equinox today! More manga news posts are coming soon. Regarding our scanlations, last night I finally finished the translation for Yoshida Sensha's The Young Bandit and passed the script on to Evan for touch-up and lettering. More soon, I proooooomise!
To date, this is the only the second horror manga tattoo we've ever seen (remember the Kazuo Umezu tattoo from last year?). But, this might be the most radical personal tribute to Guro/Horror manga in existence (hyperbole? we think not). Evan's friend Beth -- a Japanese horror & Suehiro Maruo fangirl hailing from Sacramento -- had previously posted some in-progress pics of her full back tattoo on her LJ.
During our recent NYC trip, we opened up a copy of Japanese tattoo magazine TATTOO BURST to find... a picture of Beth modeling her completed tattoo: Midori (the Camellia Girl) from Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show! All we can say is: WOW!!
This past weekend was a bit of a whirlwind: Evan & I flew out to New York to stay with our buddy at Columbia and attend NEW YORK COMIC CON! And yeah, basically everyone else has already posted their con reports, but it's taken me a few days to get this thing pieced together. In between freezing our asses off, hanging out all night with new & old friends, and dropping by a few touristy spots, we managed to get to NYCC for a few hours on Friday night and most of Saturday.
As some other bloggers have mentioned, NYCC itself was a mixed bag this year, as far as programming & exhibitors go. It wasn't nearly as well-planned or glitzy as San Diego, while at the same time the indie scene kids that show up at things like APE were nowhere to be found. I have high hopes for future incarnations, but so far the con doesn't seem like it really knows what it wants to be about yet: celebrities? manga? media tie-ins? the mainstream comic hegemony?
[EDIT: Here is the best recap of the con I've seen yet, in 4-panel comic form by Michael Kupperman!]
THE MAJOR BREAKTHROUGHS IN FUN: - Taking an actual vacation from work and going on a cross-country trip like Evan & I used to do in the old days. - Hanging out three consecutive nights with an utterly awesome crew of friends (me, Evan, Nate, Anne from Vertical, Eric & Michelle from Giant Robot) for drinks, Oscars watching and karaoke madness.
NEWS & NOTABLES FROM NYCC (according to Same Hat):
Vertical in 2007 is lined up to be the new manga powerhouse and moving into awesome territory. At their booth, Vertical handed out thick manga samplers highlighting their upcoming titles. I picked up my official copy of To Terra Vol.1 by Magnificent 49er Keiko Takemiya, and that book does NOT disappoint. I'm about 2/3 through it as of right now, so I'll post properly once I've had a chance to digest it (and read the Vol.2 preview!).
Their Aranzi Aronzo line of toy/craft books are off and running (and so damn cute), but the big news for us is the summer release of Tezuka's APOLLO SONG. They describe it as "Philip Roth meets Philip K. Dick," and it'll be another immaculate huge-form edition similar to Ode To Kirihito. What more could you ask for? Other upcoming manga releases in late 2007 include 3 volumes of the Guin Saga manga, Takemiya's Andromeda Stories and Tezuka's MW (I know, HOLY SHITBALLS!).
Also from Vertical, on the purely textual front-- David Kalat's J-Horror tome looks to be very solid. We've included pics & clips from his talk below.
Good & bad news on the horror manga front from Viz & Dark Horse. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Dark Horse stopped caring about horror manga in 2007 (ouch!), but that was definitely the image they were projecting at NYCC. To be clear, we still love Dark Horse and have been buying up all the adventurous & high-quality horror manga they've been putting out. However, we are slightly worried about their committment to these titles, and the booth presence didn't help to assuage these fears.
Their booth was Star Wars & Hellboy-d out, with a few copies of Trigun on the table for effect. They DID feature a really gorgeous MPD Psycho banner (and the DH guy I know via work was really excited about the series), but no Ito, no Umezu and no Housui Yamazaki. Check out this note on the MPD Psycho DH page: "Originally licensed by another U.S. publisher, MPD-Psycho was deemed too shocking for them to release. But Dark Horse is always prepared to give manga readers what they want!" Interesting stuff-- does anyone know who originally licensed this one?
We did get official word though (as if you couldn't guess it): Museum of Terror 4 (and beyond) is NOT happening. Bummer x1000 on that one.
In other horror news, Viz confirmed officially that they will be re-releasing Gyo & Uzumaki under their Signature imprint (home to Drifting Classroom and Golgo 13). This is great news because 1) the titles have become semi-out of print and hard to track down and 2) the Signature editions will be unflipped in the original Japanese format. Nice work, Viz!
The old dudes still know how to work it. NYCC didn't feature any of the contemporary artists I've been dying to finally meet, like Charles Burns, Michael Kupperman or Lynda Barry, but the old guard of white dudes was in full effect, including JIM STERANKO, STAN LEE and... ROB LIEFELD?? See below for pics!
Meeting lovely people is easy (when you know where to look). We had really good luck meeting and hanging out with the Giant Robot kids, Brigid from MangaBlog, Stephen from Fanfare, author David Kalat & book designer Chip Kidd. Pictures below!
The Indie comics/Manga/female readership thing is NOT HAPPENING: the overarching vibe at NYCC. Eric nailed this on his blog, saying "Comicons are usually about comics and what's around it, but NY is still in the dark ages. Comics reign. The toy thing isn't really happening in NYC." We really had a fucking blast, but I certainly felt the comics old guard was in full effect both among attendees and a majority of exhibitors.
We missed some people this time-- APE, San Diego here we come! Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to run into a few bloggers/readers that we were hoping to meet in person. Typolad, Pedro, Chris-- sorry we missed you! Let us know if you'll be at APE or San Diego and we'll remedy this with a quickness! (FYI: Same Hat is tabling as part of the Bang Gang at APE again this year, with our friends Derek, Hellen & Anthony)
OK NOW, ON TO THE PICTURES!
The very generous Stephen Robson, editor of Fanfare/Ponent Mon, hooked us up with free books and told us about his upcoming releases. We're planning to do a big post soon, featuring the beautiful graphic novels they've put out, including the award-winning Japan: As Viewed by 17 Creators, amazing Jiro Taniguchi books and Kazuichi Hanawa's Doing Time.
Manga blogger powerhouses finally come face to face! We were absolutely delighted to meet & chat with Brigid Alverson of MangaBlog! Anne & I decided that she'd basically be the coolest aunt ever, and are demanding she adopts us. If you don't already read it, (You don't? Are you a loooser?) MangaBlog is basically THE place for a daily round-up of all things manga-related on the web. I check it every morning over my first cup of coffee :)
David Kalat, author of Vertical's new J-Horror: The Definitive Guide to The Ring, The Grudge and Beyond, gave a really informative and well-researched talk with lots of video clips (including a Bollywood remake of The Eye!). Hopefully we'll be able to feature an interview with him in an upcoming post as the book's release gets closer.
Clip of David talking about the codification of J-horror standards: black hair, white dresses, scary female ghosts:
David talking about the J-Horror trend of filmmakers making & remaking the same stories:
Dark Horse's house of comics & film tie-ins (but not manga)
Wait, I lied-- Here is their MPD PSYCHO banner!
Tokyo Pop's fully-stocked store/booth.
HANDS DOWN, best cosplayer of the entire con! The Stormtrooper King!
Spiderman cosplayer is bringing sexy/black.
Fanboys abound, including this dude with the BEST SHIRT EVER. (yes, that is a silk ninja vs. viper bowling shirt)
After seeing this, my current obsession with the new Dr. Who will never be the same.
TOYS! by KAWS
TOYS! from FLCL
Living legend (and Karl fucking Lagerfeld look-alike) JIM STERANKO! We bought beautiful calendar pin-ups of naked female superheroes from him.
STAN the man LEE, famous for his numerous film appearances. Oh yeah, and inventing every superhero archetype ever.
Somehow Rob Liefeld honestly hasn't aged a single day. He still draws thighs the size of oak trees and heads the size of Beanie Babies.
After the con, we found our way to Kinokuniya NYC & BOOK OFF:
The most exciting news first: Evan and I are flying out to attend NEW YORK COMIC CON!
This was a last minute decision, but despite the potential FEET of snow and frigid temperatures, we've decided to take a trip to visit our buddy at Columbia, hang out with friends from Vertical, meet Stephen King (!), and eat pommes frites & sing karaoke. YES!
Is anyone else attending the con? We're mostly hoping to score new and/or free comics, meet Jeff Smith (this time in America), Wes Craven, Public Enemy, Jim Steranko, and hopefully chat with David Kalat.
Let us know if you'll be around-- we'll be there all-day Saturday, probably hanging out at Vertical or Giant Robot's booths during down time.
After looking at their schedule for upcoming horror comics, I decided to start a a thread on the Dark Horse manga message board.
I applaud DH for releasing so many good horror titles, but wanted to bitch about the increasingly frustrating pattern in which they abandon a series at the Volume 3 mark, leaving the rest of the books in limbo (Most notably, Museum of Terror, School Zone and Scary Book...)! The text of my initial post is here:
Hi Dark Horse,
I'm an avid reader of comics, and my tastes run the entire gamut from american mainsteam and indie comics to european graphic novels to all things manga. I've met a few people from Dark Horse/DH at book fairs over the past year, and with my good friend, run the underground manga site Same Hat (samehat.blogspot.com)
I'm a huge fan of what you've been doing lately in horror manga, and we noticed a real upswing in the quality of your books and the titles you were licensing in 06 and into 07. I've talked extensively about your great work on Museum of Terror, Octopus Girl, Lullabies from Hell, and most recenly Mail & Kurosagi on our site:
THAT SAID, we've been really sad to notice that MANY of your horror manga titles are only making it to volume 3 before they get killed/discontinued or left off the schedule. Right now, I know that School Zone, Scary Book, Octopus Girl, Musuem of Terror, Mail and Kurosagi have only been scheduled through volumes 3, with further issues nowhere on the schedule.
This is a major bummer as a reader. I assume this is a mix of sales figures not meeting expectations and a slew of other reasons, but it's turning into a really bad trend that leaves us readers frustrated.
Having read some of these titles in Japanese, I know that series like Museum of Terror, Scary Book and others go much longer--- Museum of Terror has 15 total volumes, I believe. Can you please let us, as the rabid fans who pick up your books each week, know what is going on with these? More transparency please on this issue. Also, as much as I do applaud you licensing titles like these, it will be for naught if Dark Horse ends up pulling the Miramax route of grabbing something good and not releasing it, keeping it away from readers indefinitely .
I know that sales are what really matter, but other companies like Tokyopop and ADV seem to be making their books work and fulfilling their committment by publishing the entire series of Dragon Head & Cromartie. Not sure about Dragon Head, but I know from ADV folks that Cromartie's sales for Vol. 3 were not strong compared the best-selling manga titles (naruto, etc) but they've decided to stand by the title because they believe in it (and there is a dedicated group of fans that feel the same and think VERY highly of them for putting out Cromartie).
Readers of our blog were so delighted by your pulishing of Museum of Terror (especially when you consider how poorly ComicsOne originally handled the series), but we want to know... what's next for these series that you've left in limbo? I am very excited for more good news and good books from you guys
Appreciatively, Ryan
A lively debate is starting up (with our friend Tina and others) and hopefully someone from DH will reply soon to give some explanations and let us know what to expect in coming months. Head over and take part in the conversation!
Thanks to the readers that have written us recently! We've gotten a few extremely generous and nice emails from readers all over the globe-- cool folks with equally twisted, equally peculiar tastes. Thanks for reading Pedro, Radek & everyone else we've heard from!
Clay, gaijin abroad and Same Hat reader, has (perhaps unwittingly) become the internet's star expert on the laughably awful, ridiculous movie adaptation of Kazuo Umezu's Drifting Classroom.
A few weeks ago, Clayton did a video review of the late-80s, multilingual film adaptation of this infamous horror manga. The review is hilarious, and is only outdone but the utter SHITTINESS and CRAZINESS of this film:
You can also view the review directly on his site. Most recently, Clayton was somehow able to score an interview with one of the child stars of this film, Arthur Johnson, who talks about his experience as an African-American kid in Japan starring in a Umezu adapation. in the Eighties. that was in English. Stuff like this is the why internet is teh best!!
Thanks again for the links and patronage, Clayton!
Here are 10 minutes of selected shorts from the film:
A few weeks back, Journalista and other blogs posted about a deviantART site member who had posted fan art of the Simpsons and Futurama characters done up her own 'Anime-style'. Turns out spacecoyote (aka Nina Matusmoto from Vancouver) did the drawings as a joke for a few of her friends, and the digg/del.icio.us/fark machine took over, granting Nina the coveted and surreptitious honor of Internet famousness.
Here are the two pics (click for full-size):
Holy shitballs, in this case it seems that Internet famousness has alchemically mutated into fame IRL, as she's now received job offers from Bongo/Groening to work on a comic for them, along with possibly the upcoming relaunch of Futurama (DANG!). According to her livejournal, she's also been contacted by a yet-unnamed US manga company about doing a comic with them. Oh, and Nina was also recently interviewed by the Toronto Star, which you can click here to read.
To be totally honest, at first I was sortof, well... MORE enamored with the story of fan-art turning into a real job (it's like a Harry Potter slash fiction piece getting turned into an actual TV pilot!) but LESS taken with the actual piece. Something about the SIMPSONZU pic creeped me out (though, the Futurama one is pretty damn nifty). Well, I've come across ANOTHER piece by Nina that basically affirms her position as geek-made-good starlet, deserving of her luxurious job offers: The cast of Death Note as Simpsons characters!
Okay, I'm sold!
PS: Dorkdom omake, Nina's redux of My Neighbor Totoro in the Simpsons' style:
PPS: I have to wonder, did the person who did the Battlestar Galactica characters in Simpsons style get any job offers?
Okay, okay-- So I've read over our last, hmmm 3 or 4 posts, and I DO see that we basically have devolved into hyperbolic "OMG!1, you HAVE 2 check out this AWESOME [fill_in_the_blank]!~#@" ravings. But jeez, I think we're at a historic comics/cultural epoch, where there is basically a rapidly and exponentially exploding amount of cool graphic novels/manga/publishers, and the number of hours outside of work to nerdily blog about them is, sadly, not increasing any time soon.
BUT we're doing our best, and splitting leisure between a goal of posting at least once weekly, and slaving away on more long-form scanlations and an original comic for APE 2007 (More details later). Right, OK... back on the COOL SURPLUS tip, this post is about our newest cartoonist crush, this time hailing from Germany: Mr. Sascha Hommer.
Sascha Hommer(real name = Pascal Bohr) is a German cartoonist, currently residing in Hamburg. He's a young dude, born in 1979, and has been busy and active in the German comics scene for a few years. For one, Sascha founded and edited the German comic anthology/magazine, ORANG, which is still going strong but no longer under his tutelage.
He also guest edited issue 82 of the luxurious and thick publication, STRAPAZIN, from Zurich. STRAPAZIN is like a weirder, more avant stepsister to The Comics Journal, and I wish something like this was being published in US. You can check out the one issue I picked up here, which included Same Hat staples like Tatsumi, Maruo, Takano Fumiko, Tsuge Yoshiharu, and Furuya. D-D-DANG.
Sascha has published shorts in ORANG and other places, but his first major release was just this past year, with his graphic novel INSEKT, put out by Reprodukt. Stroke of weird luck for that trip #217-- I got to meet him at Frankfurt Book Fair's giant comics pavilion. He spoke quietly in English and was really generous, and we talked briefly about European & American indie comics. He also signed the copy of Insekt I bought directly from him (that always feels nice).
He described his two main influences for this book as CHARLES BURNS & CHARLES SCHULTZ. Can you see it? (duhhh) The main drag of this entire post is that I DON'T SPEAK German, and so I've only been able to pore over the pictures. But like many fanboys before me (Evan in high school with unreleased Battle Angel Alita, Commodore Perry whacking it to kick ass Hokusai tentacle shunga) I can still tell that the book is some damn amazing cartooning. Thanks to babelfish, I know that it's about an insect-boy who lives a bearably normal life in a town laden with fog/smoke, where it's basically always night. Only when he has to leave (escape?) with his mother to the countryside, does he have confront his differentness. You know, because he's a giant bug-boy. You can check out free previews here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Oh god actually, a quick search just found the whole thing online! UPDATE: Upon closer inspection (DUH), this fully-available link is the english scanlation of the Insekt. HOT DAMN!
This is another example of me wishing I had more clout-- Throw my sweaty weight around and petition that this book gets bought, translated and released in the States. It seems like a perfect fit for either Dark Horse or Fantagraphics, depending on which way you packaged it. I actually mentioned Insekt to the guys at Reprodukt's booth and they said that there had been some early interest from a few US publishers, but no official action yet. Sucks, doesn't it?
Here are more pictures from Sascha's site that you should check out. You can also download min-comics as free PDFs on his page, including the short but awesome "Reach out and touch someone.... undead" comic Telefon (right-click for PDF download). Another great find (and awesome person we've met), thanks to a corporate, work-funded book fair trip. I'm all for mixing business & pleasure. Can't wait to see his next book (slated to be released in 2007)!
Next up: A PREVIEW OF VERTICAL'S UPCOMING TO TERRA by Keiko Takemiya. Oh, and the conclusion (finally) of the TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS posts.
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!
