After months and months of planning and talking and working, I am happy to announce that the zine is finally done! I spent the last 5 days chained to my computer and InDesign, and with the help of Evan's graphical wizardly, I finalized the layout/proofing and sent ELECTRIC ANT #1 to the printer last night!
The good news is that the book will be done in time to debut at Alternative Press Expo 2008. For folks in the SF area, I will have copies on hand and available at the Bang Gang booth (alongside Hellen's new comic, Jin & Jam no.1 fuckyess)
Front cover Back cover
ELECTRIC ANT #1: Your First Kiss 7" x 8.5" digest, 92 pages and bound like a paperback book Color cover inside & out, B&W insides with a 4-page color first kiss survey spread Printed locally at 1984 Printing in Oakland, CA (They publish some of Little Otsu's books) Price: $8, debuting at APE, then sold via Same Hat & electricantzine.com and looking/hoping to get it carried by some comics & zine shops, and (maybe?) Last Gasp and Giant Robot
ABOUT THE CONTENTS Features: + TALKING WITH THE MASTER OF MANGA Author Frederik Schodt on translation, Tezuka, and life as a teenager in Tokyo + THE ILLUSTRATED HALL OF DARK LORDS My favorite cartoonists take us on a tour of the darkest lords that ever lived! + YOUR FIRST KISS Revisited in all its glory... in the form of comics, short fiction, and drawings + DEPARTMENT FOR IMPLEMENTING 15 KINDS OF VIOLENT DEATH A photographic tour of Beijing's Dongyue Temple and its assorted hells + FEATURE COMIC: LOVE ENTITY BY SHUNGA (aaron k) A beautiful and demiurgical tale of transtemporal love and destiny
Goodies: + 4-KOMA STRIPFEST + NIN LIBS + THE 5 WORST PLACES TO FIND YOURSELF AT THE START OF THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE + NINE NUGGETS OF ZINE WISDOM FROM ERIC NAKAMURA
FULL CONTRIBUTOR LIST: RYAN SANDS (me) EVAN HAYDEN ALICE KIM ANTHONY HA ANTHONY WU CALVIN WONG DAVID MURRAY DEREK KIRK KIM DEREK YU ERIC NAKAMURA GEA* HELLEN JO JENN YIN JULIA WERTZ JUSTINE LAI MARINAOMI MATT LOCK MC LARS MIMO MICHAEL DEFORGE MICHAELA COLETTE NATE SHOCKEY ROOT STUDIO RYAN GERMICK SHUNGA (AARON K) SOPHIA FOSTER-DIMINO TONY TULATHIMUTTE
I will be posting more information as APE (November 1-2) gets closer, with further details about each of the rad contributors and how to order the zine online. I'm planning to use Google Checkout and launch a proper site sometime between now and then.
Afro-haired Fujio and bald Mitsuo, the protagonists of Tokyo Zombie, are keen judoka who know all about this, so when Fujio inadvertently kills their boss during a disagreement at work, they know just the place to get rid of his body.
When they get there, they find a middle school gym teacher disposing of his former students. The man is literally dismembered (with the emphasis on member) by a naked woman who rises from the dead. It seems the mixture of sewage, garbage and rotting corpses on Dark Fuji has unleashed a plague of zombies.
All of this within the first 13 pages of this good example of heta uma, or "bad, but good," manga that, like the 2004 British zombie movie Shaun of the Dead, treats its gruesome subject with tongue firmly in cheek.
Just finished reading Tokyo Zombie. Dead people rise out of a rubbish tip! Bald and Afro martial arts blue collars must kick ass and drive gaudy trucks to survive! Expect swearing, pig surfing, and minutely observed renderings of mixed martial arts grappling. With a grin on my face I raced to my computer to look up author Yusaku Hanakuma.
Any of this sound familiar? Zombie comedy? Gentrification? The poor laboring thanklessly to provide for the rich who live in furnished apartments? Zombie games? Believe it or not but these aren’t tributes or nods to any of the recent spate of zombie movies. No, in fact this book came out back in 1999, well before either of the movies that most people will compare it to. It’s almost enough to make one wonder whether or not Romero and Wright are closeted manga fans with hard drives full of scanlated volumes of underground horror series.
If you're looking for refined artwork, dynamic character development and complex plots, this might not be your thing. But if you appreciate manic, manly manga and over-the-top black humor, then Tokyo Zombie will not disappoint.
I had missed this news from earlier this year, but my GF just sent me this info (and came up with the blog post title)... a Korean film company is making an adaptation of Fumi Yoshinaga's manga, ANTIQUE BAKERY!
According to ANN, the adaptation is directed by Min Gyu Dong, and will star Joo Ji Hoon in the role of the shop owner (the Keisuke character in the manga) and Kim Jae Wok as the genius pastry maker character (Yusuke Ono in the manga). The film will be released in November in Korea and soon after in Japan and Singapore.
I think Antique Bakery is an awesome series. I read it a few years ago on the recommendation of my buddy (and manga overlord) Jason Thompson, and it was my first real foray into the world of shonen ai. I'm still generally a n00b in the genre, but I am always down with good storytelling no matter what the format. So yeah, I strongly and heartily recommend these books for people who like food and cakes and/or non-retarded but soap-opera style depictions of gay men double-crossing while making ornate French pastries. It's got some heartstrings-pulling too, a la Maisson Ikkoku. NICE.
Here is the recently released trailer for the film to check out! (Whoa, what the hell is up with this music?!)
Recently announced on UMEZZ.COM, two new Orochi t-shirts have been released (in time for the release of the film adaption!) These shirts were designed by otooto22.com and will be available via hip retailer BEAMS!
(This shirt is scary)
It is also worth noting that BEAMS also sells the baddest-assest (that's a word, right?) item for any Umezu fan... the RED & WHITE STRIPED T-SHIRT:
Does everyone remember spacecoyote (aka Nina Matsumoto)? She's the web artist-turned-internet celebrity-turned-professional cartoonist, who got famous earlier last year for her anime Simpsons piece? (She also whipped up Death Note and My Neighbor Totoro-as-Simpsons characters)
Interesting news to announce! Nina has posted on her lj that she's done a new comic in the latest Simpsons Halloween issue, Treehouse of Horror #14!
For her story, Nina's done what looks like a hilarious Death Note story! It seems like Bart plays the role of Light and Krusty plays Ryuk :) I'm gonna pick this book up my local shop tomorrow!
In addition to Nina's story, the book also features short stories by Preacher painter Glenn Fabry and one of my two favorite Los Bros... Gilbert Hernandez!
Here are two more pieces of Go Nagai fan art by my new friend and master-crafter Mickey Zacchilli. She recently completed a piece for Electric Ant that has totally floored us... I'm so geeked to include it! (And come the first weekend of November, we will finally debut the stupid book at APE!)
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!
