WANT TO BUY ORIGINAL ART BY YUICHI YOKOYAMA?

PictureBox publisher Dan Nadel just announced on Facebook that they are opening an online gallery to sell original art by their stable of artists. This is cool because in addition to folks like CF and Ben Jones, they are selling original comic pages and panels by Yuichi Yokoyama!

Have $200-$1000 laying around and want to own a piece of Garde, New Engineering, Travel, or his other works? Check out PictureBox Auctions!

NEWS OF UPCOMING MANGA FROM D & Q

I saw posted earlier today on the Drawn & Quarterly blog: images from their upcoming release of THE BOX MAN by Imiri Sakabashira (on September 29, 2009). Sakabashira is an avant-garge painter, and was featured in Vice a few months back (his first print exposure to English audiences Oops, Sakabashira had a story in Sake Jock, as Azraelito points out in the comments!) and profiled on billrandall.net. Sakabashira will also have a story in the upcoming AX Anthology from Top Shelf! Check these out from D&Q:

[As usual, RSS folks please click through to view the PictoBrowser galleries! Mouse over the gallery for captions.]



From the Amazon listing:

Enter the strange world of Imiri Sakabashira, whose denizens are zoomorphic creatures that emerge from one another as well as their equally bizarre environs. The Box Man follows its protagonists along a scooter trip through a complex landscape that oscillates between a dense city, a countryside simplified to near abstraction, and hybrids of the two; the theme of hybridity permeates throughout. One is unsurprised to encounter a creature that is half elderly man, half crab, or a flying frog in this world where our guide apparent is an anthropomorphic, mollusk-like cat. Sakabashira weaves this absurdist tale into a seamless tapestry constructed of elements as seemingly disparate as Japanese folklore, pop culture, and surrealism.Within these panels, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the animate and the inanimate, the real and the imagined—a tension that adds a layer of complexity to this near-wordless psychedelic travelogue.

Imiri Sakabashira (real name Mochizuki Katsuhiro) was born in Shizuoka, Japan, in 1964, the same year that Garo, the influential manga anthology in which he would first be published, was founded.

The Box Man is included in the story collection, Red Tights Man:

[Thanks, Anonymous!]
English edition of The Box Man:


According to Amazon, Drawn & Quarterly will also be publishing Red Snow by Susumu Katsumata on September 29, 2009. [UPDATED]: Here are 4 pages from the English edition, posted on the D&Q blog today:



From that listing:

Continuing D+Q’s groundbreaking exploration of the fascinating world of Gekiga, this collection of short stories is drawn with great delicacy and told with subtle nuance by the legendary Japanese artist Susumu Katsumata. The setting is the premodern Japanese countryside of the author’s youth, a slightlymagical world where ancestral traditions hold sway over a people in the full vigor of life, struggling to survive the harsh seasons and the difficult life of manual laborers and farmers. While the world they inhabit has faded into memory and myth, the universal fundamental emotions of the human heart prevail at the center of these tender stories.

Katsumata began publishing comic strips in the legendary avantgarde magazine Garo (which also published his contemporaries Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Yoshiharu Tsuge) in 1965 while enrolled in the Faculty of Science in Tokyo. He abandoned his studies in 1971 to become a professional comics artist, alternating the short humorous strips upon which he built his reputation with stories of a more personal nature in which he tenderly depicted the lives of peasants and farmers from his native region. In 2006, Katsumata won the 35th Japanese Cartoonists Association Award Grand Prize for Red Snow.

Japanese edition of Red Snow:

NEW JUNKO MIZUNO BOOK FROM LAST GASP

Exciting news for indie manga nerds... Last Gasp will be releasing a new book by Junko Mizuno this Fall!


Little Fluffy Gigolo PELU Vol. 1 by Junko Mizuno

Not too many details on Amazon, but it looks like the book is 172 pages and scheduled for September 2009. This book is the first volume in a short series, and will add to the list Mizuno titles in English, PURE TRANCE, HANSEL & GRETEL, CINDERELLA, PRINCESS MERMAID, and HELL BABIES.

I don't know the exact details, but I believe Patrick Macias & Izumi Evers' jaPress did the translation/editing for this book. More details and images from the book as I hear about them!

[To note: Evan & I did not work on this book in any capacity.]

TAKASHI NEMOTO, JUN HAYAMI EVENTS AT TACOCHE

Two events happened last month at TACO che, featuring two artist on the Same Hat wavelength. Both of these events featured signings and original goods-- unfortunately, nobody I know was able to attend (were they?). Here are the photos of art and goodies from the Taco Che blog!

First up: JUN HAYAMI [beauty labyrinth of razors, etc]
This event happened on March 22, 2009, with an in-person signing with Hayami-san.

Second artist of note: TAKASHI NEMOTO [monster men bureiko lullaby, etc]

This event happened on March 28, 2009, with an in-person signing with Nemoto-sign. Throughout March, TACO che has been featuring numerous one-of-kind t-shirts, hats, pencil cases, bags and cards created/painted by Nemoto. WISH I COULD GET MY HANDS ON ONE OF THOSE LOU REED CARDS!

Check out these badass, handmade Nemoto goods:

SUEHIRO MARUO WINS OSAMU TEZUKA CULTURAL PRIZE!

ANN and other sites are reporting that Asahi Shinbun recently announced the winners of the 13th Annual Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize, which honors the highest achievements each year in manga in Japan.

The grand prize was shared between two worthy and cool titles, Ooku by Fumi Yoshinaga and A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

The coolest part? Suehiro Maruo's book, Panorama-tou Kidan (The Strange Tale of Panorama Island) won the New Artist Prize! CONGRATS, UNCLE MARUO!



As I've blogged about before (and any self-respecting Same Hat reader should know), the book is a ~300 page adaptation of a novella by Japanese detective fiction godfather, Edogawa Rampo. The story takes place at the end of the Taisho era, and follows an unsuccessful science fiction author with an uncanny resemblance to a former classmate/son of a rich industrialist family. When the industrialist's son dies, the author fakes his own death, digs up and hides the other man's body, then washes himself up starving on a beach in a town where the dead man's family lives. After some more intrigue and scheming, he proceeds to take redirect all of their money to build a mysterious pleasure palace island, and live like a sensual weirdo king. Crazy and amazing stuff!

I've read this book 4 or 5 times now, and I absolutely love it--- It's by far Maruo's most elegant and beautiful line work to date, and his pages coupled with Rampo's excellent (albeit crazy/abrupt at the end!) and twisted tale = TOTAL WIN.

In addition to the prestige and bump in book sales, "1 million yen (US$10,000) goes to the winner of the New Artist Prize. The prize will be awarded to the winners in person on June 5 in Tokyo. FRESH.

MATT'S SUEHIRO MARUO TATTOOS

Here is a nice change of pace around these parts-- another set of rad Suehiro Maruo tattoo photographs!

These come from SH reader Matt, who had them done by artist Jane Laver at Chapel Tattoo in Melbourne, Australia. Thanks, Matt!

As usual, RSS folks please click through to view the PictoBrowser galleries! Mouse over the gallery for captions.



Do you have a cool manga tattoo that you want to share with the community? Shoot me an email at samehat [AT] gmail [DOTCOM]. Click to see other posts featuring [tattoos] on Same Hat. I'm just sortaaa starting to think about maybe getting one myself later this year with my GF-- have a few ideas but I'm still too gunshy and have my doubts. What do you guys thinks would make a rad indie/horror manga tattoo?

(SIGNED) KAGO GOODIES FROM NATE

This past weekend, my buddy Nate was in town from Tokyo and we had a blast catching up. In between eating burritos, drinking beers, and a metal show in Oakland, Nate handed over some amazing Shintaro Kago presents he picked up for me last Fall!

As you might recall, Nate met Kago twice last year- first at a gallery show/signing on Halloween, and then again at Design Festa. Between the two events, Nate managed to wrangle me a signed Shintaro Kago digital print, a bunch of postcards, and a copy of the Paranoia Street DVD!

As usual, RSS folks please click through to view the PictoBrowser galleries! Mouse over the gallery for captions.


(At my bequest, he was also rad enough to get Kago to sign a card for Johnny too!)

In addition to the goodies for me, Nate brought with him a present for our buddy Ben- a Kago self-published mini featuring a bunch of krasue gags! This book is en route to Ben right now, but Nate let me snap these photos before he dropped it in the mail:



I'm still figuring out the what & when, but plan to give away some of the postcards as Same Hat contest presents in the near future. I'll keep you guys posted!

UMEZZTUBE DESERVES SOME LOVE

After all the KagoTube posts, I wanted to revisit Kazuo Umezu's own YouTube channel. Umezz (with Demerin's help, naturally) has continued to post goofy and interesting clips.

Here is his most recent clip, featuring a bevy of paper masks, GWASHI hands and a strange giant-sized naked Umezu cut-out! (The cut-out feature Umezu's face on a big reproduction of a naked figurine. YES). Enjoy: