Just an FYI for folks, I've started up a newly-open twitter account, where I'll be talking about Same Hat, Electric Ant Zine, and other book/comics projects. It's here: @remoteryan.
I had been using Twitter off and on since last March, but with the whole thing on private and just to keep in touch with friends. That worked fine, but I couldn't ever direct message or @whatever people if they weren't following me. Minor Bummer. My new twitter fu has already paid off, as Michael Kupperman and I had a brief back-&-forth yesterday... made my day!
Anyway, if you happen to be on there (and are not a murderer), follow along and say hello!
I got a nice surprise this morning to see some news I'd heard a while back publicly confirmed on Sascha Hommer's blog: Shintaro Kago will be appearing in the next issue of the fantastic comics anthology, ORANG!
ORANG is put by one of my fave publishers, Reprodukt from Germany. Reprodukt is basically like if you took the most interesting German cartoonists and rolled them together with the best books from D&Q, Fantagraphics, NBM, and Last Gasp. ORANG is an annual (approximately?) book edited by cartoonist (and super talented dude) Sascha Hommer. I've posted previously about Hommer's excellent graphic novel, Insekt.
I just received a copy of ORANG 7 in the mail, and thoroughly enjoyed it... It's like a younger and more European version of MOME, but also features indie comics from China as well. The books are thick and have really nice paper & production values.
ORANG #08 Reprodukt, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-941099-23-4 120 pages, 16 in colour, 15,00 Eur
No specific details yet on what Shintaro Kago comic will be in the issue, but I understand it's an original comic just for the anthology :) If previous issues of ORANG are any indication, the title will likely be in the original Japanese, with German and English translations as footnotes on the bottom of each page.
Drop what you're doing and check out these two fantastic videos, shared courtesy of Dash Shaw.
These two clips make up a 13 minutes adaptation of Yoshiharu Tsuge's landmark manga story, ねじ式 (Nejishiki, "Screw-Style"). Screw-Style appeared in English in The Comics Journal #250, (and some of his shorts were in Raw) but the majority of Tsuge's work is still yet to be published for English audiences. I'm not sure on the year of this animation, but the story was originally published in Garo's June 1968 issue. Please enjoy!
Got an email from Nate last night with the news that rocker/actor/leftist Kiyoshiro Imawano (忌野清志郎) died yesterday at age 58 :(
Kiyoshiro was a musician in the 70s band RC Succession, and later played solo at the Fuji Rock Festival and Free Tibet concerts in the 90s and 00s. Outside of his long music and activism career, Kiyoshiro might be best known to English-speaking audiences from his hilarious role as Richard in the Takashi Miike film, Happiness of the Katakuris. He also performed in another Miike film, The Great Yokai War.
Here is a clip of one of Kiyoshiro's finest film moments, in one of my all-time favorite movies:
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!
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.]
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:
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.
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.]
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!
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!
I had been using Twitter off and on since last March, but with the whole thing on private and just to keep in touch with friends. That worked fine, but I couldn't ever direct message or @whatever people if they weren't following me. Minor Bummer. My new twitter fu has already paid off, as Michael Kupperman and I had a brief back-&-forth yesterday... made my day!
