VIOLENCE BECOMES TRANQUILITY
One of the first manga ever published in English, from the March 1980 issue of Heavy Metal:
Head over to Same Hat to check out all 10 pages by Shinobu Kaze.
One of the first manga ever published in English, from the March 1980 issue of Heavy Metal:
I'm going to add a new post to Same Hat specifically about The Beguiling (to add to the series of TCAF posts) this weekend. But before that, I wanted to share these photos and sightings from the shop. (I know Comic Relief lovers will be shocked by this, but I contend that The Beguiling is the best comics/manga shop in North America).
Posted earlier today on the Drawn & Quarterly site , images from their upcoming release THE BOX MAN by Imiri Sakabashira in September 2009. Sakabashira is an avant-garge painter, and was featured in Vice a few months back (his first print exposure to English audiences). Check these out:
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.
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.
...to pick up my copy of SCOTT PILGRIM #5!!!
In related news (and to add a little meat to this post), I put up my MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2009 list (w/ hyperbolic commentary) on Same Hat last night. The quick list for those with no patience:
13. Unlovable, Volume 1 by Esther Pearl Watson
12. Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei by Kōji Kumeta
11. Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture 1 by Masayuki Ishikawa
10. Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Volume 1 / Tales Designed to Thrizzle #5 by Michael Kupperman
9. Swallowing the Earth by Osamu Tezuka
8. Jin & Jam #2 by Hellen Jo
7. 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa
6. Scott Pilgrim 5 by Bryan Lee O'Malley
5. Dungeon, Zenith Volume 3 by Sfar/Trondheim/Boulet
4. Pluto by Naoki Urasawa
3. Black Jack #3-8 by Osamu Tezuka
2. Ax Anthology, Volume 1
1. A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
OTHER NOTABLES
Ooku by Fumi Yoshinaga
Cold Heat anthology by Frank Santoro/Ben Jones
ORANG 8
Electric Ant #2 and the underground manga book we're working on...
I would have added Anthony Wu's Galactica comic, but I don't know the official release details or name of the book it's in...
I'm cross-posting these from Same Hat, where more detailed explanations can be found for why I liked what I liked and didn't like what I didn't (if you are that interested to read them). I'm very curious to hearing arguments and disagreements among this group, but most importantly... share your recommendations for shit that NEEDS to be READ from the past year.
