Today’s episode of Inkstuds takes a detour East, with a chat about Japanese manga for indie comics readers with your guest host, Deb Aoki, Manga Editor for About.com (manga.about.com) and special guests:
Chris Butcher, manager of The Beguiling, comics blogger (comics212.net) and co-founder of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival.
David P. Welsh, manga and comics blogger at The Manga Curmudgeon, and former columnist for Flipped!, a weekly feature on Japanese comics for The Comics Reporter.
Ryan Sands, indie/horror manga and comics blogger at Same Hat!, editor of Electric Ant Zine and translator/editor for Tokyo Zombie by Yusaku Hanakuma and the upcoming The Strange Tale of Panorama Island by Suehiro Maruo, both from Last Gasp.
Our chat delves into alternative manga past and present, including VIZ Media’s “too hip for the room” anthology magazine PULP and their online alt-manga website, SigIkki.com, eclectic anthologies like Comics Underground Japan, Secret Comics Japan and the upcoming AX: A Collection of Alternative Manga from Top Shelf. We also talk about must-read manga beyond Tezuka, Tatsumi and Urasawa, and why 2010 is a great time to sample Japanese comics that goes beyond what you might think manga can be.
READING LIST
We talk about a LOT of manga in this episode of Inkstuds, so to make it easier to check out the titles we mentioned, here they are, presented in the order that we discussed them. Some older titles are out of print, and are notated by (OOP).
- Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo (Kodansha Comics)
- PULP magazine (VIZ Media) – (1997 – 2002)
- Tekkon Kinkreet (Black and White) by Taiyo Matsumoto (VIZ Media)
- Voyeurs Inc. by Hideo Yamamoto (VIZ Media) (OOP)
- Sgt. Frog by Mine Yoshizaki (TokyoPop)
- Hot Gimmick by Miki Aihara (Shojo Beat / VIZ Media)
- Ice Blade by Tsutomu Takahashi (TokyoPop) (OOP)
- Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaaki (Del Rey Manga)
- Magic Knight Rayearth by CLAMP (TokyoPop / Dark Horse) (TokyoPop edition OOP, Dark Horse edition to be released in 2010-2011)
- Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi (TokyoPop) (OOP)
- Comics Underground Japan by Various (Blast Books) (OOP)
- Secret Comics Japan by Various (VIZ Media) (OOP)
- Strain by Burunson, Ryoichi Ikegami (VIZ Media) (OOP)
- Drifting Classroom by Kazuo Umezu (VIZ Media)
- Emma by Kaoru Mori (CMX Manga)
- Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu by Junko Mizuno (Last Gasp)
- Astral Project by marginal (a.k.a. Garon Tsuchiya, author of Old Boy) and Syuji Takeya (CMX Manga)
- Saint Young Men (Saint Oniisan) by Hikaru Nakamura (Kodansha – not available in English yet)
- Coppers by Natsume Ono (Kodansha – not available in English yet)
- No. 5 by Taiyo Matsumoto (VIZ Media)
- Bakune Young by Toyokazu Matsunaga (VIZ Media) (OOP)
- Tokyo Zombie by Yusaku Hanakuma (Last Gasp)
- Berserk by Kentaro Miura (Dark Horse)
- Biomega by Tsutomu Nihei (VIZ Signature / VIZ Media)
- Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei (TokyoPop)
- Japan as Seen by 17 Creators by Various (Fanfare – Ponent Mon)
- Sexy Voice and Robo by Tou Kuroda (VIZ Media)
- AX: A Collection of Alternative Manga by Various, edited by Sean Michael Wilson, stories compiled by Mitsuhiro Asakawa (Top Shelf) (due out Summer 2010)
- Gyo by Junji Ito (VIZ Media)
- Uzumaki by Junji Ito (VIZ Media)
- Travel by Yuichi Yokoyama (Picturebox)
- New Engineering by Yuichi Yokoyama (Picturebox)
- Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby by Takashi Nemoto (Picturebox)
- GoGo Monster by Taiyo Matsumoto (VIZ Signature / VIZ Media)
- Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service by Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki (Dark Horse)
- Ohikkoshi by Hiroaki Samura (Dark Horse)
- Tanpenshu by Hiroki Endo (Dark Horse)
- Eden: It’s a Endless World by Hiroki Endo (Dark Horse)
- Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida (VIZ Signature / VIZ Media)
- Red Snow by Susumu Katsumata (Drawn & Quarterly)
From the 1st episode to today has to handle a fair chunk of time. I can’t recall if the time has ever been formally declared, but considering the age Ed is at it’s to be anticipated that he might do a fair bit of evolving. In regards to Mustang, I seem to too recall him preparing a speech about being able to protect foot soldiers, and then running on about how that entailed the single means to look out for everyone was to take it to the summit. I don’t recollect for certain whether this existed in the manga as well. But since the anime hasn’t added all that very much recent material, I suspect that this scene probably started there as well.
Surprised it wasn’t mentioned, but among the classic indie manga anthologies is also Sake Jock, brought to us by Fantagraphics. It’s a slim volume but features mostly Garo authors as well as some whose works may be known to D&Q and Fanfare fans.