Cover Detail from the September 2010 issue of Japanese Gay Men's Magazine "Badi", a special spotlight issue on Gengoroh Tagame. Art by Gengoroh Tagame.

"Deiri" illustration by Gengoroh Tagame. ©2010.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised this week to discover that the insanely talented gay manga artist Gengoroh Tagame has a blog, and one in English at that! You can find it online at http://www.tagame.org/enews/. This is pretty great as it’s a rare thing for a mangaka to have an English language blog, and Tagame is one of the most talented and easily the most famous mangaka producing gay-themed work (real gay, as opposed to yaoi-gay).

For those of you who not in the know, Tagame is best recognized for the muscular physique he gives his characters, which echoes the North American “Bear” gay subculture and the Japanese “Gachi Muchi” gay subculture, and is generally referred to as “Bara”. The majority of Tagame’s work is marked by strong themes of B&D and S&M, even leading into some verrrrry extreme situations. I heartily recommend checking out his website at http://www.tagame.org/frame_new.html and for the strong-willed and strong-stomached, check out his galleries.

Tagame is a bit of a trailblazer in that his web-presence has been English-friendly for years and years now, much moreso than any other gay manga artist (or almost any manga artist in general). While one of these days I’m really going to have to learn Japanese, for now I’m very happy that Tagame-san has made himself more accessible to his English-speaking fans.

Page from "Virtus" by Gengoroh Tagame. ©2010.

On that note, one of the most interesting posts about his accessibility came a few months back on his English-language blog, entitled “The Groundless Rumour About Publishing of English version of my comics:”

A little while ago, my friend told me the groundless rumor about me and my works.
It was a big surprise for me, so I think that I must correct them officially.

[the rumor]
Tagame does not want to publish his works in English.
In fact, he had refused the offer to publish his book from Tom of Finland foundation.

[the truth]
The rumor is false. I’ve been always wanting that my comics will be translated into English and will be published on magazines or books.And I’ve never been proposed such publishing program directory from Tom of Finland foundation.

Then, why my books have not been published in English? The reason is simple. If a proven publisher offers to me to publish my books in English, I welcome it. In fact, until now, French, Italian and Spanish publishers had contacted to me to publish my comic book in their language. I welcomed them, so my books in these three languages are being published now. But I’ve never been contacted from American, UK’s and Canadian publishers who want to publish my book in English. That is an only reason of why my comic books in English have been never published before.

For your more questions about that, I open the comment form of this post.
(But please write with very plain and easy English! I’m not so good at your language!)

- Gengoroh Tagame [link]

So there you go folks. Which one of you forward-thinking publishers is going to step up to the plate?

- Chris

I wrote last month, but got interrupted right before the end. I cleaned it up a little before posting, I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think in the comments.

–

This is just a small observation, but a pretty good one, so I hope you’ll indulge me.

I’ve taken over working Saturdays on the main floor of The Beguiling to give my boss an extra day off a week (he’s now up to 1-and-a-half). For those of you who don’t know, The Beguiling is split across two floors, with the first floor being set up as a ‘general interest’ comic store, with a focus on art, literature, and the kinds of books you read positive reviews of in mainstream media. Fantagraphics and D&Q, but also Picturebox, NBM, Top Shelf, Pantheon, Abrams, and the like. French-language and Euro graphic novels, art books, Tintin and  Asterix anchoring the kids section. Basically the platonic ideal of the non-superhero, non-manga comic book store… shoved into about half as much space as it really _needs_ to breathe. But c’est la vie.

The second floor, that’s for “the initiated”, the people who buy and large know what they want–either because they’ve been comics fans their whole lives and are buying their favourites, or they’re single-title/creator/genre folks (like the Gaimanites, Whedonites, and Zombieites). Maybe they’re in for the newest media tie-in too. Superheroes and other DM-centric publishers, manga, and the new-release rack. I work the second floor, mostly because my boss rules the main floor with an iron fist and I’m the only person at the store (and one of the only people in North America) approaching his level of product knowledge and so I cover the other sales floor. But I’m pretty handy the rest of it and so I can fill in for him if I have to… Just don’t ask me to find anything in French. :)

Because of the way the store is set-up, whilst there is a cash-register on each floor all of the debit and credit card purchases have to be rung out on the first floor. That means that, being behind the second-floor register, I see people making cash purchases, but almost entirely of stuff bought from the second floor — superheroes and manga. Sure, if it’s new comics day the interesting stuff that’s come out that week from the art comics publishers is still around–new releases from D&Q and Fanta get prominent display for 2 or 3 weeks. The “new mainstream” books like Oni’s JAM: Tales of Roller-dirby or KENK from Toronto publisher Pop Sandbox get their due, at least a week or two of full-face display. But that means that I’ll be ringing up orders that are 90% new releases–with Marvel and DC doing their damndest to crowd every other new release off the rack, week after week, and 100 new manga graphic novels in a given month–and it paints a picture of the comics industry.

The picture it paints is that the industry–and particularly direct market comic book stores–is 70% superheroes and then 20% manga and then there’s not-much of everything else. The second floor is, essentially, your average comic book store in miniature (although I’ve been in quite a few stores smaller than our second floor…). It paints a picture that the reason that the comic book industry is this way is because the fans are this way. This is what the fans want. But that’s only true until you remember that there’s still a first floor, and man, that first floor is very, very different.

So I’ve been working the first floor a little more, and the customer for comics is, frankly, completely different than we think it is. Sure, I just sold a copy of SCARLETT #1 by Bendis and Maleev to a dude wearing a Superman t-shirt, but before that I sold a copy of Gabrielle Bell’s CECIL & JORDAN and a Shintaro Kago import-manga to a 20-something girl and before her, I sold Sfar’s LITTLE VAMPIRE and DUNGEON ZENITH 2 & 3 to a dad and his two kids, cuz all of them are in love with those books. A guy today dropped a few hundred bucks on PictureBox and D&Q books. Guy approaching the cash right now has the work of Ken Dahl, Kevin Cannon, and Kevin Huizenga in his hands. Another lady came down the stairs with an armful of McKean, Seinkewicz, and Mack just now. Working the first floor, you get this picture of balance in the medium, and it’s a balance that heavily favours good, interesting, and ambitious works.

An aside: When we (and I mean all of us comic fans) look at the newspaper page, we tend to groan at the ‘legacy’ strips like Family Circus or Hagar, where the original author of that work has passed on and handed the book off to their offspring or a trusted friend. It’s a lot of bland stuff on the comics page, but familiar, and we all kinda wish those strips would go away and make room for something new. Now realize that 90% of comics sold through the direct market are themselves “Legacy Strips”, choking out innovation with (more often than not) their original creators long gone, existing solely to hold a space on a rack. That’s not to say that good stories can’t be told–they frequently are. It’s just that we’re largely intolerant of the practice in one area of comics, and embrace it with a blinding obedience in another.

I’d like to suggest–or really, remind–that this balance in the medium could just as easily be a balance in the industry.

But the reason that we don’t have it I think? Most retailers, myself included, tend only to see what’s in front of them. If I only ever worked in one type of store, I’d be convinced that there’d only be one superhero-and-new-release-heavy model of doing business in comics as well. Hell I worked at that store for a long time–in my last 6 months there I finally figured out that you could order books not in the Diamond catalogue each month. That you could back order things. That books exist beyond their monthly solicitation or (increasingly rare) resolicitiation… I wonder how many retailers are in the same boat? Hopefully far fewer, with the vast array of online tools available… But…

So yeah, a small change in perspective for a few weekends per month, and… well it’s not so much that my view of the industry has changed, but that I’ve been reminded that it is possible to find balance and that good work flourishes and sells when it’s not just one shelf at the back of the store, but curated, selected, promoted, understood, and shared. That readers aren’t–or at least don’t have to be–superhero readers or artcomix readers or manga readers… they can just be readers. I know it’s going to seem obvious to a lot of the readers of my blog here, I feel like folks here tend to have a pretty open mind and wide tastes in what they read. But seeing that sort of customer in action is a nice reminder of what we could do in the industry as a whole. It’s worth continuing to work towards.

- Chris

Originally published in English by Tokyopop before being put on hiatus about a third of the way through the series (with the rights eventually reclaimed by Kodansha), BECK is a really great seinen (manga for dudes in their late teens and early 20s) about an average kid moved by rock ‘n’ roll to start a band and make it big. It’s the exact sort of thing that I think would speak to a lot of people who’ve ever wanted to become a rockstar, and the anime actually aired in primetime on MuchMusic here in Canada a few years back. I know Mal’s a huge fan of the manga too, and I think that’s a good indication that Scott Pilgrim fans would probably dig it :)

For the official pop-up store website (heh) with directions click here.

For the official movie website click here.

I love love love these sorts of stores when I stumble across them in Japan… You may have noticed my near-obsession with Japanese retail spaces, and seeing something like this, a dedicated (and well-promoted) merch store for an upcoming movie release is pretty-much genius. Wish I could visit!

- Christopher

Drew Weing first came to my attention as an Autobiographical Cartoonist documenting his education in Savannah College of Art’s Comics Program, and I really loved those strips! Over the years he’s produced a number of wonderful webcomics, minis, and short pieces (mostly available at his website), and August saw his first full-length graphic novel SET TO SEA released by Fantagraphics. It’s a great read and a gorgeously illustrated book, I definitely recommend it.

Mr. Weing announced today that he is, in fact, selling off original artwork from the graphic novel, and considering how lovely it is (and that each pages is a 4.5″ x 5″ single panel, suitable for framing) I imagine the majority of the art for this book will be scooped up by fans and collectors imminently–I know I want more than a couple of them.

Check out the sale ($145 a page!!!) at http://www.drewweing.com/littlehouse/original-art/

- Christopher

This is very good news for the event, now entering its second year. Tickets for NEWW are a very reasonable $10 for the weekend, though there are one-day and VIP packages available. I think it’s excellent that there are shows like NEWW, putting a laser-focus on a specific niche market within the greater sphere of comics. Of course, that said, that niche probably has millions and millions of fans across the world, which is what makes the event pre-registering all its attendees so necessary… :) I mean, who knows what would happen if all 100,000+ peeps who read Questionable Content every day showed up at the same time, at an event designed for just a few thousand…?

The event is set up similarly to TCAF or SPX, with a selection of creators (entirely comprised of webcomics authors and publishers) set up and selling their wares, interacting with fans, etc., alongside panels and programming and larger group events. It’s a very communal, welcoming setting and a great relaxed space for fans to meet fellow fans and their heroes.

Initially I had planned to attend and help with some of the organizational efforts of the show, and I’m still planning on offering some advice and suggestions for programming and whatnot, but alas, I won’t be able to make it this year. Still, I think it’s going to be a remarkable event, held in a very cool building in a scenic locale with plenty of other interesting stuff going on in the neighbourhood. If you’re interesting in attending this year you better snap up your tickets quick, as it will definitely sell out in the next few weeks.

For more, check out http://webcomicsweekend.com/

- Chris

Update: An English translation of Satoshi Kon’s final words–a note he wrote to the public in his final days whilst dying of cancer–has been posted. It is heart-breaking, and honestly beautiful. Go read it: http://makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words

Amazing Director. Of the films he’s contributed to, I’ve seen and enjoyed Roujin-Z, Millennium Actress, Memories (The “Magnetic Rose” short), and Paprika. I own most everything else but haven’t gotten around to watching it just yet… no time like the present eh? He’s also a very strong manga creator, it’s a real shame none of his work has been released in English as of yet. Sad day.

Had the sad news first: http://twitter.com/AkiYanagi

http://board.otakon.com/index.php?showtopic=20122

http://www.uk-anime.net/newsitem/Director_Satoshi_Kon_passes_away.html

http://www.japanator.com/paprika-director-satoshi-kon-dies-at-age-47-16279.phtml

- Christopher

Minneapolis Indie Xpo
Saturday August 21st, 2010 (THIS WEEKEND)
@ The Soap Factory
518 Southeast 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55458
FREE TO ATTEND
http://mplsindiexpo.com/

“The Minneapolis Indie Xpo was founded in 2010 as a one-day show celebrating independent comics and Midwest cartoonists. It grew out of the local comics community’s desire to have its own venue for exhibition and was cobbled together by two veteran event coordinators who happen to be big comics fans.  You can call us “MIX” and, as the name implies, expect a bake sale at the show.”

Special guests include Chris (Dr. McNinja) Hastings, Zander and Kevin Cannon (Big Time Attic), John (King-Cat) Porcellino, Aaron (“Walker Bean”) Renier, and dozens more!

San Francisco Zine Fest
Saturday September 4 and Sunday September 5
@ The County Fair Bulding (formerly Hall of Flowers)
9th Ave. at Lincoln Way (in Golden Gate Park)
FREE TO ATTEND
http://www.sfzinefest.com/

“SF Zine Fest is a FREE annual two-day conference for independent and underground publishing. Exhibitors come from all over the West Coast, and while the focus is on zines, all walks of DIY life are represented — comics, arts and crafts, literary presses, and more. SF Zine Fest was founded in 2002 by Jenn of Starfiend Distro.”

Special guests include Artnoose (Ker-Bloom!), Jesse Reklaw (Slow Wave), and V. Vale (Search & Destroy).

–

Check out the website, make your plans!

- Christopher

+ So my friend Corey Mintz, food writer for The Toronto Star, has shown his true nerd colours and slavishly devoted a surprising amount of time and effort into running a post compiling every panel with food and/or eating from the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series. It also includes a short interview with Mr. O’Malley about his seeming obsession with his characters pigging out. Neat post.

+ It didn’t get much attention at the time, but the giant Gundam that they built on Odaiba in Tokyo last year was part of a tree-planting initiative, somehow. I didn’t really get it myself. Well, while the Gundam may be gone (moved to Shizuoka), there is a new tree-planting initiative in roughly the same spot, and this time it’s an 8 metre high Hello Kitty… that shoots lasers. Check it out at Pink Tentacle.

+ One of the best announcements at the San Diego Comic Con was that of Shigeru Mizuki’s work finally being translated and released for an English audience, courtesy of the fine folks at Drawn & Quarterly. Mizuki is a huge creative force in Japan, and his creations are ubiquitous. For more on that, check out this recent posting from Japan Probe which takes you to “Kitaro Town”, Mizuki’s hometown which has been completely kitted-out with characters and illustrations from Mizuki’s work, most notably his famous “Gegege No Kitaro”.  Instantly going on my “to visit” list next time I make it to Japan…

+ Two fantastic cartoonists, Gabrielle Bell and Jillian Tamaki, are running recaps/reportage of their time at the San Diego Comic Con, in comics format! They’re fabulous, and I highly recommend checking them out.

Jillian Tamaki’s got a two-parter (part one, part two) and I make a cameo in part one… part two is more of an ‘epilogue’.

Gabrielle Bell’s updates are still ongoing, with three parts currently up at http://gabriellebell.com/.

- Christopher

Skullkickers #1 Cover A.

My friend Jim Zubkavich is a good guy. He works primarily as the creative director at UDON here in Toronto, and he organizes all of their creative services and manages all of their artists and heads up all kinds of projects for them, most notably the very successful Street Fighter Tribute and Darkstalkers Tribute volumes, which saw him organize over a thousand submissions from professional and amateur artists into two very handsome artbooks.

I’m the Best Man at Jim’s upcoming wedding, so it’s pretty clear that it is difficult at best for me to be unbiased about his work, and tbh the work of Udon in general. Difficult but not impossible of course, when they get something wrong I will tell them and Jim is gracious enough to accept criticism well (he may occasionally argue, as is his right).

Jim’s got his own creative ambitions outside of working on licensed material at UDON, in fact he had been producing a webcomic called Makeshift Miracle well before he started at UDON, and after much prodding at my behest he finally got it together and released a book collection of Makeshift 3 or 4 years ago. It’s a nice looking book, we had a launch party for it, it was a great time.

Jim’s next major creative project was actually just solicited last month, and due to the insanity surrounding San Diego and Scott Pilgrim I never got a chance to mention it here on the blog. It’s called SKULLKICKERS, and it’s a full-colour 5-issue mini-series coming out from Image, with the first issue dropping September 22nd. Jim’s been a project manager and creative director for a while now, he’s got his act together and with this series and he’s put together an amazing creative team with artist Edwin Huang knocking the art out of the park on his first go. The first issue is totally complete. The second issue (in the Previews now) is totally complete. The third issue is underway. The series is gonna come out on time, in full colour, and it looks great. You can see a bunch of stuff at the SKULLKICKERS website, http://www.skullkickers.com/.

Skullkickers #1 Cover B

So SKULLKICKERS. It actually launched out of two short stories in Image’s POPGUN anthology over the past few years, and they were short, sharp, funny little pieces. The premise of the series is basically “What if Army of Darkness had two Ash’s, and it was set inside a Dungeons and Dragons game?”  I’ve read the first issue thanks to Jim providing me with a preview, and it’s just as good as the shorts, maybe better as the longer format allows for some longer set-up… and follow-through on the jokes, and the action has more room to breathe. It’s a really solid first issue, and I enjoyed it as a reader, and I’m proud of my friend for following up on his creative ambitions and making this book happen. I think it’s going to be one of those surprise hits that Image has been publishing lately.

As I mentioned, the first issue was in the last Previews. Issue #2 is in the current Previews.  The item codes are, if you are so inclined:

We ordered 50 copies of the first issue, to support the work and to entice Jim into doing a signing at the store, and because I feel like we can probably sell a bunch of copies of a very solid new indy book. Hell, it’s even $2.99, cheaper than most of Marvel’s and DC’s stuff, and with their deep pockets they could almost assuredly afford to lower their prices… Anyway.

So the reason I’m telling you all of this is because I’ve got this blog here, and for the last 13 years or so I’ve used my web presence to direct as much attention and energy and sales and good fortune as I’ve been able towards comics I like, and comics by my friends, and those are usually both the same things. I have spent a lot of time telling all y’all about how good things like Scott Pilgrim are, because I believe in Mr. Bryan Lee O’Malley and I believe in his work, and now this weekend a major motion picture based on the work of my friend is opening across North America. It is amazing. My friend is now a bestselling author, and has a measure of financial security not often afforded to people in the comic book industry, and while I don’t pretend to take credit for the incredibly hard work he’s put in over the last six years, I am quite happy to have done my part to get that work into as many peoples’ hands as possible.

That’s the reason I’m telling you about SKULLKICKERS. My friend Jim did a really fun book, and it’s coming out soon, and what do I have this small measure of internet fame for if not to sell some good comics and help my friends out? Well, that and to get on comp lists.

So in closing, if you are a reader who would like to take me at my word and check out this comic, I strongly recommend you talk to your local retailer and make sure they’ve ordered it. They may not have–there are a lot of books in every given PREVIEWS. If you are a comic book retailer, I would urge you to pick this book up as it is likely to be underordered, and likely to receive some very positive attention in stores. Retailers can increase their orders until the FOC date of September 2nd, and for every 10 you order, you get 1 free as an ordering incentive!

Congrats to my buddy Jim on the first issue of his new series. Best of luck on the next and the next.

- Christopher

I think it’s fair to say that on my Summer 2009 trip to Japan, I spent a lot of time in stores that sell manga. I’m a pretty manga-specific guy actually. Sure, I’ll get suckered in for some cool looking toys, and I’ve got no resistance to Gashapon at all. But generally, the other otaku goods fall a little flat with me–given the choice I’m filling up my suitcase with books. Manga mostly, a few artbooks, and the occasional oddity. :) So when I say that my favourite manga displays in Japan were found at the Shibuya location of Tsutaya–the country wide chain of media stores–well, I hope you’ll consider it a ‘considered’ opinion. The Shibuya Tsutaya has an enormous depth and breadth of selection, well-organized and with lots of creator and series-specific displays, lots of hand-written recommendations and decorations, and the taste of the staff seems to be exactly the same as my own.

For example, it’s where I found this mini-shrine to Tekkonkinkreet creator Taiyo Matsumoto:

Everything in one convenient place? Don’t mind if I do.

To get to the Shibuya Tsutaya (and I’m sure it’s just one of dozens), take the Hachiko exit from Shibuya JR Station. Hachiko is the name of the dog up top there. Directly across the scramble crossing, in the same building that houses the Starbucks, is Tsutaya. Actually, I covered it briefly on my 2007 trip, if you wanna go check it out: http://comics212.net/2008/02/24/japan-2007-shibuya-ginza-ramen-museum-macadonaru/

I enjoyed it so much I went for another spin and came away just as impressed at their manga retail acumen! Here are some shots from inside the store.

The elevator to B1 drops you in the middle of the shoujo section, and a large poster promoting the work of Fumi Yoshinaga, amongst others…! Zooming in to the top of the post there?

A signing card/poster by one of my favourite mangaka, Paradise Kiss and Nana creator Ai Yazawa!

The English editions of Paradise Kiss from Tokyopop were sort of awful approximations of the elegant Japanese designs–complete with metallic inks. Gorgeous. On the very edge there, you can see 2 copies of the Paradise Kiss postcard set and “Welcome to the Gokino World”, an artbook of Ai Yazawa’s pre-Parakiss work. I have both of these items, I’ll try and blog them at some point in the future… they’re amazing!

This is one of the new-release tables, which features giant stacks of manga, hordes of manga… and the cool, fashionable young people checking them out. I really dig the interior page reproductions, I think that’s a cool idea that I wish we did more of here… that I wish we had more space to do at The Beguiling where I work…! :)

A closer look at the new releases sees a two-volume best of edition of OISHINBO, “Maverick” and “Tycoon” for the opposing father and son culinary enemies! Also, some sort of ridiculous salaryman manga, and another cool-looking food manga in the upper-left corner.

Some more new releases.

The magazine-wall of new releases. Love the full-face display too.

This month’s Shonen Ace Monthly Gangan comes with a DVD!

Meanwhile, it looks like the Azumanga Daioh gang make a return engagement…?

I loved these fat Golgo 13 collections. Note the complete run of Golgo 13 also on the shelf around it… 120+ volumes.

I guess with all of these close-ups, it’s kinda hard to get the best idea of just how big this place was…? Apologies, I don’t seem to have taken a reallllly wide shot. Still, trust me, it’s a pretty big floor :)

Here’s another one of those ‘shrines’ I was talking about… this time to Naoki Urasawa, creator of the then just-completed PLUTO series! As you can see, Pluto is prominently featured, but it’s his (then) brand new manga series BILLY BAT that really took the cake!

Oh and a signing card from the creator of  Emma, Kaoru Mori, peeking through on the right hand side there… I may not have even seen that in store. Good thing I took photos eh?

This weird food manga looked fascinating too. Love the display signage of the sardine on the plate.

So here’s something weird. Junji Ito did a very strange cat-manga…? The horror guy, you know, Uzumaki and Gyo? Yeah, I had to buy it. I haven’t read it yet though, but it’s kind of amazing that it exists. I’ll try and blog that too.

Here’s the shrine to all-things Takehiko Inoue. I love that Slam Dunk STILL has more facings than his 2 current series, Vagabond and Real.

So I just wanted to post this–this is how BUDDHA by Osamu Tezuka is sold in Japan. As a box of 12 manga, each with a different weirdo animal illustration on the cover. I… I don’t get it.

An amazing collection of some of the awesome signing cards they’ve got in store from the folks who’ve visited! That’s Junko Mizuno up top, followed by Suehiro Maruo in the middle. And the bottom is familiar to me, but I can’t make it out. Feel free to let me know in the comments, and I’ll correct it!

Speaking of which, this hand-made sign for Suehiro Mauro’s adaptation of Edogawa Rampo’s “Mysterious Tale of Panorama Island” is awesome!  Make sure to check out the English-language edition when it gets released this fall from Last Gasp!

How it all works: These manga shelves are the most fantastically designed things I have ever seen. Stroke of genius, really.

How it all works: Have a standing special order? Supposed to get a toy with your magazine purchase? Want something really thefty? You can find that material behind the counter, ready for pick-up when you’re ringing out.

That’s it for this time! Look for the last post in this travelogue very, very soon. We’re visiting one more Tsutaya before we leave the country…

- Chris

Last week the excellent Japanese Culture blog Pink Tentacle picked up on the story of illustrator Goji Ishihara, a Showa-period Japanese illustrator who is fondly remembered for his children’s book illustrations… depicting horrific monsters and violence! This illustration is from the aptly named “Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters” from 1972, and if you head over to Pink Tentacle you can see 15 other illustrations from that book and a bunch more. They’re great! He’s clearly an amazing illustrator.

He was also immediately recognizable to me as the illustrator of a lovely little chapbook of erotic illustrations that I picked up at Taco Che, the alternative comic/book store in Nakano Broadway. It’s called “Erotic Art of Gekko Hayashi a.k.a. Ishihara Gojin” and it turns out that it was actually published by Taco Che themselves, though in 2005 and is now sadly out of print.

The book is fabulous, focusing on primarily gay erotic works, with some S&M a general erotica thrown in for good measure. From what I can tell, the chapbook acted as a gallery catalogue for an exhibition of his work that the store threw back in 2005. You can still see the event page here.

Slightly Naughty! Click to enlarge.

Looking back at it now with a modern eye, you can see the dedication to the depiction of powerful, lithe, and sexy male forms in his kids illustration work that Pink Tentacle dug up, and it goes to show the sort of coded gay language that was a big part of mainstream culture through the 70s and early 80s.

Unfortunately there’s very little information on Hayashi in English anywhere on the net, so far as I can tell, so any speculation as to whether or not he identified as gay would be up in the air. EDIT: I just found this interview at ComiPress that has a great overview of his career (apparently he worked right up through his 70s, including doing gay work until the end of his career, (including some racy stuff!). He also, apparently has a son who is the administrator of his estate (Hayashi passed away in 1997) so… yeah. Gay is still kind of a sliding scale in Japan. :)

The other neat thing is that all of the images that Pink Tentacle ganked came grom a site called “Gojin Fech!” which seems to be a massive repository of his work online, which I can’t seem to navigate at all, Google Chrome/Translate are utterly choking on it. But maybe check it out for yourself, and see if it works out better for you: http://shun50.cool.ne.jp/gojin.htm

Anyway, if you like really attractive illustrations of the male form from 1970s Japan (and who doesn’t?), I highly recommend googling the names “Gekko Hayashi” and “Goji Ishihara”, because there are tons of other fabulous examples of his stuff online.

- Christopher

How I Spent My Monday Night: Chatting with hundreds of people at the Scott Pilgrim Costume Contest. Photo by Alex Davies from http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=6631

So about 8 hours after I got home from the Scott Pilgrim event, I hopped in a cab and headed to the airport to hit the San Diego Comic Con. It was fun times! But then so was the big event, but because of the timing and rush of it all, I didn’t get to really read any of the event coverage, or thank the fine folks who covered it or mentioned it or had a great time. While Google is turning stuff up, I’d hate to miss anything, so if you covered or attended the Scott Pilgrim v6 Midnight Launch at The Beguiling and wrote about it online, please drop a link to the coverage in the comments section here! I’d really appreciate it.

All the best,

- Christopher Butcher

So, continuing from my last post (http://comics212.net/2010/07/06/japan-2009-harajuku-kiddy-land-tintin-shop/), I spent a bunch of time in Harajuku this time around, and it was great. We set a very relaxed schedule, and planned only to walk around and try to go to places and see things that we hadn’t seen before. That said, I couldn’t resist the lure of either Kiddyland (the awesome toy store) or the beautiful Tintin shop, but we did decide to disappear into the sidestreets and back streets of Harajuku, a mostly residential part of town that didn’t get much in the way of tourists. It was wonderful, and a great reminder that there’s so much to Tokyo–and really any travel destination–than the must-see stops in the guidebook.

Popping back around the corner from the Tintin Shop is the Louis Vuitton flagship, which featured a massive installation of work by and based on the art of Takeshi Murakami, which is… pretty awesome! We explored a little bit and found it utterly delightful, but in retrospect I wish we’d lingered a little longer. They were pretty serious about a lack of indoor photographs, unfortunately.

Omotoesando is quite a bit less busy, the further away you get from the station, Meiji Shrine, and tourist attractions.

So about 5 minutes after that last photo was taken, we decided to just duck down a random side street and see what life was like outside of the malls and stores. So of course the first thing I photograph is a convenience store… (Combini/Conbini for short). Why? BECAUSE I’VE NEVER SEEN THIS ONE BEFORE. I know, it’s ridiculous, but seeing it I was just… overcome. I dunno. I thought I had the conbini hierarchy all figured out, but I’d somehow completely missed “Ministop”. More to learn!

I could look at pictures of Japanese streets for hours. The cars, the powerlines, the architecture… It’s even more fun to walk down them.

About the time we tripped over this corner, we realized that we were going to see some unique stuff. Tiny office buildings, bright-yellow appartments overtop tiny parking spaces. Those awesome delivery mopeds… The buildings in Harajuku are fabulous.

Great little artbookstore.

Tiny little retail space undergoing rennovation. Andrew shown for scale. :)

Detail!

This one took the cake.

Some great under-the-bridge ‘graffiti’:

Hippie-beach-party-drum-circle store going out of business. That Pegasus is BAWLER.

An old Japanese lady laughed at us as we were taking this photo. I think she was just NUTS though.

This freaked me out, this whole complex.

Then we got back to the main street that Harajuku station is on, and managed to walk back up! It was a lovely little detour, we walked a pretty good ways, it was super fun… except for being v. hungry for much of it. Travel tip: Remember to eat. Seriously.

Then we got back to the place that made their own donuts! Which was a lovely time. You can check it out in one of my Random Japan posts about Desert: http://comics212.net/2010/02/09/random-japan-dessert/

Loved the Hello Kitty/Lucky Cat mashup at the entrance to this Family Mart.

… and then we were at  the entrance to Takeshita Dori, the cool/cute/boutique shopping strip that runs parallel to Omotesando. It’s Jam-Packed with boutiques, restaurants, chains and more. You could spend a whole day just here, but as you can see the sun was starting to set so we didn’t dawdle.

Explicit anti-jerk instructions written in English. I mean, they still misspelled a bunch of the instructions, but… Yeah. I guess some people come here and are jerks and need to be told otherwise. :-/

Not only CAN you smoke in restaurants in Japan, you basically HAVE to smoke in restaurants in Japan.

This was a Faaaaaaaaabulous shop for drag queen clothing! I clearly was a) not gonna fit into anything and b) was not the intended audience, so I didn’t head in very far. But I did love it a great deal, and was happy to stumble over it. Sugoooooiiii!

I’ve run into some pretty strange versions of “tough” outfits in Japan, but I thought this sound-effects hoodie over-top of the Angry Goofy t-shirt was pretty badass. Didn’t have my size, alas.

And before you knew it, Takeshita emptied us back out onto the main shopping throughfare, right at the doorstep of the gorgeous “icecube” building that house the Japanese H&M flagship.

The then-recently-opened Forever 21 store is right next door, and I can’t tell if it’s ALWAYS that busy on a Sunday or if there was a special event, but the lineup to get in was surprising!

The infamous condom store kitty-corner to the gap. Biggest, pretty-big, and “smart” sized condoms. Heh. That is some brilliant-assed advertising right there.

The exterior of the Uniqlo t-shirt store was branded to celebrate the anniversary of Shonen Sunday magazine, and the store featured all kinds of Shonen Sunday t’s and signatures/original illos by creators including Adachi and Kubo.

Here’s a close-up on the Zetman (Zettman?) illo for Halliday, who’s a huge fan of this series.

The interior of the store is fantastically exciting, and all the shirts are sold in capusles!

We then ducked back up one of the boutiquey side-streets to check out some of these utterly fantastic clothing shops.

Love that Domino’s delivery bike.

We tripped across a zine show… 15 minutes after it closed! Soooo pissed off about that, as the idea of buying a bunch of handmade Japanese zines? That is an awesome idea I would like to participate in. Disappointing. I did meet the really lovely Maki from Presspop Gallery, and I encourage you all to check out their nifty blog: http://presspop.blogspot.com/

We ducked back to the main street to visit Blister, the then-only-comic-book-store in Japan (for Western comics, superheroes and the like). I heard CB Cebulski say lovely things about it and was hoping to check it out. Sadly, they were closed to… and then they closed their doors for good a few months later. Too bad. :-/

One last look at the icecube building and then it was time to head back to the train station, and home for the evening. We were laden with packages and exhausted from walking for 8 or 9 hours around Tokyo, but it was a lot of fun.

I never did figure out what the hell this guy was selling, but speaking as a fat guy sweltering in the 40+ degree heat of Tokyo’s summer, I would certainly have purchased whatever gave him such refreshment. Feel free to translate this in the comments and make me feel more foolish than I already do :)

And that was Harajuku! Thanks for reading! I’ve got maybe 2 more posts from 2009, one on the Tezuka Museum, and one on Tsutaya. Hopefully I’ll get to those soon.

- Chris

Item!

Item! My good friend Eric Kim wrote and drew and self-published a book called “The Complete Plays Of William Shakespeare”, in which he has adapted all of The Bard’s plays as two-panel comic strips! It’s a great book that debuted at TCAF this past May, and while I’m a bad friend for not having mentioned it until now the good folks at The National Post have my back. Check out this great feature on Mr. Kim  http://natpo.st/ccEH0X.

Edit: The morning brings fresh, awesome things.

Item! My good friend Steven Murray writes regularly for The National Post, usually dolling out extremely bad advice and wearing branded-panties in the name of politics, but now he’s stepped beyond the pale and started a regular column about “pop culture” for the post. His first installment is about “nerds”, with the focus being nerd-prom (San Diego Comic Con) that just passed. Check it out at http://bit.ly/dnuiBq.

Item! Last week, just before Scott Pilgrim madness, I got invited over to Mr. Corey Mintz’s house to participate in his next FED column, toasting the release of the sixth Scott Pilgrim graphic novel and Mr. Bryan Lee O’Malley. A whole whack of Bryan’s friends were invited over as well, and we all ate very delicious roasted pork shoulder (prepared three ways). It was a lovely evening. You can read all about it at http://bit.ly/9gd4D8

Being 'Fed': Joel + Bry + Me. Photo by Corey Mintz.

- Chris

Comics In The Classroom

Comic-Con International: San Diego

Saturday, July 24^th 2010, 3:30pm, Room 23AB

Panelists:

Anastasia Betts (UCLA) – https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/InstructorBio.aspx?instid=27588

Christina Blanch (Ball State University) – clblanch@bsu.edu

Deborah Ford (San Diego Unified School District) – http://www2.sandi.net/IMC/,

Tracy White (NYU). – http://www.traced.com

Moderated by Christopher Butcher, manager of The Beguiling books in Toronto and writer for http://comics212.net.

Anastasia Betts, UCLA: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

Success: The biggest success and most satisfying experience I have had thus far is using several different GNs and other texts (written and multimedia) to create a learning experience for students on understanding the WWII events (among others) that ultimately led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by the United Nations.  It is an integrated humanities unit that includes both literature based lessons as well as history and ethics. I use the following:

GRAPHIC NOVELS:
Maus I (and II if time) by Art Speigleman
Barefoot Gen Vol. I (and vol. II if time) by Keiji Nakazawa
Excerpts from History of the American Empire, by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, & Paul Buhle

FILM
Barefoot Gen (the animated feature)
White Light Black Rain (documentary)

ONLINE RESOURCES
Hiroshima Peace Site (Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum): http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/index_e2.html
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN Site): http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
World War II Remembered (Scholastic Online): http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/wwii/index.htm

The combination of all of these resources (I have found) has a profound effect on the students.  Especially when they watch White Light Black Rain after reading Barefoot Gen.  The characters in the manga become real, not just mere illustrations drawn on a comic book page.  I also include some interviews with the artists/authors that are easily found onlin (Nakasawa and Speigelman).  Primarily the interviews with Nakasawa are moving and tragic, as he experienced the bomb and its effects first hand.

I find that students are familiar (a bit) with WWII and the Holocaust.  So, they have some prior knowledge going into the reading of Maus.  We usually start with Maus in this unit, because its the most familiar material.  The format is usually entirely new for students, or rather the format combined with the heavy subject matter.  The visual metaphors portrayed through the use of the animals is both startling (in that it so concretely defines the predator/prey relationship), and relatable (hey, they are mice and cats).  Students often report (at the end of the reading) that it is easier to connect with the characters and gives a much more intimate look at relationships through the use of animals, than it would have it human characters had been used.  The characters as animals also seem to provide another layer of protection for the reader to absorb some material that in horrific.

We talk about this choice (animals vs. humans) a lot after reading Barefoot Gen, where the artist/author chose to use human characters.  It is often pointed out that even though humans are used, they are still quite stylized (manga style) and over the top — which again seems to add a layer of insulation between the reader and the horrific outcome.  However, by the end of the book (vol.1) the reader is completely absorbed and realizes this really happened, this is one person’s TRUE story, and despite the traditional manga plot devices (of crazy humor and gratuitous name calling and physical chicanery), the events that the author lived through are truly tragic.  It is not uncommon to see students crying near the end of the book, as they read through the final scenes of the bomb’s immediate aftermath.

However, sandwiched between Maus and Barefoot Gen, we read the excerpts from History of the American Empire — the chapters on the decision to drop the A-Bomb.  We get into this discussion by discussing (just based on our prior knowledge) whether or not it was right to drop the bomb – -was it necessary.  This is coming on the heels of reading Maus, and so the discussion always takes the route of, if you knew this type of human rights abuse was happening, wouldn’t you feel justified dropping the bomb on the enemy to put an end to it?  Then we read the chapter from American Empire — which of course presents Zinn’s very biased view of US motives for dropping the bomb.  Then, we begin Gen.

Sprinkled throughout the unit, we investigate the websites, and after Gen we watch the film White Light Black Rain.  The transformation of students from only passively interested in WWII and the UDHR (or not interested at all), to impassioned rights activists is a marvel to behold.  At the completion of the unit, students are ready to write letters to congress about any number of current human rights crises, from Darfur, to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in Gaza, to Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan, and more.  The challenge at the end of this unit is for students to take what they’ve learned, to analzye what we’ve learned from these events as a global people (which they usually surmise is pretty much nothing), and to apply it to a modern day issue.  What have we learned?  What should we have learned but didn’t?  Where is your proof that we did/did not learn it.  They write a paper and pick an NGO or an issue to become involved with.  Later we have follow up discussions related to their choices.

My biggest goal with this unit is that students CARE about what happened, and have reasons TODAY for caring about what happened.  They always exceed my expectations in this regard, and that is why I feel so successful with this unit.
CHALLENGE: As I am sure my colleagues will share, some of the biggest challenges that can be overcome with graphic texts are those with reluctant, struggling, or second language readers.  This past year I had a fourth grade ELL (English Language Learner) at my school that absolutely hated to read.  He had some major issues, was not reading on grade level, etc.  No books interested him and it was extremely difficult for him to get into any books.  Normally with a boy like this I might suggest the Wimpy Kid series — but he had already read that.  Next on my list was Bone — but he had already read that.  So, we were running out of options.  Finally I had just had a copy of vol. 1 of Amulet come across my desk.  I decided to give it to him and he LOVED it.  He kept coming to my office asking when the second volume would come out.  His teacher reported that she actually had to stop him from reading to tell him to go out to recess.  We ordered the second book and he read that as well.  He shared the books with his guy friends, many of whom were not eager readers themselves.  Basically this book really turned him on to reading.  We were able to provide other books, combining text and graphics with great success — but really, it was Amulet that lit his fire.  I wish there were more of these.
Along those same lines, my own children were reluctant readers.  As most adolescents will do, they found anime and manga, and got very interested in that world.  Before I knew it, they were always reading!  They wanted to go the book store, the library… I couldn’t keep them away because they always wanted to read the next installment.  Because Manga traditionally deals with archetypes and the heroes journey, it was easy for them to apply the ideas they had been exposed to in mange to their more “traditional” school reading, like Catcher in the Rye and Great Gatsby.  Because they had become used to “reading” and holding a book in their hands, it no longer seemed like such a chore.  They were more receptive to reading traditional texts, and got over their aversion.  They no longer identified themselves as “non-readers” — rather, they considered themselves readers.  They would go online to research anything and everything about their favorite manga series.  They would read up on Wiki about their favorite characters, story arcs, and more.  They watched English subbed anime (which required very FAST reading), because they truly couldn’t stand the English voice acting on the dubbed versions.  Their reading skills GREW by leaps and bounds.  Then reading a traditional book was no longer an issue.  It was amazing.

I find the biggest challenge to teaching graphic novels to the uninitiated (other than overcoming the bias that it’s not real literature), it teaching the students to SLOW DOWN and READ THE IMAGES.  Its more about understanding visual literature.  Newbies tend to want to read the comic the same way the read a book.  They just glance at the images, read the speech bubbles, and move on.  Then they are done and find that they really didn’t get anything out of the book.  I find myself playing that scene in Lion Kind when Rafiki says to Simba (who has just said he sees nothing in the reflection in the stream), to “look harder…”  To help students look harder, we typically take the first panels/pages one at a time on the overhead, discussing each as we go.  I invite them to REALLY LOOK.  What is the artist showing us?  He isn’t going to tell us what he wants us to know, he is going to show us. Etc.  Moving through that way, you can really see the light bulbs go on for students in ways they hadn’t before.  We also talk about perspective and gutters.  What is he showing us?  Why is he choosing to show it to us inthat way?  Why is he NOT showing us?  Why is he NOT showing it?  What happened between what he showed us HERE and what he is now showing us HERE?  Etc.

Anastasia Betts

https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/InstructorBio.aspx?instid=27588

Tracy White, NYU: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

SUCCESS: Third idea: Something unique to comics and important to grasp when reading them is the experience of reading/seeing how words plus images together can create an understanding bigger than the sum of those two parts.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Alison Bechdel ISBN: 978-0618871711

Epileptic, David B ISBN 978-0375714689

The Greatest Marlys! Lynda Barry   ISBN-13: 978-1570612602
CHALLENGE: TIME. Every choice a write/artist makes within a graphic novel is deliberate including how time is depicted.

The Arrival, Shaun Tan ISBN-13: 978-0439895293

Buddha Osamu Tezuka ISBN-13: 978-1932234565
–
Tracy White
www.traced.com

Christina Blanch, Ball State University: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

SUCCESS: I teach in Higher Education, but the idea of how I use graphic novels in my Anthropology class can be easily adapted for 9-12th graders in High School Anthropology, Sociology, or even Cultural Geography.

I use the first volumes of “Y: The Last Man” in my Introduction to Anthropology class. In the class throughout the semester, we learn about culture and how culture affects everything that we do. We first learn how to study culture, or ethnographic methods. Then we study different topics relating to culture such as language, economic exchange, adaptations, marriage, kinship, religion, social stratification, and globalization. We also look at how culture is integrated, i.e. if one part changes, it affects the other parts of culture. During the class we learn about a variety of cultures including the Dobe Ju/’hoansi of Africa (sometimes referred to as “bushmen” and featured in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy”), the Yanomamo that live in the rainforests of Brazil and Venezuela, and the Inuit (commonly referred to as “Eskimo”) who live in the northern regions of North America.

After we get a grasp on culture and how much we depend on our culture for survival, we read “Y: The Last Man.” This graphic novel is about a man named Yorick and his monkey Ampersand who, after a disaster, become the last males on Earth. As you can guess, this changes culture drastically. The students are asked to look at this culture (American culture) and see how this one incident will change our culture. Simple things like language…do you still call a manhole a manhole? Will the masculine words eventually disappear from our language? How will this affect marriage and family? We talk in class about things like in the United States more than 95% of commercial pilots, truck drivers, and ship captains are male. Also, 99% of the mechanics, electricians, and construction workers are dead. How will this affect our culture?

After the students look at how this will affect the United States, we look at global culture and how other cultures will be affected. How will this affect matriarchal cultures as compared to patriarchal cultures? How will magic and religion be used or not used to explain this? Will horticulturalists be better off than hunter/gatherers and agriculturalists?

Then finally, we look at globalization. How will this affect world culture? Will it be nation against nation or will women band together to help each other out? With many members of the United Nations dead, how will leadership be affected? There are many possibilities to discuss in this area.

Results from this were outstanding. Not only were the papers excellent, but the students told me they read the graphic novel ahead of time and many times over and over and that it made them WANT to read the textbook (something that ALL teachers struggle with) so that they would better be able to understand Yorick’s story.

This year I am using the first four volumes of “The Walking Dead” as a text as we are also looking at the cultural construction of zombie culture.

CHALLENGE: One of the most challenging things to get students to understand about culture is how different cultures can be. They see them as strange or weird sometimes, and we try to teach cultural relativism, accepting cultures on their own terms. Not judging them by the standards of another. To help them understand this, I use comics. I show them a foreign comic, such as manga (not Pokemon or something they are familiar with). First, having to read it “backwards” and “the wrong way” is challenging and the jokes and terms, even translated, don’t make sense. They just think it’s silly. Their assignment is to take an American comic that is humorous in some way (I provide several that they can use or they can use one of their own) and read it and then explain why it’s funny to our culture. Then they have to try to explain why it’s funny to another culture of their choosing. Sometimes I will let them use comic strips if they are pre-approved by me. Finally, they have to think of how to change the comic to make it funny to their chosen culture. One student chose a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin is buying lemonade from Susie’s lemonade stand. The culture he chose was a very patriarchal culture where women would never dress without being covered, would never own a business, and would never talk to a man the way Susie talked to Calvin. This exercise really gets the students to take off their cultural lenses and see that their culture is just one model of reality and other cultures are not failed attempts at emulating our culture, but as Wade Davis said “unique manifestations of the human spirit.”

Christina Blanch
Department of Anthropology
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
clblanch@bsu.edu

Deborah B. Ford, San Diego Unified School District: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

Success Story: “Non-reader”: Sammy comes from a family that “does not read.” When his mom told him he had to read Coraline before she would take him to see the movie, I sent him home with Coraline, the graphic novel. He begged to stay up and finish reading it. He read it twice and then moved on to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. His mom says he is the first reader in their family.

Coraline / adapted & illustrated by P. Craig Russell ; colorist, Lovern Kindzierski ; letterer, Todd Klein.

Publisher: HarperCollins, c2008

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-082545-4
ISBN-10: 0-06-082545-6

Coraline / Neil Gaiman ; with illustrations by Dave McKean.

Publisher: HarperTrophy, c2002

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-057591-5
ISBN-10: 0-06-057591-3

Diary of a wimpy kid : Greg Heffley’s journal / by Jeff Kinney.

Publisher: Amulet Books, c2007

ISBN-13: 978-0-8109-9313-6
ISBN-10: 0-8109-9313-9

Challenge: Connecting to the Curriculum: Teachers can use comic books and graphic novels to teach what they already teach. Many are award winning books that are directly related to the curriculum. Capstone Press publishes graphic history, science, and biography graphic series. Toon Books publishes early readers in graphic novel format. First Second Books publishes many different level books that can be used, including their new series on mythology.

Toon Books- Benny and Penny series

Benny and Penny in The toy breaker : a Toon Book / by Geoffrey Hayes.

Publisher: Toon Books, c2010

ISBN-13: 978-1-935179-07-8
ISBN-10: 1-935179-07-1

Olympians. 1, Zeus, king of the gods / George O’Connor.

Publisher: First Second, c2010

ISBN-13: 978-1-59643-625-1
ISBN-10: 1-59643-625-5

Websites:

Deborah B. Ford blog, Libraries Matter http://deborahford.blogspot.com/

Capstone Press http://www.capstonepub.com/default.aspx

First Second Books http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/

Toon Books http://www.toonbooks.com/

Deborah B. Ford is an award-winning teacher librarian, author and international speaker with over twenty five years of experience as a classroom teacher and librarian in K-12 schools. She is the author of Scary, Gross and Enlightening: Books for Boys. She is currently working as the District Resource Librarian for San Diego Unified School District, serving over 180 schools. Traveling in the United States and Canada, she also does seminars for the Bureau of Education: “Increasing the Effectiveness of Your School Library Program,” and “Books and Boys.” Deborah Ford is available for workshops and keynotes at conferences, as well as for school districts. Contact her at auntbettyblue@yahoo.com for more information.

Drawn & Quarterly has acquired North American English rights to two graphic novel memoirs,Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths and NonNonB?, by one of Japan’s most acclaimed and legendary manga-kas, Shigeru Mizuki, it was announced today by Chris Oliveros, Editor-in-Chief, Acquiring Editor and Publisher of Drawn & Quarterly. – Drawn & Quarterly Blog, http://bit.ly/9idG4m

Best news of the show so far!

- Chris

Heya!

So I’ve been twittering photos live from the floor of the San Diego Comic Con all day–you can follow me at http://twitter.com/Comics212 and see all the fun I’m having. That’s me up top, posing with the Super Pro KO Championship Belt–a neat spin-off of the new Oni Press series that looks great. Anyway, here’s a bit of a photo parade from the set-up and preview night! Enjoy!

The Webcomics area, chock full of webcomics.

Jon Rosenberg and Rich Stevens in the final battle.

Dylan Meconis (Family Man), Gary Tyrell (Fleen.com), and Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie) are having a GREAT TIME!

The Topatoco booth… If you want T-shirts, they’ve got you… covered.

This is the emptiest the show will be all weekend.

Sunday Press, publishers of fabulous books.

Oni Press: They got lotsa books.

Oni Press designer Keith Wood models the Super Pro K.O. belt!

Ever wanted to know what 4,000 copies of Scott Pilgrim looked like? Also shown: Charlie Chu.

Hellboy Skelanimals.

Miles and a statue from anime.

It’s the D&Q booth with the energetic Peggy Burns, keep’n it fully real today.

Look, it’s me and the McClouds! Its me in back, then from left Winter as Envy Adams, Ivy, Scott, Robynne (honorary McCloud), and Sky.

So JD Arnold and Rich Koslowski put tigether a special box set for their new album BB Wolf, complete with all kindsa bonus stuff… I forgot to ask how much it was!

- Chris

Chris with Megaphone. Photo by Paul Hillier, http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadragebunny/

I swear, I was much happier than this last night.

Seriously, that was a pretty ridiculous night. We feel like there were over 2,000 people at the event, we did counts on the line and there were over 800 people lined up for Mal for the midnight signing (that went until about 3:45am). About that many in the “I just want my book” line, and people milling out, seeing bands, playing video games, listening to music, drinking, having a good time.

In short, it was the most successful event I’ve ever run. Thanks to everyone who helped out. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to Oni for helping us set it up. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for not calling the cops. Oh, and thanks to Mr. O’Malley, who basically killed himself in the service of comics… that’s all I really ask of anyone :)

- Christopher

“I have to admit, I think it’s nice that Robert Kirkman and Bryan Lee O’Malley are due big, crazy weekends at CCI tied into comics work they own and control; I think a weekend-long display of the virtues of that arrangement is a positive for comics. I mean, it’s nice when a big corporation has a big corporate movie for you to enjoy, but I like those projects where if you stare back you can see the primary creator fully invested — figuratively and literally — as opposed to perhaps the latest caretaker who may even be paid for those “handling” duties more than original creator was rewarded.” – Tom Spurgeon, ComicsReporter.com

Well, yes. Yes exactly. I haven’t done a very good job of covering non-me-related happenings at San Diego Comic Con this year, but luckily Spurgeon has, and he’s got the perspective on the show most in tune with my own, on the con floor. So assuming you’re not already doing it, go check out http://comicsreporter.com

- Christopher

I want to write about it first and foremost because I thought the first two volumes (now available in better comic and book stores everywhere) are really wonderful stuff. They’re inspiring and strange–a mix of magical realism and science-fiction that’s rare in North American publishing. Essentially, the story is about a group of teenagers that are vying to be a part of Japan’s revamped space program. They enter a highschool set to train young people to go into space (or become support crew) and have trials and tribulations, but it’s set against an awful disaster in the space program that cost hundreds of lives. It’s got drama and pathos, there’s a lot of great research into space and astronaut training that’s evident in the stories, and the lead character’s wistful optimism and is-he-real/isn’t-he-real imaginary friend keeps you guessing at the whole thing. I’m eagerly anticipating the third volume, and the fourth, and the rest of the series really. :)

Now, unfortunately just liking a book isn’t really enough to get me to blog lately (as it is I am late for work typing this out). Yesterday in mentioning this book on twitter, I couldn’t help but mention that people should try it despite it’s cover… And I felt I should elaborate on that a little. As a retailer, I’ve attemped to share my enthusiasm with many customers, but I’ve been thwarted somewhat because… well… you can see that cover right?

The audience for the book in North America is probably older teens and people in their 20s (at least I hope so because the teen market is saturated and full of thieves…). But more importantly, as part of Vertical’s line (folks who have heretofore only published work intended for adults, primarily by Osamu Tezuka) there’s a natural adult crossover. As a bookseller, I look at the people who enjoy Sci-Fi and Drama, people who might’ve really loved the critical-hit / sales-flop PLANETES and want something new to read. But every time I put a copy of Twin Spica in someone’s hands, they take one look at the cover and go “that’s not really my thing”. Why? Well it’s got a moe little girl on a magical background holding glowing orbs… It’s precious, and awkward, and looks verrrrry young by North American standards.

But the book is great.

So I’ve been offering up a money-back guarantee and at that point most people “bite” because I’ve got a good track record with recommendations and there’s almost no risk. But I’m not in every store. I mean, I heard about the book months and months ago through a licensing announcement, and I got excited, and then I saw the art and was convinced that there were two series in Japan called Twin Spica. I’m on board and even I have reservations.

Of course, none of this is to admonish Vertical–far from it. They produced a version very faithful to the Japanese edition, and seeing as this series has a large fan-base they might’ve ended up in a situation similar to the one with Yen Press and the Spice & Wolf novels. Hardcore fans don’t really care if the cover of a book makes it difficult to sell, they want it to be as close to the Japanese as possible without bothering to learn Japanese. They don’t really get that making something a success in the marketplace means that more of that thing can keep coming out in the marketplace, for the most part, and from what I can tell Twin Spica has some very hardcore fans. I don’t think it was in anyone’s best interests to alter the cover design if it meant alienating the people most likely to buy it, but at the same time, I’m kind of in a pickle because that book? Tough sell to the casual manga fan, the 20+ year old manga fan, the non-manga-fan who’d probably enjoy it. Hell, it doesn’t look like any other book Vertical has ever published. Which isn’t even a bad thing. But it does make it pretty difficult to give it a retail context.

Anyway, the point of all of this is: Read Twin Spica. It’s a delightful series that’s off to a great start, and like Vertical’s other recent releases Peepo Choo and Chi’s Sweet Home it’s an interesting step for the company to take, and one they should be rewarded for with sales. Because you really can’t judge this book by its cover.

(You knew that was coming, right?)

- Christopher

Some con-goers taking a break at San Diego 2007.

Hey everyone! After my one year hiatus (first since 2002) I’m happily headed back to the San Diego Comic Con July 21st-25th! I love me some comic-cons, and I really love the biggest comic-con the most–it’s just completely insane. I’m planning on writing about and from the show whenever possible, and hitting up all the parties and visiting all the booths and all of it. Keep reading the blog for updates, and if you’re a PR person/rep and wanna invite me to something, feel free to drop me a line at chris [at] beguiling [dot] com.

On that note, I’ll also be working The Beguiling’s original art sales area periodically, located in the Drawn & Quarterly booth (same area as last year I believe). Official PR about that one a little later, once we have the booth number and such.

I’m also quite honoured to be moderating or participating in a number of awesome panels and programs. I’d be delighted if you’d come out and visit, I think they’re all going to be pretty awesome (though all very different):

Thursday, July 22
The Best and Worst of Manga 2010
4:30-5:30pm, Room 3
It’s been a wild year for manga, with new publishers springing up while old ones fade away, and sometimes it seems like the one constant in life is that One Piece will go on forever. Join our five panelists—Deb Aoki (manga.about.com), Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide), Christopher Butcher (comics.212.net), Tom Spurgeon (comicsreporter.com) and Kai-Ming Cha (Publishers Weekly)—as they talk about the best and worst manga of the last year, the manga they want to see translated, and the most anticipated upcoming releases!

Friday, July 23
Comics Design
3:30 – 4:30pm, Room 26AB
How do pages of art become a book? Six designers – Mark Chiarello (DC Comics), Adam Grano (Fantagraphics), Chip Kidd (Random House), Fawn Lau (Viz), Mark Siegel (First Second Books), and Keith Wood (Oni Press) – discuss what’s involved in the process of comics design, and the importance of design to a book’s critical and consumer reception. Moderated by Chris Butcher (The Beguiling).

Saturday, July 24
Comics in the Classroom
3:30 – 4:30, Room 26AB
Comics are becoming increasingly common in the elementary and Secondary classrooms. But how can teachers incorporate comics into their course curriculums? This panel provides practical strategies for teachers to do just that. Presented by Anastasia Betts (UCLA), Christina Blanch (Ball State University), Deborah Ford (San Diego Unified School District), and Tracy White (NYU). Moderated by Chris Butcher (The Beguiling).

–

See you there!

- Christopher Butcher

I like taking pictures of toys, because I like Looking at toys. Particularly toys that are beautifully constructed, and not stuff you normally find here in North America. Harajuku, fashion and shopping Mecca of Japan, is a place to find pretty-much everything your heart desires, including a huge toy-store (mostly aimed at a female clientelle) called Kiddy Land. In 2008 I took my first trip to Japan and spent an hour wandering around this heavily boutiqued and beautiful toy-store, and I probably spent even longer there in 2009.


View Larger Map


From Harajuku JR Station (the main point of entry for any tourist) you can head east along the major-chain shopping street Omotesando (home of the Omotesando shopping complex) (the yellow one also labeled ’413′), or head north a block and then head east (turn right at The McDonalds, basically) along the tiny Takeshita Dori, home of high-fashion boutiques, low-fashion boutiques, goth/loli wear, indy/alt/punk wear, and so very much more. For this trip we headed up Omotoesando, circled the entire city back to Harajuku JR Station, and then headed east along Takeshita Dori. It was a very long day… but the photos are pretty great…! Click to…

Upon exiting Harajuku JR station, our beloved and amazing SNOOPYTOWN had disappeared. I’d heard that they might be moving/reopening, but seeing it all covered in grey hoarding is sad.

If you want to see the joy and wonder of Harajuku Snoopytown, check out my posts from 2008.

http://comics212.net/2007/12/04/japan-2007-harajuku-part-1-gothic-lolita-yoyogi-park/

http://comics212.net/2007/12/07/japan-2007-harajuku-part-2-peanuts-tintin-moomin/

But that didn’t stop the delightful goths, lolis, gothlolis, and freaks from congregating on the bridge outside the station.

.

To be honest, the phenomenon has gotten to be a bit… much. Like not to rag on either the people doing it or the people watching, but it’s been in so many guidebooks and websites for so long that… Yeah, I kinda felt like a creep taking photos, it’s just a total scrum of people trying to get in there.

So I stopped taking pictures. Sorry. There are enough pictures of goth lolis I think. Well, for me anyway.

I’ll take pictures of tako-yaki instead! It’s tiny pieces of octopus covered in batter and then deep fried.  It goes best with beer…

Can I just say again… for the record… how much civilized it is to be able to buy yourself a cold beer on a hot day and enjoy a nice walk through a park? It’s one of those times that I really regret being born into a puritan, uptight country, and living in the province with the strictest liquor laws in the country only compounds that. Anyway, here’s to Japan. Home of beer, octopus, and rockabilly dancers:

Meanwhile, the newest trend when we were there? Character socks! Totally, totally unlicensed character socks, from what I could tell. Very cute though. Who doesn’t want Batman, as a bear, as socks (lower left)? Or Spider-man, as a mouse, as socks?

Spider-man AS MICKEY MOUSE, as socks. And I should mention for the record, that this was July 2009, more than six months BEFORE Disney bought Marvel. Japanese fashion trends are better than a crystal ball, I tell ya what.

The ‘reusable bag’ trend had just started to hit as well, and while I’d like to think these were all officially licensed goods, I can’t really prove it. But if you ever wanted an ALF shopping bag, there’s probably still one in Harajuku.

Alf.

The main shopping drag of Harajuku, Omotesando Road, is very, very full on a weekend. But this is not as full as it can be in Harajuku.

We’re going to jump forward in time a year to May 2010 when I went back to Harajuku. In addition to it being a warm weekend full of people-watching, it was also “The Thai Festival” and there was some sort of sporting event going on at the olympic stadium around the corner. This is what it was like trying to exit the train station:

Just a steady stream of people, out the door down the street. Unreal. So yeah, Japan is not a place for you if you do not like crowds.

Anyway.

If you’re anything like me, you mostly want to see PRODUCT PHOTOS. Well you’re in luck! We went back to the fairly-awesome giant toy store KIDDYLAND and took some photos.

Kiddyland photo exterior from 2008.

I love the boutiquing of Japanese stores, and toy-stores in particular. It’s utterly amazing, the disparate ranges of products all artfully arranged together. Figure out what your niche is, go to that section, and just spend to your heart’s content. All of the popular stuff is on the back wall, all of the up-and-coming stuff is in the center aisles, just waiting to hook some poor new fan. Awesome.

Seriously, Popples.

They even provided a handy chart so you could get the right Popple, based on your personality.

So many Elmo.

A murder of Elmo.

There’s something unsettling about Bert dolls without comperable Ernie dolls… Just tickle-me-Ernie, which is no good. No good at all.

And then, front-and-centre, it’s Hello Kitty. Because they pay for the good displays.

Hello Kitty patterned Wellys… With heel, of course.

My most vivid memory of being at Kiddyland that hot July day? The first 3 floors were _crawling_ with unhappy white children. Seriously. This tour group of like 20 Australian kids, maybe 8-14, just absolutely fucking miserable, taking up my precious valuable air conditioning. The possibility exists that they were brought to the toy store and then told that they could not buy anything, and that would almost justify their sullenness. Instead they sat on the already narrow stairs and whined. Ugh.

So when a friend asks you to “bring back some Moomin stuff from Japan for me” and then you’re confronted with this, you’re in a bit of a pickle. Because… do you just bring back like $50 worth of stuff? $100? $200? Cuz $200 won’t even make a dent in the available merchandise.

But it’s far worse if they’re Ghibli fans…

Can you believe that statue is only $35? Uggggh. I wanted to buy everything.

Heeeeeeeeeee.

Me and Totoro.

At this point Ponyo had just been released to Japanese theatres, and I gotta say for Ghibli merch it looked strange as hell. Big eyes, featureless. But having seen it now? I kind of regret not getting a little something, it’s a great, great film and the merch is adorable.

Meanwhile, we found Snoopytown:

It had migrated to take up a full floor of Kiddyland. Not nearly as ritzi as previous digs, but probably a tenth the cost in rent…

Meta? More like METADORABLE!!!! Amirite!?

No, I didn’t feel awkward or out of place at all, why do you ask?

Heh.

The Evangelion posters welcomed us to a new floor. A badass floor. A floor… for DUDES.

I really wanted the Statue of David toy, but I didn’t forty dollars want it.

SEH! PHI! ROTH! (dunh dunh dunh dannnnh). Click to wallpaper-size.

Then we took our leave of the humble Kiddy Land, and headed down the street to The TinTin Store, which I also love.

Tintin and Snowy greet you inside the door!

It was sale season when we were there. Sales everywhere! Apparently the economy really needed the boost.

Anyhow, that wraps the first half of our walk through Harajuku! Stay tuned for getting lost in the residential part of town, and fashionable street Takeshita Dori!

- Chris

Hey! It’s been quiet around here eh? Heh. Sorry. I’ve been… busy. It’s been busy. It’s gonna keep being busy too, but man, things are good. I’m doing lots of cool stuff to make comics better and more interesting and that’s what counts, right?

No? Okay, you’re right. Sorry. I will write about comics some more instead. But first I’m gonna have to do a little bit of self-promotion. I’m on a very cool panel at San Diego, and I’m moderating two very cool panels, and that’s gonna be fun. Plus we’re doing Beguiling stuff there? And September… and October. Man.

So, yeah.

But first: I went to Japan in the week between TCAF and Anime North to buy stuff to sell, and it was a great trip. Here’s me at one of those ground-level train crossings that seemingly only exist in anime, just south of Shinjuku Station.

I still have 3-4 posts worth of material from my Summer 2009 trip too. Yikes!

Anyway, good times, busy times, but I’ll try not to disappear again.

Here’s a shot of me in a Yukata:

Here’s from when I met the awesome/legendary Shintaro Kago and bought some art off of him:

I’ll try and organize something more coherent this week. Thanks for continuing to read/subscribe to this blog.

Oh, and the last two manga milestones of 2009, I’m gonna fish those too.

- Christopher

The 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival Wrap-Up

Hi Friends!

My name is Christopher Butcher, and I’m the co-founder and festival director of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF)! As you might know, TCAF is dedicated to celebrating comics and graphic novels and their creators, with a specific focus on all of the great comics that Canadian creators have to offer. I had the pleasure of presiding over our fifth festival last month, and I’m pleased to report it was our most-successful and best-attended yet. Perhaps the best example of this is that TCAF was the number 3 trending topic on Twitter in Canada for much of the Sunday of the show, even beating out Canadian supercrush Justin Beiber. It’s a heartening example of how many people TCAF speaks to, and to their affection for the event.

Rather than send out a big PR, and in keeping with our tradition, on behalf of the staff and executive of TCAF — and whom I thank for their hard work and dedication — I’m sending out the following informal note talking about TCAF 2010 and announcing exciting plans for the future.

Thanks For All Of The Support!

We’d like to thank our partners and presenting sponsors Toronto Public Library for supporting, promoting, and hosting TCAF 2010 at their fantastic flagship location, Toronto Reference Library. By incorporating the gorgeous new Bram & Bluma Appel Salon into the TCAF floorplan we were able to comfortably more-than-double our footprint for 2010, expanding to more than 200 exhibitors and honoured guests, and dozens of comics-related readings and symposiums. The increased space allowed us to easily accommodate a great increase in public attendance — a record high 12,000 TCAF-specific attendees visited the Festival over the weekend (a 10% increase over 2009)! 2010 marks TCAF’s second year of partnership with TPL, and it’s a partnership that reinforces that TCAF is a not-for-profit event. We’ve always maintained that making TCAF free removes a key obstacle – finances – for anyone who might be interested in the comics medium, and TPL continues to be a wonderful partner in that goal.

Of course there’s no Festival without great creators and works to celebrate, and so we’d like to thank all of the wonderful cartoonists, publishers, writers, artists, and other agencies that took the time to exhibit and present at TCAF 2010, it made for a truly diverse and excellent look at the medium of comics, touching on every corner of the medium. Special thanks to featured guests Daniel Clowes, Roger Langridge, Jeff Lemire, Paul Pope, Dash Shaw, James Sturm, Charles Vess and Jim Woodring, all of whom chose to premiere their wonderful new projects with TCAF, and for participating in panels and workshops and presentations and general support.

About The Festival…

TCAF tried a number of new initiatives this year that used Toronto Reference Library in new and unique ways, and we found them to be generally quite successful; our Publisher’s Pavilion was significantly cooler than last year, our Sunday kids area was packed all day, and the new Webcomics Pavilion was busy all weekend! Of particular note were our art installations. The biggest and boldest installation from Toronto art collective Trio Magnus (Clayton Hanmer, Aaron Leighton, and Steve Wilson) was fantastic, featuring a massive installation, live drawing, and a unique and vibrant set-up! Canadian webcomics collective Transmission-X transformed a learning centre into something unique and fun, and the fine folks at indie-lit magazine Broken Pencil and artist group WOWEE ZONK teamed up to create “The Small Press Schooner,” a rotating assemblage of fantastic non- and nominally-narrative artists, producing unique visual works over the course of the weekend. It was a great space with a great vibe and Chris Kuzma, Patrick Kyle, and Ginette LaPalme deserve big thanks for their hard work making it look so good.

At TCAF we’ve definitely strived to integrate ourselves into the rich fabric of cultural events and exhibitions that happen around Toronto, and a big part of that has been the support of the local and national media that help to draw out comics aficionados and newcomers from all corners. Again this year, the Arts & Life section of the National Post newspaper went above and beyond in their coverage of TCAF, running over a hundred Q&As with TCAF exhibitors and cartoonists in addition to numerous feature articles—the kind of coverage they reserve for massive events like NXNE and The International Festival of Authors. Our 2010 lead media sponsor Eye Weekly ran a cover story and many other pages of coverage on the 2010 festival and guest Daniel Clowes, and cross-town rivals NOW Magazine got in on the act with a cover feature on TCAF-debut graphic novel KENK. We also received fantastic coverage from the CBC, Toronto Star, Torontoist, BlogTO, Publishers Weekly, Quill &Quire, Sequential, The Walrus, Comics Reporter, RGB Filter, Open Books Toronto, plus dozens of blogs, thousands of tweets, and a general increased awareness of what we do and why we do it was the end result. Thank you!

We Couldn’t Have Done It Without…

Finally, we’d like to thank some of the organizations and individuals who worked to make TCAF 2010 such an unprecedented success:

• - Sponsors & Partners Toronto Public Library, Eye Weekly, Owl Magazine, The French Consulate in Toronto, Broken Pencil, The Walrus, HeartsandFlours.ca, and especially The Beguiling Books and Art for their ongoing financial support.
• - Venue partners The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, Toronto Reference Library, The Merril Collection/Lillian H. Smith Library, The Miles Nadal JCC, The Pilot, Clinton’s Tavern, Fuzion Lounge, Tequila Bookworm, and The Cadillac Lounge.
• - TCAF 2010 Poster artist Daniel Clowes, and Drawn & Quarterly’s Tom Devlin for helping us put the poster together.
• - The staff of Toronto Public Library, Toronto Reference Library, and The Bram and Bluma Appel Salon for all of their work, and especially TPL’s Ab Velasco for his tireless efforts to make TCAF a success.
• - Our many programming hosts and moderators including Mark Askwith (SPACE), Robin McConnell (Inkstuds), Gil Roth, Matthew Kumar, Jason Thompson, Bart Beaty, Holly Post, Dan Nadel, Robin Brenner, Kathryn & Stuart Immonen, Jeet Heer, Jose Villarrubia, Jason Azzopardi, Scott Campbell and Graham Annable, Larry Marder, Jim Munroe, Walter Dickinson, MK Reed, Brad Mackay, Eva Volin, Matt Forsythe, and Jaleen Grove.
• - The hosts and staff of The 2010 Doug Wright Awards for throwing a great event Saturday evening.
• - The staff of The Beguiling for working on their weekend off
• - Peggy Burns from Drawn & Quarterly for excellent organization and coordination of guests.
• - Chip Zdarsky for his wonderful maps and expert assistance.
• - George Rohac for his early support!
• - Nadine Lessio for the fantastic new web-presence.
• - The always shrewd advice of Nathalie Atkinson.
• - Finally, and especially, our volunteers. I’m convinced that we have the greatest assemblage of volunteers of any major comics event, and this year’s crew were efficient, helpful, and praised by all of our exhibitors. Thank you for all of your hard work, dedication, and support, and we hope to see you back again in 2011.

The BIG News…!

Yes, you read that correctly: TCAF will occur annually for the foreseeable future. Save the Date: the next Toronto Comic Arts Festival is on for May 7 & 8, 2011, at Toronto Reference Library. It is once again Mother’s Day weekend. (Thanks, by the way, to all of the cool Moms who came out for the event on the Sunday.)

Our number one request for years now, from our partners, sponsors, exhibitors, attendees, and staff, has been to make the show a regularly occurring annual event. After our trial year, we feel confident that we can accomplish TCAF to our satisfaction on an annual basis. We’ve looked at what worked, and what didn’t, and we’re ready to take all the necessary actions to make TCAF an annual show, even if that means some change.

A big part of going to an annual event is the recognition that we’d like to make TRL our home for the foreseeable future, that we’d like to offer a space for new exhibitors and artists every year but our physical presence is not going to increase much year-over-year, and that the Festival’s landscape and texture must continue to change every year in order to ensure a fresh and exciting event. We’ve always tried to strike a balance between innovations to improve the show and creating a familiar and welcoming experience for exhibitors and attendees, and that won’t change… But some changes will be made to how the show operates and interacts with the comics community in order to create the best event possible. We ask for the support and understanding of all of our exhibitors and attendees going forward in the years to come, and you can expect further announcements this August. We promise all of you reading this: we are committed to making TCAF 2011 our best comics festival yet, and any and all changes we make will be towards that goal.

In Conclusion…

On behalf of myself and the entire staff we’d like to thank all everyone who made The 2010 Toronto Comic Arts Festival such a fantastic success. We greatly appreciate your support, promotion, and most-of-all your attendance at all of our Festival events. We’re looking forward to presenting great shows for years to come.

Best,

Christopher Butcher, Festival Director & Co-Founder
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival

On behalf of…

Peter Birkemoe, Co-Founder

Miles Baker, Assistant Festival Director

Nathalie Atkinson, Media Coordinator

Rob Broughton, Sean Rogers, and Tory Woollcott, Site Coordinators

Kate Dickson and Gina Gagliano, Programming Coordinators

Scott Robins, Kids Programming Coordinator

Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Volunteer Coordinator

Parrish Kilthei, Tech Coordinator

May 24th: Zan Christiensen posts a great article about possible censorship concerns against gay-centric graphic novels at Apple’s App Store, for the iPad and iPhone.
http://prismcomics.org/display.php?id=1858

June 13th: The New York Times covers the case of ULYSSES SEEN, a graphic novel adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses that had non-sexual nudity edited out after demands by the appstore people. Rage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/technology/14ulysses.html

June 14th, 1:40am: I post a link to Zan’s article at Prism, add a little bit of commentary and additional thinking, call for comment. I feel bad for being behind the times…

June 14th, 10:40am: Tech blog Gizmodo picks up on the story of ULYSSES SEEN and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST censorship.
http://gizmodo.com/5562802/the-latest-examples-of-apples-stupid-editorial-censorship

June 14th, 12:30pm: Awesome Gay Blog JoeMyGod publishes a story on the same issue, based on a reader tip.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/06/apple-censors-gay-graphic-novels-but.html

June 14th, 4pm: Gizmodo updates that Apple has apparently reversed its decision and has asked the creators of both ULYSSES SEEN and THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST to resubmit the unedited works for approval.

While it shouldn’t have taken a public, multi-site shaming to get Apple’s act together, I’m quite pleased that both sets of creators will get their work to be presented in the format they’d originally intended, and hopefully get a nice little sales boost from all of the attention. I’m glad that whatever small part I played in bringing the story to people’s attention helped resolve the situation, and kudos again to Zan for writing a great article and highlighting an obvious injustice. I hope the Yaoi Press people aren’t similarly left behind…

Which brings us to another issue, as mentioned by my friend Andrew Wheeler this morning:

@Wheeler: Given Apple’s censorship, shouldn’t intelligent liberals adamantly reject it as a publishing platform? Where’d our ethics go? I refer in part to the censorship of comic adaptations of Wilde http://tinyurl.com/37j3q3b and Joyce http://nyti.ms/9HzgFE

Too racy for Apple? Apparently so... The Importance of Being Ernest, by Tom Bouden.

While I was on my little hiatus, one of the things I did make a point to read was Zan Christiensen’s excellent and lengthy essay on the difficulties that queer creators and queer-themed comics works have had getting accepted into Apple’s iPad app store. I recommend that you go and read it for yourself over at The Prism Comics website, a thriving c0mmunity for queer comics and comics-fans.

In case you don’t make it over there I’ll sum it up for you: There’s a very definite class-system at work in the app-store, and it’s looking very much like queer comics are at the bottom of the heap. The panel to the right there, from Tom Bouden’s adaptation of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest (featuring, naturally, an all-male cast!), was considered too sexy for an 18+ app, and is one of 6 or 7 panels in the book that got it denied from the app-store, all similarly tame (a bare bum, an embrace).

There are lots of examples, plenty of pictures to show just how ‘edgy’ the banned material is (not very much at all), and plenty of the standard Apple denials and non-denials (The Sports Illustrated quote is particularly telling).

The pragmatist in me believes that this isn’t a free speech issue, that this is simply a business making business decisions for itself that I don’t happen to like. But if gay-themed material is being held to a different standard than straight material, particularly if it’s systematic, then it’s both unfair discrimination and quite happily illegal (in most of the world anyway). Looking at the situation, I’d be inclined to start leaning towards the latter. I don’t know why a business would set themselves up as a censor, but if they’re going to, they better start being more transparent and accountable… or it’ll only be a matter of time before they find themselves in a great deal of legal trouble.

Edit: As a brief aside, I would love to hear from publishers if the approval process is the same (or easier) when it comes to getting your comic/graphic novel published through iBooks (Apple’s online bookstore) as getting a stand-alone app published…

- Chris

Matthew Seiden manning The Buenaventura Press table at TCAF 2009. Photo by Deb Aoki, manga.about.com.

Sad news today, as Alvin Buenaventura officially announced the end of his publishing company Buenaventura Press at the (excellent) group blog Blog Flume, to which he contributes.

“I deeply regret having to take these actions, but the press experienced a devastating financial blow that made it impossible to continue.”

While I do actually have a good handle on what that ‘blow’ was, it’s not my place to say if Alvin doesn’t want to talk about it just yet. The fact that he closed down Buenaventura Press in January and just told the public now implies the level of privacy he’d like, and that’s totally within his rights.

I really liked a lot of Buenaventura’s output–they’re the only North American publisher to have released work by the wonderful Tom Gauld for example, they were the amazing Vanessa Davis‘ first publishers, they took over the publishing duties of the outstanding Kramers Ergot and surprising Comic Art magazine, not to mention all of the other fabulous prints, comics, and books that they released over their short lifetime. They were a regular exhibitor at TCAF and they always put on a fantastic-looking display. They put out good work by good cartoonists, and it’s a shame that there’s now one less publisher doing that. Cheers Alvin, you did great work.

Which brings me to my next point: There are still a lot of awesome publishers around that could probably use a few of your hard-earned dollars in exchange for wonderful comic books.

Buenaventura Press at TCAF 2007. Photo by Jamie Coville.

I don’t want to turn this into a polemic or anything, I’m not trying to guilt or badger you into giving up your money, but I know more than anything how easy it is to get swept along in the day-to-day-discussion of comics, the bullshit Blackest-Night-Siege-Heroic-Age-Brightest-Day nonsense is fun because you can be a part of the conversation online about how terrible it all is, but when it comes to spending money on good books that don’t get as much discussion–but are going to hold up on your shelves and in your comic boxes a helluva lot better down the road–it really is worth your time and effort to check out some of the smaller and boutique publishers out there, because they’re often doing amazing stuff.

And I’m not setting this up as a mainstream versus indie debate–that’s fucking stupid. That’s over. This is about buying comics you like versus buying comics you don’t. And there are a lot of great books out there getting left out of the discussion that are great, that are worth your time. I do my best to promote them here on the blog, to sell them in the store, to give them a platform and an audience at TCAF, but sometimes it isn’t enough and I have to make a direct appeal like this.

So here’s a list of publishers I like, and a book or two I recommend from them; Please support them with a purchase if you can:

AdHouse Books – http://adhousebooks.com/
Recommended: Afrodisiac, by Jim Rugg. The Venice Chronicles, by Enrico Casarosa

Bodega Distribution – http://www.bodegadistribution.com/
The Mourning Star Volume 1 & 2, by Kazimir Strzepek

Conundrum Press – http://conundrumpress.com/
Drop-In, by Dave Lapp.  Ruts & Guilles: Nine Days in Saint Petersburg, by Phillippe Girard.

Drawn & Quarterly – http://drawnandquarterly.com/
Market Day, by James Sturm. Vellevision, by Maurice Vellekoop. Red Colored Elegy, by Seiichi Hayashi. Get a Life by Dupuy & Berberian.

Fanfare / Ponent-Mon – http://ponentmon.com/
A Distant Neighborhood Volumes 1 & 2, by Jiro Taniguchi

Fantagraphics Books – http://fantagraphics.com/
Almost Silent, by Jason.  Artichoke Tales, by Megan Kelso. Ganges #1-3 by Kevin Huizenga.

Koyama Press – http://koyamapress.com/
Lose #1 & #2, by Michael DeForge. A Very Kraftwerk Sumer, by Chris Hutsul.

La Pasteque – http://lapasteque.com/
la Fugue, by Pascal Blanchet.  Jimmy et le Bigfoot, by Pascal Girard.

New Reliable Press – http://newreliable.com/
Horribleville Volume 1, by KC Green.

Oni Press - http://onipress.com/
Scott Pilgrim Vols 1-6, by Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Picturebox Inc. – http://www.pictureboxinc.com/
New Enigineering & Travel, by Yuichi Yokoyama.

Pop Sandbox – http://popsandbox.com/
Kenk, by Richard Poplak.

SLG Publishing – http://slgpublishing.com/
Street Angel, by Jim Rugg and Brian Marruca. NIL, by James Turner. DORK Vols 1 & 2, by Evan Dorkin. SQUEE!, by Jhonen Vasquez.

Sparkplug Comic Books – http://sparkplugcomicbooks.com/
Bookhunter, by Jason Shiga. Jin & Jam #1, by Hellen Jo.

Top Shelf Comix – http://topshelfcomix.com/
Alec: The Years Have Pants, by Eddie Campbell. Superfuckers, by James Kochalka. Moving Pictures, by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen.

Topatoco – http://topatoco.com/
Never Learn Anything From History, by Kate Beaton. Adventures of Dr. McNinja, by Chris Hastings.

Tug Boat Press – http://tugboatpress.com
Papercutter Anthologies, by various.

U.S.S. Catastrophe – http://www.usscatastrophe.com/
Pretty much everything they stock is awesome.

…and that’s the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of single-title self publishers doing great work like Carla Speed McNeil and Finder, Jeff Smith and Rasl, Eric Powell’s Chimichanga… hell, tons of creators trying to scrape out a living publishing under a larger umbrella too. Not to mention the many fine retailers like The Beguiling trying to stock and sell these books too.

There are people doing good work, and while it’s tempting to get yourself down when a great publisher disappears, scuff your shoes on the ground and say “shit”, it’s much more productive to remember that there are still folks out publishing great work… and we don’t want them going anywhere, you know?

- Chris

An international coalition of Japanese and American-based manga publishers have joined together to combat what they call the “rampant and growing problem” of scanlations, the practice of posting scanned and translated editions of Japanese comics online without permission of the copyright holders. The group is threatening legal action against 30 scanlation sites.

The effort brings together the 36 member Japanese Digital Comic Association—which includes such major Japanese houses as Kodansha, Shogakukan and Shueisha—as well as manga publisher Square Enix, the Tuttle-Mori Agency and U.S.-based manga publishers Vertical Inc, Viz Media, Tokyopop and Yen Press, the manga/graphic novel imprint of the Hachette Book Group.

A spokesperson for the coalition said the effort shows that Japanese publishers—who license the majority of manga sold in the U.S.—are taking an aggressive interest in combating manga piracy outside of Japan as well as inside the country.

- From the article at Publishers Weekly

Well that’s pretty good news, I’d say…! I’ll probably have thoughts on this later.

- Chris

http://www.comicsreporter.com/

It’s a bit of a long one, and it was almost entirely written between the hours of midnight at 4am, so it is considerably more honest and off the cuff that I originally intended, but I think it holds up okay. I kinda wanna give it another edit, but that’s life.

Originally I was going to save any official commenting on the show until our wrap-up, but as that’s been a while in coming I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to thank our staff and volunteers for all of their hard work, and Spurgeon’s is a pretty prestigious website upon which to send out those thanks. There’s still an official wrap-up coming of course, where we name names… in thanking all the wonderful people who helped out. And talk a little bit more about how things went, and what we’re going to do next time.

Also of note, not sure I mentioned it but there are a ton of photos of TCAF 2010 up online at flickr including my own. Here’s all the tagged TCAF 2010 shots:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/tcaf2010/

Alright, nuff of me. More commenting coming soon.

- Christopher

…But I did want to take a minute out to congratulate my friend Jeremy Tankard on winning The Blue Spruce Award, as part of the 2010 Forest Of Reading Awards, for his children’s book BOO HOO BIRD! It’s the sequel to his award-winning debut Grumpy Bird, and it’s great! I’ve already bought copies for both of my nieces (and a few more besides!) and they’re a real hit. Winning the award puts thousands of extra copies of work into the hands of K-2 kids all over Ontario!

I know I’m kinda off in my own little world a lot of the time (and I’ve missed sooooo many other opportunities to congratulate friends) but yeah, congrats Jeremy! It’s a well-deserved award!

- Christopher
(via)

First up, why is this killing trees?:

Time Masters: Vanishing Point #1
On Sale July 21 – 1 of 6 – 32pg, FC, $2.99
Written by Dan Jurgens. Art and Cover by Dan Jurgens and Karl Story

TIME MASTERS: VANISHING POINT #1 launches “The Search for Batman,” as Rip Hunter puts together a high-powered band of Time Masters to travel through time in search of the World’s Greatest Detective. But can even the combined might and skill of Superman, Green Lantern and Booster Gold help the Time Master pinpoint where Batman went at the conclusion of FINAL CRISIS? Information that could keep Vanishing Point from tearing itself apart?

This six-issue mini-series, a companion piece to BATMAN: THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE and a story chock full of clues that point toward the next major DCU event, hits in July from writer artist Dan Jurgens with a variant cover by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story (the artists on BATMAN: RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #1). How can you say no?

(VIA)

A companion series to back-up players from Grant Morrison’s Batman? Set to end 3 months after the story it compliments? Uggggggh. I don’t even want to order this. I’ve got nothing against Jurgens, but this ill-advised, poorly timed, and entirely superfluous little mini-series is just gonna clutter up my racks. Forget this.

–
Edit: Okay, one more.

Marvel is reprinting the 1960s MARVELMAN stuff in hardcover, black and white, 160 pages at a time, and charging 35 American Dollars for the privilege.  Is anyone going to buy this? Anyone at all? It’s so very, very expensive.

AND, in case that’s not good enough, they’re doing a 6 issue ‘best of’ reprinting in black and white for four bucks an issue as well.

Is it just me or is the pricing on this totally out to lunch? More than 20 cents a page for black and white reprints?

I think I’ll be counting on reorders for this one.

And not needing them.

–

- Chris

So, here’s the deal:

CMX wasn’t, at its inception, a particularly well-run company. There are a lot of excuses out there, but bluntly DC didn’t know a thing about the manga market, and the person they hired to start the imprint wasn’t good at his job. DC offered a deep-discount offer to retailers to stock some of the initial titles, MADARA in particular, an older-Seinen action adventure title at the height of the shoujo boom. (Their sole shoujo title was from the 1970s.) I can’t stress enough, their initial licenses were very strange and generally weak with no cohesion as a line.

Sales tanked, comics retailers who were encouraged to buy BIG were left with unsold stock, and comics retailers have long and ‘specific’ memories and if they’re ever burned by anything they never forget and hold a grudge indefinitely. (Except for superheroes of course; Marvel and DC are putting out lit cigarettes on the foreheads of comics retailers every month, and they keep coming back for more. But say something nasty about Carol Kalish in an obituary and I WILL NEVER BUY YOUR FUCKING BOOKS FOREVER I HATE YOU. Comics are kinda lame sometimes.)

So with retailers burnt, the publisher upped the ante and censored one of their second wave of titles, when the _only_ thing it had going for it was the dirty bits. Manga fans hold STUPID grudges too, and they only need the thinest whisper of an excuse to steal their shit forever. “CMX censored Tenjho Tenge! That’s why I’ll download all the books they publish and never give them any money ever!” Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. You’re awful, flat out awful.

But that’s besides the point; fans were burned too.

So no retailer support, little fan support, reported difficulties getting press coverage/convention coverage, and the books were barely ever in bookstores. All of it added up to…? What? Surprise? It wasn’t a matter of if CMX was going to get closed but when, and bad news at Viz provides the perfect cover doesn’t it? “See! Economic downturn! We can’t publish manga if Viz can’t!” Except of course Viz are publishing manga, just tightening their belts. Feh and bah.

This all smells very much like someone got some early July DC solicitations, noticed there were no CMX books, and started asking questions. This seems exceptionally poorly handled, from a company who’s doing a great job at poorly handling this imprint.

So to summarize: It was a line that was poorly conceived, poorly run for the first half of its life and then barely run at all for the last half. Then it was unceremoniously killed. The end.

I’m not saying the whole thing isn’t utterly depressing, it is, but only because it’s just a monumental waste of time and resources and talent and opportunity, not because I’m particularly sad to see it go. Maybe that’s mercenary of me–a lot of other people liked the line and I should probably shut up–but yeah. DC evidenced quite clearly that they have no idea how to run a manga line so if they weren’t going to _try_ then it’s best they stopped wasting my time clogging up my shelves.

- Chris

This is Monthly Shonen Gangan, a monthly manga anthology published by Square/Enix, best known in the west for their video game properties. It is where the very popular Shonen series Fullmetal Alchemist, published in English by Viz, is originally serialized. This is one fat piece of comics.

For comparison’s sake, here’s how this puppy stacks up against my USB plug… it’s about 3 inches thick, and about a 90/10 split comics and advertising.

As you can see, the final story begins serialization on page 1103. The magazine, by my count, weighs in at 1144 pages. In addition to FMA, it serializes a number of popular stories currently being released in English, including Soul Eater from Yen Press. Stan Lee has a serial in here too (really) called HEROMAN, which I’m sure is coming to the U.S. annnnny day now.

In addition, the magazine was even FATTER on the shelf, coming with two gifts! A double-sized Fullmetal Alchemist folder, and a Fullmetal Alchemist mechanical “sharp pencil”. A nice little bonus…!

So how much was all of this? 1144 pages of manga, two free gifts?

That’s right, 500 yen. Actually they charged me 499 yen. That’s about 5 bucks, give or take.

I kind of wish manga would continue taking off in the states, rather than stumble into the plateau it’s hit… Because man, there’s so much further to go.

- Chris

P.S.: Having a wonderful time in Japan, wish you were here. :)

One of the loveliest things I saw this weekend was this original Catwoman illustration by Jillian Tamaki, on display at The Doug Wright Awards Booth at TCAF. This illustration is part of a fundraising auction for the DWAs, which features a number of excellent Canadian Cartoonists donating the proceeds of the sale of their work to keep the awards going. You can find all of the auctions at http://tinyurl.com/27fmlnm.

Also to the right here is Kate Beaton’s contribution, the original artwork to her cranky Wonder Woman strip which I love. The other fantastic contributions to the auction include Chester Brown’s Batman, Joe Ollman’s The Spectre, Matt Forsythe’s Hawkman, Bryan Lee O’Malley with a spread from Scott Pilgrim, Marc Bell’s Iron Man, Jeff Lemire’s Hawkman and The Atom, Lynn Johnston with a For Better or For Worse strip, John Martz’ Bizarro, Diana Tamblyn’s Black Canary, Michael Cho’s Superboy, and Seth’s Dr. Fate.

I probably should’ve mentioned these auctions earlier, but I was a bit busy. At any rate, the first of the auctions ends in less than 24 hours! So get over there and bid on some gorrrrrrrrrrrgeous artwork. That link again? http://tinyurl.com/27fmlnm.

- Christopher

I took a bunch of pictures at TCAF this weekend, and now they’re online! Check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/sets/72157624038123570/

In other news, I’ve received word that a few other people have put photo sets online, so if you missed out at TCAF now you can feel like you were there:

Jim Zubkavich: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=182562&id=506857670&l=40671bbc2b

Jamie Coville: http://picasaweb.google.ca/comichistory/TCAF2010#

AdHouse: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adhousebooks/sets/72157624038996660/

Coleen Frakes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colleenfrakes/sets/72157624036778478/

I think there’s a couple more I’m missing… I’ll update this if I find’em.

- Chris

From the @torontocomics account, this is a screenshot from Sunday at about 6:30pm. Check out that trending list.

So yeah, it went pretty well. Thanks to everyone who helped out and came out. TCAF will have a more official response a little later, but for now, we all feel pretty good about stuff. But man do I miss blogging…!

- Chris

TCAF: Calm before the storm. 11pm Friday. Photo by ab81 on Twitter.

http://torontocomics.com

I talk a lot of shit about the way things ‘should’ be done in comics here, but one of the ways I actually try to create a better medium–and industry–is with TCAF, The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It’s a comics event, sorta like SPX or MoCCA, but it’s free to the public and we do a couple of other things differently too. I’m really proud of the event, all of my staff, and our amazing volunteers. We just had the best evening set-up in the history of the show (particularly when you factor in how complicated it was this year), and we ran the amazing kick-off presentation by Dan Clowes and journalist Mark Medley, and everyone’s basically pumped for the show tomorrow.

So if you’re reading this and you can make it to Toronto this weekend, I’d like to invite you to come by the event. It’s a good time, and like I mentioned it’s free, and it doesn’t really ‘work’ for our exhibitors and small press artists and stuff if we don’t get a great big bunch of people walking through the door, spending some money and buying some comics, graphic novels, prints, shirts, whatever. We’ve got some truly fantastic guests, some amazing publishers, and a pretty killer programming line-up too. You can find out more about the event at http://torontocomics.com.

With that, I’m probably going to be offline for a few days… Well a few more days. Thanks for reading everyone!

- Christopher

And I’m going to be very blunt with you too: we’re not doing this deal in the media. Anaheim and San Diego – San Diego just woke up and put out that offer a day late and a dollar short, in my view. Our offer’s been out there for five years. And our offer is superior to their offer. I won’t say all the details because I’m not going to play this all out in the media, but I will say that that offer is a chump change offer. It’s kind of an afterthought to me. It’s like, “We think we’re going to lose it, so we’re going to throw a few bucks out there.” And I’ve got to be honest with you, to Comic-Con it isn’t just about that. That’s how I interpret it. It’s all about “How can we grow and enhance the show?” And my primary mission here is to grow and enhance that show. If I can’t improve that show for Comic-Con and for your industry here in Los Angeles, then I would not pursue this show. And I would not have busted my rear end for five years to do it if I couldn’t present them with that option. My offer today is only improved by the fact that I have A.E.G. and the LA Live development in partnership with me.

- Michael Krause, part of the comittee wooing Comic-Con to move to Los Angeles, @ CBR

I have 10,000 other things to do today, but I came across this in a link from Scott McCloud on Twitter (who is firmly in favour of Comic-Con staying in San Diego, I should say), and the bolded part up there (Emphasis mine) jumped out at me.

My response? Yes. Exactly.

Despite some public commentary to the contrary, San Diego has been routinely horrible to the Comic-Con, and their efforts to “work” with their most volumnous show of the year have been sad. The big “public show of support” this year is a fucking joke, flat out. You don’t look at what they’re promising to do, you look at what they _actually_ do, and this year the biggest hotel and the closest hotel basically told Comic-Con to fuck off, holding a giant conference (very police and security-heavy) on the same weekend, blocking off a bunch of rooms and holding them away from an event that they’ve known was coming for… years.

It’s a joke, the city from an infrastructure point of view does not like the show. They don’t. This ‘show of support’ they made is tokenism at best, it’s a to cover their asses with the hotels and restaurants–their constituents–if 125,000+ tourists and their associated tourist dollars disappear in a few years.

I run a show. It’s less than 1/10th the size of San Diego, I’m on nowhere near the same playing field. But running a show like this, making demands on people and organizations and venues and having to make concessions and the wonderful back-and-forth that goes into planning a large event? You begin to be able to tell when the folks on the other end want to make something work, and when they don’t, and in my opinion San Diego isn’t really interested in making the Con work.

This isn’t important, in the grand scheme of things. I think we all know that, but I do think it’s nice that someone–even someone coming from a competing organization/area–came forward and said “We’ve got a better offer, San Diego doesn’t really give a shit” because that’s been my observation all along. And then their recent promises and shows of support? WOEFULLY inadequate. Chump Change.

So yeah, I like walking out the back doors to the pristine Bay view and the good food as much as the next guy, but… I also want a better offer. I want more floorspace, more hotel space, better organization, and I want to be at an event where everyone involved is actually on board, and not barely tolerating each other’s presence.

Where’s that event?

- Christopher

Via.