I’m sure I’m being too sensitive about this, but this was annoying:
“Hm, front page story in the NYT Arts section…hipster manga just got a lot more hip in New York. This is definitely the art manga equivalent of the cover story on art comics from the NYT Magazine that kicked off the whole “comics are an art form” thing a few years ago.” – Heidi MacDonald, The Beat
That’s Heidi talking about Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life coverage.
Seriously, if any hipster-douche can make it through an 850 page autobiography of a manga pioneer set in post-war Japan, I’ll stop automatically adding the word “douche” after the word “hipster”.
Really? Hipster manga? I actually can’t think of a more dismissive term than that. Anything outright critical could at least be argued, that’s just… yeah. Whatever.
Props to Peggy and D&Q for the amazing coverage though.
– Chris
P.S.: I am clearly biased because I’m hosting Tatsumi and D&Q in Toronto in 3 weeks, so feel free to ignore, but again, I’d like to stress: what-ever.
I agree totally, Heidi missed the mark on that description.
I purposely waited until this weekend to read it closely, and 370 pages in I can attest that this is not the kind of book you’d read (or enjoy) for a quick credential-propping, me too me too status symbol (or whatever was implied by that post, exactly).
It’s one of the most important books about manga written, definitly needs to be on the shelf at university bookstore shelves next to Schodt’s Manga! Manga!… and it’s an incredible and touching narrative to boot, (oh shit).
what-ever.
Heidi nailed it right on the head. Being labeled hipster doesn’t mean you’re content free, it means you’re most vocal fanbase is a bunch of smug pricks who sneer at anything that taste of the slightest contempt for the beloved high brow comics. This is one case where the lunatic assholes who protest the latest development in Spider-Man marriages look a lot more fun to be around. At least they aren’t proffering claims of intellectual and cultural superiority.
This begs the question: what’s the actual hipster manga?
Also, if you haven’t heard, A Drifting Life tied with Fumi Yoshinaga’s ?oku for the Tezuka Grand Prize.
Obviously it would have been better if that space in the Times’ Art section had featured a profile of Battle for the Cowl or something.
Hey how about that, a self-proclaimed hipster-douche showing up on my blog to agree with me! But seriously, dude, I’m glad that your apparently long-standing feelings of anger about… people who sneer at comics? (your point is a little fucked up) Anyway, I’m glad you could get that off your chest. I’m all about healing, man. Feel free to hang out with the crazy Spider-people if you’d prefer.
Tlonista- Actual hipster manga? WRONG. The Hipster response is “what’s manga?” Also, thanks for following up hipster-douche with “actually the book we’re talking about was just chosen ‘best manga in Japan’. That’s just lovely.
You’re being too sensitive about it.
chris sounds like a huge hipster
I would think a lot of what it’s in A Drifting Life would be lost on the average hipster, but then again I haven’t read it yet.
I’d say it would appeal more to seinen fans and those interested in manga history in general (Tezuka fans, etc.). The Beat article says sales jumped up A LOT on Amazon, but I wonder how many of those are actual manga fans and how many aren’t and don’t know what they’re getting into but they’re reading it because the NY Times told them to.
as an ignorant non-american, could someone please explain to me exactly what a hipster is?
what are they doing to deserve all the venom?
A Drifting Life is absolutely hipster manga and that in no way is a slight on the book itself. But the combination of length (reading big books means you’re smart! cf. Infinite Jest) and non-mainstream subject matter (for twenty- and thirty-somethings, comics are on the fringe, manga are on the fringe of that, and gekiga is on the fringe of that) is complete hipster bait.
Not that the book is aimed towards the hipster audience, nor does reading this book make you a hipster. But I’d put the over-under on my spotting someone reading this book in a bar in Williamsburg at within the next two weeks.
I was on the fence, leaning towards your camp Chris–and then I got the NY Times review forwarded to me from a “comics are for idiots and children” guy who lives in Williamsburg, buys 300 dollar fair trade handmade shoes from LA, and spends his non-graphic design time recording mash-up mp3s of old dub music.
“This sounds good” was included.
After that, I gotta say that I’m firmly in the Drifting = hipster club.
I’ve read the first quarter of ” A Drifting Life”, and I’m enjoying it immensely.
Does that make me–an old middle-aged fart–a hipster?
I feel almost relevant.
Hm. I’m still somewhat of the persuasion that most hipsters do not read manga. Clowes, Tomine, etc., etc., yes. But generally not manga. Maybe Drifting Life will change that? However I think I agree that if they are reading a historical autobiography about cultural and comic development in post-war Japan, they’re perhaps not just fly-by-night readers “in it” for the credibility.
Plus, the thing is too big to lug around just to have fellow hipsters see you read in on the L Train.
Dude, Shintaro Kago did a cover for Vice magazine and he now has a regular feature in it. We’re talking about Vice fucking magazine, the biggest hipster signifier this side of American Apparel; that means a lot more for hipsters than anything in the New York Times. Hipsters know what manga is (or at least know of Japanese comics), they just hate anything that’s not pretentious or horribly grotesque.