A Healthy Selection
by Dan Nadel
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Richard Gehr casts his eyes to the gutter this week in the Village Voice and finds (besides Tim’s own Gorey find) Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby. He notes that “By depicting human behavior at its worst, Nemoto recalibrates the limits of what we can bear to consider on a page of comics.” Damn straight. I have to admit, aside from my own publisher-like needs, as a critic I feel like Monster Men was criminally overlooked in 2008. With the release of this book and Hanakuma’s Tokyo Zombie we’ve gotten our first North American look at two of the seminal alternative Japanese graphics novels of the last 20 years. There have been anthologies, but never full length works. It’s a funny thing — but perhaps not unexpected — as though Jimbo and Black Hole were released in another language and more or less ignored. What do these two books say about the form? And lurking in the background is that both emerge from King Terry‘s formulation of Heta-Uma as a valid way to make comics — that this bad/good style is arguably a dominant one in the Japanese underground is worthy of notice. Terry, in fact, has packaged both artists works, and designed the North American Nemoto book as well. As far as I can tell, he’s exerted an influence similar to that of Art Spiegelman (editor/packager/mentor) on the Raw generation. I hope there’s room for more material, but I wonder if the sales will make it feasible. They’re not easy reads (well, Hanakuma is easier than Nemoto, but still…) Remember, there’s a trove of material corresponding to our own 30-odd year history of alternative comics, and a tiny, tiny fraction of it has been shown here. I imagine Top Shelf’s Ax anthology will help remedy that, and of course the mighty D&Q continues to shine light on unseen parts of Manga history. Anyhow, all of this is to say that I’d selfishly love to see an article about all of this by a writer far better informed than I am. So, get on it already!
Labels: Edward Gorey, king terry, manga, Monster Men, Richard Gehr, Takashi Nemoto, tokyo zombie, top shelf, village voice, Yusaku Hanakuma
I love monstermna, and have been recommending it.
to me it seemed to take a long time for me to see monsterman at any shops, I didn’t see it(at big brain comics) until december. and like a tital wave of good comics have been coming out since october. my guess is if they are anyhting like me. most alternative comics fans have a stack of stuff they haven’t read yet. and it’s in that bedside stack.
I do believe there is some kind of schism between the alternative scenes of East and West. I`ve been here a year on this research trip and I`m still finding it tough to crack. The poor Japanese is the biggest limitation but I`m getting somewhere. The second problem is the lack of display copies with everything wrapped up somehow. Extrememly frustrating. Art book stores are more generous on that front. even in a halfway between shop I asked to open a Yokoyama Yuich book to show a friend but they said no and lost a sale potentially.
It`s worth noting that the choices D&Q have made regarding what they are translating have been works which wouldn`t fall under that heta-uma flag. Maybe the tastes of the western alternative comics reader just aren`t focussed on that right now. I`m still looking for new underground work of the caliber of Taiyo Matsumoto or Yokoyama Yuichi which we don`t already know about. My best discovery has been a fairly mainstream story about an ex-yakuza. Oh yeah and I did find a great limited edition book that I`m going to post about on my blog soon when I do a book review of the last year. It`s called Takajiro by a guy named Tadasuke Iwanaga. he does painting and such too:
http://tadasukeiwanaga.blogspot.com/
Thanks for this post, Dan. I am curious to hear how the economy is affecting a few of the dreamy projects I've heard knocked around. For the small circulation and what it is worth, we're starting on our next underground one soon — contract wrangling notwithstanding.
It's time for a proper study and discussion of the COM/GARO—>AX—>NOW? vector and how it touches against RAW and the american scene. I think the book that will single-handedly fill in the first part of this history is A DRIFTING LIFE IN GEKIGA, the 800 page Tatsumi autobiography. I've read the first 100 or so pages, and it's enlightening and amazing.
So dang, where is the venue of said/described/requested indie manga article? I alone don't have all the details or chops to pull this off, but with the help of you and other allies and friends, maybe we can put something worthwhile together?
Looking forward to 2009. The somewhat calm reception to NEMOTO is improper and retarded… I have been showing the book to our entire bay area group of friends. But in other Japan-side news, Kago's book comes out in a week— and i've got a feeling he'll be coming out in at least one Western language in 2009 or 2010 (other than Vice's efforts).
Dan, I knew the book was on the way and visit your sites at least once a month, but I didn't realize it was out yet. I need to get my eyes checked.
I applaud you for publishing it, but who in comics is Nemoto's natural audience? Comics is still pretty conservative, and he's not; and he's so far past railing against the Man or the church it seems like an odd fit with the Crumb generation. Nemoto's more Boredoms than Woodstock (actually, more Gerogerigegege than either).
It's like he hates our DNA.
& quickly, as I've got to run– King Terry's hugely, hugely influential, but quite mainstream. (In Dreamland Japan Schodt notes that he hit at a time when the pop mood was all about amateurism.) Ask for a list of heta-uma manga and you get Chibi Maruko-chan, who's got TV shows & whatnot.
Flipping through copies of Garo from the 80s, 90s, and 00s, this underground looks pretty mainstream. Shojo styles, seinen styles. The more realistic gekiga style, which has been on the wane for years, is probably a stronger trend.
Besides, Nemoto's singular. A lot of the heta-uma stuff is crap (Miura Jun/ ???????and the other simpler stuff is often intricately crafted– Z-Chan, a key work, is precise. Very design-y, very clean.
Don't forget Comic Baku & Comic CUE for gekiga/alt-anthologies (though these categories probably don't translate well.)
(For TCJ I've been working on a Shiriagari Kotobuki article for forever, who's a major artist, pretty heta-uma though hardly underground. But I just got a stack of his books, including his theory text ????, so who knows when…)
It’s always those sales that keep us away from super stuff and give us more of the crap that Marvel and Dc treat us with now a day!
Hey Picturebox! In the same no-sale drawer, there would be the work of SANPEI SHIRATO, who kicked of the GARO stuff at the beginning of the mag.
I know, he is classic Samurai stuff but, we haven’t seen any of his at any rate!
Make it so!
Thanks, all. These are very insightful comments. Bill, you’re totally right. Who is the audience? I guess whoever also likes Rory Hayes? Perhaps not. Nemoto is notty, difficult works. Hayes, for all his roughness, tells stories in a fairly conservative manner and keeps it all pretty tight. Nemoto is creating narratives, but it’s so thematically dense and painful, which is augmented by a somewhat refined line, at least for heta-uma. And yes, Terry was not only hugely influential, but hugely successful. I mean, he runs a studio of over a dozen people now. When I met him and asked about the rise of heta-uma he said, “we won!” Which I think speaks to his own and others’ success. It’s acceptable in a way that, say, Crumb is, but on a bigger scale. Terry does massive ad campaigns, even. The parallels to RAW work, according to both Comics Underground Japan and my own conversation with Nemoto and Terry like this: By the late 70s Terry was already a nationally successful designer and illustrator, kinda like a Milton Glaser figure, but if he drew like Gary Panter, etc. The key cartoonist figures of heta-uma, Nemoto, Ebisu, Suzy Amakane and Carol Shimoda were younger than Terry, and kind of gathered around him. He packaged their books and gave them direction. Nemoto refers to him as his “sensei”, and they all seem to have a healthy respect for one another. How this bears out on the second generation of the 90s I’m a little less certain of, but obviously there’s Hanakuma, as well as Mimiyo Tomozawa and others. Terry himself sees his heritage as extending back to Shigeru Sugiura, bypassing Tezuka all together. Anyway, it’s all pretty fascinating. I would love to get back to Japan and investigate this further, but that won’t be for awhile, I fear.