Greetings on another Manhwa Monday! First, a bit of news I picked up from Variety, NETCOMICS will be producing a film version of the manhwa series X Diary by Toma. According to the article, casting will begin in June of this year (with filming beginning in October). The film is being produced by NETCOMICS’ VP Soyoung Jung.
In a review from The Comics Journal earlier this year, Adam Stephanides writes, “X Diary is a feather-light collection of humorous four-panel strips — I would call them gag strips, but “gag” is too strong a word for the gentle humor here — about Mingo (female) and Jerry (male), a pair of 26-year-old ex-lovers who have decided to remain friends … X Diary is unpretentious, and there is a genuine warmth to both the writing and art. It could perhaps best be described as likable.”
For those interested in seeing for themselves, X Diary is available in print from NETCOMICS in a single volume. You can also read it for free in its entirety at NETCOMICS.com. Toma’s other work includes Small-Minded Schoolgirls, one of my favorite series currently running at NETCOMICS.
Speaking of live action made from manhwa, JinraIlustrisimo at Ningin has posted a Top 5 favorite manga/manhwa turned live action, including two of my favorite manhwa, Full House (NETCOMICS) and Goong (Yen Press).
Back to the printed page, the folks at wordcandy.net feature two manhwa series from Yen Press that have come to a close this month, You’re So Cool and The Antique Gift Shop. I admit I don’t share their opinion of You’re So Cool, but I’ll save that for my own upcoming series review.
In reviews this week, Manga Recon has the most going on, with reviews from Jennifer Dunbar of both volume one of Time and Again (Yen Press) and volume three of Sugarholic (Yen Press). Senior Editor Michelle Smith also weighs in with a review of volumes two and three of Sarasah (Yen Press).
Elsewhere, at Manga Maniac Cafe, Julie Opipari checks out volume five of Bride of the Water God (Dark Horse) and at Manga Jouhou, Susan S. reads volume seven of The Antique Gift Shop.
That’s all for this week!
Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!
Sara K. says
March 18, 2010 at 11:07 amI can’t remember if you posted anything on this before, but there’s this exhibit at the San Francisco Library –
http://www.sfpl.org/index.php?pg=1000842601
I’ve only had a brief look at the exhibit itself, but I went to the lecture they had yesterday on manhwa and Korean politics. It was interesting and insightful.
Melinda Beasi says
March 18, 2010 at 11:21 amI haven’t actually posted about it, and I should. I think Eva Volin went to that lecture as well (or I know she went to one). I wish I was on your coast so I could have attended!
Sara K. says
March 18, 2010 at 4:53 pmIt’s a touring exhibit put together by the Korean Society. You should ask them to come to Massachusetts, or ask some Massachusetts institution to be a host.
http://www.koreasociety.org/arts/traveling_exhibitions/korean_comics/page-3.html
The first third of the lecture was an overview of 20th century Korean political history. Then we saw political cartoons. One cartoon from 1986 went like this (I don’t remember verbatim, so this is a paraphrase)
Panel 1: A husband is reading and he hears his wife say “Mr. President, I hope you live a long life.” The husband is surprised.
Panel 2: The wife says “I love everything you have done, Mr. President.” The husband is even more surprised.
Panel 3: The husband is extremely surprised when the wife says “I hope you stay healthy President…”
Panel 4: The wife finishes her sentence “… Reagan.”
The cartoonist was arrested for this cartoon. If you want more descriptions of my recollections of the political cartoons, I will provide them.
After seeing political cartoons, the lecture went on to children’s comics. A lot of rural housing was demolished and replaced with high-density ‘modern’ housing which had no playgrounds for kids, so kids played in the streets, or went to manhwabangs to rent comics. The speaker herself spent much of her childhood in manhwabangs.
Then she went to discuss girls comics, and she focused on Candy Canday. But wait, Candy Candy is Japanese! She explained that she chose it because a) she didn’t realize it was not Korean until recently and b) it’s her personal favorite. So she talked about the Candy Candy characters. She also talked about how Japanese comics were banned for quite a while because they threatened the purity of Korean culture, and since nobody licensed Japanese comics when she was a child they were all pirated copies, yet they consisted of the majority of the reading material at manhwabangs.
Finally, she talked about girls’ comics by Korean artists, and in particular discussed Shin Il-Sook, the ‘godmother’ (or at least one of the godmothers) of Korean girls’ comics. She deliberately put feminist values into her art. Her most notable work is Four Daughters of Armian, which I now really would like to see licensed in English.
I hope this lengthy description helps make up for your inability to attend.
Melinda Beasi says
March 18, 2010 at 5:11 pmSara, thank you so much! How kind of you! I really appreciate it.
Sara K. says
March 18, 2010 at 11:23 pmThere’s one more event, “Manhwa for Girls”, but I may not attend. The speakers are Trina Robbins, Mike Madrid, and Andrew Farago. They know a lot about comics, but I doubt they are fluent in Korean, and thus are as reliant on translation as I. I suspect their knowledge of Korean culture is as limited as my own (though I may be wrong).
It would be interesting to see who would show up to that one. Most of the audience for the politics and manhwa lecture were Koreans, and I wonder if non-Koreans will be the majority at the event led by non-Koreans.