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Toto! The Wonderful Adventure, Vols. 1-5

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If you’ve ever been to Canal Street in New York City — the Counterfeit Capital of North America — you know that there are two types of goods for sale there. The first are inept knock-offs: the “Cooch” purse with plastic handles, the “Rollex” with cubic zirconia insets and a flimsy metal band. The second are just as fake as the first, but are executed with enough panache that style-conscious women get a secret thrill in owning them: the plastic “Birkin” bag that looks like the real thing but costs $30, the canvas “Louis Vuitton” wallet that comes in prettier colors than the original.

The same principles apply to manga as well: there are series which shamelessly imitate a best-selling title like Dragonball or InuYasha, rehearsing the same plot without capturing the original’s charm, and there are copycats which bear a strong resemblance to the original but nonetheless work well on their own terms. Toto! The Wonderful Adventure falls into the latter category, a good-natured rip-off of One Piece and Rave Master that accomplishes in five volumes what many shonen series need twenty or thirty to pull off.

…

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Off the Shelf: O the Yule Log, Fear its Might

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined, once again, by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week, we take a look at some recent titles from Tokyopop, Viz Media, and Yen Press.

MJ: There’s a chill in the air here in western Massachusetts–great weather for curling up with a blanket and a good book. I expect that’s not the case at all down your way, but I’m hoping you’ve read some anyway. You know. So the column won’t suck.

MICHELLE: Well, no one could call it chilly but our highs are now merely in the low 90s, so that’s a definite improvement! With the absolutely essential help of central air I have indeed managed a fair amount of reading this week!

MJ: Hallelujah, central air! So… anything noteworthy?

MICHELLE: Some! I thought I would take this week’s selections in ascending order of preference. And so, accordingly, I start with the first volume of The Witch of Artemis, a new series from TOKYOPOP.

In this shonen fantasy series, originally serialized in Comic Blade, orphaned Kazuhi is living a bland existence on Earth and spends a lot of time daydreaming about Artemis, a star that was the subject of many stories his late father told him. As the stories go, the people of Earth and the people of Artemis once lived together, but eventually those with special magical powers departed earth to settle on Artemis. Conveniently, Kazuhi overhears a news report about a girl in strange clothes—why the news would report this, I do not know—and dashes to the scene, whereupon he meets one witch, whom we later learn is named Viora, who inflicts a death curse upon him, and another, called Marie, who whisks him off to Artemis in order to cure him.

Marie is most textbook example of a tsundere character I have ever seen. After curing Kazuhi, she berates and insults him, trying to get him to leave her alone, but when he finds out she wants to do good deeds for people, he volunteers to help and, despite her crusty exterior, she still does things like follow him around when he goes off wandering to ensure he doesn’t come to harm. The second half of the volume depicts their first joint effort at helping someone, and includes an ominous hint from Viora that the world is on the verge of ending.

I might possibly have made this sound better than it is. So far, it’s rather bland. The art is pleasant, but not distinctive, and the characters and plot are the same. There’s always potential inherent in ominous hinting, and so I’m willing to read a second volume to see where the story goes—and, indeed, the series is only three volumes long, so if I’ve read two-thirds of it I might as well go all the way—but at this point I don’t have high hopes that it will ever be anything more than pleasant but not distinctive….

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Pick of the Week: Howdy Sir Dog Milk

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This was actually on Comicopia’s list last week, but it wasn’t until this week, when I received my copy of volume two in the mail that I realized just how much it needed to be a Pick of the Week. I’m talking, of course, about the second volume of Filipe Smith’s Peepo Choo.

I rarely quote back-cover copy, because I usually think it misses the point. Vertical’s blurb on the back of this volume, however, is completely spot on:

“Originally serialized in a comics monthly issued by Japan’s premier publisher, Filipe Smith’s exuberant satire rips a new one in the fabric of trans-Pacific understanding, sparing neither the Japanese mafia nor American manga licensors. The ugly truth about the eponymous anime is revealed in this second of three volumes of shrink-wrapped excellence.”

And “excellence” it is. I’ve had some trouble reviewing the first volume of the series. Though the seeds of a strong story all seemed to be there, I felt that Smith was not quite able to follow through. With the release of volume two, everything has changed. Suddenly it’s clear what story Smith is really telling, and he’s telling it very, very well. Though the real-life industry personalities Smith is skewering pass this manga n00b right by, his point does not. Expect more on all of this in my upcoming review!

Please note, this series is rated 18+, and is not for the squeamish. Some of its gross-out moments have been a bit much for me, I’ll admit, but the payoff is well worth it.

Check out more on the series at Vertical’s website, or simply buy this book.

Linkblogging: Stuck on Shojo

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So, just as I thought I’d satisfied my obsession with shojo-centric conversation in the manga blogosphere, Deb Aoki posts the transcript from her recent interview with Moto Hagio, rendering me fully obsessed all over again.

The transcript begins with Hagio’s panel appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, and moves into a private interview Deb was able to catch with her later on. Not only does Deb ask wonderful questions (along with SDCC panel attendees), but Hagio’s responses (interpreted by Matt Thorn) and her account of her own career are, frankly, inspiring. This transcript is a must-read for all manga lovers and any woman in the arts, in my opinion. Please check it out!

Now, for a brief recap of all the conversation that’s been happening online… comments exploded in response to David Welsh’s Thursday thoughts, inspiring this response from Brigid Alverson at Robot 6. Part of the premise of Brigid’s post was to refute my assertion that Fruits Basket and Boys Over Flowers have very little in common (an opinion I still hold, by the way, and which I’ll be happy to explain at length for anyone who cares).

Having been called out, I reacted pretty strongly in comments to what I felt was a pretty reductive argument. And though I stand by my reaction, after reading the discussion in comments, I don’t believe Brigid actually meant to dismiss shojo, and I’m distressed by the heat she’s taken for it overall. On the other hand, nobody’s taken as much heat as Chris Mautner, who received a scathing response to his review of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories from passionate editor Matt Thorn.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Erin Ptah takes issue with my post about female fans (though I think the argument she actually objects to is one I quoted from an earlier post), and Kate Dacey confesses (in comments) to her own internal conflict over wanting to defend shojo manga against dismissive arguments made by male critics while not really feeling the love for much of it herself. This comment (among others) inspired me to talk about why my love still stands strong.

Lastly, in comments to my original HU post, discussion with a reader named Tacto prompted me to provide a list of shojo and what I’m calling “youth-oriented josei” (focusing on older teens and twenty-somethings finding themselves and so on) from my personal collection, with a view towards illustrating the diversity and quality available in titles that have been translated into English. My collection is laughable compared to what I know some of you own, so feel free to add on!

In the end, though? Go back to Moto Hagio. If you read just one link about shojo manga today, that should be it. It will make your day, I promise.

Manhwa Monday: Review Round-up

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! After several weeks with very few manhwa reviews to share, things are finally picking up!

My pick for this week is David Welsh’s look at volume one of There’s Something About Sunyool (NETCOMICS) at The Manga Curmudgeon. Though NETCOMICS hasn’t offered any new chapters of this series since the end of June, there’s still some buzz around the series’ debut print volume, which will hopefully lead to many more! Here are some tidbits from David’s review:

The title of Youngran Lee’s There’s Something About Sunyool (Netcomics) is accurate, though it takes a while to figure out what that something is and if you’d like to see more of it. By the time I’d finished the first volume, she had gone from blandly quirky to confidently madcap, and I was very much in her corner.

… I always feel a certain resistance to arranged-marriage comedy, particularly when it isn’t a period piece, but Youngran Lee approaches it with such a bemused smirk that it’s hard to get too bogged down in my western perceptions … I’m looking forward to seeing her refuse to suffer new fools and roll with life’s nastier punches as the series progresses.

Read David’s full review here, and check out the comic at NETCOMICS.com.

At RocketBomber, Matt Blind posts the latest manga ratings, including his new manhwa breakout. Volume six of Bride of the Water God (Dark Horse) has the best showing this week, by far, coming in at #48 in the rankings overall.

This week brings a couple of new reviews of Sirial’s One Fine Day (Yen Press), with Danica Davidson weighing on on volume two at The Graphic Novel Reporter and Chris Zimmerman checking out the very new volume three at Comic Book Bin. Here’s a quick quote from the latter: “One Fine Day is closer to a slice of life tale than it is a fantasy, though there is a healthy intermingling of the two. Despite its length and overall lack of any real development of a plot to speak of, the series delivers on its promise of adorable characters experiencing what it means to live. Those in search of uplifting moments as a means to brighten their day need look no further.”

Zimmerman also reviews volume three of Laon (Yen Press) this week, offering up one of the most positive reviews of the series I’ve seen so far. “Laon doesn’t fall into any one classification. While it remains firmly steeped in the paranormal, it can just as easily switch to horror or action. While some might find this to be jarring, the fact that the series can branch into so many genres adds to its appeal, keeping the audience guessing while it continues to tell a unique story.”

Finally, at Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson has little positive to say about the latest volume of Jack Frost (Yen Press). “I was hoping for an improvement with this volume, but unfortunately was denied … After two volumes, nothing has changed or improved in Jack Frost. It’s still a barely average title with no discernible direction.”

That’s all for this week!

Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!

Shojo manga: navel-gazing edition

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With all the recent discussion of shojo manga that’s been going on, it should be no surprise that I’ve had shojo on the brain. Some of the comments that have struck me most in all the din have come from adult women who find themselves in the position of wanting to defend shojo manga and its readers, while being forced to acknowledge the fact that they’ve lost interest in most shojo (and its more persistent tropes) themselves.

While this doesn’t reflect my own experience, I can certainly understand how awkward that must be for them amidst the current discussion. And I have to admit that it’s led me to question why it is, at the age of forty-one, I’m not in the same boat. “Shouldn’t I be over shojo?” my inner adult asks. After all, I’ve publicly chalked up my disinterest in the Twilight series to cynical middle-age. So what exactly is it that’s got me going out on a limb to defend the honor of Fruits Basket?

One of the things that has astonished me most, as I look back at a life that includes several major moves (featuring a 9-year span or so in the middle that best resembles nomadism), a series of total career shifts, numerous relationships of many kinds, and a general lack of conventional stability, is really how little my life has changed over the years, or at least how little I have. While it’s true that I’ve learned a great deal throughout the course of my life so far, and have developed a few attitudes and opinions that could be considered jaded or even cynical, for the most part, my core personality has remained intact, year in and year out.

As a child, the trait I most tragically lacked was guile (and the ability to see through anyone else’s), so I spent most of my teen years utterly bewildered by the actions of my peers, who seemed able to make friends and drop them without so much as a thought, and whose skill with a cutting remark or personal insult often left me stunned and bleeding (figuratively, for the most part) on the hallway floor. Though I’ve developed somewhat more sophisticated social skills over the years, and a few simple methods of self-protection, overall, I’m still cursed with what Chris Mautner might view as an “overly sincere, heart-on-the-sleeve-style” personality.

With only that in mind, I think I can perhaps understand some of the reasons why shojo manga (and shonen manga, for that matter) might appeal to me, in particular, and why even some of the most melodramatic stories published for that demographic often ring very true to me. Even more to the point, however, I find that many of the struggles faced by the heroines of shojo manga (or the older-but-still-young heroines in series such as NANA)–particularly in terms of personal relationships and finding one’s place in the world–are struggles I still face daily in my adult life.

Who am I? Who do I want to be? Whom can I trust? Does this person love me? These are all questions that still loom large in the life of this forty-something. When I cried for a half an hour after reading volume four of We Were There, it wasn’t because it reminded me of the pain of adolescence. It was because it reflected pain I was experiencing right then at the time. When I see Shugo Chara!‘s Amu struggling to reconcile the variations in all her would-be selves, it speaks to my ongoing career angst and the many decisions I have not yet made, even at my age.

While there are certainly shojo series that win me over with nostalgia (Please Save My Earth, for example, which is practically a perfect imprint of my 12-year-old mind), many more are favorites because they resonate with the current me. And though there are seinen and josei series that stimulate me much more on an intellectual level, they rarely address the unresolved issues at the core of my own life. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Whom can I trust? Does this person love me? Ask me a question about politics, religion, philosophy, the arts, human rights–on these grown-up concerns I have hours worth of fully-formed thoughts, all ready for discussion and debate. Ask me the others… well, I’m still there with Amu, Nanami, Nana, and Hachi, struggling to figure it all out.

If my life was more settled into a normal “adult” groove, would I still find such resonance in these kinds of books? It’s hard to say. On one hand, I think remaining in close touch with my younger self may just be a part of my personality. Perhaps I’d still enjoy these series as nostalgia pieces, even if I was truly sitting at the grown-up table. But with this in mind, I can certainly understand why a lot of other women might have difficulty finding many of them compelling. And though I think that trivializing them based on that is fairly problematic, I have a great deal of appreciation for women who are trying really hard not to.

I’m well aware that there are plenty of adult women who still enjoy (or perhaps even enjoy for the first time) young adult fiction, including things like shojo manga, so I know I’m not alone. I also know that their reasons for connecting with it may or may not be anything like my own, so this little post can only serve as personal account and nothing more. Take it as you will.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

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Modern governments from the Bolshevik regime to the Bush presidency have sought simple, appealing ways to present complex information to their citizens, from “Red Pinkerton” novels (think politically correct Communist detective stories) to televised public service announcements. Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is one such effort, produced with the full cooperation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The goal: to summarize the Commission’s findings in a concise, visually arresting format that would appeal to readers reluctant to tackle the full 500-page document. Unfortunately, the final product falls well short of the mark, offering a dense, confusing gloss on the Commission’s work that I found harder to read than the actual prose report.

One can’t fault Colon and Jacobson for their fidelity to the original material. Their book follows the report closely, down to the chapters and subheadings, and uses the Commission’s own words to explain the events that precipitated the 9/11 attacks. In their efforts to mimic the structure of the original document, however, Colon and Jacobson seldom find the right balance between text and image; most of the artwork feels more like an afterthought than a clarification of the prose. More frustrating is the book’s choppy visual flow; Colon and Jacobson’s panel placement often seems poorly chosen, making it difficult to read the images and text boxes in the correct sequence.

The artwork, too, is a disappointment, an eclectic assortment of traced elements, computer-generated graphics, maps, photo-realistic drawings, and Silver Age character designs that never mesh into a seamless whole. (It’s particularly odd to see some real-life figures get the cartoon treatment, while others are rendered in a naturalistic fashion; as depicted in The 9/11 Report, Condolezza Rice bears a striking resemblance to Lucy van Pelt.) Though Colon and Jacobson generally avoid visual stereotyping, there are a few unfortunate images sprinkled throughout the book. On page 115, for example, there’s a chart outlining strategies for combating Muslim extremism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The chart is embellished with several images of hook-nosed, squinty-eyed, turban-wearing terrorists, one of whom grins menacingly at the reader, rocket launcher perched on his shoulder; surely the problem of global terrorism deserves a more sophisticated treatment than cartoonish, racist typecasting.

The most effective section of The 9/11 Report is the very beginning, in which Colon and Jacobson meticulously recreate the morning of September 11, 2001. They present the sequence of events twice, first depicting what happened aboard the four hijacked airplanes, then reconstructing the official response to these same events, documenting the jurisdictional confusion and poor communication that prevented the government from taking more decisive action. Both passages consist of four horizontal timelines that allow the reader to see, at a glance, what was happening aboard all four planes on a minute-to-minute basis. (In the hardbound edition, these timelines are printed on a single piece of paper which readers can unfold to view the entire sequence of events.) Here, the comics medium seems uniquely suited to showing these events simultaneously, giving the reader a much better appreciation of just how quickly the day’s events unfolded, and how difficult it was for anyone — military commanders, aviation authorities, police and fire officials — to know how to proceed.

It’s a shame that the rest of The 9/11 Report doesn’t utilize the format as effectively as these early pages, where image and text function as co-equal partners. Whatever the flaws of the original report — and, depending on your political inclinations, those flaws are either minor factual errors or egregious omissions of evidence implicating the CIA in bringing down the World Trade Center — it is a more effective, compelling narrative than the one Colon and Jacobson fashioned from it.

THE 9/11 REPORT: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION • BY SID JACOBSON AND ERNIE COLON, BASED UPON THE FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES • HILL & WANG • 134 pp.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

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Modern governments from the Bolshevik regime to the Bush presidency have sought simple, appealing ways to present complex information to their citizens, from “Red Pinkerton” novels (think politically correct Communist detective stories) to televised public service announcements. Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is one such effort, produced with the full cooperation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The goal: to summarize the Commission’s findings in a concise, visually arresting format that would appeal to readers reluctant to tackle the full 500-page document. Unfortunately, the final product falls well short of the mark, offering a dense, confusing gloss on the Commission’s work that I found harder to read than the actual prose report.

One can’t fault Colon and Jacobson for their fidelity to the original material. Their book follows the report closely, down to the chapters and subheadings, and uses the Commission’s own words to explain the events that precipitated the 9/11 attacks. In their efforts to mimic the structure of the original document, however, Colon and Jacobson seldom find the right balance between text and image; most of the artwork feels more like an afterthought than a clarification of the prose. More frustrating is the book’s choppy visual flow; Colon and Jacobson’s panel placement often seems poorly chosen, making it difficult to read the images and text boxes in the correct sequence.

The artwork, too, is a disappointment, an eclectic assortment of traced elements, computer-generated graphics, maps, photo-realistic drawings, and Silver Age character designs that never mesh into a seamless whole. (It’s particularly odd to see some real-life figures get the cartoon treatment, while others are rendered in a naturalistic fashion; as depicted in The 9/11 Report, Condolezza Rice bears a striking resemblance to Lucy van Pelt.) Though Colon and Jacobson generally avoid visual stereotyping, there are a few unfortunate images sprinkled throughout the book. On page 115, for example, there’s a chart outlining strategies for combating Muslim extremism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The chart is embellished with several images of hook-nosed, squinty-eyed, turban-wearing terrorists, one of whom grins menacingly at the reader, rocket launcher perched on his shoulder; surely the problem of global terrorism deserves a more sophisticated treatment than cartoonish, racist typecasting.

The most effective section of The 9/11 Report is the very beginning, in which Colon and Jacobson meticulously recreate the morning of September 11, 2001. They present the sequence of events twice, first depicting what happened aboard the four hijacked airplanes, then reconstructing the official response to these same events, documenting the jurisdictional confusion and poor communication that prevented the government from taking more decisive action. Both passages consist of four horizontal timelines that allow the reader to see, at a glance, what was happening aboard all four planes on a minute-to-minute basis. (In the hardbound edition, these timelines are printed on a single piece of paper which readers can unfold to view the entire sequence of events.) Here, the comics medium seems uniquely suited to showing these events simultaneously, giving the reader a much better appreciation of just how quickly the day’s events unfolded, and how difficult it was for anyone — military commanders, aviation authorities, police and fire officials — to know how to proceed.

It’s a shame that the rest of The 9/11 Report doesn’t utilize the format as effectively as these early pages, where image and text function as co-equal partners. Whatever the flaws of the original report — and, depending on your political inclinations, those flaws are either minor factual errors or egregious omissions of evidence implicating the CIA in bringing down the World Trade Center — it is a more effective, compelling narrative than the one Colon and Jacobson fashioned from it.

THE 9/11 REPORT: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION • BY SID JACOBSON AND ERNIE COLON, BASED UPON THE FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES • HILL & WANG • 134 pp.

Shojo manga: a tangent

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To a great extent, this post serves as an excuse to link to David Welsh, whose Thursday thoughts revolve around the question of how critics talk about shojo manga, and whether some reviews of Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories reveal a chronic devaluation of works written by/for girls and women. I’ve probably said enough on the second half of that topic already to warrant keeping my mouth shut for quite some time. Still, I wanted to address one small thing.

One of the reviews David quotes is this one from Chris Mautner (a critic whose writing I respect a lot, by the way) at Robot 6. Here’s the quote:

“Dream, on the other hand, has both feet firmly planted in the world of shojo manga. The ten tales that make up this book all consist of overly sincere, heart-on-the-sleeve-style work. There’s very little ironic distancing and self-effacing humor here, although it does peep its head out occasionally. Mostly though, that’s been ignored in favor of heightened melodrama and earnest heart-tugging. While it avoids the sort of contrived, romantic, situation-comedy type plots that mark a lot of the shojo manga that has been translated into English over the past decade, there can be little doubt that Dream has more in common with Fruits Basket and Boys Over Flowers than Red Colored Elegy or Abandon the Old in Tokyo.”

Ignoring, for the moment, David’s main purpose in pulling this quote, I find myself compelled by one major question: What do Fruits Basket and Boys Over Flowers really have in common?

Let’s look at the (abbreviated) facts:…

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Black Blizzard

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First published in 1956, Black Blizzard is a juicy pulp thriller that will irresistibly remind Western readers of The 39 Steps, The Defiant Ones, and The Fugitive. The hero is twenty-five-year-old Susumu Yamaji, a down-on-his-luck pianist who stands accused of murdering the ringmaster of a traveling circus. The circumstantial evidence against him is so compelling that even Susumu — who was in a drunken stupor at the time — believes he did it. After surrendering to authorities, Susumu is handcuffed to hardened criminal Shinpei Konta, a middle-aged man who’s spent most of his adult life drifting in and out of jail. (When Susumu admits to his crime, Shinpei sniffs, “Just one? Tch! That’s nothing! I’ve been convicted five times. Twice for murder.”) An avalanche provides the shackled pair an opportunity to escape into a raging snowstorm, police hot on their trail.

Written in just twenty days, Black Blizzard unfolds at a furious clip, pausing only to allow Susumu a chance to tell Shinpei about his involvement with the circus. The two principals are more archetypes than characters, drawn in bold strokes, but the interaction between them crackles with antagonistic energy — they’re as much enemies as partners, roles that they constantly renegotiate during their time on the lam. Only in the final, rushed pages does manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi falter, tidily resolving the story through an all-too-convenient plot twist that hinges on coincidence.

The plot may be pilfered from Manhunt — Tatsumi claims Mickey Spillane as an influence — but the art leaves a fresh impression. Tatsumi already had a substantial amount of work under his belt at the time he wrote Blizzard — seventeen novel-length stories, as well as several volumes’ worth of short ones — but was moving in the direction of what he called “manga that isn’t manga,” stories that exploited the medium’s capacity for representing action in a more dynamic, cinematic fashion. Black Blizzard is filled with slashing diagonal lines, dramatic camera angles, and images of speeding trains; it’s as if Giacomo Balla decided to try his hand at sequential art, filling the pages with as many signifiers of motion as he could muster without lapsing into abstraction:

This kineticism extends to even the smallest gestures; in the very first panels, for example, we see a pair of hands banging out notes on a keyboard:

The composition couldn’t be simpler — just a few speedlines and sound effects convey the action — but these details, when coupled with the claw-like position of the hands, suggest the pianist’s extreme agitation, an impression confirmed just a few panels later when we first see Susumu’s sweat-drenched face.

Tatsumi’s regard for anatomy is, at times, careless; Susumu has Rachmaninoff-sized mitts, to judge from the awkward way in which his hands are drawn, while other cast members look stumpy, with grossly foreshortened legs. Yet for all the obvious flaws in his draftmanship, Tatsumi’s gestural approach to characterization proves well-suited to the material’s relentless pace, efficiently communicating each cast member’s personality, age, and plot function with a few artfully rendered lines and shapes. Shinpei, in particular, is a terrific creation, with a broad, sagging jaw and two thick, diagonal lines for eyebrows, making him a dead ringer for a jack-o-lantern.

Drawn & Quarterly has done a fine job of adapting Black Blizzard for Western readers, thanks, in large part, to a crisp translation by Akemi Wegmuller that captures the unique cadences of mid-century noir; one can almost imagine Shinpei referring to an attractive woman as a “tomato.” The volume also includes an interview with Tatsumi; read in tandem with “The Joy of Creation,” one of the later chapters in A Drifting Life, the interview sheds light on Tatsumi’s creative process as well as the work’s initial reception. Editor and designer Adrian Tomine has given Black Blizzard a retro-chic makeover, dying the trim yellow and boldly announcing the book’s price in the manner of a dime-store novel. It’s an attractive design (see above), but I can’t help wishing that Drawn and Quarterly had used Masami Kuroda’s original painting:

It’s a minor complaint, to be sure, but the original cover — to my mind, at least — is a closer expression of the story’s pulpy roots and futurism-tinged artwork.

That said, Black Blizzard is a welcome addition to the growing body of mid-century manga now available in English, providing an all-too-rare glimpse into the early stages of the gekiga movement. And while it lacks the visual and narrative polish of Tatsumi’s mature work, I’ll take the sweaty hyperbole of Black Blizzard over the dour verismo of The Push Man any day; Black Blizzard has a vital, improvisatory energy missing from Tatsumi’s later period, even though his command of the medium was clearly more assured in the 1960s and 1970s.

BLACK BLIZZARD • BY YOSHIHIRO TATSUMI • DRAWN & QUARTERLY • 132 pp. • NO RATING