Manga

The Beat takes a look at Japan with the manga Solanin during their 24 Hours of International Comics.

A seaside town is haunted by a terrible, terrible stench—and soon much more in Junji Ito's classic horror manga GYO. Originally published in Japan...

Manga pioneer Yoshihiro Tatsumi has passed away at age 79, according to a letter received by Paul Gravett. Tatsumi had been battling cancer for several years. Tatsumi is best known as the pioneer of the "gekiga" style of manga (a term be invented), true to life stories of ordinary people. He own work featured haunting adult themes of alienation, dread and obsession. His autobiography A Drifting Life, depicting his struggles as an artist, won the Eisner award for Best Reality Based Work in 2010. He also won the World Outlook Award at Angoulême and the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize.

There's no question but that in American culture the predominant view is one that is rich, white, male, straight and Christian. And while "The male gaze" is pretty well known, we're getting to learn about the "white gaze" as well. Have you ever wondered what it looks like? Now we know. Except it’s from peace loving New Zealand AND America.

A week's worth of reading: § Has Manga Become a Niche Category? Johanna Draper Carlson examines some opinions on this, and quotes comments by Vertical's...

If you have room on your shelf for ONE MORE omnibus series, make a little room for Dark Horse's just announced omnibus series for...

Streaming anime service Crunchyroll is getting into the original webcomic game with a new “Crunchyroll Originals” program, and it kicks off with HYPERSONIC music club by artist Hiroyuki Takahashi. The story line involves world of tomorrow young cyborgs fighting a mysterious conspiracy led by monster girls. Just a day at the office. Takahashi's work is a mix of manga and music influences, and his work has a colorful explosive effect just right for hidef computer screen.

by Zachary Clemente Way back in the early 90s, Nintendo Power published a serialized run of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past limited comic series....

Junji Ito! Junji Ito! Junji Ito! Japanese horror master Ito has been avoiding the genre of his greatest triumphs—Uzimaki, Tomie, Gyo— for eight years, but...

Americans can't get enough Tezuka! Well sort of. The Japanese comics pioneer was as prolific as he was influential and recently we've recently seen a pretty ambitious attempt at getting a bunch of his works into print here in the US from DMP. But a lot of primo Tezuka's work was already published here via a series of very attractive volumes published by Vertical which ranged from Black Jack—perhaps his most accessible series and one of the best known—and standlone volumes like Ode to Kirihito. Sadly many of these books are out of print, but not to worry, Vertical is bringing them back in digital form:

The other day we reported on DMP's new Kickstarter which hopes to publish some untranslated works by Osamu Tezuka but as a pretty hefty price: $360,000 to put out 20 books, and stretch goals that go all the way up to $589,000 for all 31 volumes. Understandably, a lot of manga observers have questioned this amount and the reward tiers— for instance, when this all started the lowest amount you could pledge to actually get a book was $150!

Manga isn't all awkward schoolgirls and giant robots. There has long been a very strong alternative and literary thread of manga, and two recent articles give you some perspective on it. I would call Ryan Holmberg's Proto-Gekiga: Matsumoto Masahiko’s Komaga a must read, but I have to confess, it is very long and involved, and I have set it aside for weekend reading. BUT the important thing is that he compares and contrasts Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who is kind of credited as the father of "gekiga" or realistic manga, with Matsumoto Masahiko, a figure who appears in Tatsumi's autobiographical A Drifting Life under another name. Masahiko's work went down a slightly different path than Tatsumi's but Holmberg shows that it was equally important: