Shakariki!

Masahito Soda, writer/artist

Published by Akita Shoten

18 volumes from 1992-1995. This big one probably includes 3 or 4 regular volumes.

458 pages, 950 yen

This is a very big manga book, and it’s part of a serial about bike racing, and it’s got lots of very tight drawings of bikes and bike parts (wow), but it’s also not too tight, so the characters are cartoony and the action is fluid. It’s a cool biking story. What’s really cool about this volume is that just about the whole thing is one big long race that’s about as, uh, tiring to read as it would be to ride. I mean that in a good way.

There are absurdly many emotional peaks in this book, as one character sees another one ahead (!!), starts to catch up (!!!), gets spotted (!!!!), pulls ahead of him (!!!!!), everyone is shocked at the new lead (!!!!!!!)… you get the idea. But, hey, the story unfolds and it’s not too hard to catch the meaning through the pictures and enjoy it.

This book reminds me of something Paul Pope wrote on his blog a while ago, The extended cinematic sequence is one of the best gifts we’ve inherited from manga. Hm, yeah? I don’t know, sure. This is a good example of that. I definitely think it’s really cool that someone drew such a long, intense event as this and filled it so high with action and story and motion lines and enough variation that it doesn’t get monotonous or dull. To me, this book is weird and cool, and only recommended if you just love seeing stuff happen in comics. Read this when you need a break from comics about boring guys walking their dogs or jerking off in their apartment. Vavoom, whooshhhhh!!

I just discovered a very limited stock of prints under my bed. Thought I’d have a little print sale back at the headquarters. All prints are hand screen printed and ship flat in a sturdy cardboard pack. This is a cheap and concrete option to the enhancement of your collection or a generous starting point, don’t pass it up, you’ll never forgive yourself.

* Well this was fun: Travis Greenwood, of the genuinely excellent retro-movie-oriented t-shirt company Found Item Clothing, interviewed me about t-shirts for the Found Item blog. The ostensible focus is my t-shirt tumblr Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts, but it’s sort of a “towards a philosophy of the t-shirt” kinda deal. Before I sat down to answer Travis’s questions I’m not sure I ever thought through my love of t-shirts any further than “gosh, I love t-shirts,” so you’re getting some real first-draft-of-history stuff here in terms of me feeling out what makes a good t-shirt and what explains my affinity for them.

* Big Questions #15 is on its way! Anders Nilsen, best of his generation.

* Just this week I received the blu-ray of Michael Mann’s Heat as a gift and was surprised to discover a blurb on the back cover noting that the director had somehow tweaked the content of the film for this release. So I was struck by the lede for Matt Zoller Seitz’s piece on “director’s cuts” and their recut brethren for Salon, which is basically a plea to Mann to stop messing with his movies. Anyway, the piece is an argument-starter (to my mind especially when Seitz argues that Apocalypse Now Redux is less dreamlike than the original version). Check it out.

* Speaking of argument-starters, Tom Ewing presents an alphabetical list of rock-critic arguments. One of the list’s most interesting points is its discussion of the dialectic between “guilty pleasure” and “if it gives you pleasure, why feel guilty?”:

The “no such thing as a guilty pleasure” line ends up at a kind of naturism of pop, where the happiest state of being is to display one’s tastes unaltered to the world. But the barriers to naturism aren’t just shame and poor body image, it’s also that clothes are awesome and look great. Performing taste– played-up guilt and all– is as delightful and meaningful as dressing well and makes the world a more colorful place.

I think Ewing is simply overstating the need for guilt as a component of taste. Rejecting the concept of “guilty pleasure” isn’t a question of rejecting rejection–I loudly and proudly reject art all the livelong blog-day. Just by way of a for instance, Rob Sheffield’s gushing over “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” and “Tik Tok”–two songs constructed entirely of clumsily pandering cliches, the latter at least dubiously distinguished by the apparent aim of sounding annoying on purpose–in his epic interview with Matthew Perpetua this week made me want to smash Brett Michaels’s acoustic guitar over Ke$ha’s head like a felonious Bluto Blutarski, just by way of a for instance. My taste still has very clearly defined boundaries; they’re simply not defined by my reaction to the notion of what I’m “supposed” to like or dislike and subsequently feeling bad about the places where I don’t measure up. As a critic, consumer, and occasional maker of art, I don’t get anything whatsoever out of reacting to how I supposedly “should” be reacting. Rejecting “guilty pleasure” is simply exerting ownership over the entirety of your taste. To continue with Tom’s metaphor, it’s not about not wearing clothes, it’s about approaching art without asking “Does this song make my butt look fat?” (I understand that this could be a pose in and of itself, like how whatsisname in Singles‘ “thing” was “not having a thing”–but wouldn’t you rather your pose not involve dancing between other people’s raindrops?)

* Just some fine writing on the pleasures and perils of genre from Tom Spurgeon in his review of an otherwise unremarkable comic.

* The very talented superhero artist David Aja walks us through several covers for the “Seven Capital Cities of Heaven” arc from The Immortal Iron Fist, including one that was never used. Neat, thoughtful stuff.

* Kate Beaton kills political cartoons dead. They stink!

* Speaking of politics, I spent the bulk of this week completely unplugged from the internet, with checking in on what the Closed Caption Comics crew was up to and deleting spam comments the only exceptions. It’s difficult to describe how dispiriting playing catch-up with political blogs since yesterday afternoon has been. Since my shameful willingness to be duped by bloodthirsty fools and still more shameful willingness to aid them in duping others placed me on the wrong side of the Iraq War debate, I can therefore safely say that I’ve found nothing more upsetting in American politics since the dawn of my political sentience than the current campaign of naked bigotry against Muslims, wholeheartedly embraced by an entire political party and abetted and encouraged by a variety of prominent bigots and cowards in its supposed opposition. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Josh Marshall have been despairingly eloquent about this.

* I think this season of True Blood is the best so far, and I think this Rolling Stone cover is the best True Blood thing ever. True Blood is exactly what we want, right? Pervy sex, disgusting violence, fuck the squares? (Via Jason Adams.)

* I liked the Weezer tour based on their two good albums better back when I first saw it–when their two good albums were their two only albums.

* I’m back!

* I’d like to thank the crack Closed Caption Comics squad–especially Conor, Zach, Chris, Molly, Noel, and Ryan–for filling in so admirably in my absence. I got precisely the combination of inspired comics and oddness I was hoping for, and I hope you did too. Posting from me is gonna be light for a bit longer as I play catch-up, so with any luck there’s a little more CCC on its way to you, but I certainly encourage you to check out their website and–and this is the key part–buy their comics if you like what you see!

* Congratulations to this year’s Ignatz Award nominees, especially my friend and collaborator Matt “Best New Talent” Wiegle. The nomination panel included genuine altcomix top dawgs Josh Cotter and Anders Nilsen, so that’s pretty swell.

* So maybe there’s another Hellraiser movie called Hellraiser: Revelations on the verge of being made? And it’s probably not the Weinstein-approved reboot of the franchise that’s been kicked around for a couple of years now? And it probably doesn’t involve Clive Barker? And it’s probably based on a script by a guy who did some point-missing Pinhead make-up redesigns a while back? Personally I’d prefer Rickey Purdin’s Slashpendables.

* Pitchfork says the words I long to hear: The Orb featuring David Gilmour!

* Three interviews about projects I’m looking forward to: Paul Cornell talks to CBR’s Jeffrey Renaud about Knight and Squire, Megan Kelso talks to Robot 6’s Tim O’Shea about Artichoke Tales, and Hercules & Love Affair’s Andy Butler talks to Mike Barthel in the Portland Mercury about Blue Songs. You definitely want to read what Cornell says about his fictional Britain and what Kelso says about the notion of place as a character, and you definitely want to cry over what Butler had to do to make his second album.

* Ana Matronic from the Scissor Sisters is writing a comic!

* Matthew Perpetua defends the honor of “Drunk Girls.” As time goes by I find this to be the best song on LCD Soundsystem’s third and third-best album This Is Happening by what would be a pretty comfortable margin but for “Dance Yrself Clean.” I think the overall record feels too organic–both the harshness and the cold beauty of some of their best previous stuff is gone–but organic works for a shout-along rock song like this.

* Keep doing you, Jim Woodring.

* Bedbugs at the AMC Empire 25 in Times Square? Disaster! I see a lot of movies there. (Via Ryan Penagos.)

* Brandon Graham draws Twin Peaks! Well, maybe the exclamation point is not quite merited–he drew Audrey without black hair. (Also via Agent M.)

* Very much digging this Jaime Hernandez Strange Tales II cover.

* Monomanaical shelf porn is often the best shelf porn.

* White Lantern Batman? Sure, I’ll eat it.

* Robyn as Robin: Shaggy is right.

Here’s a low-rent animation I made special for blogging

Adam Lambert

“20th Century Boy”

Live at Erie, Pennsylvania, August 10, 2010

What do we talk about when we talk about Adam Lambert? I talk about the only American Idol contestant in nine seasons’ worth of regular viewing that nearly always included a “favorite” contestant by whom I was ever even remotely interested in buying a record, let alone actually going out and doing so. (“Since U Been Gone” is the exception that proves the rule.) I talk about a person I would sit around and daydream up lists of covers I wanted to hear him perform. I talk about the closest I’ve ever come, in my dully, ardently heterosexual life, to having a crush on a man–a reduction of myself to literally swooning, literally shrieking Beatlemania-level hysteria when he did things like cover David Bowie or Muse or Led Zeppelin. I talk about the kind of man I once dreamed of being–the ideal self I saw in the throes of my turn-of-the-millennium glam obsession, when I was known to go to Target in heels. I talk about a man who I’ve pictured covering “Sweet Transvestite” from Rocky Horror in full Frank N. Furter regalia only to realize that were this to actually happen I think I’d be in danger of fainting. When I talk about Adam Lambert I talk about the kind of infatuation with a pop star we, and by we I mean tween girls, usually experience only to grow out of and forget how to feel.

I don’t talk about the actual album he ended up making. I like it, for the most part–it certainly has a kick-ass opening track in the form of the Darkness-penned “Music Again,” and the throw-it-all-at-the-wall pop-house and “rocker” balladry the label provided for him are all a lot more palatable when issued from behind that beautiful half-smile and from those genuinely astounding musical-theater pipes. To paraphrase Stardust (not Ziggy, not Alvin), music sounds better with him. But “better” isn’t “PERFECTION,” and I find that contrary to the Lambert of my dreams, For Your Entertainment is something I rarely have the patience to sit through. That cacophonous production, a full-on casualty of the loudness wars, just doesn’t have the strut and slink and kick that Lambert himself does; the blandly orgiastic videos produced for his two dancey singles “For Your Entertainment” and “If I Had You” and the utterly sexless (literally–the significant other never appears!) video produced for his Top 10 hit “Whataya Want from Me” are all too fitting an act of commodification and de-interesting-ization.

So what do I talk about when I talk about Adam Lambert? This, even when it’s not what he’s actually doing. A glam anthem. T. Rex’s best, ballsiest song, previously covered with ear-splitting sleaziness on the seminal (!) Velvet Goldmine soundtrack by Placebo, now kicked up several keys and strutted to like it’s what he was born to do. Which it is, for better or for worse. In today’s pop climate, it’s Lady Gaga who’s the exception that proves the rule: whether because polymorphous perversity is more acceptable coming from sexy ladies than openly gay men, whether because the Idol machine exerts more control over Lambert than Gaga ever had to deal with, or whether it’s simply because he’s a performer first and an artist second, my hero is at his best when embodying the glorious provocative pop of the past. He’s a 20th century boy.

So I made a large one page comic and submitted it to a free comics newspaper. I then posted it on flickr as I do with all unpaid work, including the name of the comics newspaper I submitted it to as to promote the publication even though I know my piece might not get published. I then get a comment on facebook from the guy who puts it out telling me that if i want to get printed “then don’t post it all over the goddamn internet first”. It says nowhere in the submission form that I can’t post my comic online, and there’s no logical reason why I shouldn’t, and since it’s unpaid I own the comic and am only lending it to be printed for free. So fuck all that shit, I’m posting it “all over the goddamn internet”.

hey dudes. wish i could say i’ve been drawing a lot, but as conor put it i’ve been doin the ‘Fuckin Bob Vila’ thing. i built these boxes for my pedals. the larger is for the B&P setup and the smaller for the Witch Hat trials. here are some progress shots and the final product. pretty classy huh? i would never do this life-posting but i gotta post something right.

these are the guts. grey veltex.

noel go easy on em, no one can follow that beautiful photo essay! anyways i just moved to anodda planet, so i thought i’d start this with some inspirational dancing:

&

and i wasnt quite prepared for this blog take over?? but here’s a 2 sketches of 2 new stories i’m workin on (sorry for the bobo quality, scanners are a rare delicacy now):

and here’s an amazing pulsallama video, guaranteed to inspire:

bye biddies, back to waiting for the mailman

Salem

“King Night”

from King Night

IAMSOUND, September 2010

Buy it, eventually, from IAMSOUND

I take it that “King Night” is to “witch house” what Neon Indian’s “Deadbeat Summer” was to chillwave/glo-fi: the accessible face of an unnecessarily divisive micogenre based on what synthesizers sound like if you have an inner ear infection. From that I shall deduce that witch house is hilarious. The most striking element is the giant, bassy synth sound, portentous even without the ominous choir voices. You can picture black-hooded demons striding straight out of a 1980s backmasked subliminal message. But this is coupled with stuff that wouldn’t sound out of place on the first Prodigy album: rinky-dink little skittering percussion effects, high-pitched semi-hooks, even a cheeky children’s-show sample! And then it turns out that the choir is singing “O Holy Night”! The band name, the song title, the art, even the genre are all goth as fuck, but it’s the arch, tongue-in-cheek goth of Type O Negative writing song cycles about black hair dye or women masturbating to Jesus. Basically, this song is funny. Now, funny songs can be funny in part because they’re also so impressive you’ve gotta laugh–cf. the first time you heard Andrew W.K. or Sleigh Bells–and this isn’t on that level, for me at least. Blame, perhaps, the laconic pace, which I understand is part and parcel of the subgenre but which prevents the bigness and silliness of the song from truly overpowering you. It’s a good goof, all told. A goof isn’t necessarily something I’d yell “stop the press!” over and dub the next big thing, but it can be a fun time.

It’s Summertime in Baltimore, for those unfamiliar, the uninitiated, it means time to: get some Natty, get sweaty, and go to OTAKON! For the past two years (2008, 2009) I’ve busted into the second largest anime/manga convention in the nation. You asked me by any means possible to bring it back, you screamed “give it to me dead or alive!” So Now, with out further hesitation, here’s that 2010 bounty you’ve been waiting for, I’ve got that elmo generation, I’ve got that maniac cop, I’ve got that fur on wheels!

Otakon (otaku convention) always gives me the strangest mix of feelings. The atmosphere is initially very exciting and stimulating. Weird people dressed up very strange everywhere. People really going all out. Big weapons, fake blood, bright wigs, fake nails, fake eyes, cardboard robots, taped nipples, plastic metal, cat lady, full-body suit, high heels, cross dress, fur gender. Why?…… It’s all about being the biggest fan, getting the opportunity to be your favorite character, connecting with people that have the same feelings you do, It’s a place where you will be praised for something that is usually not acceptable, a safe haven for the fans!

What I’m trying to get at is (and this may seem very obvious) that the goal of many costumed attendies isn’t to make the most interesting costume, but to most accurately depict their fav character, the goal is realistic imitation, to create this moment of excitement for the other attendies of seeing their favorite characters interacting with each other, you can find many groups of people dressed as the entire cast from an anime all for the purpose of a large fantasy photo shoot. I guess the pleasure derived from dressing up is similar to that of being an actor (which is foreign to me, probably why i don’t completely understand).

OK I’m just going to say it: “Otakon is actually very boring, Everyone is dressed very wild, but they are actually very tame and subservient to the rules, you will never see a fight break out at otakon, you will never see nudity/sex at otakon, you will never see a real metal gun or sword at otakon, you will never see real blood at otakon. It’s like disney world “no one ever dies at otakon.” Everything is for the benefit of the camera, suspending a moment, a photo, that appears out of control and free, but a second later, once the pose is casual, you realize that your favorite character is all surface decoration, they won’t actually pistol whip you for being bad, the excitement fades, there is no real threat of danger. There is no chaos. Don’t confuse this for the natural world because it’s all contained, calculated, and secure. An abundance of effort is spent on this wild/safe world, and it is confusing and unnatural.”

Well that’s enough of an intro, “on with the show,” I’ll try and let the pictures speak…

Everyone was screaming “Big Boy!” at this guy.

Kamen Rider? Pete?

Ahh, Mr. Sweeley, the only person I found that i knew in real life at the con. I sneak up on him and he starts to run.

Sweeley puts it in high gear, I’m walking fast after him trying to hang out hard, he escapes up the “staff only” elevator, and I’m left to my own devices.

There is an event on Saturday night called “The Masquerade” where costumed attendies can perform skits of their favorite anime/videogame/manga. This is truly bizarre. The performances are usually unmonumental with minimal coreography, and prerecorded vocals (it’s like watching a dubbed movie live, it’s impossible for the actors to synch their lips realistically, it’s a nice other worldly effect). This sounds all fine and all, but the real shocker is that these amateur performances take place in the 1st Mariner Arena, which seats up to 13,000 people, it’s not at sold out capacity full, but there are definitely thousands of people sitting around watching this. There are around 22,000 attendies at Otakon so it could theoretically fill up…

This guy sitting next to me, Charlie, was dressed as a ghostbuster, he literally started crying, breaking down on my shoulder because he said “this is my last con because I’m moving away.” bummer. This was my most intimate interaction at the con. Keep on doing it Charlie! “You know who to call!”

The experience is hard to explain, would be similar to watching a middle school talent show with an audience of 6,000 people. Fans gathering to watch fans. This might be my favorite part of Otakon, it’ll make you feel really weird.

The finale of the show was an acoustic performance by two members of the hard rock japanese band “X Japan.” They played classical versions of two of their songs, and did a short Q/A session. This band is responsible for the genre called “Visual Kei” popular in Japan. according to wiki the term “Visual Kei” came from X Japan’s slogan “Psychedelic violence crime of visual shock.” I’m not to familiar with the band, but i was surprised that they played classical versions of their songs…….(like Metallica?)

Back at the convention center, and what do we have here?

This guy’s costume was my favorite, the skunk mouth moved when he talked! Really pulled me in.

hey there fur baby!

WHAT IS THIS?

You so cute

You fell over

Bye Bye Otakon 2010, til next time…..

Kamui Den

Sanpei Shirato, writer/artist

Garo Magazine, published by Shogakukan

21 volumes from 1964-1971

Hey, I’ve been meaning to post this on my own blog forever, but now that we have appropriated Sean’s huge market power, it’s time I finally review interesting manga that I come across in my daily life in Japan. These are manga that I’d never heard of before I came across them in a shop or in the trash or something, that I find interesting for whatever reason. First I’ll start you off with a really really good one. Let me tell you about Kamui Den, or Legend of Kamui.

Kamui Den is a totally awesome samurai and ninja fighting comic from the sixties written and drawn by Sanpei Shirato. Wikipedia says that it was the first story serialized in Garo, an influential gekiga magazine that printed more serious “art” manga. I found out about Kamui Den when I saw it on the top shelf of a big used manga store near my house. It was wrapped in plastic so I couldn’t see inside but it was a really fat volume with a nice cover design with just a little bit of drawing on it, and it looked good. Boy, damn, when I opened it up, I knew I made a good choice. The drawings are so amazing, full of life and energy, and drawn really wacky but so well. Basically, everything looks really scratchy and hastily done, but it’s really well-rendered, and also somehow very cartoony. Like, the faces are “iconographic,” and the characters are built with a classical drawing sense, and all that happens within natural and architectural backgrounds that are very loose, but they hold together. This is just masterful.

I can’t even read the manga – though I know there are English editions in the United States, so YOU can go and find this – but you don’t need to read the words to know what’s going on, mostly, and that’s a sign of really good cartooning. The stories are good, too. It’s a really long serial about a ronin, from what I gather, but it seems to be made of smaller story arcs about lots of different people. You know this is fun for him to write, because he tells all kinds of different stories. Check this out – there’s a whole big volume that’s mostly (beautiful drawings of) animals living their lives and having drama in the forest, and then the subplot is what’s happening with the humans in the nearby village, and you see their stories reflect each other – alpha males, theft, war, justice, laws of the jungle and stuff like that. Sometimes, on the other hand, he does a lot of historical writing (with some pretty difficult kanji) about feudal lords and stuff. And a lot in between.

I read online about how the comic is supposed to be political, about how the upper class has always conspired to suppress poor people, or something like that. The message comes through. It’s kind of sad and fatalistic, but at least the book addresses issues of class conflict, which Japanese people are generally very reluctant to discuss openly. This is a country where 90% of people identify themselves as “middle class.” Weird. Sanpei Shirato isn’t someone who would propagate that idea and that makes this book really smart, on top of being really beautiful. This is one of the best manga I’ve ever found, so if you have a chance to buy it, you should!

Hi everyone, my name is Ryan and I’m a member of Closed Caption Comics and I live in Japan, so I guess today I’ll share with you some pictures of things I saw in a store that are part of a theme of the internet called “Weird Japan.” I think maybe you’ve never seen something quite like these before. It all starts with…

The Face Up Roller

You see, here people say that if you’re cute you have a “small face.” I don’t really get it, I’ve measured my head against various students (cute and not-so-cute) and I don’t get a consistent ratio, but I guess that’s fine. What’s funny is that there are instruments marketed to the public that will shrink their face down to a better size, and even though they’re obviously face massagers, no one seems to let on to that. They insist they are fascinated by their face-shrinking effects. I’m like, “what? that’s like for a massage, for your face,” and they say, “no! no! face small! make face small!” (these are my dopey girl students with so-so English ability)

In the face rollers above, notice the first picture has no Japanese on the box, and the second one has some Japanese but also includes French. The girls I talk to (again, these are 15-year-old dopes, I mean that affectionately but seriously, they’re kind of dopes) are under the impression that these products are really big in America. Facepalm.

Speaking of facepalm, here is something more advanced. They are special masks that you can use for cosmetic purposes. Exhibit A will take the droop out of your chin, Exhibit B will also stretch the wrinkles off of your temples. Do you think this feels like a massage? Actually, hm, I kind of doubt it.

This next product will turn a (Caucasian?) girl with a gross smile into a girl with a gorgeous smile! This might or might not feel like an inner facial massage.

There was a very big display rack at Tokyu Hands with lots more, here are the best, without more comments, except to assure you that three or four of my students use them and say that they work (the ones for faces that is, we didn’t ever talk about the rest of these). If you are interested in purchasing these products, you can find them at Tokyu Hands, a pretty common big store in any city in Japan, I guess. Or you could use a Japan-product-buying service like this one and he will find it and ship it to you.

so it’s saturday, i wasted my morning taking a safety construction class and napping, no one’s answering their phones, and now i can’t take a shit because the exterminator paid a surprise visit to spray the bathroom and tell me i have too many bags under the sink.

why not blog, right?

this is a 2 page comic i made called slime and punishment and it’s for a zine called snakebomb vol. 1, which should be coming out later this month maybe? i don’t know too much about it except that brandon graham is doing the cover and scott pilgrim might have done some artwork. whatever, google it.

ihavetopoopsobadwhyamidoingthis

obviously if things are small you can click em big.

this zine sounds like it’s going to kill so if you read this you should buy it. like i said i don’t know too much info about when/where it’s gonna drop (oh my god i’m shitting my pants) but if you want to keep updated about it or my tattoos then follow my blog too spamspamspamspam: hyperlink

stay gassy

I’ll be on vacation for the next week or so, attending the nuptials of my beloved brother (and Lost thoughts comment-thread staple) Ryan. The regularly scheduled Comics Time and Music Time reviews will still go up as usual, but other posting from me will be minimal to nonexistent.

And now for something completely different: The good men and women of Closed Caption Comics, Baltimore’s finest art-comics collective, will be guestblogging all week. Together, Chris Day, Noel Freibert, Mollie Goldstrom, Zach Hazard, Lane Milburn, Andrew Neyer, Molly O’Connell, Pete Razon, Ryan Cecil Smith, Conor Stechschulte, Eric Stiner, and Erin Womack are making some of the comics and objects that get me most excited about the medium–nothing mercenary about it, just sheer love of the game. Who among them will be posting, and what (if anything!) will they post? Your guess is as good as mine–I’m just turning over the keys and splitting–but I’m psyched to find out. Hope you dig ’em.