This week Tim travels just south of Tokyo to Yokohama to meet up with Chris Taylor (“Sketchfro”), creator of Relic Hunter: Riven, and James Stacey of Black Hook Press, which publishes Japanese translations of US and UK graphic novels. How do you prepare for conventions? Did you do comics differently back home? What’s different about tabling at German comics events? Why did Chris get in an argument with Archie Comics? That and more!
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When doing an autobiographical comic — a memoir, a travelogue, whatever — one problem to consider is how the people around you feel about appearing in your comic, especially if it’s getting published! This week Tim talks with Lucy Knisley — author of many such comics, including An Age of License — about this problem, as well as doing art for a living without losing the joy, getting career advice from Lynda Barry, and much more.
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Michael Bangert’s Viking Sky Kings features a guy looking for work to support his wife and child. Each scene is a slice of life… but maybe a bit too thinly sliced. How do these slices fit each other? The site navigation of this Web comic is not helping matters… Tim and Mulele try to piece things together.
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Actually, several questions. I’ve become a follower of Yugata’s career since meeting her at the massive Comic Market (“Comiket”) event in Tokyo last December. At that event and also at Comitia in May, I bought some of her work. The juxtaposition of cute high school girls and creepy insects is interesting, but the main attraction is not so much the subject matter as that it’s just drawn and colored so beautifully. This is a lady with real talent.
| I feel I’d like to show characters who are both scary and cute. Putting horror elements together with cute ones, I think I can create something new and interesting. — Yugata |
Stunned that this twentysomething artist is not already the toast of the Tokyo manga world, I’ve been wanting to spread the word about her. I first inquired about doing an interview in January. She has a lot going on, but finally found some time to sit down with me on June 21, 2015, in the Nakano area of Tokyo. What follows is a transcript, translated from Japanese and edited for length and clarity.
(Note: “Yugata” is a pen name; as is not unusual in Japan, she doesn’t put her real name on her work, at least in part because moonlighting is frowned upon. She also declined to let me take a photo of her; it’s your loss, I have to say.)
DCP: Is making comics your job?
YUGATA: Well, I really want it to be my job, and lately I’ve been getting some things published in magazines. Continue reading Yugata, I’ve got a question…
The daily strips on Dakota McFadzean‘s site are darkly humorous, or sometimes just dark. (Folks gets eaten!) On this week’s show, Dakota talks about how doing daily strips has helped him as an artist, surviving Cartoonist Boot Camp at the Center for Cartoon Studies, why kids stop drawing at a certain age (and why we should encourage them not to stop!), and more.
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When Kumar was in Toronto in May and met up with Koom, one topic that came up was a 2000 anthology book called Streetwise, featuring autobiographical stories by a number of well-known comics artists (including Jack Kirby, Sergio Aragones, Paul Chadwick, Joe Kubert, John Severin & Roy Thomas, Walter Simonson, Rick Veitch, and Barry Windsor-Smith). This week, with Kumar back in Australia, they chat via Skype/phone about an overlooked book that’s worth a look.
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Kumar reports on the three comics shows he attended while in Canada last month: Toronto Comic Arts Festival (where he spoke on a manga translation panel), East Coast Comics Expo (where he had a table), and Vancouver Comic Arts Festival. (Click below for photos) |
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Then Tim and Mulele discuss Jason Brubaker’s “Sithra: Book One”. Brubaker recently quit DreamWorks — yes, that’s right, QUIT DREAMWORKS — to follow his muse, which prompts Tim and Mulele to think about their own career hopes, in comics or otherwise. |
Continue reading #454 Kumar Across Canada
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Critiquing Comics returns! Tim and Mulele dust off their neglected pile of submissions and look at Terra Kaiju, by Joe Badon and P.B. DeBerry — a comic with Japanese (and Chinese?) ideas, run through a Western filter.
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Why draw in a manga style? Why are zombies popular? How can you represent the comics creation experience in a card game? These questions and more as Tim interviews Jason Thompson, author of Manga: The Complete Guide, the Web comic The Stiff, and Kickstarter project card game Mangaka.
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American comics fans were introduced to Ken Niimura back in 2010, when his art appeared in the Image miniseries I Kill Giants, written by Joe Kelly. Since then, Ken’s work has been seen in some short Spider-Man stories, and more recently, his book Henshin, which just came out in English from Image.
He currently lives in Tim’s stomping grounds of Tokyo, so this week it’s an in-person interview with Ken, about why I Kill Giants was in black and white, his story goals and storytelling techniques in Henshin, and much more.
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