Tim and Mulele progress through the 2018 Irrational Comics PITCH page in this episode with Tokyo Mime, featuring two cops going up against a monster that takes the form of the last person it ate, and Pantheon’s End, in which a superhero team is faced with an apparently unstoppable end to the world.
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This week Koom interviews Prabal Purkayastha, author of Flirting with Death, about how he tried to use the structure of a comic to communicate music, and how his next project is just the opposite of this one.
Then, what would you do if you found yourself on a park bench along a city street, and you knew where you were but you didn’t know who you were? Your home, friends, family, job, all forgotten. Tim and Eugenia review the French graphic novel Blank Slate
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Invasion from Planet Wrestletopia #1 presents a washed-up wrestler who, though he doesn’t know it yet, is about to have to defend his 15-year-old claim to being “the champion of the universe”! Is this comic by Ed Kuehnel, Matt Entin, and Dan Schkade also a champion, or another also-ran?
Irrational Comics is again presenting its annual PITCH page, in which five writers submit eight-page scripts, drawn by the publishers artists, and then users vote for their favorite. In this episode, Tim and Mulele discuss the first of the five, Shaun Kang’s Dreamtime, in which a man uses the Aussie Aboriginal “dreamtime” state to solve murders.
Attend the upcoming CANVAS Sequential Art Meetup on Comics & Visual Storytelling in Tokyo on February 15 at 7 pm, featuring Raul Trevino, and this podcast’s own Mulele Jarvis and Tim Young!
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The Phantom was introduced by Lee Falk in 1936, and appeared in comic books and funny pages for decades. Now comes a new book by Kevin Patrick, The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero
In this episode, Kevin Patrick tells Emmet about the character’s global popularity, especially in Sweden, Australia, and India — and how “The Ghost that Walks” made his first appearance in all three countries in the same unlikely way. Why did the setting change in the early years from an urban situation to a jungle? What does it say about the situation in the former British colonies, especially in Africa? Why is the Phantom that Emmet remembers considered “wrong” by fans? All this and more.
Attend the upcoming CANVAS Sequential Art Meetup on Comics & Visual Storytelling in Tokyo on February 15 at 7 pm, featuring Raul Trevino, and this podcast’s own Mulele Jarvis and Tim Young!
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Tim and Mulele talk about four more comics they picked up at the recent Tokyo comics conventions, Kaigai Manga Festa and Comic Art Tokyo. Also, a response from the author of a Kaigai/CAT comic reviewed in a previous episode, and our take on what Erik Larsen’s recent controversial assertion about being successful in comics.
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Himawari Share #1, by Harmony Becker |
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Teach English In Japan #1, by Jonathon Dalton and Jeffrey Ellis |
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Spaboon by Chris Carlier |
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Florida Folding Zine and Poster, by Natalie Andrewson |
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Many Westerners feel a bit puzzled by Japanese comics — the subject matter, the art style, the pacing, etc. Koom has been trying for some time to grasp what he’s not “getting” about manga. Meanwhile, manga translator Kumar is about done with “explaining” Japanese comics to people, but he makes an exception for Koom (and the podcast). They discuss I Am a Hero by Kengo Hanazawa, and A Distant Neighborhood by Jiro Taniguchi — both translated by none other than Kumar!
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Tim and Mulele talk about four more comics they picked up at the recent Tokyo comics conventions, Kaigai Manga Festa and Comic Art Tokyo:
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Bourbaki, by Adam Pasion |
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Run Boys Run, by Michiru Morikawa |
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Do You Remember Kobot? by Ian M |
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Haunted, by Natalie Andrewson |
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In this special Monday edition of Critiquing Comics, Tim and Mulele take on a couple of comics by our listeners:
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First, Chris Calderon’s The Adventures of Rage drops us right into the middle of a battle. This is a time-honored approach, but is it being done well here? |
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Then, Andre Mateus and Rahil Mohsin’s The Big Sheep gives us funny animals in a noir setting. How does this compare with Andre’s previous submission to Critiquing Comics? |
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This time, Tim and Mulele talk about some of the comics they picked up at Kaigai Manga Festa and CAT in November!
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Tim attended CAT 2017 on November 25, with job one being a talk with Scott Pilgrim and Seconds creator Bryan Lee O’Malley! O’Malley answers some lingering questions from those books, and discusses the inconsistent censoring of cursing in Snotgirl, giving characters body language, why autobio comics are so popular, and what, if anything, he would change about his published work.
Tim also talked with a couple of other creators (many of the denizens of Artist’s Alley were the same ones we met at Kaigai Manga Festa in the past two episodes) and covered a workshop on Risograph Printing presented by Natalie Andrewson, Ryan Cecil Smith, and Grame McNee.
Also in this episode, we’ll hear from CAT co-organizer Adam Pasion about how this year’s event went, and lessons learned for next year.
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