I like this paper!

This is the top layer for a test-print for the Secret Prison 7 cover. It’s like 1/4 the size of the real thing. I was figuring out the composition and trying to figure out how dark of markers/pencils/ink I should do.

From Weird Schmeird #2, this comic by ME! sorry, spoiler alert, this was the last page of the comic!

Some collages I made… a few years ago!! That’s why the tape is all yellow. 

KAIGAI MANGA FEST 2012 / COMITIA #102

I really had a good time at this festival. Comitia is a quarterly convention that’s like 5 or 10 times SPX size in terms of scale, but it’s only 1 day, 5-hours long. It’s all indie/self-publishing/doujinshi circles/individual artists with tables. It’s reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally big. Lines and lines and lines of tables in rooms and rooms.

It’s not unmanageable:

• The festival organizes artists based on what genre they draw/write in, so visitors can easily find what they like.
• Your “entrance ticket” to the festival is a 12-dollar catalog, that’s very big and comprehensive! This is a smart idea.
• More popular artists are on the outside of the sections so you can get to them quickly/line up easily.
• The festival is so full of people but the spaces are all wide enough that it’s never crowded or stuffy, btw. That was nice.

I didn’t spend much time in the larger Comitia.

• I don’t know where to start, it’s seemingly endless.
• A lot of the work I just don’t care about - you know, lots of books of cover-drawings/illustrations of cute girls, printed in color, bound in 16 A4 pages, that’s it.
• There were a lot of pitifully shy artists with 1 book on a small table, the artists looking down at their laps when a visitor approached.
• There were normal artists, too, though. But there were so many, and so little time.

This quarter’s Comitia features the first ever KAIGAI International Manga Festival - basically a new section within Comitia featuring international exhibitors, artists, publishers. It will be an annual thing (I think) from now. It was surprisingly good.

• KAIGAI had good placement near the entrance. 
• Marvel, Udon, Drawn and Quarterly, Koyama Press, TCAF, & “other” were there.
• Lotsa traffic. People were nice. People bought books!
• No one expected artists to sign or draw inside books, which was nice (we sometimes did it anyway, to the genuine astonishment of the “lucky”(?) customer).
• Everyone happily accepted business cards/stickers/pins. I strongly recommend bringing lots of free cards/pins/stickers to this event.
• The crowds were friendly, even if they didn’t speak the same language as the exhibitor. Lotsa girls, but lots boys. I suspect 60/40 g/b.?

I arrived late because I was only “unofficially” there and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I wish I had arrived earlier because it was great! i.e. friendly people behind and in front of the tables, and good sales. Lemme run through the Kaigai area, from my POV…

I met Helen Koyama (not Annie) and Robin & Daniel Nishio at the Koyama Press table.

• They let me sell my books with them and sell their books and “rep” KP.  I was proud to do this. Robin gave me a big hug from Ryan Sands - thank you Ryan! They were all very nice to me and I was so grateful.
• By the time I got there, they had already sold a lot of books. I watched Koyama sell out Root Rot first, and I think every stack of books they brought sold well, if not sold-out. It was cool to see the audience interested in all the different types for sale. I hope KP brings a wider variety of books next year (assuming this festival happens again and KP goes) because I think the audience was hungry for different types of books.
• I didn’t bring very many copies of my books and I wish I had brought more.

TCAF had a nice display.

• They were drumming up Japanese interest in the festival, explaining what it was, giving out a book of diary comics about the festival in Japanese. They did a good job.
• I was so happy to see my friend Chris Butcher, who I met last year on another trip of his to Japan. He introduced me to Peter Birkemoe, the owner of The Beguiling, and Andrew Woodrow Butcher, who runs The Beguiling’s kid’s book store Little Island. All so nice and cool!
• Drawn & Quarterly was there, too. They had a great display, I bought Black Blizzard, & also I was so excited to see beautiful editions that have been published in America while I’ve been away.
• D&Q books are so nice!! That new Tomine book about New York is really nice looking (I believe it sold out quick).  I looked at the book for about 55 seconds and was too overwhelmed. It feels like “an accomplishment.” 

Other publishers…

• Marvel was there, a guy was doing portfolio reviews, I heard they were interested in talent-scouting at this show. I listened in on a critique briefly, it was a guy showing a portfolio of cover-drawings, no story/actual comics. Meh.

• Udon Press was there. Were they cosplaying or was that a different booth? They had a great display. Lotsa books, lots colors, they had a big portfolio of original drawings out, it was cool.

There was a big area for browsing (but curiously, not buying) French B.D. These tables were run by (I think) a company that specifically works with selling international rights of French books, NOT a publisher or a reseller. The nice French woman told me that she usually never sees the public interact with books. She just kinda sat far behind the table reading a book, ignoring most visitors and not interacting much (but she was nice and cool and friendly when I and presumably anyone else wanted to have a chat). This seemed like a wasted opportunity or something… but whatever, I guess it’s cool. The goal was to “generate interest” and show publishers that the public is into the books (which were of course in French).

BTW Kaigai was centered around a big open stage where guys like Naoto Urusawa and Katsuhiro Otomo and some French artists were speaking. This was cool!

I randomly ran into Chris, Peter, Maurice Vellekoop and Debra Aoki the day before the fest, and went book shopping with them. This made me, lonely traveller RCS, so happy. BTW I have followed Debra’s twitter account for a long time - I personally have learned a lot about comics/manga/book sales/commerce from the discussions she leads and publishes via RT. I recommend that you follow her.

The last thing I did before boarding the night bus was to watch Chris, Maurice, and Love Love Hill do a presentation/book reading at PARCO in Shibuya. This was cool! I had to leave in the middle of Wai reading something of hers, it was good. I left, ran to my night bus, and took off for Osaka. Now it’s Monday morning and I’m back at work, yes that’s right sitting at my desk at school typing a con-report.

RCS’s VERDICT: Kaigai was real good. If you can come, then you should do it.

SF#2 - it’s a new zine, IMO you should get it!! Debuting at SPX, and you can order it, too.

• 6 5/8” x 9”
• 36 pages
• Risograph printed with soy ink on recycled paper
• available in 2 colors
• 6 bucks
• It’ll be at the Retrofit Comics table at SPX!

Basically, it’s about a little boy named Hupa Dupa whose parents were killed by Space Pirates, so he gets adopted by the Space Fleet Scientific Foundation Special Forces and joins a galactic war. The story is inspired by Matsumoto Leiji’s great space opera manga Queen Millenia.

Zz zzzz

12. Emerald Kiss by Maoko Nagasaki

This story is great. On the surface, there are lots of textures creating forms, overlapping and mixing very well. For example, see how the dress in panel 2 has no outlines, its just a texture. You can see a lot of overlapping textures on the first page. I like the pupil created by a radial gradient on the bottom. This is well done. It’s balanced by heavier lines in the foliage. It’s also balanced by panels with no background at all. This is nice.

The comic looks like a play from the Takarazuka Revue (everyone wears lots of makeup, the men are played by women). In the whole story there’s only one drawing with a dick, with penetration, while the rest is foreplay and oral sex performed by the ambiguous male - i.e. it reads like they could be lesbians, just like a Takarazuka play (you know what I mean).  (If you don’t know, look it up!) Is this significant? To anyone besides me? Does Takarazuka stir homosexual feelings? Does this comic? As for me, I’m just calling it like I see it.

I really like the thick gutters and relatively heavy borders. In the first four pages, the 3 rows of panels are very clear and distinct, I like it. In the sexy spread in the next post, it breaks up a bit. But it still reads very clear. Man, just look at that nipple sequence - this is some sexy, erotic stuff! So much better than the blocky, stiff anatomy in some of the other stories in the book. 

If it’s not instantly obvious to you (it kinda isn’t for me), notice how she doesn’t draw the complete figures in every panel. She kinda trails off at the feet on page one. Only draws the tip of the breast in the nipple sequence, and then it’s just blankness, filled in by tones. I’d love to see this without the tones overlaid, I think that would help me imagine “how” the pictures are composed. It’s very elegant.

There’s a lot to love here. Betcha wish you could read the whole story. It’s good.

12. Emerald Kiss by Maoko Nagasaki

I wanted to include an erotic page. This isn’t consecutive with the last four pages. Great stuff.

11. Dress-Up Love by Nina Hatori

The twisting around of the figures is pretty weak. The expressions are pretty bad - just really dark eyelashes and too-iconic mouths. Hands are interesting but hideous. The geometry and balancing in the panels - especially on the third and fourth pages here - is interesting and different but I don’t think it carries weight very well. So, meh. 

10. 120% Pleasure by Junko Matsufuji

Maybe the drawing is boring in some ways… but there’s more to the storytelling in this one! I like the way the panels work on the first two pages. Page two is obvious - there’s like an axis where those panels meet, that kind of feels connected to the movement of the figures in the third panel (which also connect on a lower axis). That’s nice, I think.

And you know, page one has a similar function. The figures, and the panels, are sort of pushing down. It’s a real effect, I think. The figures in the top panel are moving horizontally, right to left. The figure in the next panel is looking diagonally, down and left. The figures in the bottom panel are moving down. This is a real thing! This is a motion!

Feel the relative closeness between the figures on the third page in the way the panels are close together. The second panel, in which she’s orgasming, it blends into the last panel. Style and content are closely related.

The fourth page is the end of the story, with kinda a dumb joke. Not a bad way to end a comic but not very inspiring, really.

9. Attic Ecstacy by Isshiki Kamio

The drawings are very boring. The gestures/panel-to-panel stuff is pretty boring. There’s little atmosphere. I kinda feel like, “I could do this easily. Just think of some sex things and draw them.” There’s no feeling of emotion here. The lines are boring. The style is boring. I’m not saying this is bad!! 

8. Honey-Colored Bed by Tomoko Ogiura

Oh man I’ve just been too busy to scan more images from this comic today, so here’s one I didn’t get to last night. Notice the background-scenery panels, the heavy atmosphere, the ugly-ass tongue slobber drawings again. I don’t like this kind of kiss drawing. Maybe you do, I don’t know.

I do like the story here. Get in a heated argument, up and kiss, slobber all over each other, then quickly flash through some sexy touching panels and BLAM, in the hotel, fucking! This is the hot stuff that I want to read in my erotic comics.

PS - I am busy tonight making a presentation about America for some students at an international high school tomorrow. They will probably want to buy tickets to Baltimore immediately after I’m done.

PPS - I really don’t like the drawings here.

1. Aya: Young Love Comic

I bought a big romance comic this weekend, for 100 yen. It’s called AYA: Young Love Comic. It seems to be targeted at mostly girls but also boys. There is sex alongside the romance (more than I expected!). The different artists have different styles of drawings that speak to different audiences, I think. Some of the styles I “like” and some I “don’t like.” It’s a matter of taste…

I’m just gonna show you some scans from some of the stories and write down some of my thoughts. I’m not trying to persuade you to think one way about ‘em, because it’s so subjective. I’d rather talk about this with you in person, really. Anyway, here are the first few. Show you more later. Lemme know what you think.

Update:

I should have noticed that the top of the book says ”Lots of ADULT LOVE AND SEX inside!!” Also, it’s interesting that there’s a full-color advertisement on the first page for a cell-phone porn service. So yeah definitely it’s got a boy’s audience, even though it looks like a girl’s book on the outside.

3. Love Blog Princess by Risako Iwashimizu

This is the first main story. I kinda hate this style. It doesn’t do it for me. The faces are too mass-less, things are too flat (e.g., the arrow on the first page fits right in with everything else). The characters are elf-y I don’t think the cropping is very elegant. I mean I’m just saying, I don’t dig it. Maybe you like it!

This is the first story in the book so it’s probably popular. I’ll say that I really like the panel of her tugging his dick, and the panel of her legs on top of his. Haha, these are the panels without any faces. Yeah I like the last panel without any faces, too. Although those nails are pretty sick, right?

This is important: you know who this story is for? Girls who like heavy, expensive “nail-art.”