dreamed comic
Dec. 13th, 2002 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashThis was a dream with lots of changing of form - watching an animated movie, being a character in it (a shapeshifter who turned into a hippety-hop type toy shaped like a bumblebee), fashion design roughs, a swirl of storyboard and conceptual drawings, and finally an anthology-type comic. Or maybe I should say anthology-type manga, because this was an anthology from Japan.
It wasn't the usual Japanese look, either. Instead, I was amazed: every few pages had work by different artists, in radically different styles. It was all over the map - cartoony, realistic, noir, itchy lines, just wild. One story was like Basil Wolverton crossed with Jack Cole (Plastic Man's creator) - really dynamic, with strange texture obsessions. One was big-nosed, big footed shlubs. Some of it was kinda badly drawn. There was work that was primarily stippled. There was a story about a bunch of people trying to emulate a fictional cowboy hero, usually getting outnumbered as they shouted out the catch-phrase of 'In the name of (whatever the cowboy hero's name was)!'. There were text-heavy ads, mostly in English - actually, most of the comic was in English, I guess it was translated. It read left-to-right, too. There was a really silly thing involving a giant child that had an exhortation for readers to sent in photos of them posing like an action soldier hero; the best one would win the competition, and have their photos used as source material for the next story in this series of stories of Winsor McCay-like distortions.
And I was really into thiscomic manga, because I was glad to see that what people have suggested is really quite true: what makes it over to the West is just a small portion of what comics artists and animators do over there; for some reason people only want to import the big eyes, small mouths, giant robots stuff, despite all these other, dramatically different stylizations.
Then I woke up, and was sad to be back in the world where all the stuff I see from Japan looks exactly the same.
It wasn't the usual Japanese look, either. Instead, I was amazed: every few pages had work by different artists, in radically different styles. It was all over the map - cartoony, realistic, noir, itchy lines, just wild. One story was like Basil Wolverton crossed with Jack Cole (Plastic Man's creator) - really dynamic, with strange texture obsessions. One was big-nosed, big footed shlubs. Some of it was kinda badly drawn. There was work that was primarily stippled. There was a story about a bunch of people trying to emulate a fictional cowboy hero, usually getting outnumbered as they shouted out the catch-phrase of 'In the name of (whatever the cowboy hero's name was)!'. There were text-heavy ads, mostly in English - actually, most of the comic was in English, I guess it was translated. It read left-to-right, too. There was a really silly thing involving a giant child that had an exhortation for readers to sent in photos of them posing like an action soldier hero; the best one would win the competition, and have their photos used as source material for the next story in this series of stories of Winsor McCay-like distortions.
And I was really into this
Then I woke up, and was sad to be back in the world where all the stuff I see from Japan looks exactly the same.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-13 02:38 pm (UTC)"Hellbaby" springs to mind most quickly, but there are others and
quite a rich library of manga that has nothing to do with the more
mainstream tradition that i think you object to...
I will gather and send you some things...
no subject
Date: 2002-12-13 02:57 pm (UTC)Oh, unless I'm looking at the original Astro Boy, which is really cool because it's this crazy combination of Fleischer, European styles (the same design world Asterix lives in), and rather serious story.
Pointers or Xeroxes would definitely be interesting. I don't go searching for Japanese comics or cartoons because everything someone says is great is just more of the same to my eyes.
I hear ya.
Date: 2002-12-21 12:27 am (UTC)But Astro Boy is da shit, yes.
Unless it's those horrible comics from the 80's I saw on eBay where they tried to make him look muscular. *shudder*