#Repost @mangaberg ・・・ With Bloody Stumps Samurai @retrofitcomics headed to the printer in a few hours, now seems like a good time to officially announce the following blockbuster event: as part of the "Yoshitoshi: Sprit and Spectacle" exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, yours truly and cartoonist Ronald Wimberly will be giving a tag team talk on the topic of "Yoshitoshi and Comics" on Wednesday, July 24 at 6PM in the Perelman Auditorium @philamuseum. Tickets are required. Not sure what @ronaldwimberly will be talking about, but given Yoshitoshi's many dynamic samurai images I can imagine. I will mainly talk about Yoshitoshi's shadow influence on manga of the 60s, focusing on Hirata Hiroshi, whose naturalistic style is a distant but direct descendant of Yoshitoshi via historical fiction illustration. I will also touch on artists like Shinohara Ushio, Hanawa Kazuichi, and Maruo Suehiro who have been inspired by Yoshitoshi's gory imagery in a more isolated way. By foregrounding Hirata, my goals are 1) to complicate the image of early gekiga by highlighting a trajectory that had little to do with Tezuka or American comics, 2) begin fleshing out the art history of jidaigeki manga, and 3) show that postwar manga can be linked concretely to 19th century woodblock prints without reference to Hokusai Manga or Edo picture books (kibyoshi, akahon, etc). Another goal is to promote Bloody Stumps Samurai, which unfortunately probably won't be out in time for the talk, but who knows? The above image: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's badass drawing of Saito Daihachiro Toshitsugu brandishing the severed head of an enemy (1880s), from the @britishmuseum Manga catalogue. I gotta learn me a lot of samurai history in the next month! #yoshitoshi #月岡芳年 #hiroshihirata #平田弘史 https://www.instagram.com/p/BzGR7yxnI3v/?igshid=1xif55j5jbtwn
