#ryan holmberg

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The staff at the pachinko parlor, in a panel from Ebisu Yoshikazu's comic "Fuck Off," which appears in the 1981 collection The Pits of Hell (available from Breakdown Press).

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Living the Line announces a new manga imprint, Smudge

Living the Line announces a new manga imprint, Smudge #comics #comicbooks #graphicnovel #manga

Publisher Living the Line has unveiled a new publishing imprint, Smudge. Smudge is a line of pulp, horror, and dark mystery manga, curated and translated into English by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg. Smudge is set to debut in Spring 2024 with cult classic Her Frankenstein headlining the inaugural issue. Originally published in 1986, Kawashima Norikazu’s Her Frankenstein marks the…

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[thebristolboard]

Best Comics of 2018

Here’s my contribution to The Comics Journal’s annual roundup. There’s lots of great lists. You should click over and read them all.

Berlin by Jason Lutes – a towering masterpiece 22-years in the making, Berlin is a high watermark for alternative literary comics and its completion feels like a significant milestone for the generation of post-Love and Rockets creators and fans who came of age in the ‘90s.

The Goat Getters by Eddie Campbell – Meticulously-researched and beautifully-designed, this is an important work of comics archaeology. Campbell sifts through the medium’s pre-history, focusing on “the missing link” between early sports cartooning and newspaper comic strips. He carefully traces this evolution, including detailed biographies of the major cartoonists (Swinnerton, Dorgan, Herriman, Fisher, Goldberg, etc.) and a lot of historical context. Not a light read, but definitely worth the effort.

The Troublemakers by Baron Yoshimoto, edited by Ryan Holmberg – If you aren’t following Ryan Holmberg’s work, you’re missing out on one of the best critic/historians in the game. Holmberg is an expert in alt-manga and his translation projects are always worth looking at. This year he edited or otherwise contributed to four collections with several different publishers. I still haven’t read Slum Wolf but of the other three (including Fukushima Devil Fish and Vérité 01), this was the standout, with six short stories from the ‘70s and ‘80s by Yoshimoto, a manga master I was previously unfamiliar with. Holmberg’s books also include insightful essays focused on the artist which adds to the appreciation and understanding of the works reproduced.

Frontier #17 by Lauren Weinstein – This memoir about pregnancy and childbirth is simply a beautiful comic, unflinchingly honest. Weinstein is not afraid to be naked on the page, both literally and figuratively, and never shies away from baring her soul. It’s definitely the best issue of Frontier to date and ranks high among Weinstein’s best works.

Hieronymus & Bosch by Paul Kirchner – From the creator of High Times’s “Dope Rider” and Heavy Metal’s “The Bus” strips, this latest book is a collection of silent comics set in Hell. Perfectly timed gags, often ending in the protagonist’s torment, are mixed with a healthy dose of dark humor. This is perhaps Kirchner’s best work. Plus it’s full color!

Blammo #10 and One Dirty Tree by Noah Van Sciver – Van Sciver’s work turned more personal this past year, revealing intimate details about his family life, relationships, and Mormon upbringing. At the same time, his storytelling, artwork, and especially his use of color have grown more confident and attractive. 

Mort Cinder by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Alberto Breccia – Following Fantagraphics’ translation of Oesterheld and Solano López’s masterpiece, The Eternaut, a few years ago, this gorgeously reproduced translation of one of the greatest Argentinian comics ever is the first of several planned volumes in the Breccia Library. Breccia’s chiaroscuro brushwork is exquisite throughout as he dissects various historical eras from ancient Greece to World War I.

Coin-Op Comics Anthology by Peter and Maria Hoey – You don’t usually hear comics described as aerodynamic but this collection of short strips by the brother and sister duo is filled with sharp angles and sleek curves. The comics draw heavily on the siblings’ graphic design experience, giving the entire book a glossy magazine-like quality, but each strip is filled with clever film-inspired visual experiments.

Flem by Rebecca Rosen – An impressive debut graphic novel about assisted suicide and mother/daughter relationships. Rosen’s art has some similarities with Dash Shaw’s work, but her creative page layouts and expressive coloring portend great things to come. Definitely an artist to keep an eye on.

Ice Cream Man by W. Maxwell Prince and Martín Morazzo – One of my favorite Image books in a long time. Each issue of this series is a loosely-connected one-off tale of suburban horror. Martín Morazzo’s style is reminiscent of Frank Quitely and Prince’s scripts are sparse, thought-provoking gems.

Honorable mentions: Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, The Beef by David Hine and Shaky Kane, X-Men: Grand Design and Second Genesis by Ed Piskor, Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Brian Stelfreeze, et al., All the Sad Songs by Summer Pierre, Tongues by Anders Nilsen, Ensemble by Maxime Gérin, Amnesia by Al Columbia, and The Nib #1, the first print edition of the popular web-comic.

Finally, because nobody should limit themselves to new stuff only, here’s the ten best older comics and related stuff I read in 2018:

The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu – a fantastic and well-researched look back at the history of censorship and fetishism in early comics that led up to Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent.

Hostage by Guy Delisle – Delisle’s best maybe ever, certainly since Pyongyang. This should have been on my best of list last year.

March Books 1-3 by John Lewis and Nate Powell – I read all three books to my 6th grade son this year and we were both blown away. John Lewis is a true American hero and I’m grateful that he chose to write his memoirs in graphic novel form.

Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller by Joe Lambert – this was the third time I read this one and it’s still great; one of the most under-rated graphic novels in recent memory.

Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm by Percy Carey and Ron Wimberly – I had the pleasure of interviewing Ron on a panel at SPX this year and it was the perfect excuse to revisit this outstanding memoir about hip hop and gang culture.

Jar of Fools by Jason Lutes – I re-read this after finishing Berlin. It remains one of my all-time favorite graphic novels.

The Eternaut by F. Solano Lopez and Héctor Germán Oesterheld – I actually like this book better than Mort Cinder, but both are masterpieces. And Fantagraphics hit it out of the park on the design and slipcase packaging. Arsene Schrauwen by Olivier Schrauwen – I missed the boat on this book when it came out, but I’m really glad I went back and read it. Outstanding art with a creepy dreamlike story. I’m looking forward to checking out Parallel Lives soon.

2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino – I love this hard sci-fi manga series so much, I wrote an appreciation for The Comics Journal about it.

Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne vol. 3-6 – I collected these off the stands back in the ‘80s and am amazed how well they hold up. I think this is Byrne’s best work for Marvel, even surpassing his X-Men run (and let’s also not forget Namor).

[copcomco]

Oba Electroplating Factory by Yoshiharu Tsuge

The fourth volume in the Drawn & Quarterly series collecting the Tsuge Yoshiharu's mature works, Oba Electroplating Factory takes readers through 1973 and 1974, guided by translator, Ryan Holmberg's in-depth, heavily researched essay. It's hard to believe this work is fifty years old!

Available HERE

[copcomco]

Bubbles Is in the House @ Copacetic!

Along with the latest issue of Bubbles – which features an interview with Copacetic fave, John Hankiewicz (conducted by Copacetic helmsman, Bill Boichel, no less) – we restocked our supply of the entire catalogue of Bubbles Press (although we sold out of Bubbles #19 before we had a chance to post this!).  So, now's a good time to fill in the holes in your collection, try one of the Bubbles Press books (three of which are projects of manga scholar/translator and Garo specialist, Ryan Holmberg), or take the plunge and check out Bubbles for the first time!

ALL AVAILABLE HERE

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🙏 Drawn and Quarterly is publishing a collection of Yoshiharu Tsuge 🥰 tr...

[voliol]

There has been so much great manga translated into English lately. Like Murasaki Yamada's Talk To My Back.

I've taken a liking to this bundling with an explanatory essay on the author and work (here by Ryan Holmberg (also the translator)), which is normally called an "introduction" or such in typical literature — but here it is at the back of the book. Or at the other front perhaps; the manga is right-to-left and the essay left-to-right. This creates a disjunction where the two are contained in the same physical book, yet are most sensibly read by closing it, and opening anew. It is cool.

Now, I had not planned to talk about the format, but I have a hard time finding what to say about it. I hadn't read anything like it, so I imagine you might not have as well. Just that might be enough a reason to. Like, you might not find yourself as a housewife in 70s Japan, but you might need to understand some things about that to be a decent human. I'm making my way there.

[smashpages]

Coming in 2023 from Drawn + Quarterly:

Nejishiki by Yoshiharu Tsuge

Nejishiki unveils the most iconic scenes from Yoshiharu Tsuge’s highly respected body of work alongside his most beloved stories. A cornerstone of Japan’s legendary 1960s counterculture that galvanized avant-garde manga and comics criticism, the title story follows an injured young man as he wanders through a village of strangers in search of emotional and physical release. Other stories in this collection follow a series of weary travelers who while away sultry nights and face menacing doppelgangers. Even banal activities like afternoon strolls uncover unsavory impulses. The emotionally and erotically charged imagery collected in this third volume remains as shocking and vivid today as it did upon its debut fifty years ago.

Tsuge’s stories push boundaries, abruptly crossing the threshold of conventional storytelling. Unassuming protagonists venture further into eerie symbolism against a shadowy, perceptibly dreamlike landscape easily mistaken for the real world. The angst that pervades postwar Japanese society threatens to devour his characters and their pastoral sensibilities as each protagonist’s wanderlust turns surreal.

Nejishiki is translated from the Japanese by Ryan Holmberg.