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Post by pentimento on Mar 4, 2024 3:44:28 GMT
This is a fine and handsome book, like most of Taniguchi's works, and creates a strangely calming atmosphere, something very unusual in comics. It's funny, though, I read something like this and sometimes I wonder: shouldn't I just step outside and go for a walk myself, instead? I still think his & Yumemakura's Summit of the Gods is his masterpiece. All five volumes are completely compelling and suspenseful and also weirdly spiritual in the way that many mountain climbers I've known really are. Not the rich thrill seekers, but the unknowns who do it for love of it, or some kind of transcendence. That's one of the great mainstream manga of this century.
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Post by dominocorp on Mar 4, 2024 7:12:35 GMT
To each his own, no problem. Arousal is like comedy: a very personal response. But I don't necessarily find these comics sexy! I'm praising his astounding draftsmanship and startling page layouts, first and foremost. Sure, he is reptilian (which I admit I find fascinating) and Eurotrash, but that's his stuff, the stuff of 1970s filmmakers like Jean Rollin, Radley Metzger, Joe Sarno, etc. I just luxuriate in his aura. For sure! I totally get it. And I do like a lot of stuff with that cold, detached feel. Maybe if I spent more time with it I'd connect... I like his stuff more in a dinged up, thoughtlessly designed used Italian edition I found once, felt more illicit that way. The fanta editions are very respectful and well done, but I don't know how you read these stories & enjoy them as the production begs you to respect Crepax every time you turn the page. It's like a grandma buying you a fake deluxe edition Sears copy of Great Expectations with imitation gold leaf pages or something. Asks you to like the thing in a way that's inverse to what it's about.
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Post by colinprojects on Mar 4, 2024 13:36:00 GMT
It's funny, though, I read something like this and sometimes I wonder: shouldn't I just step outside and go for a walk myself, instead?
This is a great endorsement for me. I love a good book that makes me question why I'm not going and doing something instead of reading it.
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Post by franlopez on Mar 4, 2024 13:55:39 GMT
I like his stuff more in a dinged up, thoughtlessly designed used Italian edition I found once, felt more illicit that way. The fanta editions are very respectful and well done, but I don't know how you read these stories & enjoy them as the production begs you to respect Crepax every time you turn the page. It's like a grandma buying you a fake deluxe edition Sears copy of Great Expectations with imitation gold leaf pages or something. Asks you to like the thing in a way that's inverse to what it's about. I think I understand what you're saying, but I do think Crepax was always kinda "begging for respect". I like the old Linus magazine a lot, but I wouldn't say there wasn't a sense of self importance to that work. Specially Crepax.
In a way, that's why I think I've always failed to see something in his comics: there's the constant hint at (or connection to) some Important Thing (the kind of Important Thing that a writer would write while fantasizing about their Nobel Prize acceptance speech), to then give it self to some silly game. I have no problem with neither Important Things or silly games, but I never felt Crepax's comics fully hit in either direction for me. Like, I don't find much weight to the literary references and troskyist discussions and they even kinda bog down the other aspect of those comics. But when I read them, I do feel like the author is thinking of himself as an Author (with a capital A), trying to have some argument with semiologists about his work and the discursive crossroads of the Italian Communist Party...
(That being said, I do appreciate the page layouts and I fear I'm sounding a little too dismissive of the work just to make a point here?)
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Post by BubblesZine on Mar 4, 2024 14:26:41 GMT
It's funny, though, I read something like this and sometimes I wonder: shouldn't I just step outside and go for a walk myself, instead? This is a great endorsement for me. I love a good book that makes me question why I'm not going and doing something instead of reading it.
I always heard the point of these comics was an escape for people who are stuck reading manga on the tokyo trains on the way to work, for example. When I read Walking Man with that in mind I became obsessed with it haha. Pure bliss in those pages.
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Post by pentimento on Mar 4, 2024 19:46:27 GMT
The funny thing is, I read Summit of the Gods, and it sure as shit doesn't make me wanna go climb mountains, fuck that!
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Post by dominocorp on Mar 4, 2024 19:54:41 GMT
I remember liking A Distant Neighberhood by Taniguchi a lot, everything he does is great. Fanfare Ponent Mon had such great manga, Hanawa's Doing Time, the incredible Disappearance Diary by Azuma, etc.
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Post by franlopez on Mar 4, 2024 20:43:13 GMT
This is a fine and handsome book, like most of Taniguchi's works, and creates a strangely calming atmosphere, something very unusual in comics. It's funny, though, I read something like this and sometimes I wonder: shouldn't I just step outside and go for a walk myself, instead? I still think his & Yumemakura's Summit of the Gods is his masterpiece. All five volumes are completely compelling and suspenseful and also weirdly spiritual in the way that many mountain climbers I've known really are. Not the rich thrill seekers, but the unknowns who do it for love of it, or some kind of transcendence. That's one of the great mainstream manga of this century. Yeah, this one and A Distant Neighborhood made such an impression on my teenaged self, took me a long time to shake-off the need to try and emulate them in my own comics.
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Post by pentimento on Mar 5, 2024 3:22:58 GMT
This is a fine and handsome book, like most of Taniguchi's works, and creates a strangely calming atmosphere, something very unusual in comics. It's funny, though, I read something like this and sometimes I wonder: shouldn't I just step outside and go for a walk myself, instead? I still think his & Yumemakura's Summit of the Gods is his masterpiece. All five volumes are completely compelling and suspenseful and also weirdly spiritual in the way that many mountain climbers I've known really are. Not the rich thrill seekers, but the unknowns who do it for love of it, or some kind of transcendence. That's one of the great mainstream manga of this century. Yeah, this one and A Distant Neighborhood made such an impression on my teenaged self, took me a long time to shake-off the need to try and emulate them in my own comics. Have you read Harvey Pekar? That's the "slice of life" stuff from my teen years that knocked me out. Not so much a fan anymore, but at the time, whew, it seemed to blaze a path for me.
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Post by franlopez on Mar 5, 2024 20:24:54 GMT
Have you read Harvey Pekar? That's the "slice of life" stuff from my teen years that knocked me out. Not so much a fan anymore, but at the time, whew, it seemed to blaze a path for me.
Yeah, but I got to it later, so it didn't quite have the same impression in me. Also, I think the thing that really impacted me about those Taniguchi books (specially Walking Man) was mostly the rhythm and the attention to very mundane, boring life elements. I liked Pekar a lot when I read it, but those comics did feel a lot more concerned with being about something interesting and keeping you busy as a reader. Didn't quite give me that feeling of unveiling something obvious that I couldn't quite see for myself, if that makes sense... Taniguchi pointed to what at the time seemed like a very natural path for me to take, but that I wouldn't have gotten on my own, I guess.
Sidenote: I think the effect Pekar could've had on me was also very different because I read him after I've read Kochalka's American Elf. I've been thinking a lot about American Elf lately because of a comic I just finished. I find it curious that we've all decided to kinda "move on" from it? About a decade ago, almost every young cartoonist from the USA/Canda/beyond interview would mention they started making comics because of reading and/or directly emulating American Elf, but today nobody would mention it (even those same cartoonists). Attention cycles are unfair, I guess, and it's now also been long enough certain little things rub us the wrong way because we can still mirror ourselves in it, but not long enough to just think about it as belonging to a specific time? I guess we're about a decade away from putting it where it belongs...
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Post by pentimento on Mar 6, 2024 3:13:27 GMT
I read Kolchaka from his first minis until about ten years later. At that point, I found his self-aggrandizement bordering on narcissism, with the humor just a form of deflection. And frankly I've known too many people in real life who have strong "personalities" that are just fucking obnoxious, and every video interview I've seen with the dude bears that out for me. I couldn't stand to be around him for more than five seconds without resorting to violence. Also, his childlike quirk and lack of filter is so forced and contrived I can only assumed he was abused as a lad; lots of people I know are the same way: very aggressively involved with children, acting like children etc. Fucking creeps, every one.
I Liked his sparring with Woodring and others in the old TCJ Blood & Thunder, though, that was some of his best work.
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Post by arecomicsevengood on Mar 7, 2024 2:15:48 GMT
Only Taniguchi I've read is his crime comics Viz did - Hotel Harbor View, Benkei In New York. Both are pretty cool, although obviously unlike the other stuff.
Today I read the Pierre La Police comic Masters Of The Nefarious that NYRC is putting out in English. I believe the French editions were handled by Cornelius. It kinda seems like something that fans of the Teddy Goldenberg stuff would enjoy, but I haven't actually read that stuff and maybe there's more than meets the eye there. Pierre La Police does one panel a page style, "absurdist" storytelling, sometimes aligning with genre tropes. The translator has a note in the end that argues that every page is funny, but that's not my experience - some pages felt more like nothing was happening, just establishing or sustaining a pace. It also kinda aligns with NYRC's great love for the gag cartoon that's .
Other recent reading- finally got around to reading Tatsumi's Abandon The Old In Tokyo. There's some funny bits in that one, I kinda disliked how his protagonists have very similar character designs. Interesting the context of these books vs. the big explosion of Garo reprints in the intervening years.
And I read the Ennis/Dillon Hellblazer run over the weekend - Something satisfying about how he casually builds up a supporting cast and pays it all off with a big arc at the end. Not my favorite of the proto-Vertigo/early-Vertigo classic runs but in some ways the most relatable or companionable. Like, the themes of friendship, (or being a bad friend), aging and wanting something different out of one's life, enjoying a drunken revelry are things that feel resonant, but also would clearly have hit harder (or played out deeper) had I been reading this "in real time" at the time of their release. Like the themes are keyed into why people read serial comics every month - and not in the same way that Morrison rhapsodizing about superhero comics does. A soap opera, but playing out at the slow pace of monthly installments can be more attuned to the melancholy of drifting in and out of people's lives and having something from years ago still be important. There's a neat tension too to how the comic sorta seems to want to get away from the genre/horror elements that define it as tying to the character's own existential crisis.
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Post by adamszym on Mar 7, 2024 17:09:40 GMT
I read Kolchaka from his first minis until about ten years later. At that point, I found his self-aggrandizement bordering on narcissism, with the humor just a form of deflection. And frankly I've known too many people in real life who have strong "personalities" that are just fucking obnoxious, and every video interview I've seen with the dude bears that out for me. I couldn't stand to be around him for more than five seconds without resorting to violence. Also, his childlike quirk and lack of filter is so forced and contrived I can only assumed he was abused as a lad; lots of people I know are the same way: very aggressively involved with children, acting like children etc. Fucking creeps, every one. I Liked his sparring with Woodring and others in the old TCJ Blood & Thunder, though, that was some of his best work. Funny to complain about how you think someone has an obnoxious personality in the same post where you baselessly speculate that someone was abused as a child. I would personally rather spend time with someone mildly annoying than someone who creates elaboratetheories about which person he barely knows may have been hit or molested in their youth.
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Post by junkflower on Mar 7, 2024 17:30:19 GMT
Other recent reading- finally got around to reading Tatsumi's Abandon The Old In Tokyo. There's some funny bits in that one, I kinda disliked how his protagonists have very similar character designs. Interesting the context of these books vs. the big explosion of Garo reprints in the intervening years. I love the spines of the first run of Tatsumi hardcovers with the black cloth. So unique and attractive- I'd love to know what the impetus was behind that design, and why D&Q hasn't done anything similar (that I'm aware of, anyway)
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Post by dominocorp on Mar 7, 2024 17:44:00 GMT
When Groth interviewed Tatsumi for TCJ, he wrote an intro that included this paragraph, which I think is correct...and I appreciate interviewing someone because they're historically important and beloved by many, but still holding on to your idea of them and expressing it. Attachments:
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