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Post by bayls171 on Sept 18, 2021 12:05:03 GMT
Anyone know why more of Tatsumi's work hasn't been translated? It's pretty great D&Q put out 6 volumes of his stuff (although I hope they reprint Drifting Life.. only one I don't have), but its also been almost 10 years. Obviously alt manga doesn't sell well, but is there any reason the translations ended?
Alternatively: anyone aware of plans from publishers to print more of his stuff?
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Ian M
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by Ian M on Sept 18, 2021 12:18:19 GMT
D&Q seems to have stopped, but did you pick up Midnight Fisherman? It's from a Singapore publisher, and the format is smaller than the D&Q 70s stuff, but it's good work from that era.
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Post by bayls171 on Sept 18, 2021 13:18:27 GMT
D&Q seems to have stopped, but did you pick up Midnight Fisherman? It's from a Singapore publisher, and the format is smaller than the D&Q 70s stuff, but it's good work from that era. I somehow did not know that but it has been ordered now. Thank you!
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Post by mamalips on Sept 19, 2021 13:39:03 GMT
Here's some of my rambles on the unreleased work of Tatsumi, but yeah like Ian M said, apart from D&Q's released work, check out Midnight Fishermen. It looks maybe bootleg-ish to me. I'm sure there were spelling mistakes in it. Also the D+Q 25 year book (Drawn and Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels) has his final pages from part two of his auto-biography graphic novel. Oh, and finally the last place to get any published work of Tatsumi's is in an anthology called AX: alternative manga, where he has one story.
The amount of unpublished Tatsumi work is staggering. Black Blizzard was originally published in 1956, when Tatsumi was just 20. Before this, he had drawn seventeen book-length mangas and several volumes of short stories. His three most famous books "The Push Man and other stories", "Abandon the Old in Tokyo" and "Good-bye" only cover just a fraction of some of the work he made between 1969-1972. In the Q+A section at the back of the "Abandon" book with Adrian Tomine, Tatsumi says his creative output for 1970 came to "500 pages." Oh and "I even have a long story that is 1000 pages in length." He also talks about his never-completed Part Two of his autobiography, which was going to be "approximately 240 pages long." Sadly a lot of this work will never be republished because, Tatsumi said "the original art I did for rental publishing was never returned to me. Reprinting was inconceivable back then. A lot of original art for rental comics was just tossed." Yoshihiro Tatsumi passed away in 2015 at age 79 and began drawing manga while still in school. So only a very, very small fraction of his work has been published and translated for Western audiences. There's still at least 50 years worth of work unpublished ⁉️
Here's hoping more volumes of Tatsumi's work will come out...someday 🤞 Ryan Holmberg said "yes, probably more at some point" when I asked him on Instagram if more will be published.
Tatsumi is an incredible artist and it kills me to know we are only getting to see a tiny, tiny amount of his work.
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Post by teemcgee on Sept 19, 2021 17:53:33 GMT
The Midnight Fisherman stories I found pretty pulpy (the furious alienated power in some of the D&Q stories feels reduced to mere exploitation) and they niggle a suspicion I have about Tatsumi's work - that what we have got in the D&Q books might be cherry picked, and that maybe not all of those hundreds of other pages are of the same standard ... (that being said, if any of it's translated, I'm probably going to buy it, ha!)
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Post by mamalips on Oct 21, 2021 8:09:52 GMT
Someone is selling Tatsumi books with sketches in, if anyone has a spare $3000
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Post by timbecile on Oct 21, 2021 12:40:01 GMT
I seem to recall overhearing some talk decades ago that some of the unpublished Tatsumi was considered problematic, but I'm not positive. Ask Adrian Tomine's Substack while there's still time, ha ha. Clearly he's a busy man.
I was asked to do the title lettering for Black Blizzard I think because I gave him a small untranslated paperback of Tatsumi I bought at a used bookstore in Little Tokyo; this was before any of the reprints had started. All I remember of the book was one panel that had a guy wearing big chunky 70's headphones, presumably listening to Haruomi Hosono or something.
I did get a book signed by Tatsumi when he did an event at the Hammer Museum (named after a fellow named Hammer, to avoid any confusion lol) here, but sadly I don't remember what I did with it. Donated it to the library? Binned it? $3,000 with wings attached, flapping upward. That signing was one of the best attended I've ever been to, nice to see for an old codger.
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Post by wigshop on Oct 21, 2021 16:12:54 GMT
Aw wow. $3,000 is objectively crazy but those are some lovely drawings. Years ago I found a seller on abe selling signed/drawn-in copies of each of the hardcovers for something like $100. Got myself this guy, feel super lucky
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Post by timbecile on Oct 21, 2021 21:05:03 GMT
Wait, that's mine! Just kidding. He was too swamped to do a drawing. I have more the opposite of a collecting problem--a paring down problem...
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Post by timbecile on Oct 29, 2021 19:22:23 GMT
Hey, somebody actually asked Adrian Tomine the Tatsumi question. For citizens of the future, if Substack ever goes the way of Ozymandias, here's his reply: "This question refers to the legendary Japanese cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi, and the translations of his work that I edited for Drawn & Quarterly. And the answer to the question is: I don’t know. I haven’t had any direct contact with anyone about this since Mr. Tatsumi passed away in 2015. I’ve heard that he had completed a fair amount of work on a sequel to his memoir A Drifting Life, but I don’t know much more beyond that. There are hundreds—if not thousands—of pages of his work that have not been translated into English. Just speaking as a fan, I’d love to read more of Mr. Tatsumi’s work, but the issues of rights and permissions (as well as the wishes of his estate) are obviously not my domain." adriantomine.substack.com/p/first-cartoonist-parenthood-table
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Post by BubblesZine on Oct 30, 2021 13:44:41 GMT
C'mon adrian, make it happen! lol
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Post by mamalips on Oct 31, 2021 19:44:02 GMT
Yeah I DM'd him the question after you suggested to! Glad I did. Seems hopeful at best
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Post by timbecile on Nov 9, 2021 16:19:27 GMT
Realized I don't have Tatsumi's autograph, but I do have Tsuge's. When Mandarake closed their attempt at a location off the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica years ago, they had an everything must go sale, and they had two oversized framed silk screen Tsuge prints for $200 each. The other one was the famous Screw Style eye doctor panel, but the colors seemed weird, and I could only afford one. Should've donated a lung and got them both. The art looks like it was scanned at like 300 dpi: Edit: here's the other one for $300?: order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1035101963&lang=en
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Post by bayls171 on Nov 10, 2021 8:57:27 GMT
Realized I don't have Tatsumi's autograph, but I do have Tsuge's. When Mandarake closed their attempt at a location off the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica years ago, they had an everything must go sale, and they had two oversized framed silk screen Tsuge prints for $200 each. The other one was the famous Screw Style eye doctor panel, but the colors seemed weird, and I could only afford one. Should've donated a lung and got them both. The art looks like it was scanned at like 300 dpi: <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button><button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button> Edit: here's the other one for $300?: order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1035101963&lang=enThat looks so sick. I cannot wait for Red Flowers to arrive.. Tsuge is so good
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Post by teemcgee on Nov 11, 2021 13:03:33 GMT
That looks so sick. I cannot wait for Red Flowers to arrive.. Tsuge is so good
I got Red Flowers last week and while I'm forever grateful that we're finally getting to fully understand and appreciate his body of work in English, I drank that book down in an hour or two, and now I have to probably wait another year for the next installment....
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