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Post by teemcgee on Sept 26, 2021 11:57:36 GMT
I think it was whitecomics who suggested this in another thread and it was a good one! Nominate books/artists that ought to be translated into English.
I'll start with a trio of French artists/work:
Aristophane's Conte démoniaque (Demonic Tale)
His only English work is the Zabime Sisters - that is a tender, slim work - whereas this is a 300+ page wrist breaking descent into hell, the account of a civil war in the kingdom of Satan, all in swirling dense black and white. As the story progresses the art because looser, ink splashed on the page, with an urgency that mirrors the underworld's collapse into self-destruction. Aristophane is a curious figure in the history of independent bande dessinee - by the end of his twenties he had produced this and another similarly striking & bleak work, Faune, then suffered severe injuries in a boiler accident, which reputedly he interpreted as divine punishment for the irreligious content of his early works. He then died several years later under unclear circumstances.
Fabice Neaud's Journal
Confession time. In my undergraduate years I translated one of Neaud's short works and put in on a fan translation page called Comix Influx; my French was exercable (still is, really), the translation was servicable at best, but it lead to a sort of relationship with the publisher of Neaud's works (Ego Comme X - a publishing house that put out solely autobiographical comic books and sadly closed doors some years ago). They put that translation on their own website and I actually ended up translating all of the first volume of the Journal too - thank god they decided never to put that online though, it was pretty awful.
I say this as a preamble to give you a sense of the enthusiasm Neaud inspired, that as someone with tres mauvais French on the other side of the world (living in New Zealand at the time) I was chipping out these bad translations in the hope that he'd get more exposure in the English world. His Journal series, in four books, recounts his life in the early 90s in provincial France, with a particular focus on his experience as a gay man. These works aren't like the slice of life autobio that was so in vogue in early 00s American comics, though. His works, especially the third and fourth volumes, have the density, the textual sophistication of literary fiction - not just in terms of the words used, the narrative relayed, but also in his employment of symbolic representation and repeating images and motifs. His line on a superficial reading has a precise realism but he draws on influences as diverse as David McKean and 80s Marvel comics when the text demands it.
Dominique Goblet's Souvenir d'un journee parfait (Memory of a perfect day)
Goblet has had her Pretending is Lying translated into English (worth seeking out if you haven't already), but this is my personal favourite of her works. Similar to Pretending, it is a melage of fact and fiction, the imagining of the last days of Goblet's own father (or at least a fictional counterpart), but it's really the pace of the work that really works for me, two panels per page and an effective deployment of text that speeds and slows the reading, leading to a kind of estatic vision by the end. A short work, just 50 pages, but almost feels like a poem in panels, one that you can reread over and over with deepening appreciation.
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Post by manoopuesta on Sept 26, 2021 14:35:47 GMT
Pompeo, by Andrea Pazienza
I have read the Spanish translation of this (published by Fulgencio Pimentel last year). Zanardi's style is just amazing. While I love the other work of his that I have read, this is still my favourite. Very grim and sad (I believe this was his last work before dying) and so touching. The other 2 volumes that Fulgencio Pimentel published of his were later on also published by Fantagraphics as a single volume in 'Zanardi' (maybe there are some differences between these, I haven't compared them).
So Fantagraphics may be also planning to publish this?
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Post by whitecomics on Sept 27, 2021 14:03:56 GMT
I really love Yvan Alagbé's Ecole de la Misère, which consists mostly of beautiful two panel inkwash pages that tell an elliptical but incredibly impactful story. It features the characters from the main story in the Alagbé collection that NYRC put out recently, so it would seem like an ideal book for them to take on.
There's at least one, maybe two, volumes of Christophe Blain's Gus series beyond the material that First Second collected a million years ago, back when they published work that wasn't YA. Incredible, energetic cartooning married with perfect colors.
(Conversely, Blain and Sfar did a truly awful Blueberry album recently, which I got because I love the Gus material. Blain tries, and fails, to draw like Moebius instead of bringing his own approach, while Sfar delivers a story that is genuinely troubling for the degree to which it happily engages in the dumb tropes and stereotypes of Western stories. So, uh, don't translate that??)
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Post by shrelp on Sept 29, 2021 10:41:53 GMT
ROKUDENASHI BLUES - Masanori MoritaOne of the best works of the delinquent sub-genre of manga. It was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump (1988-1997) during its golden age and goddamn is it just amazing. "Rokudenashi Blues is a Shōnen manga by Masanori Morita (author of Rookies and assistant on Fist of the North Star) with a realistic art style and detailed expressions, centering on the highschool career of one Maeda Taison. However, Maeda isn't just any old ordinary high school student, or even an ordinary delinquent: He dreams of becoming the heavyweight champion of the world (even though he doesn't know the rules of boxing.) He knows street fighting though, and he uses those skills to protect his friends, help out his rivals, and generally rule Teiken High School - even though he's just a freshman. Along with his friends Katsuji, Yoneji, and...too many people to name. 42 volumes of fistfighting, blood, comedy, drama, and general awesomeness follow. A classic in Japan, but altogether unknown in the west (except in France, under the title "Racailles Blues".) "Though the summary really doesn't do justice to this manga, it'll have to do for now. The story is one of the perfect examples of depicting the emotions of teens accurately. It also holds the title of being the most successful Weekly Shonen Jump series (60 million volumes sold according to a 2013 report) , without at anime. It hasn't got an English release. But fan scanlations do exist which have translated 300/422 chapters and counting. There is a new french re-release coming out very soon. With the release of "Fist Of The North Star" and soon "Dragon Quest: The Adventures Of Dai" I do have some hope that it might be translated by Viz Media. But that's just a speculation. As said above, Morita worked as an assistant on Fist Of The North Star, so the art is exceptionally phenomenal. I do hope y'all will give it a shot.
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Post by teemcgee on Oct 2, 2021 16:09:30 GMT
(Conversely, Blain and Sfar did a truly awful Blueberry album recently, which I got because I love the Gus material. Blain tries, and fails, to draw like Moebius instead of bringing his own approach, while Sfar delivers a story that is genuinely troubling for the degree to which it happily engages in the dumb tropes and stereotypes of Western stories. So, uh, don't translate that??)
I feel like Sfar has had a fair few stinkers of late, stuff like Tokyo! and Tu n'as rien à craindre de moi didn't do much for me (and which also lean a little into bad stereotypes of French masculinity)
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Post by whitecomics on Oct 5, 2021 16:14:09 GMT
I feel like Sfar has had a fair few stinkers of late, stuff like Tokyo! and Tu n'as rien à craindre de moi didn't do much for me (and which also lean a little into bad stereotypes of French masculinity)
I'm not a big fan of Sfar in general -- I definitely fall into the camp that sees most of the l'Asso and associated cartoonists as great cartoonists and mediocre writers. That's part of why I like Gus; it leans into cartooning and doesn't worry too much about plot. On a very different note, I'd love to hear thoughts from anyone who knows more about the prospect of translating Sanpei Shirato's Kamui Den. I have a few Garo issues (ha, I expect many of us do at this point) and I love the fluid cartooning in the chapters that I've seen there. But it's a very long series so a full translation would be a big undertaking. Honestly I'd welcome one or two volumes of the best work even if it's scattered across several years. |
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Post by teemcgee on Oct 5, 2021 17:08:59 GMT
On a very different note, I'd love to hear thoughts from anyone who knows more about the prospect of translating Sanpei Shirato's Kamui Den. I have a few Garo issues (ha, I expect many of us do at this point) and I love the fluid cartooning in the chapters that I've seen there. But it's a very long series so a full translation would be a big undertaking. Honestly I'd welcome one or two volumes of the best work even if it's scattered across several years.
So, one of my abiding book buying regrets is that I did not buy purchase the final two omnibus volumes of Kamui Den in French, which have now fallen out of print, and on the rare occasion they are sold on ebay fetch eye watering prices (€300+). I've read the first two omnibi, roughly covering the first 10 tankobon or so, and my impression is that if you were looking for a sampling the first couple hundred pages would suffice - right up to a plot macguffin which I won't spoil here but which I presume was chosen to extend the series further after it found success. Those first few hundreds are really forceful (and quite pessimistic) in their political critique, and the series becomes a little more like your sterotypical winding saumari narrative after that (your mileage may be higher in the later volumes if narrative is less of a concern).
... and if you want to read those first few hundred pages, there's a scanlation in English of them online - not sure how far it gets, but I think it probably covers most of that. I don't know if sharing what is technically pirated material is kosher on this board though, but you can easily find them through a web search...
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