New Engineering

The idea of hanging comic pages on the walls of museums is one I’ve always found most unappealing. Comics are meant to be flipped through and enjoyed, they should be designed to be reproduced, not hung in reverence in the expensive gathering places of the snooty cultural elites, or in the trendy boutiques of the pseudo-hipsters. But what we have here, in this new English version of Yuichi Yokoyama’s New Engineering is sort of the opposite case. This is the first book I can think of that has taken work that seems best suited to be hanging on the walls of a museum and presented it instead as a comic book. As comics, I found the book far less than satisfying. It’s like if you took the cut-up comic book paintings of Roy Lichtenstein out of the museums and re-assembled the work as a comic book - suddenly it wouldn’t work - it would feel wrong - and loose its power.

I do find Yokoyama’s dynamic energetic drawing quite appealing (although I think there may be something slightly off in the reproductions in this book - as the line work and tones seem a little lighter than in other places I’ve seen his work?). Trying to read look at his artwork as comic book stories leads to a dissatisfied feeling. The mostly wordless stories are crazy, but don’t draw you in. Many of the drawings are incoherent and filled with sound effect. Reading the sound effect translations at the bottom of the page is sometimes the best way to figure out what the drawing is supposed to be about. Actually those sound effect translations have a weird poetry of their own that can be appealing - but at the same time leading to an excessively disjointed experience. Also thinking, in the Japanese original, where the sound effects weren’t explained, the reader had a different (even less coherent experience). Example, “GACHA Sound of mechanical parts clicking / PAKA Sound of a lid flipping open / BARA BARA BARA Sound of multiple object falling together.”

The 232 page book is filled with these crazy, usually not decipherable stories focusing on machines, technology and people fighting. Transformation also seems to be a central theme. Because the pages have so little dialog, its very difficult to look at the artwork slow enough to figure out its meaning. In that sense, I do feel like the work would be more appealingly seen on a museum wall, where you could just enjoy the individual dynamic images, and be less concerned with the storytelling aspect of panel to panel transitions one associates with the comic book form. I was also thinking this stuff could work better as experimental short animated films - there it could be dreamlike in a way that pulled the viewer in. As a comic I found New Engineering dreamlike in a way that left me feeling bored, and as if I’d perhaps wasted my $19.95. “WAAAAAA WAAAAAA Sound of people screaming.”

Chroniques Birmanes

For the most part, I really enjoyed Guy Delisle’s new graphic novel, Chroniques Birmanes (not yet available in English as far as I know, but I imagine it will be shortly, like his other works via Drawn & Quarterly). This was actually the first of his graphic novels I’ve read, so I can’t say if they all follow the same formula, but if they do, and I’d read the others, maybe this one wouldn’t have felt so fresh? In any case, the book basically covers a little over a year he spent living in Burma (or the Union of Myanmar) with his wife, who works for Medicines sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), and their very young son (3 or 4 years old, I’d guess). Instead of trying to tell some grand, big story, he spends most of the book showing little episodes from their lives. Although the book runs for 263 pages, most of the stories are told in 1 to 3 pages, with a few stretching out a little longer. This is an approach I really like. The snapshot. The little stories all do add up to tell a big story, but you’re never lost in it, and never bored. It’s an easy book to pick up when you have a little time, read a few stories, then put down for however long, until you feel ready for another little bite. And since each story is pretty much its own thing, it’s a good book to digest a little at a time. I felt it actually read a lot longer than 263 pages would imply - I really got immersed into the world he was showing - it actually reads like a longer book than it is. Not to say its dense - for the most part if feels really balanced between, lightly humorous pieces and more serious things - like the reality of living in a country with a dictator at the top. There are also a few especially enjoyable strips that went mostly wordless - the quieter the comics got, the more I liked them, really. Just occasionally, Delisle did seem to get a little didactic, and those few passages, where he couldn’t help himself from over describing his surroundings maybe, were a minor off note.

As for the artwork, I was impressed by how much he was able to do with such a simplified, newspaper-strip like style - where everything is cut down to a minimum. There’s a lot of humor brought into the stories just because of the nice way he drew his characters and their surroundings. The artwork definitely drew me into the world, even as it left a enough space for me to fill in the details on my own (sort of like the anti-Joe Sacco). I especially liked the way he drew people when they were slouching.

The book is basically the story of what happens when a kind, thoughtful, smart, family goes to a new country to live for a year. One an aid worker, one a cartoonist, and one a little baby. Is the book maybe too nice, too light for its own good? Maybe a little, but I enjoyed it, found it mostly interesting and felt it was very well drawn. And I really felt the goodbye feeling as the book drew to a close.

MW

MW is the latest huge (582 pages!) book by Osamu Tezuka to be published in English by Vertical. Thanks very much. An amazing job they are doing bringing some of the most wild and interesting Tezuka works to us - finally.

Originally serialized beginning in 1976, it reads very novel-like, as if it was more fully conceived as a novel than some other serialized works. It’s not repetitive at all, and always moves forward.

At first I was a little disappointed with the artwork, which seemed a little more workman-like than a lot of the Tezuka we’ve seen - less wild page layouts, less inventive character design - just more concerned with function and clear storytelling - in a less exciting way, somehow. But then there are those certain sequences where the artwork steps it up a notch (perhaps some pages Tezuka was more personally involved with than others?). In any case, while less wild, it’s maybe more solidly drawn, and I grew to appreciate the way the artwork fits with the story.

And in MW, more than most other Tezuka comics I’ve read, it’s really the intense story that makes the book worth picking up. I mean, this one really has some wild stuff in it. First of all, the main character is a bisexual, insane mass murderer - and the next most important character is the conflicted (catholic?) priest who is his lover. They are both the only survivors of a secret (covered-up) poison gas accident that wiped out the entire population of a small Japanese island. One was driven insane by the gas, one was driven to the church. Most of the story takes place a decade or so later as the crazy guy seems to be trying to expose the truth about what happened on the island, but in reality just wants to get his hands on the remains of the poison gas weapon MW so he can mass produce it himself and kill every last human on Earth. The book has a lot of interesting things to say about politics, conspiracy between Japan and the nation X (obviously the U.S.A), and Nietzsche’s superman (ubermensch) concept, and wraps it all up in a surprisingly gripping plot. Especially towards the final chapters, the book becomes a real page turner.

MW is one of the best, most fully-realized, Tezuka works to be available in English, so far.

Yoko Tanji

Not exactly comics, but some very nice (often comic book like) drawings here, by Yoko Tanji. Also check out some of the categories on the left of her page, tons of stuff there!