Comicsgirl

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories Buy at Amazon.com

I didn’t buy that much while I was at Comic-Con. Yes, a good portion of that was because I lost my wallet on Saturday (and it never turned up, by the way. I’m going to assume it’s in a landfill somewhere now) but I really didn’t have that much money to spend in the first place.

But it was a privilege to purchase Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (Fantagraphics, 2010, with translation by Matt Thorn). It should go without saying that if you’re at all interested in women’s comics or manga, you should buy this book. But in all honesty, I think even if you just like comics and beautifully-told stories, this should be a part of your bookshelf.

Most of the stories here revolve around loss. Sometimes the loss is a physical death or departure. Sometimes it is more psychological as characters try to come to grips with who they are or aren’t. Often, it’s quite a bit of both. “Angel Mimic” has a young woman coming to terms with her choices and “The Child Who Comes Home” has a family facing pain they’d rather forget. Hagio treats her characters with affection and sympathy and rarely is anyone ever completely right or completely wrong. Through their anguish, she show tenderness for the human spirit.

Hagio does deal quite a bit with what it’s like to be a girl or woman in a changing world. The earlier “Girl on the Porch with a Puppy” focuses on a little girl who does not behave in the way her family expects, with a disturbing ending. “Hanshin: Half-God” focuses on conjoined sisters. One is beautiful but empty-headed and the other is ugly but intelligent. Told from the perspective of the “ugly” sister, it deals with how she perceives her own worth in the world, especially once she and her sister are separated and she is the one to survive.

The centerpiece of the book is Hagio’s “Iguana Girl” about a girl, Rika, whose mother can only see her as an iguana and subsequently shuns her. As Rika grows up, she has to find her own self-worth (even she believes she’s an iguana) and make peace with who she is and her relationship with her mother. It’s a powerful story — Rika is strong and funny despite her mistreatment and Hagio makes the wise choice of drawing Rika-as-iguana as cute rather than realistic. It gives the story a lightness and humor that balances the thoughtful tone.

Hagio’s art is, of course, constantly gorgeous. This is evident throughout the collection, but very much so in the title story, “A Drunken Dream.” The lush scenes of this romantic tragedy are shaded in white, black, gray and red and transition from space to ancient Rome. Her talent for expressive faces and small, every-day details from the interiors of homes to clothing make all these stories feel like they’re populated by real people.

Thorn’s translation definitely seems to be true to Hagio’s stories. He is obviously a great admirer of her and he does her justice.

Also included is an overview of the manga scene Hagio was a part of, “The Magnificient Forty-Niners,” and an extensive interview with Hagio. Both are by Thorn and originally appeared in the July 2005 issue of The Comics Journal.

This is a beautiful book by an incredible creator. Whether or not you knew of Hagio before or this is going to be your introduction to her, it’s a book you need to have.

Moto Hagio is considered to be one of modern shōjo manga’s pioneers, but English-language audiences haven’t gotten much of her work. Fantagraphics‘ forthcoming A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (available now at Comic-Con) will help to remedy some of that. (I did buy it yesterday, as I reported.)

Moto Hagio is also a recipient this year of Comic-Con Inkpot Award and this was her first-ever visit to the U.S.

During her interview session yesterday with manga expert Matt Thorn, who translated her comments from Japanese, Hagio was utterly charming and fascinating.

She said she made her professional debut at the age of 20 and gained fame through her vampire story, The Poe Clan. Greatly influenced by American science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark (she specifically cited Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” as one of the stories that had a big impact on her), she tried her hand at sci-fi stories like They Were Eleven and Marginal.

Hagio incorporates a lot of darker ideas into her work. The short story, “Iguana Girl” is about a girl whose mother only sees her as being a lizard, although to everyone else she looks normal. Hagio said she created this story because she was trying to deal with her own issues with her mother, who believed that being a manga-ka was a “vulgar” profession.

Her longest-running story to date is A Cruel God Reigns about a young man seeking redemption after killing his stepfather who was molesting him.

During the audience question-and-answer session, someone asked if she had trouble getting published. She said when she first started out, she was doing comics for a magazine aimed at elementary school girls and her editors wanted energetic, happy stories. Instead, she was turning in depressing stories where people died. Another publisher approached her and it was glad to publish her dark stories. She said she kept right on killing people in her stories after that.

Someone else asked if she liked how shōjo manga now had a lot of strong female characters, and she said that it’s a good development. Japan has always been male-dominated, she said, and women are expected to get married, have kids and stay at home (she also remarked that she thinks that’s why her job was a source of conflict with her parents). She then went onto say that “The idea that men should do this and women should do this is ridiculous.” That got the most applause of anything she said.

At the end of her presentation, it was announced that she was donating the books of her works that she had brought with her to Comic-Con.

NANA Vol. 1 Buy at Amazon.com

I actually have no idea why you’re not already reading Ai Yazawa’s NANA (of course, I am severely behind on the series) and while, yes, I do think you should read all of it (which you’re going to want to), NANA Vol. 1 stands alone nicely.

Before all of the rock ‘n’ roll, soap-opera drama, the first volume is a beautiful pair of stories about two young women, each named Nana, who are each setting off in the world for the first time. Nana K. is naive and idealistic, but irrepressibly sweet and loving. Nana O. is a tough punk-rock musician who is individualistic but loyal.

Ai Yazawa’s art is beautiful — her women are gorgeous and distinctive and her boys are even prettier. She conveys a lot of emotion in the faces of her characters and page layouts. (And the clothes! The clothes are so much fun!)

They haven’t actually met by the end of this book, but that’s coming. And without a doubt, you’ll be hooked on the story of these two women.

(And if you get obsessed, there are movies and an anime series and music CDs and much more of NANA to consume.)

I sometimes order shoujo manga phonebooks from Sasuga Books. Originally, I did this because I needed a few for projects and while that’s still my purpose now, I also just like to get them because they’re gorgeous — comics printed in pastel-colored inks sometimes on colored paper. They are so much fun to flip through (and relatively cheap, all things considered — they usually run about $9 or so).

My most recent shipment arrived and it came with extra goodies — my issue of Ribon came with a plastic pencil box and stickers and my issue of Ciao! came with an ice-cream cone shaped bag, a strawberry-scented eraser, a two-color pen and a heart-shaped carabiner.

Do I need any of these things? No. Was I delighted to find that my manga phonebooks came with them? Yes.

Understandably, I don’t think most usual comic book fans are going to want a sparkly pink pencil case to come with their issues of Superman but I think most wouldn’t hate a little plastic figure of some sort.

No, I’m not really serious about wanting to see this happen, but with comic prices hovering around $4, maybe the industry needs to rethink things. These free gifts are certainly gimmicks but to me, they’re ones that work.

This subject is something I’ll do more with later, but it’s timely.

Lots of news outlets are writing about the mass of teenage girls excited about the Twilight movie. Now, I know, despite the name, the San Diego Comic-Con hasn’t been just about comics for a good long while. But all these teenage girls are there, excited about a movie based on a book that’s genre fiction (although, yes, vampires are an acceptably romantic and tragic form of genre fiction) and they’re at something that has “comic” in the name.

So where are the comics for these girls? Would they not read them? I don’t think it’s entirely a leap for a girl who graduated to Twilight from the Harry Potter books to pick up a comic. Yes, there’s manga, and maybe she does read that, but as far as American comics go, I think she’s pretty much being ignored. There is this huge, passionate audience that remains untapped.

Why isn’t anyone trying to get these girls to read comics? Because they will. I was, more or less, like these girls. (Some would go as far to say I’m still basically one of these girls, despite not being a teenager, but I suppose that’s a different matter.)

I’m sure some of these girls do read comics. But I think they deserve more.