Recently, I've been doing my best to mimic a literary ostrich since I've
had my head buried deep inside assembly of the next novel.
Trouble is I have trouble picturing a big bird with a hardback and a pair of spectacles, wrapped in Harris tweed.
And I say assembly, because this brute not only deconstructs 1930s
detective noir/pulp and 1960s Marvel comic book lore, but renovates them
together as a conjoined tome over 100,000 words in length — stitched
together by 35 images from 28 artists.
It's the way comic books, after all, work in the real world.
Bryan Hitch's perception of Captain America in 2009 was far different from Jim Steranko's in 1969. Then compare and contrast John Buscema's chunky-thug idea of Conan the
Barbarian in 1980 with the lithe, laddish figure originally put out by
Barry (Windsor) Smith a decade earlier in 1970.
But now I'm geeky nitpicking. If I haven't lost you already, I swear
I'll try harder, there are some pretty pictures still to come, and a
bunch of other people take the verbal reins.
For now, suffice to say, this train of thought (the wayward one about
comic book art) inspired me to ask artists from Australia (Paul Mason), the UK (Harvey Finch and Andrew Chiu — see picture at right), Italy (Giovanni Ballati), Russia (Saint Yak), Spain (Javier 'JG' Miranda and Carlos Gomez), Canada (Fred Rambaud), Mexico (Rodolfo Reyes), Chile (Juan Andres Saavedra — see picture above), the Philippines (Hannah Buena) and Argentina (Maan House),
amongst others in Japan and America, to get involved drawing characters
and events from the book — and then let their hair down for a
rambunctious tête-à-tête together here.
All in all?
Putting together the novel has been like taking Lego and Meccano and
making the pieces function together as a futuristic-retro superhero romp
that mixes and matches 1930s Art Deco architectural lines with the
gung-ho Soviet formalist propaganda style, twisted into '60s pop art
sentiment and the huge influence of Jack Kirby.
Anyway, Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?will be
published via Perfect Edge Books some time around September, but what
I'd like to share with you over the next couple of months of this column
are the insights and opinions of some of the fascinating, talented and
truly cool visual artists I've had the opportunity to touch base with —
while attempting to keep the bulk of these within Flash in Japan's obvious perimeters: focused on, well, the Japanese archipelago.
If interested, you can read Part 1 of this interview @FORCES OF GEEK.
We're cobbling together noir, surrealism, comicbook asides and
dystopian, hardboiled moments colliding with snapshots of contemporary
culture. Think 1989 right through to 2013.
You will even find some of the articles about Japan that have appeared on this blog, in Geek and Impact magazines, or at Forces Of Geek.
And I’ve received some more fantastic artwork for Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?
(my upcoming dual homage to 1930s-40s noir and 1960s comicbooks chiefly produced by Marvel) from Canadian artist Fred Rambaud (see above, with Southern Cross on the
motorbike) while Mexican artist Rodolpho Reyes is putting together
still more.
If you’re curious, you can stay abreast of things here.
You can also read about some of the early '60s comicbook influences at my other blog.
I’m spending most of my waking hours, and the ones during which time I
should be sleeping, waylaid by Japan’s lovely August humidity – and
also on novel #3 – Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? The current pitch is this:
Heropa: a vast, homogenized city patrolled by superheroes and
populated by the adoring masses. A perfect place a lifetime away from
the rain-drenched, dystopic metropolis of Melbourne. So, who is killing
the great capes of Heropa?
Yep, as you can figure out, the Capes are superheroes. Kind of. It’s set in the future Melbourne dystopia of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat
(without being a sequel) where the only escapism is a computer game
wherein people play out the role of superhero/villain. All fun and games
until someone starts knocking off these superheroes… hence the mystery.
Thing is I’m just past the half-way mark of writing the thing, so I’m
sure there’ll be more twists and turns to come that I have no idea about
at this stage. I just today changed my mind regarding tone – I had a
dramatic segment set for the finale, which worked (I thought) as author,
but detracted from the over all tone of the project. The simple fun of
the comic.
While it’s shaping up as a wink, aesthetically speaking, to
the Golden Age of comics in the 1930s/40s (one of my favourite periods
for the noir, pulp, movies and cars) this is definitely more of an
homage to the classic 1960s work of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at Marvel –
and still gets to poke fun at the auspices of the Comics Code Authority.
There's also a sequence of a murder that reminded me of the death of Marat (and in particular that famous painting by Jacques-Louis David, so my wife Yoko sketched up this image above.
I waffled on a bit more about the writing stuff here.
Anyway, enough rambling. I need to get stuck back into the
manuscript, if I can only ignore the fiendish cicada outside the window
that sounds like a malfunctioning dentist’s drill.
The latest Doraemon movie hit cinema screens across Japan yesterday (Saturday 6th March) to much hoo-har on TV.
Nobita's Great Battle of the Mermaid King (映画ドラえもん のび太の人魚大海戦, Eiga Doraemon Nobita no Ningyo Daikaisen) will quite possibly it'll surge straight to the number one spot in box office receipts in the very first weekend or two it plays here, if previous Doraemon outings are any indication.
This isn’t some recent-hit sensation and in fact the title has a history to roll up and perish for – or at least swoon over in gob-smacked new ways - in terms of anime. It's actually the 30th feature film in the series.
Doraemon (ドラえもん) started out in manga form in the 1960s, fashioned by Fujiko Fujio – a collaborative smoke screen coined by its real creators, Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko.
It did the big switch to TV in 1973, promptly fizzled, then was revamped by TV Asahi six years later - with character designs by Eiichi Nakamura (of Panda! Go, Panda!notoriety).
When you add in the two dozen odd theatrical movies, you're forced to realize that the franchise continues to be a sizzling property in this country over three decades later.
Doraemon hasn’t surrendered its grip on Japanese TVs or the Japanese everyman’s psyche; I swear that every person in this place can draw his happy face and and every third salaryman or office lady uses one of the series’ theme tunes for their keitai (cell-phone) ring-tones.
There’re Doraemon clocks, pop-up toasters, slot machines, turntables, beer-dispensers, ice-blocks, chocolates, drinks, and every other (in)conceivable merchandising possibility.
It's also the country’s second-longest-running animated TV show after Sazae-san.
When I interviewed the TV series’ producer Daisuke 'Dan' Yoshikawa at TV Asahi a couple of years ago, he was at a loss to explain the somewhat miraculous ongoing popularity of the animated mechanoid feline.
“Various elements – combined - made Doraemon a successful property,” he theorized. “But I think that it’s the storyline that makes it so special.”
So what’s that story about?
Our titular character is a blue, dysfunctional mechanical cat from the future (of course) that boasts a magical, four-dimensional pouch the envy of any self-prepossessing marsupial. He’s been sent back in time to sort out Nobita, a good-for-nothing schoolboy ancestor of the people who built him, sans ears, but usually instead complete mayhem breaks out – including subtle, ingenious anime references to Hollywood cinema classics like West Side Story and The Three Musketeers.
The saga also has some serious psychological eccentricities: For starters, aside from regular panic attacks, our motorized feline suffers from an ongoing musophobia that stems back to the future – to a time in the 22nd century, when his ears were consumed by a robotic mouse.
Hapless schoolboy Nobita is not only a lousy athlete and an abysmal scholar but lazy, cowardly, and selfish to boot.
Despite Nobita’s faults, Yoshikawa believed that he’s “just like all of us! People can relate to Nobita, and his story captures a feeling everyone shares. Not all of us get 0% on tests, but we can understand that feeling.”
It’s Doraemon himself, however, who is the undoubted star of the series.
“People love that adorable, cat-like robot,” Yoshikawa confirmed.
While the TV show focus on Nobita’s bizarre everyday family life and neighbours, the movies go for a more exotic, adventurous edge but they’ve been a tad rear-visionist in recent years: Nobita’s Great Adventure Into The Underworld (2007), for instance, may have been the 27th Dora-chan feature unfurled by distributor TOHO (of Godzilla notoriety; they do on average one Doraemon flick per year) but it’s in fact a rebake of the sixth in the series - released way back in 1984.
While he’s easy to sketch, he has a trademark profile and he’s a downright cute and often hilarious character, another reason for Doraemon’s popularity had for years been the quirky vocal effort of Nobuyo Oyama who did his voice all the way from 1979 until 2005.
After such a long haul, that year a bunch of the series’ seiyuu including Oyama and Noriko Ohara (Nobita from 1979 as well as the voice of Nobita’s mum in the 1973 original series) quite understandably bowed out of the series as both people were hitting the age of 70, and made way for new blood.
The transition annoyed some long-time fans of the series but overall passed relatively painlessly for TV Asahi and the show’s producers.
“The main characters are the same,” Yoshikawa said.
Besides, voice changes and exotic locations are not the big issue here, not anywhere as appealing as Doraemon and Nobita themselves, their time traveling exploits and outrageous futuristic devices, their essentially whacked-out neighbourhood buddies and an insane overriding story arc.
These have made Doraemon a hit also in China and South Korea, yet he remains a largely unknown entity in the English-speaking world – a happenstance that I truly believe to be bordering on unforgivable ignorance.
Just look at the evidence: Our fave feline was voted “cool” by 19 votes to 10 (three people opted out ‘cos they didn’t know who Doraemon was) in a two-month poll at the highly esteemed tzelun.com website – just check out: http://tzelun.com/blog/2007/03/05/it%E2%80%99s-official-doraemon-is-cool/
By the way, we are kidding you. Really. It’s not quite as esteemed as all that.
One of the things I can't help doing over here is seeking out the trace-elements of old Tokyo, hardly an elementary pastime since much of this has been removed by the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, the carpet bombings of the mid '40s, assorted fires, and the rapid pace of reconstruction and renewal that Tokyo willingly submits itself to every day.
Today I discovered these gems in Shintomi, not more than 100 metres from Ginza - one of the most luxurious shopping districts in the world and the most expensive real estate in Japan.
