What made #1? Why, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A DRIFTING LIFE of course!!! Natch…
This may not be fair, entirely. I spent more time with Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life than I did any other book this year. And it was well worth it. Tatsumi’s illustrated text, (historic, autobiographic, economic) of the Japan that he grew up in and the growth of the industry there that we currently know as manga, is an even handed, revealing work of graphic prose that evokes the youth and imagination – as well as the industrious nature – of a young artist. Soon after publication, A Drifting Life was awarded the Osamu Tezuka prize in Japan. Well worth an Eisner in this country, and well worth owning.
Although I wholeheartedly agree with her on many of her selections, Kai-Ming should be taken to task for rating badass Death Metal comedy DETROIT METAL CITY at a lowly #5. Shame on you, Cha. Shame on you.
Jeff Ayers is a NYC native and the General Manager of Forbidden Planet where he has worked since 1995. Email links, stories, news, tips, gossip, secrets of the universe to: jeff@fpnyc.com Follow him on Twitter (@jeffayers and @fpnyc) or find him on Facebook using the link below.
By Mat K. There are a decent amount of books coming out this week, and one title in particular made something fairly clear to me. Natsume Ono is the new Fumi Yoshinaga. “How is that?” […]
The Eisner Awards were presented Friday evening in concurrence with Comic-Con International at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. Onstage guests included the cast of the imminent Scott Pilgrim film, Thomas Jane, Ben Garant (Reno 911), […]
So its a reeeeally small week this week, about 10 books. Three of those books are Mobile Suit Gundam related. First up is the 9th (and I believe final) volume of Gundam: Ecole Du Ciel. In case you were curious, Ecole Du Ciel first started coming out in the states in 2005. That’s five years to put out 9 books. The only excuse for that kind of fan-teasing is some horrible debilitating disease that left the artist minus both their hands for a couple years. On top of that, Tokyopop seems to think they are justified in raising the price on the book not only to $10.99 like they did the rest of their series, but instead this final volume is going to be $12.99, like anyone who even was reading the series 5 years ago hasn’t already fallen out of love with, or plain old forgotten about the whole thing. I know they had issues with a lot of downsizing in the last couple years, but it has been 2 years sine volume 8 released, and even that was really far behind it’s predecessor. At some point in the last two years you would think Tokyopop would have switched one of their crappy pseudo-manga books if just to finish a series that at least has pretty covers and nice artwork. But I digress. […]
This may not be fair, entirely. I spent more time with Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life than I did any other book this year. And it was well worth it. Tatsumi’s illustrated text, (historic, autobiographic, economic) of the Japan that he grew up in and the growth of the industry there that we currently know as manga, is an even handed, revealing work of graphic prose that evokes the youth and imagination – as well as the industrious nature – of a young artist. Soon after publication, A Drifting Life was awarded the Osamu Tezuka prize in Japan. Well worth an Eisner in this country, and well worth owning.
