MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

The “inconsistent” drawing style of Cave-in [Rakuban, 1959] makes this short story unique. The five memory scenes (free motifs) are depicted in five distinctive styles, ranging from simple, comical line drawings reminiscent of prewar children’s comics to more detailed, “gekiga-like” figures. The degrees of detail in the drawing style represent the reliability of Maehashi’s story. [...]

Buzzati, Dino. Poem Strip [1969]. Translated by Marina Harss. NYRB, 2009. ISBN: 9781590173237. New York Review Books publishes quite a number of excellent novels, including one of my favorites Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau. This Italian comic from the 1969 is certainly a bit of an odd choice for them. Outside of the works themselves, [...]

Overby, Jason. Exploding He[a]d Man. Self-published, 2009. 96p for $6 from discretefunk.com. This is going on my best comics of 2009 list, no question. Jason Overby impresses me more and more with each new comic of his I see. (Beautiful piece in the Abstract Comics anthology, by the way.) I’ve been sitting on this one [...]

Tatsumi, Yoshihiro. A Drifting Life. Drawn & Quarterly, 2009. 856p. ISBN: 9781897299746. This massive autobiographical manga has been appearing on a lot of the early best of 2009 lists, and while I can, to a point see, why, I’m not in agreement. A Drifting Life is, basically, the story of Tatsumi’s early entry into the [...]

I knew I’d love this manga as soon as I heard about it, a long running series about food, not where food is just part of the setting but rather an integral part of each story. Oishinbo has been running in Japan since 1983 and totals over 100 volumes. Viz is here translating the “A La Carte” series, a repackaging of stories from across the title’s run into thematic volumes. That immediately tells you one thing: you don’t read this for the larger narrative arc or the character development.