Research Prompts from IJOCA 26:1 - #5 Why do so many cartoonists turn to other art forms later in their career? Especially sculpture?

   Some Ideas for Articles, written by Mike Rhode, and excerpted from the print edition.

Why do so many cartoonists turn to other art forms later in their career? Especially sculpture?

A quick list includes Daumier, Pat Oliphant, Rube Goldberg, Rose O’Neill, Rowland Emett, and Ronald Searle. A recent article about O’Neill said, “In her later career, O’Neill delved into sculpting and had several exhibitions of sculptures and paintings in both the United States and Paris. While in Paris, O’Neill was elected to the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français and had exhibitions of her sculptures at the Galerie Devambez.”(2) Oliphant has pieces in the U.S. National Portrait Gallery. 

Other cartoonists turn to painting, such as Bill Watterson, or more successfully, Jimmy Swinnerton. What makes them move on from their success to a new medium?

(2) “Creator Profile: Rose Cecil O’Neill,” Scoop. April 5, 2024. <https://scoop.previewsworld.com/ Home/4/1/73/1016?ArticleID=273613>

Håkan Storsäter replied, "Sculpture? My impression is that painting has been a lot more common."

Liz Brown of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs responded: "I've noticed this as well, although with ceramics not necessarily sculpture. Some of the artists that sparked my attention: Sarah Duyer, Brit Wilson, Isabella Rotman. Since they're still alive, anyone interested in picking this topic up could interview them."

Which is a good point, and Barbara Dale now does ceramics as well.

Research Prompts from IJOCA 26:1 - #4 Why did some comic book companies start making fun of themselves? And why don’t they do it anymore?

  Some Ideas for Articles, written by Mike Rhode, and excerpted from the print edition.

Why did some comic book companies start making fun of themselves? And why don’t they do it anymore? (updated and corrected from the print edition)

Marvel’s Not Brand Echh in the 1960s (revived with a 2018 one-shot), Crazy! (1973) and then What The? (1988-1993). Marvel’s Crazy Magazine (1973-1983). Fred Hembeck’s one-page superhero comic strips for both DC and Marvel, and then his Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe (1989) and Fred Hembeck Sells the Marvel Universe (1991). Image’s Splitting Image (1993). These were all done by companies to make fun of themselves. Unlike Mad, which never made fun of EC Comics, or the knockoff Cracked, these comics were published by the company using their characters and mocking themselves.  Why? Is it something the creatives really wanted to do? Was there fan demand for it? Does DC’s Plop (1973-1976) count as one of these types of books or just a humor comic?

(images courtesy of the Grand Comics Database)

Michael Dooley responds:

"Unlike Mad, which never made fun of EC Comics…”

I suggest you read Harvey [Kutzman]'s first Mads, which directly made fun of Al {Feldstein]’s EC Comics.  Mad #1's cover declares its intentions to mock Feldstein's EC output, which Harvey disliked. and in addition to its "jugular vein" subtitle, it acted as an intro to "Hoohah!", the lede piece, by declaring – spoiler alert – some readers may be taken in by Al's horror stories – which Harvey objected to on principle – but the less gullible will calmly pick their noses and realize that – HAH! – there's no "there" there.

 

  I did some Googling to provide random examples:

 

"The first issue of Mad... The first story ("Hoohah!"), illustrated by the legendary Jack Davis and written by Kurtzman, was actually a parody of EC horror comics.  The joke of the parody is that, in an old, dark house on a stormy night, nothing happens."

https://mindsnackbooks.com/humor/kurtzman_and_elder.html

______________

"Seeing Kurtzman parodying the house style of (re: Feldstein's) purplish prose and Jack Davis really letting his zany streak fly in the horror lampoon “Hoohah!” is a delight..."

"...Mad Magazine began its life as a ground-breaking funny book, parodying films, television, song, and even EC itself."

https://barebonesez.blogspot.com/2017/03/ec-comics-its-entertaining-comic-issue.html

______________

"The opening story took on EC's most popular genre of comics, its horror comics, with a couple who come upon a spooky house and just keep on thinking that there is horror around every corner, even when it is just a bunch of kids wearing a costume..."

"The third story, drawn by Will Elder, was a parody of EC's crime stories..."

https://www.cbr.com/mad-ec-changed-comics-70th-anniversary/

______________

"In our first outing, the kind of black humor horror/comedy story that seems like it would fit in one of EC’s other books, maybe narrated by the Crypt-Keeper or The Old Witch.  After running out of fuel near the notorious Bogg House (home of serial murderers God and Magog Bogg, natch), a young couple finds nothing but the Caretaker, Melvin, who pooh-poohs their warnings of ghosts and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. Instead, he reveals the true source of the strange noises and bumps as a pair of misbehavin’ kids!"

https://majorspoilers.com/2019/09/08/retro-review-mad-1-october-november-1952/

______________

"Mad #1: Blobs! ~ The first two issues of Mad parodied each genre that EC was known for. Jack Davis drew the horror story, Will Elder the crime story, John Severin the “Two-Fisted” story, and of course Wood drew this science-fiction send-up."

https://13thdimension.com/the-top-13-wally-wood-ec-stories-ranked/

______________

"In MAD #1, the parodies are of genres. The book... opens with the horror parody “Hoohah!” ... “Hoohah!” is a simple tale of a couple stranded in a thunderstorm by a haunted house. Like most EC horror comics, it features a twist, but you can somewhat tell that Kurtzman himself was never a fan of the horror books."

https://kittysneezes.com/though-quite-different-than-what-it-would-become-mad-1-is-an-auspicious-start/

______________

"Early MAD thrived on genre parodies, and like in MAD #1, we get another science fiction parody [in issue #2]. .... “Gookum!” is an EC-style twist story, where Glarf, a Martian who crashed to Earth tells reporters over a meal of why he had to escape his home planet. A life form known as Gookum lay outside his city’s walls. Gookum is a pink, jelly-like substance that lies dormant for 500 years; but when it awakes, it devours organic material. The twist: It’s what we earthlings call Jell-O."

https://kittysneezes.com/mad-2/

 

 Mike Rhode replies:

If it's only the first 2 issues out of a 60-year run I don't think it's particularly relevant, except to say "Originally Mad did, but almost immediately..."  

 

Mad is probably a badly chosen example, because there were no other EC comics for most of its run, but it's the field's most famous humor comic, and the idea of this column is to get other people thinking and doing research.

Research Prompts from IJOCA 26:1 - #3 What about black superhero cartoonists before Milestone and after?

  Some Ideas for Articles, written by Mike Rhode, and excerpted from the print edition.

There are significant black/African-American cartoonists, besides those

who have been part of the Milestone company.

One normally does not think of Thor or the Fantastic Four’s Thing as something you would find in a black comics history article, but both of them were drawn for a long time by black cartoonists. Keith Pollard and Ron Wilson had long runs with Marvel Comics, as did writer Jim Owsley/ Christopher Priest. While some university libraries are collecting African-American comics, they are probably not collecting Thor or the Thing. Brian Stelfreeze had a major Batman run, as did Shawn Martinbrough. Mark D. “Doc” Bright passed away recently and while he was part of Milestone Comics, he had a long career on either side of it. He drew runs of Iron Man and Green Lantern before Milestone, and co-created Quantum and Woody after Milestone. His death perhaps means that we should look at other black superhero cartoonists while they are still alive. 1960s-1970s cartoonists Grass Green, Billy Graham, and Wayne Howard are already gone.

A similar historical amnesia applies to the black comic strip artists of the 1960s and 1970s. While Charles Schulz is getting a lot of renewed attention this year for introducing one black character, Franklin, and Barbara Brandon-Croft’s strip is having a renaissance, still Brumsic Brandon’s “Luther,” Ted Shearer’s “Quincy,” and Morrie Turner’s “Wee Pals” could use more attention. E. Simms Campbell’s magazine cartooning career is only known to specialists as well. Significantly-recognized cartoonists include: Oliver Harrington, Matt Baker, and Jackie Ormes. It is also important to keep in mind that George Herriman publicly identified as Greek, and not black, so he is not a pioneering black cartoonist, in spite of claims made for him.

Ken Gale responded, "Jamal Igle is still drawing.

    In the '70s Ron Wilson, Arvell Jones and Andre Gordon (uncredited penciller on Marvel's Robin Hood, but also background inker on various comics that Tony Dezuniga/NY Tribe inked).  A few others, as well, mostly (only?) at Marvel."

Håkan Storsäter responded, "Ken Quattro mentions, in his book Invisible Men, Elmer Cecil Stoner,

Matt Baker, and Alvin Carl Hollingsworth, somewhat dependent on how strict you are about defining the superhero genre, related to other adventure tropes."

Research Prompts from IJOCA 26:1 - #2 Who have been the richest cartoonists?

 Some Ideas for Articles, written by Mike Rhode, and excerpted from the print edition.

Who are the wealthiest? Who are the best paid? Who inherited enough money to be a cartoonist? In America? Franco-Belgian? Europe? In Japan? In the world?

This would need to be adjusted for inflation, but some American names might be George McManus, Chic Young, Hank Ketchum, Charles Schulz, Herblock, Matt Groening, Walt Disney, Todd McFarlane, Stan Lee, Bob Kane, Cathy Guisewite, Barbara Dale, Ranan Lurie, Al Hirschfeld, Peter Arno?

Joachim Trinkwitz responded, "A good candidate would be Sidney Smith, creator of the comic strip series The Gumps (1917–1959), who in 1922 signed a contract about $100,000 $ per year for ten years (and a new Rolls Royce on top of that). In 1935 he even signed a new one about $150,000, but couldn't cash in on this one because he died in his car on this same day. I can't remember the source right now, but Smith should have had a higher income than the US President of his day."

Håkan Storsäter responded, "This CBR article mentions the Top 3 Mangaka as Eiichiro Oda, Rumiko Takahashi and Akira Toriyama - https://www.cbr.com/richest-japanese-mangaka-ranked/ (Certain deceased, historically very successful mangaka such as Osamu Tezuka, Fujiko Fujio and Mitsuteru Yokoyama aren't mentioned...) For the Franco-Belgian market, names like Hergé, Goscinny and Uderzo have been very successful, but my impression is that historically, there have been less money involved than in USA or Japan...

I replied, "I wonder about Willy Vandersteen, and his colleague Marc Sleen. Sleen's recently closed museum had shown him with a pretty comfortable lifestyle.

Pedro Moura retorted, "A better prompt would be, how the hell do comics artist even survive?"

I replied, "Do you really want to do that research and read that article, Pedro? I know you meant it sarcastically but..."

And Pedro Moura responded, 

"Undoubtedly sarcastic, but nonetheless pointed, I hope.

There are a few dissertations and articles, leaning on sociology, on the French-speaking artists' economic and social milieu. I can't check it right now, but if I remember correctly, 30% of the people working within that industry in France lived below the poverty line.

As a teacher - and a comics author - I always reserve at least one session to discuss with my students issues such as taxation, contracts, rights, and the management of expectations. There is simply no money to be made in comics in Portugal. You cannot live off them. I know it's slightly better elsewhere, but precarity is a feature, not a bug. 

I'm very old-fashioned, so I tend to still follow the close-reading the aesthetics of the work of art school kind of thing, but many scholars are also focusing on the whole process thing, or in comics as process, industry, economic machine, and so on.

So, in truth, yes, I'd like to read more about these issues. Actually, every time I meet international artists, if the conversation allows, I will ask uncomfortable questions, off the record, about how much money one makes with specific work, books, contracts, etc. How's their daily life, schedules, how they manage family or personal life. It's just anecdotal, of course, but maybe someday we will read something more systematic about this from various markets."

Ken Gale shifted the conversations, noting, "The best-selling comic book in the world is not in any European language.  It's "Old Master Q" published in Hong Kong in Chinese.  Since all Chinese languages read the same printed language, just don't pronounce it the same, there is a potential readership of well over a billion.

    It's gone through a few artists and writers.  When I discovered it in the '70s, it was without dialogue and I could and did enjoy it.  Somewhere in the '80s they started introducing more and more dialogue and now it's almost all dialogue.  I don't enjoy the wordless strips as much, either.  The comic is on sale in New York City's Chinatown and is available at the NY Public Library in Chinatown (East Broadway)."

IJOCA area editor CT Lim, concurred, "Good point. Yes, most Asian comics are ignored except for Japan manga and Korean manhwa. 

Old Master Q was drawn by Alphonso Wong who passed away in 2017. His son Joseph Wong holds the copyright and licensed the characters for various purposes and ventures. So I think there was some money for Alphonso when he was alive.

IJOCA EiC John Lent has written about HK comics so he would know about the wealth of Tony Wong and Ma Wing Shing. Not easy to find out how much they are worth but maybe some data in Wendy Wong's book on HK comics and others that are written in Chinese published in HK.

Wong lost quite a fair bit of his fortune when he went bankrupt and went to jail in the early 1990s. But he rebuilt his wealth and reinvested in his comics and comics companies. 

From what he made, Ma Wing Shing (The Chinese Hero, Tianxia) invested in property in HK instead which made him very rich. He has since retired from drawing comics. 

I conducted a short interview with Tony Wong in Mandarin in Singapore in 2023. He has many Malay fans and collectors (usually in their 40s and 50s) from Malaysia. It's at https://sgcartoonhub.com/interview-with-tony-wong-at-the-singapore-comic-con-on-9-dec-2023/

Research Prompts from IJOCA 26:1 - #1 What comics never leave home?

 Some Ideas for Articles, written by Mike Rhode, and excerpted from the print edition.

What comics never leave home?

How many comics in a mass medium, such as comic books, comic strips, editorial cartoons, animation, or webcomics, only appear in their native language and never in any other language? Or in their native country and never anywhere else? Or are not held by any libraries beyond their native country? Or aren’t even held in their native libraries?

As Gene Kannenberg noted in an interview earlier this year, speaking about the content in newspapers held by the Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, “...[There is] indigenous stuff that’s never been collected. If I could, I could spend all my time just putting together collections. We had one editorial cartoonist... who came to our library just to get photos of all his cartoons. Because he had no way to get photos of his published cartoons in his country.”(1) This would be a multidisciplinary, multinational, multiyear project to figure out, but it would be pretty darn interesting.

(1) Geoff Grogan. 2024. “Gene Kannenberg Jr. & comics at Northwestern University.” Blockhead: Cartoonists talk Comics (March 25). <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gene-kannenberg-jr-comics-at-northwesternuniversity/id1440223132?i=1000650431997 -- around minute 25:00>.

International Journal of Comic Art Vol. 26, No. 1 Spring/Summer 2024 TOC

[the print edition has been mailed to subscribers; the electronic edition will be available tomorrow]

 

International Journal of Comic Art Vol. 26, No. 1 Spring/Summer 2024

Editor's Notes
John A. Lent
1
The Things They Buried: Marvel Comics and the Vietnam War, 1963-2019
Stephen Connor
3
The Supermachos Strike Again! Rius and the Defense of Marijuana in Mexican Comics
Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste
29
"The Flow of Flipping Through the Pages": An Interview with David Marchetti
Alessio Aletta
Manuela Di Franco
57
Falling Silently Like Snow: Interpretations of Sound as a Lived Experience in A Sign of Affection
Kay K. Clopton
73
Punk Rocker to Award-Winning Comics Artist: An Interview with Nate Powell
CT Lim
96
A Graphic Report
The Editorial Cartoon and Political Change in Kenya
Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru
106
The Shakchunni Project: From Childhood Fear to Internet Icon
Ipsa Samaddar
138
Reading Beyond Martin: March, Souls of Black Folk, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the BLM Era
James F. Wurtz
Mandy Reid
160
Leveraging Comic Art in the Fight Against Disinformation: A Philippine Case Study
Rachel E. Khan
Kara C. David
181
Aquí Tenemos Todo: A Love & Rockets Snapshot
José Alaniz
199
Spectator Sport: The Cartoons of "Sham's Saturday Smile"
Justin Zhuang
206
Sham's Smiles
CT Lim

212

Women's Manga: A Symposium

Moderated by Fusami Ogi

Toward an Expanded Field Crossing Boundaries
Fusami Ogi, project leader of WMRP
217
Shōjo Manga: A Challenging Label in the Global Age
Fusami Ogi
219
Sharing My Shōjo Manga Influence at Angoulême
Abby Denson
225
Kyoto, Popular Culture, Campus Life and the Pandemic
Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
231
Are There Any Texts in BL Studies? Rethinking Narrativity of BL Ethnicity in Japan and Southeast Asia
Kazumi Nagaike
240
Prunella and the Cursed Skull Ring
Matthew Loux
246
Twisted Vines and Tangled Roots: A Reflection and Analysis of Swamp Thing
Jason D. DeHart
252
Mediating Socio-Political Issues through Digital Cartoons: A Study of Caste-Based Cartoons on Instagram in India
Krishna Sankar Kusuma
Saroj Kumar
262
The First Tarzan Manga, Boken Tarzan
Kosei Ono
283
A Comics and Nonfiction Graphic Memoir Course at The Graduate Center:
A Trial Run at Teaching the Methods and Making of Nonfiction Visual Narrative as Part of Postgraduate Study and Its Resulting Work
Sandy Jimenez
288
Do Comics Affect Pop Culture? The Case of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Maria-Theodora Folina
Chrysa Agapitou
Dimitris Folinas
303
Remembrance
One of a Kind, Trina Robbins, 1938-2024
John A. Lent
323
Remembrance
Farewell to the Mother of Women's Comic Book History
Trina Robbins (August 17, 1938 - April 10, 2024)
William H. Foster III
329
Remembrance
Bob Beerbohm: 1952-2024
John A. Lent
331
Research Prompts
Michael Rhode
333
News Briefs

336

Book Reviews
Laurent Baridon and Marie Laureillard. Caricatures en Extrême-Orient. Origines, Rencontres, Métissages, by Valentina Denzel,

p. 340.

Jonathan Najarian, ed. Comics and Modernism: History, Form, andCulture, by John A. Lent, p. 345.

Phil Witte and Rex Hesner. Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons, by Sam Cowling, p. 347.

Haruki Murakami. Adapted by Jean-Christophe Deveney and illustrated by PMGL. Haruki Murakami: Manga Stories, by Jon Holt, p. 349.

Laura Cristina Fernández, Amadeo Gandolfo, and Pablo Turnes, eds. Burning Down the House: Latin American Comics in the 21st Century, by Maite Urcaregui, p. 355.

Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, and Fabrice Leroy. Eds. The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel, by Kirsten Møllegaard, p. 358.

Kaori Okura and Makiko Itoh (trans). Sōseki Natsume's Botchan: The Manga Edition.

mkdeville and Philippe Nicloux (ills). Akutagawa's Rashômon and Other Stories, by Liz Brown, p. 361.

Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko, eds. Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan. The World of Kusazōshi, by John A. Lent, p. 364.

Matt Reingold. The Comics of Asaf Hanuka: Telling Particular and Universal Stories, by Cord A. Scott, p. 366.

Kent Worcester. A Cultural History of The Punisher, by CT Lim, p. 368.

Brian R. Solomon. Superheroes! The History of a Pop-Culture Phenomenon from Ant-Man to Zorro, by Dominick Grace, p. 370.

Benjamin Fraser. Ben Katchor, by Matt Reingold, p. 373.

Joseph R. Givens and Darius A. Spieth, eds. Robert Williams: Conversations, by John A. Lent, p. 373.

Josh Tuininga. We Are Not Strangers: Based on a True Story, by Shanna Hollich, p. 375.

Rachel Khan. I Run to Make My Heart Beat, by Lori Spradley, p. 377.

Marc Sumerak, Elena P. Craig, and Ted Thomas. Marvel Comics: Cooking with Deadpool, by Lizzy Walker, p. 379.

Ken Forkish and Sarah Becan. Let's Make Bread! A Comic Book Cookbook, by Christina Pasqua, p. 382.

Christina De Witte and Mallika Kauppinen. Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice: A Thai Comic Book Cookbook, by Cord A. Scott, p. 387.

Justin Gardiner. Small Altars, by Liz Brown, p. 389.

Rich Johnson. The Incredible Hulk: Worldbreaker, Hero, Icon, by José Alaniz, p. 391.

Exhibition Reviews

Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form, by Charles Hatfield, p. 395.

Comments on the Huge Cartoon Exhibition At the Pompidou Center in Paris, by Harri Römpötti, p. 407.

Portfolios
Chubasco (Victor Emmanuel Vélez Becerra), p. 411.
Oleg Dergachov, p. 420.
Jugoslav Vlahovic, p. 428.

Graphic Novel Review: Kenji Miyazawa’s The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories

 
reviewed by Jon Holt, Portland State University

Kenji Miyazawa.  Adapted by Yasuko Sakuno and translated by Moss Quanci.  Kenji Miyazawa’s The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories.  North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle, 2024.  192 pp. $14.99.  ISBN 9784805318249. https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/kenji-miyazawas-restaurant-of-many-orders-and-other-stories-9784805318249

                      

Billed as “the first manga version of three modern fables by Kenji Miyazawa one of Japan’s most read and best loved authors,” Tuttle’s next entry into their manga-ization of modern Japanese literature is the short and inexpensive collection of The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories.  Those other stories are “The Acorns and the Wildcat” (“Donguri to yamaneko”) and “The Twin Stars” (“Futago no hoshi”).  The press release says that this book is “the first manga version” of Miyazawa’s work, but that is not true at all.  In fact, in the mid-1980s, Shio Shuppansha released a masterful five-volume “Manga House” (“Manga-kan”) anthology series that had some of the most amazing and varied artists of the day doing manga adaptations of Miyazawa’s stories into manga.  Witness that contributor list:  Mizuki Shigeru (Kitarō), Yamada Murasaki (Talk to My Back; Second-Hand Love), Nagashima Shinji (Mangaka zankoku monogatari), children’s picture-book artist Suzuki Kōji, manga artist and animator Murano Moribi, Hatanaka Jun (Mandaraya no Ryōta)—just for starters.[i]  For Tuttle’s book, we instead get Sakuno Yasuko (creator of The Conditions for Being a Princess [Himegimi no jōken], an 8-volume series published from 2002 to 2006).  As manga goes, Sakuno’s adaptation of these classic Miyazawa stories is passable.  She originally published these in Japan in 2010, according to the colophon.  Was her manga good enough to originally justify publishing in almost 200 pages, the equivalent of 47 pages of text (in Japanese)?  Was it then so good enough to republish her work, translated into English for a foreign audience?  After all, whether one reads the stories in Japanese or in English (as in John Bester’s superb translations of the same stories), one could probably actually enjoy the originals in less time than it takes to read them in this manga adaptation. 

If we put that aside, there are some merits to Sakuno’s manga adaptation of this children’s story author, who in Japan has a stature like that of Lewis Carroll in the West.  Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933)[ii] is not only one of Japan’s most well-read children’s story writers (even if during his lifetime no one did read him), but also he was an avant-garde poet.  Actually, he was a modernist writer. So, to adapt him into manga should be a pretty heady and steep challenge.  Fools rush in, as they say.  Compared to Tuttle’s other recent manga outings, like their horrifically awful Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human or their Haruki Murakami’s Manga Stories (volume one reviewed earlier this year in IJOCA), Sakuno’s work on Miyazawa here is not that bad.  Her manga is not great, but it is not that bad either.  She nearly meets the challenge.  For hard-core Miyazawa fans, it might be worth experiencing her effort, but I would not want Tuttle’s manga versions to be anyone’s “first Miyazawa Kenji.”

            In fact, like a lot of other of Tuttle’s new manga series entries, it really is better to think of these books as collections of illustrated stories, probably intended for a younger or teenage audience as a way to encourage students to read more Japanese literature.  At times, Tuttle’s offerings have barely aspired to be more than digest versions of novels or short stories. At the very worst, they are “Modern Japanese Literature for Dummies in Pictures.”  Certainly, the Dazai and Murakami collections reveal only a minimal desire either by the artist or the publisher to make the pictures really matter and add something to the enjoyment of the original author’s writing.  When Sakuno does succeed in elevating the pictures beyond visually answering the question of “what happens next?”, she does so by using small, quiet moments that require the reader to wonder instead “wait, what just happened?” or “what is happening now?”  These moments of quiet mystery are really what can make the original Miyazawa stories tick—so Sakuno is wise to try to use multiple panels or even the whole page to open up questions instead of simply providing answers, answers, answers to the reader.  Plot is never the point of a Miyazawa story, so kudos to Sakuno for respectfully handling the source material.

Figure 1.  A shōjo (girls’) manga approach to Miyazawa Kenji’s children’s story, “The Restaurant of Many Orders.”  Sakuno Yasuko, Kenji Miyazawa’s The Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories (Tuttle, 2024), pp. 22-23.

            A case in point comes early in Sakuno’s adaptation of the title story, “The Restaurant of Many Orders” (“Chūmon no ōi ryōriten”), where two avaricious and gluttonous hunters first have the tables turned on them when the remote mountain restaurant starts to give them orders.  Sakuno takes two pages to deliver this ironic turnabout in very minimal (but in no way minimally satisfying) panels (Figure 1, pages 22-23).  Much of the original story simply involves cutaways from the narrative to show isolated “sign” texts that both protagonist pair and the reader must pause to consider.  In Sakuno’s manga, too, she dedicates a whole panel to a panel of whitespace with text written on it.  It might seem a bit lazy or unimaginative, but in her way, Sakuno is respecting the source material.  She takes some liberties with the Miyazawa text in having her protagonists sometimes think (thought balloons) rather than voice (speech balloons) their impressions of the signs, but that is not altogether out of keeping with the feeling of the original story and it provides an interesting flow for the reader.  In Sakuno’s adaptation, the two bigoted hunters sometimes keep their ugly thoughts to themselves, as if each man is a bit embarrassed to share his petty thoughts with his petty companion.  The last panel on the page is a completely silent shot of the next (of many) doors leading deeper into the restaurant, effectively working to set up a growing sense of foreboding doom and claustrophobia.  If you want to keep score, this two-page and five-panel sequence came out of only four truncated lines of text.  This is why I mentioned that readers of the original text could probably enjoy the richness the Miyazawa in the original (or translated English) prose faster than by reading this Tuttle manga version. 

            Overall, Sakuno’s style here reads like a shōjo manga, with her open and airy panels.  Sometimes there is even the trademark layered page, where panels overlap over panels, balloons overlap panels, characters pop out and are layered over other panels and characters.  Many of the panels are cut into diagonals, so it feels much more like a shōjo manga from the 1970s or the 1980s than a contemporary text in girls’ manga mode.[iii]  As with other Tuttle manga books, the company seems to be targeting older readers with classic manga sensibilities in terms of the art, but the packaging otherwise is designed for readers actually in their teens.  For this reader, who enjoys classic shōjo manga, the older touch was quite welcome and at times I could completely appreciate what Sakuno was doing by opening up the story and the manga to moments of reflection.  The most important characteristic of classic shōjo manga is seen here every few pages:  we see the “interiority” (naimen)—the thoughts and feelings—of Miyazawa’s characters, who really only had such feelings inferred by his readers.  In other words, Sakuno’s greatest skill in adapting these stories into manga form was her brave move to allow her own manga readers to slow down and infer from minimal, often blanked-out visual context, that her characters are thinking.  Her manga readers too are forced to think and ponder what the characters are thinking and feeling.  Compare though her approach to that of Murano Moribi, who instead uses numerous beautiful panels to render with love and respect the wilderness of Miyazawa’s beloved Iwate prefecture (Figure 2), as seen in the Miyazawa Kenji Manga House (1985) anthology.  I must say that I favor the Murano over the Sakuno in terms of the former’s ability to present in pictures the larger worldview of Miyazawa, but Sakuno can convey something palpable and real, even though it is invisible.  Such is the power of manga.

Figure 2. Miyazawa’s worldview: what you do not get in the Tuttle Miyazawa manga.  Murano Moribi, “Oinomori to Zarumori, Nusutomori,” in Miyazawa Kenji Manga House (Vol. 2, Shio Shuppansha, 1985), pp. 6-7.

            Lastly, when it comes to manga-izing literature, one is curious how the translators and adapters will choose to comic-book-up the story through the use of onomatopoeia.  As seen in my review of Tuttle’s Murakami Manga Stories, the team had a special person who added onomatopoeia words to Murakami’s text that were never there.  In that case, the words were kept in the original Japanese in Romanized form, so unless the Anglophone reader knew some Japanese, most of those additions must have come across as noise and distractions.  In this Sakuno edition, it seems that she conservatively added or swapped in her own onomatopoeia on her own to convey action or feeling in combination with her panels and layout.  For example, in the original Japanese, Miyazawa often has the doors open with a clicking sound, perhaps showing the two hunters’ anticipation of the next door and the next room; in her manga, Sakuno often makes the sounds of the doors SLAM or BA-TAN shut— as written in this English translation.  Overall, this move on her part enhances instead the creepiness of this Restaurant of Many Orders. Moss Quanci, the translator, has wisely provided these English equivalents, so the action soundtrack is intelligible, even if not always necessary for the reader.  Sometimes Quanci fails to consistently do this, so among the sounds of WOOOSH and BANG, there is the odd holdover of ZAWA-ZAWA from the Japanese left untranslated. Having read these stories numerous times in the original Japanese, I can attest that Quanci’s English translations of the narration and dialogue are appropriate, and, for the most part, are in keeping with the spirit of the original text with minimal contemporizing of the language from the way it originally read in Japanese in the 1920s.  John Bester and Roger Pulvers are still, to my mind, the best translators of Miyazawa into English, but Quanci does not do injustice to the words of this beloved literary figure.          

      Is Tuttle’s Miyazawa manga worth buying?  Probably not when comparted to other manga adapted from literature.  Consider other options one has out there for one’s dollar that do something similar.  Zack Davisson’s superior and thrice Eisner-nominated translations of Tanabe Goh’s Lovecraft manga (Dark Horse Comics) are much more wondrous cross-media and cross-cultural comic adaptations of literature.  Fueled by an English translation based on that by Columbia Professor Emeritus Donald Keene, when Viz released Itō Junji’s adaptation of No Longer Human, the classic Dazai angst novel, they provided North American audiences with a far superior reading experience than Sakuno’s Miyazawa manga, because Itō’s manga visuals truly adds to one’s understanding and appreciation of Dazai’s words.  Interest in contemporary and modern Japanese literature is quite strong these days—which is a very welcome thing for this reviewer—so perhaps one should not complain about Tuttle’s effort to bring classic stories and novels to a younger demographic here in North America.  Will Sakuno’s comic-book version of Miyazawa spark a reader to go out and try to read him in the original prose format?  I have my doubts about that.  What is most interesting about this effort—and Tuttle’s larger push—to put modern/manga Japanese literature into the hands of new readers is that a major publisher of Japan-related books in North America believes that the market is hungry again to read Japanese authors, and, that manga is the vehicle to get them to do just that.  No one ordered Tuttle to produce all of these fusion dishes—much of them mediocre fare—but then again, maybe the customer isn’t always right.

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[i] I would be remiss if I failed to mention the most famous manga illustrator of Miyazawa Kenji’s works:  Masumura Hiroshi, an artist who always turns human protagonists into anthropomorphized cats.  His 1983 cat-charactered adaptation of Night on the Milky Way Railway (Ginga tetsudō no yoru), Miyazawa’s greatest full-length story, into manga was even adapted later into a full-length anime film.  To read more about the difficulty of working with Miyazawa’s stories like it that were often never completed, see my article on Night of the Milky Way Railway:  Holt, “Ticket to Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism in Miyazawa Kenji’s Ginga tetsudō no yoru,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 42:2 (2014), 305-345.

[ii] Japanese names should be listed in their proper order of first surname, then personal name, which I follow: Miyazawa Kenji, not Kenji Miyazawa.  I only deviate from this traditional practice when I am quoting PR material or book titles by Tuttle, who has chosen to reverse the order to please Anglophone readers and is not proper in Japan.

[iii] For a concise description of the genre’s visual characteristics, see Deborah Shamoon, Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 2012), especially Chapter Five.  For further discussion on how to teach shōjo manga in the classroom using Shamoon’s insights, see my chapter “Type Five and Beyond: Tools to Teach Manga in the College Classroom” in Exploring Comics and Graphic Novels in the Classroom (edited by Jason DeHart, IGI Global [2022]), pp. 46-63.