Chinese Cartoonist Xiao Bai Wins Japan's International Manga Award

© 2010 XIAO BAI / KANA

Via Asia-Pacific News:

Tokyo - A Chinese cartoonist captured the top prize in this year's International Manga Award contest hosted by the Japanese government to honour artists abroad, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Xiao Bai's gold award-wining comic

titled 'Si loin et si proche' (So far and so near), features a Chinese first-year female university student named Xiao Tian, who runs into her son coming from the future. The work was published in Belgium in 2010.

French, Spanish and Thai cartoonists also won silver awards, the ministry said.

The winners will be feted in February or March, awarded with a 10-day stay in Japan, during which they will meet with local cartoonists and visit publishing companies, it said.

The 4th annual contest received 189 entries from 39 countries and territories, notably Thailand, Brazil, Belgium, Spain and Kazakhstan, the ministry said.

Xiao Bai on Deviantart

Xiao Bai's blog

The Welcome to My Playground blog interviews Xiao Bai

Jason Thibault's Submission Guidelines for Every Comic and Manga Publisher in the Universe

comic-submissions-guidelines
Originally uploaded by OptimumWound.com

Just in case you haven't seen Jason Thibault's much-linked-to Submission Guidelines for Every Comic and Manga Publisher in the Universe, here it is. The guide is designed for cartoonists who want to break into comic books, graphic novels and manga.

Bedside Books

Time to take a look at what books have wandered over and stayed to my bedside all summer. There are some more books (LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE V2 and THE COLLECTED DOUG WRIGHT, for instance) that I've read and then dutifully shelved. But these volumes have created a small leaning tower, ready for thumbing thru any night, since Spring.



I like John Stanley's comics work. MELVIN THE MONSTER, a 1960s era series of comic books are typically well done stories -- fun for kids and adults. It's part of the John Stanley Library that Drawn & Quarterly is publishing.


SPELLBOUND IN DARKNESS is a history of silent movies and includes reviews back in the day. A 1983 Christmas present from Dad!

JAPAN BY 17 AUTHORS and THE PUSH MAN; 2 great manga collections.


Richard Thompson gave me his copy of JUMPING UP AND DOWN ON THE ROOF AND THROWING BAGS OF WATER ON PEOPLE edited by Mark Jacobs (sadly, out of print), one of the best collections of cartoons by the best cartoonists (Sam Gross, J.B. "Bud" Handelsman, B. Kliban, Charlie Rodrigues, Brian Savage and Gahan Wilson). I've read and reread it. Thanks, Richard!


Hoo boy. A lot of books.

• COMIC JOURNAL #297, the one with a huge Mort Walker interview
• WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW by my pal, the talented Brian Fies; one of the year's most gorgeous books
• THE WORLD OF UKRIDGE by P.G. Wodehouse; Ukridge being not as well known as his Keeves & Wooster character, but great little short stories about the slacker/schemer Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge
• THE WALKING MAN by Jiro Taniguchi, which is one of the comics that made me really like manga
• BARNEY GOOGLE AND SNUFFY SMITH by Brian Walker, one of the best portraits of a cartoonist, his time and his comics

• THE ARRIVAL by Shaun Tan, the multi award winning book that shows you what can be done with a wordless story; a very touching and beautiful book
• LITTLE LULU: LULU GOES SHOPPING more Dell Comics reprints of the John Stanley Lulu stories; Dark Horse keeps churning out these great books; for less that $10 a volume, you get a fistful of stories
• TAMARA DREWE by Posy Simmonds was a good, recent read (and it will soon be a motion pciture) and I've just received another GN of hers
• LOVE AND ROCKETS THE NEW STORIES #1 by the Hernandez Brothers, whom I enjoy immensely; I like this new 100 pages once-a-year book format
• DISAPPEARANCE DIARY an autobiographical manga book by Hideo Azuma all about when he disappeared from society; recently nominated for a couple of Ignatz Awards and named one of the best graphic novels of the year by New York Magazine and Publisher's Weekly

THE SOUTH BANK SHOW: Anime Documentary

I was asked a few weeks ago, by a college professor, to briefly explain what manga is. I stumbled through a brief explanation:

Manga is, simply put, Japanese comics. Manga, historically, is different that US comics: it's read by everyone; businessmen read it on the way to work, etc. Manga subject matter is as varied as TV or movies here, and there is no stigma that comics have to be for children or have superheroes.

And there are, of course, about a zillion places on the Web to find out more.

And here's one from YouTube.

THE SOUTH BANK SHOW, a British series from ITV, showed a primer in manga and its influence on Japanese culture in 2006, with interviews with Manga Masters. Some great video.

Profession Mangaka Documentary by Benoît Peeters

Belgian comics writer Benoît Peeters has a documentary on YouTube titled "Profession Mangaka" about (what else?) manga.

It's part of a series of documentaries titled COMIX that have been shown on European television. In this episode, 3 manga creators are interviewed: Usumaru Furuya, Jiro Taniguchi, and Kiriko Nananan.

The film is in German. If you don't speak or read German (like me), it's still interesting and easy to follow.

The documentary is in three parts:

Mangaka 1/3




Mangaka 2/3



Mangaka 3/3



Here's a description from a Google-translated TV schedule Web site.

COMIX
Profession mangaka
Directed by: Benoît Peeters

The wave manga is currently expected to descend on Europe. In Japan, which is already a social phenomenon: everyone reads manga, the albums cover all the possible topics, in every style imaginable. This part of the documentary series "Comix" discover the universe and the methods of work of three very different authors. Usumaru Furuya workshop works with a team to produce a series of action as the soap opera "Pi". Jiro Taniguchi, l'auteur de Jiro Taniguchi, author of "Neighborhood distant," also works in a workshop, but his approach is more introspective, more intimate. Finally, the young Kiriko Nananan creates alone, a new form of manga specifically designed for girls.

Related: French cartoonist Olivier Martin lives and works in Japan for two years, soaking up manga style in this 3 part film: part one, part two, and part three.

Dirk Deppey's 50 Best Comics of 2007

I've been reading all of Dirk Deppey's best comics picks for 2007. Dirk is a writer and an editor with The Comics Journal. He produces the Journalista! news site, a daily must-read that covers the world of comics.

I've read a few of the comics he cites, haven't heard of a lot of them, and have heard of a few. I really enjoyed his opinions and I am going to pick up a couple of these.

The thing about Dirk is that he's an omnivore, devouring superhero comics, manga, literary graphic novels, reprints of newspaper comic strips, Web comics, etc. This is worth your time and then some, particularly if you're curious.

We're in a great time for comics. There is so much that's out there, on the shelves and on screen. As Dirk says in his intro:

"Any way you add it up, 2007 was a fantastic year for comics entering the English-language market from all over the world, both in print and online. I bought so many good comics this year that I'm surprised I didn't wind up in bankruptcy court — and there were still an unholy number of critically lauded works that I missed."

Image from the graphic novel THE ARRIVAL by Shaun Tan, that went out of print shortly before the Holidays. My copy, I am told, will get to me by next week.

Manga to Help Find Real-Life Killer

Above: Kyoto Seika University manga students in a photo from the KSU Web site.

Kyoto Seika University has a Manga Department, where students learn how to create manga.

KSU had a tragedy in January: one of its students, Daisaku Chiba, was knifed. The Tokyo police have not caught the suspect.

The faculty and students have gotten together and created a 20 page manga book about the boy, his life, and what happened on January 15, 2007, in the hopes of finding the person or persons who stabbed Daisaku Chiba ten times.

Above: the 20 page pamphlet. A thousand copies will be distributed around railway stations in Kyoto and other places.

Some interior detail.

“Chiba-kun met us through manga. Wouldn’t it give us some comfort if we could help arrest the killer with the power of manga?”

Anime News Network has the story.

A big hat tip to Dirk Deppey at Journalista! for the heads up on this.

Tokyo Comic Book Chain Store: Animate

Above: cool Moomin toys and a book-dispensing vending machine from Chris Butcher's Tokyo trip.

Christopher Butcher posts a ton of photos from his visit to Animate, a mega comics store in Tokyo, at his Comics 212 blog.

The amount of manga and anime in this multi-floor chain comic book store is overwhelming. Even if you're not into this kinda stuff, take a peek for a minute.

Big hat tip to Dirk Deppey at the TCJ news blog Journalista!

MANGA: Sanctioned by the US Government

The Library of Congress is using manga and anime-type characters to teach the children about copyright.

"As we all know, manga never, ever tempts readers into moral compromise…" so comments Dirk Deppey over at the Journalista! site where I snagged this story.

But not everything is 21st century cutting edge at the LoC. There's a cool, funky, 1970s electric guitar riff for the "Cop E. Right" animation.