I am a child of the Silver Age. My touchstones and reference points are the DC and Marvel Comics of the era and the myriad of smaller publishers who populated the Bronze Age. When I lectured this past week on writing dialogue, all my visuals came from those eras, which was fresh to the students.
As each semester at MICA begins, my students present their projects to me and their peers. We are told about the premise and are shown character designs and a proposed schedule. Additionally, they are asked to show what works influenced this specific project, and I am always surprised.
As a result, I find myself scribbling down names of works and creators I am entirely unfamiliar with, and it’s part of my education.
The most mainstream of my students is one whose style inspirations are drawn from Herge’s Tintin, Los Bros Hernandez’s Love & Rockets, and Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese (which prompted me to finally buy the first volume to see what the fuss has been all about). Another cites Scott Pilgrim and Paper Girls. Also mentioned are Adventure Time and Tillie Walden’s Are You Listening? Then there are the ones I have never heard of, such as Natasha Allegri, creator of Bee and Puppycat, Helen Phillips’ The Disaster Store, and Canadian Iranian creator Soroush Barazesh (Kings of Nowhere).
In a sign of true international influence, one Chinese student named René Laloux’s beloved 1973 animated Fantastic Planet. Other films namechecked are The Princess Bride, Goethe’s Faust, The House of the Devil, and The Mephisto Waltz.
The majority take their cues from Manga and Anime, two areas in which I am woefully unprepared. So, there’s Jillian Tamaki (Supermutant Magic Academy), Hiromu Arakawa (Full Metal Alchemist), Trung Le Nguyen (The Magic Fish), Jinsei Kataoka & Kazuma Kondou (Deadman Wonderland), and Tsutomu Nihei (Blame!).
The one that at least three people named was Junji Ito. From the samples shown on the screen, I liked what I saw. One student emailed me after class and made some suggestions, so I quickly obtained his Tombs, a short story collection. He works predominantly in the horror genre, and his ideas are incredibly imaginative, and the art is wonderfully textured, but I found the writing a disappointment.
Being exposed to all these global creators certainly keeps me engaged and broadens what I am reading, so I am definitely getting as much out of the class as the students are.
#Tags: Adventure Time, Are you Listening?, Bronze Age, Corto Maltese, DC Comics, Fantastic Planet, Goethe's Faust, Helen Phillips, Herge, Hiromu Arakawa, Hugo Pratt, Jillian Tamaki, Jinsei Kataoka, Junji Ito, Kazuma Kondou, Love & Rockets, Marvel Comics, MICA, Natasha Allegri, Ppaer Girls, René Laloux, Scott pilgrim, Silver Age, Soroush Barazesh, The Disaster Store, The House of the Devil, The Mephisto Waltz, The Princess Bride, Tillie Walden, Tintin, Tombs, Trung Le Nguyen, Tsutomu Nihei
Can you unpack a bit your impression that Junji Ito’s writing was a disappointment? Was your reaction to the literal words writted (which might be an issue of translator’s style) or more about writing in the sense of story structure and development?
Monsters just show up. The dead come back to life. Nothing is exalained, the worldbuilding to make me believe the supernatural elementa are missing None of the characters are particularlyl memorable.