Word: comix
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...outfit named Fanfare, has published five books in the U.S. as part of a line they call nouvelle manga. They mean to start a new genre and the latest two, "Doing Time" by Kazuichi Hanawa and "The Walking Man," by Jiro Taniguchi, are two of the most peculiar comix of the year...
...Nouvelle Manga has its champion in Frederic Boilet, a French artist living in Japan. Being French he naturally had to write a "Nouvelle Manga Manifesto." In it he explains how Japan came to see the French style of comix, called bandes dessinees or "clear line," as too graphically focused, while the French saw Japanese Manga as little more than near-endless volumes about robots and monsters. In spite of this disconnect, Boilet writes, both cultures share a mutual fascination with slice of life stories, as evidenced by the popularity of French cinema in Japan. (The name nouvelle manga deliberately echoes...
...Leland Purvis's black and white art, always readable and clear, moves ably back and forth from conventional comix storytelling to more metaphorical sequences explaining the science. Still, "Suspended in Language" does better at dramatizing Bohr's life than at illuminating his theories. If, like me, you couldn't pass a current high school physics exam, you will likely find much of the high math and various connections between ideas a bit heady and confusing. Fortunately, the pacing of the book is such that even if you don't totally get, say, the importance of Planck's Constant or even...
...nearly 25 years Peter Kuper has worked to raise the consciousness of comix. In 1980, inspired by the Reagan Revolution, he co-founded the highly politicized magazine "Word War 3 Illustrated," an early conflation of 'zine and comix anthology. Since then he has expanded his repertoire into travel comix, autobiography and even the "Spy vs. Spy" strip in "Mad." (He has also done a fair amount of illustration work for TIME.) But his political comix have always been the standouts. As far back as the late 1940s, EC comics included themes of racial inequities and the hypocrisies...
...Peter Kuper's dedication to using comix to foment social change, or at least keep social inequities on the table, makes him one of a long history of politically aware comix makers. Of his two latest books, "Sticks and Stones" will likely age as poorly as the anti-Nixon spoofs from the underground era, but "The Jungle" successfully mixes both artistic and political agendas into a new work of engaged literature...