** follow Jenny on twitter **
** follow Ed Salazar on twitter and tumbler **
** stalk Jenny on facebook (but not in person, please) **
** see Jenny dance **
What always made the best horror comics work is a sense of unpredictability—confronting the unknown in brand-new circumstances (see 30 Days of Night, Severed, The Courtyard). Traditional monsters are fun and funny—especially when featured in ‘monster mash’ titles like Screamland and DC’s new Frankenstein book—but there is no real sense of fear there. Unless you break the rules, monsters can be fairly unscary.
What Junji Ito does so well in UZUMAKI (as well as his other titles) is introduce unknown horrors that have no real precedent and no ‘explanation’ or reason for happening. There is no ghost to be pacified, vampire to be staked, or alien to be blown away. These are phenomena without source or relief.
In UZUMAKI, there are spirals. The shapes invade a small coastal town, infect the locals, cause smoke rings and tornadoes. Characters become obsessed with their own cochleae. People turn into giant snails. Babies grow spiral-shaped mushrooms from their stomachs. Hair hangs its owners by wrapping around telephone poles. And there is no why, here—no secret answer to the chaos.
Ito’s art style takes grotesque situations and makes them tangible—the sweat, the decay, the snail skin. His characters’ hollow eyes scream of desolation and desperation. It is not pretty, and not for the faint of heart. These lines are scaly and horrifying. There is nothing remotely ‘magical’ about it.
UZUMAKI goes places that few American mainstream comics would dare. Are you a fan of Avatar titles like Crossed? Sick of the usual villains? Pick up a volume of UZUMAKI at Meltdown and receive 10% off of your purchase. Just don’t get caught staring at your fingertips for too long…
LAST MONTH: Shiro Miwa’s DOGS.
Follow my twitter for more thoughts: @junkstory #comicgeeksagainstmangadiscrimination
DRAWMELT! 2 life drawing days a week
Monday: EXTREME cosplay Tuesday: Traditional clothed figure
Every event is $20/person*. There’s limited space so first come first serve and/or contact DnD@Meltcomics.com to prepay and hold your spot. Bring as little as a sketch book and pencil or as much as canvas & Paints. Hosted by Satine Phoenix (available for art instruction)
Location: Meet us in the new side gallery
Time: 7pm – 10pm
*water & light snack included
This week’s models are:
MONDAY: Azmyth Kaminski http://www.azmythkaminski.com/ http://www.modelmayhem.com/648688
TUESDAY: Vivid Vivka http://www.modelmayhem.com/32477
Monday: Azmyth Kaminski
- TUESDAY: Vivid Vivka
Dec 072011
DnDMelt’s Beginner’s bootcamp 101. The first part of our Boot Camp Series where we teach you the ABC’s of Character Creation.
Price: $10
DAY: Saturday December 17, 2011 TIME: 1:00pm-5pm
In this 4e BootCamp we will show you:
- EXACTLY How to make a character & what makes a character
- What to do in what order and what to add up to calculate all the things that need calculating
- Choosing Feats & Powers
- the importance of Armor, Weapons & Equipment. *Always be prepared
- Easy steps to leveling up
Bring Yourself and a pencil. We will have the character sheets here as well as other handouts
Questions? check out http://meetup.com/DnDMelt or Email DnD@Meltcomics.com
This month in MANGA DOESN’T SUCK: Kaori Yuki’s GODCHILD.
Fairy tales are often warped for the enjoyment of comic book fans—see GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES and FABLES as two obvious examples. In GODCHILD, Kaori Yuki has done similar things with nursery rhymes, and the effect is simultaneously gorgeous and horrifying.
This is an eight-part series about an Earl named Cain, who has a cursed heritage and even more disturbing hobbies—in this case, collecting poisons and solving other royals’ mysteries with them. The mysteries that Cain solves involve blood-draining parasites, human embalming, medieval torture masks, and reanimated dead people. It is truly mad Victorian mayhem, with brief moments of subtle emotion. The characters can barely breathe between plot elements, and when they do, it’s usually in the form of self-reflection… or self-hatred.
Cain himself is a curious cross of Sherlock Holmes and The Shade. He enjoys solving mysteries but has moral loyalty to no one but his valet, Riff. His actions can be arbitrary and dictated by mere curiosity, but he also seems to be capable of great love—as far as it serves his own interests, that is.
Kaori Yuki’s artwork, while amazing, is difficult to defend in an American comics context, because it is very, very Japanese. Yuki is a master of spidery lines, wandering limbs, and slender faces. Her attention to detail is shocking; even a straining neck seems elegant, and the imagery—spiders, petals, candles, the tarot—makes Dracula seem tame and dry. But Yuki never apologizes for her style. It’s rich and genre-filled like a classic Hammer horror film.
I have a friend who used to say that Kaori Yuki is ‘like Shakespeare with pictures’, and that has never been more accurate than in the case of GODCHILD. Meet your manga Macbeth, your comic King Lear, your gothically illustrated Titus Andronicus. And if this comparison puts you off, then perhaps it’s just as well, for there are no happy endings here, and Cain’s Victorian London is darker than any Green Lantern can light.
There is a translated prequel series, entitled THE CAIN SAGA, which is no less disturbing or poetic but slightly more difficult to read, seeing as Yuki’s art style has matured so drastically since she first wrote it. GODCHILD bewitches all on its own. In fact, if you buy Volume One at Meltdown, we’ll take ten percent off of it and everything else. Do you still dare to resist?
LAST MONTH: Junji Ito’s UZUMAKI.
For more of why Kaori Yuki is so diabolically different from Western writers, read my blog: http://concretesoul.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/why-kaori-yuki-is-my-favourite/
For more comic & manga ramblings, follow my twitter: http://twitter.com/junkstory
#comicgeeksagainstmangadiscrimination